Little Bo Peep is done except for the child's name and birth date.  They will be at the bottom between the little blue flowers but I doubt that you will see them.  I plan to not disclose them in the interest of family privacy.  I have actually finished stitching them and have begun to piece the top. 

I have finished all of the stitching and have begun to stitch on the beads.  I have gotten as far as the beginning of the butterfly row. 















I was going to show you a finished Christmas ornament but I did not finish it today.  Instead I cut back a lot of the iris, did a significant amount of laundry, made applesauce from our apples, and watched the installation of our new garage door.  It is much more weather tight than the old door.  The ornament is stitching and finishing so quickly that I do not plan to show it in progress.  I can show it to you next week along with Moonie's Harvest Pumpkin. 

Chatting a Little with You

I am going to go back to the comments to my last post; there were some questions and comments that I would like to address. 

Faith asked if I started First Stitches in 2000.  Yes, I did.  I stitched the final stitches of Last Stitches on 31 December 1999 and the first stitches of First Stitches on 1 January 2000.  I continued stitching daily until I got to the butterfly row.  I needed to have a filler row to take up the horizontal threads that would be left when I rewrote the wording to read "First stitches of 2000" which would go with "Last stitches of 1999" on Last Stitches.  I completely bogged down on that and put the sampler away until this year. 

Annebelle asked if the projects are for myself or someone else.  First Stitches is for me and I have the mats and frame to go with those of Last Stitches.  I will hang them together where I can see them frequently and often.  Little Bo Peep will be pieced into a pillow top for the daughter of our nephew whom I will just refer to as our niece.  The pillow will have a tooth fairy pocket on the back.  I made a Little Boy Blue pillow for her brother. 

I answered Christine privately right after I posted her comment.  She lives in Cornwall and I needed to explain some general things about education in the US and specific things about the school district in which I live.  Kindergarten in the US is comparable to Y1 in Great Britain.

Now for where I am.  Monday mornings I go to school to help with one class of kindergarteners.  Tomorrow I get to have extra time with them.  They are going on a field trip to the local fire station to  learn about fire safety.  It is close enough that they will walk.  I will be a chaperone.  Please wish me well as I am certain they will be exuberant.  My son will be one of the firefighters conducting the lesson and I am certain my teacher will point that out to them as well as the fact that Firefighter Bill is the father of one of the children in the class. 

Little Bo Peep, except for her shoes and the hill are done.  I need to stitch in the sheep, the flowers, Little Bo Peep's shoes, and the tree. 

The design work is almost finished.  The end is coming into sight. 

I just forget

It seems to be very difficult for me to keep on track with my blog entries; that is even though it helps me keep on track with my stitching.  What have I been doing?  This morning before the sun rose, I walked 3.25 miles.  It was all uphill as I climbed out of the Mississippi River valley.  Now I am cleaning radiators; it is a messy, thankless task.  I really need to clean all of them before I begin to paint the three I have marked for painting.  I can only hope it improves our fuel efficiency during the winter.  Simultaneously I am working on the laundry.  It certainly is not glamorous work.  I love my kindergarteners; they are a lovely class.  We took them to an apple orchard for their first field trip.  They were extremely exuberant on the bus but noisy.  They did not yell or scream; they just talked loudly constantly.  We had a full bus with two classes in it.  By the time we got back to the school, it seemed like they had sapped every ounce of my energy.  It is good that their parents are much younger than I am.

I do continue to stitch. 

As you can see the arch around Little Bo Peep is finished and I have stitched in the sky.  

I continue to make progress on my XOUFO.  The stitching is going much easier and quickly since I finished the pansy row. 

A Little Stitching, A Little Painting

We have been painting.  Our associate pastor and her family are moving into the parsonage.  We need to paint.  So I have been painting.  My son, our senior pastor and I painted her future sewing room.  My son and I also did some clean up work.  All in all, it has been rewarding but tiring.  It has motivated me to think a little more seriously about the painting we must do.  This week I picked up a gallon of ceiling paint and a gallon of wall paint.  Because they blend one into another, I selected colors from a single paint card for the front entry, bedroom hallway, passage way from the front entry to the living room, and the living rooom.  The front entry is extremely small; the bedroom hall and passage way to the living room are confined and have no natural light.  So those three areas will be the lighter shade while the living room which is quite large and has south and east windows will be the darker shade.  I picked up the lighter paint because where it will be going are three small areas and the living room is so large it is scary.  I need to begin by vacuuming the corners and prepping the walls.  I think the radiators will be what I paint first.  They are such a pain to paint that if I have them done before I paint the walls, the painting should seem like a breeze. 

Our church youth program has been giving the confirmation students a fleece blanket when they are confirmed.  It is a reminder that as they wrap themselves in the blanket, the members of the congregation figuratively wrap their arms around them and stand behind them.  We stitch a patch of the United Methodist symbol on the blankets.  I stitched eight but the eighth blanket was flawed.  Fortunately I did not wait until the last minute to do it and we have ample time to arrange for an exchange. 

I have just barely begun Little Bo Peep. 

My XOUFO is coming along very nicely.  The row with the nine pansies took a long time and was very fussy to stitch.  The final parts should progress very quickly in comparison. 

Back to Normal

I have had a couple designs to stitch for Annie's Publishing.  The last one is in the post and is due to be delivered tomorrow.  I have had some time to decompress over the weekend. 
First off, I want to show you another finish. 

This is Blue Carnations by Thea Dueck, Victoria Sampler.  I have modified it to be a birth sampler and changed the colors.  They are the same colors I used to stitch samplers for each of her older sisters. 

I am very pleased to say that it and the wedding sampler shown in the previous post are now in the possession of their intended owners. 

It does not get much better than that. 

Not much progress on my XOUFO.  The UFO always is left out when I have a stitching assignment. 

My new project is Little Bo Peep, one of the Country Cottage Kids by Country Cottage Needleworks. 

I will make it into a pillow with a tooth fairy pocket for the daughter of one of our nephews

  Today is Cosmo's first birthday.  Unfortunately he is the definition of a bad boy.  His defenders say that he is not a bad boy just that he has no conscience and acts before he thinks, if indeed he can think.  I can tell you that he has put his claws in the curtains and made huge rips in them and that he jumps on my back and sinks he claws into it. 

Mister Mooch has permanently unfriended him.  It seems that Mooch does not like being swatted; does not like being jumped upon; does not like being bitten and chewed upon; and does not like seeing Cosmo in his food. 

Cosmo is now keeping his distance from Mooch. 

My Finish

The wedding sampler is finished and in its frame.  It was a struggle every step of the way but very much worth the effort.  Currently I am waiting to hear from my sister in law to make arrangements to deliver it to her. 

Back At Last

Okay, I just scanned through all the posts in other blogs since I was last here two weeks ago.  I finished a little project for Annie's Publishing.  I have no idea what they are doing with it because I think it is not for Just Cross Stitch.  In any case, it seems like it is all a closed subject because my check arrived in the post today. 
It has been a little difficult for me to settle back into my stitching. 

My last posted picture of the wedding sampler shows it completed but not in its frame.  That has been fraught with problems.  First I had to locate some 1/8 inch foam core because 3/16 inch is too thick.  I cut the foam core and laced the sampler to it.  I could not line it up squarely behind the mats; it just would not work.  With much frustration, I cut the sampler off the foam core.  With some help I hauled the mat cutter upstairs and set it up.  Please keep in mind that I have never used this mat cutter since it was given to me a number of years ago.  After spending half a day learning how to set it up and how to use it, it cut the foam core with lovely straight, even, and smooth edges. Ahhhhh, I thought, I will get that sampler on here so quickly and it will just jump behind the mats, not so.  I had to carefully manipulate the sampler but it is now taped to the foam core and looks rather even and square.  It has been sitting there of almost a week.  At first I thought I would just leave it taped in place.  Then I decided to stitch the corners and leave the edges taped.  Now I think I will also lace the edges in place.  I am not certain when I will begin but it ought to be sometime this week.  Please keep me in mind to silently urge me to resume the framing process. 

There is some nice little progress to show you on the birth sampler.  This week I plan to paint the dowel and finials for it.  Last week I picked up some lovely pearl cotton to make cording and a tassel for it. 

My very old UFO, otherwise know as XOUFO (Extra Old Unfinished Object) has been languishing.  I have only done a little bit more on the band of pansies.  But I did make a correction to the mats for Last Stitches.  The mats for both Last and First Stitches were made with a spacer.  As nice as it looks, it was not going to work because it made the back stick out way beyond the frame.  I knew I would have to take the mats apart to take the spacer out but I was very hesitant to do so because I feared ruining the mats.  I did try with the mats for Last Stitches and was successful.  I feel confident I can correct the mats for First Stitches when I am ready to frame it.