New Life for an Old Blog

It has been a little less than a year since I last posted.  I have decided to resurrect the blog because there are several people who are interested in my progress on this sampler.  I feel this will be the easiest way to do it. 

It is another wedding sampler, the second one this year. 

It is a little hard to believe it looked like this a week ago. 
Ruth Ann can verify that. 
Now for a little eye candy from the sampler. 

Later today I will complete the hardanger needleweaving in the heart above. 
After that I just have the sprays above the hearts.  Some Japanese ribbon stitch leaves, two spiderweb silk ribbon roses. some pearl beads and a few French knots. 
All in all, I should be able to order its mats cut and frame made next week. 

While I was outside taking these pictures, I had chance to look over the gardens. 

The raspberries are at their peak.  They ooze juice and are so sweet. 
It is a dream, maybe goal, that we have to be able to stand in the middle of our raspberry briar patch and eat raspberries off the canes until we are beyond satiation.  We are there this year.  

I may not continue to use the blog.  I may have to use Facebook.  Something has happened; it is extremely laborious to upload pictures.  This one of the raspberries was tipped on its side.  While they look unnatural when the picture is on its side, they do not look too strange. 
I am a little apprehensive about what will happen when I try to upload a picture of my blue hydrangea; I will give it a try. 

Nikko Blue is blooming like it is made for Minnesota when it is really for a slightly warmer climate zone.  Our winters kill the growth that is supposed to overwinter for the flowers.  Nikko does not reliably bloom on new wood.  I have some HUGE blue pom poms.  I had not been especially good about acidifying its soil last year.  Its flowers are blue in acidic soil otherwise they are pink.  As you can see, I have some mauve flowers. 

Come Look at My Jell-O

It is a brain.  I dug out my brain mold for Halloween. 

There is no progress on Little Bo Peep or First Stitches. 

But Gracie got Moonie's Harvest Pumpkin on Tuesday this week.  Considering that the Post Office said Gracie's Grandmother would not get it until Wednesday, that was pretty good.  She took it to Gracie on Tuesday.  When Gracie took it out of the box, she said that it was Moonie.  Not too bad. 

I pressed heat transfers onto 70 tote bags this week.  It was decided that I only needed to do 70 and not 100.  Another project down. 

My next project for Just Cross Stitch magazine arrived last Friday.  I made a wrong cut when I serged the edges and have to wait for a new piece of linen to come, maybe tomorrow. 

This is my next new project but it is going to be put on hold for a while.It is Dog House Sampler from Little House Needleworks.  I am substituting the white floss for the ecru floss because it will show up better on the linen I selected.  It will become another pillow for a child,  a little boy this time.  I had stitched all of the alphabet but had to pick out everything beginning with the third row.  I miscounted the location of the "H" so the whole row was off and I based the next rows on it, consequently they were off too,  It is almost like starting from the beginning.  I will have little time to stitch on it when the new linen comes from Just Cross Stitch.  I do stitch on it a little in the evening but some of the time in the evening, I have been knitting.

Yes, Christine, I commented on your most recent entry so I am writing an entry.  I was looking through the bogs I follow before I went to compose the entry.  There is lots to tell you so let's begin at the beginning.  I have four finished to make up.  I think I have never had that many at one time. 

My first ornament of the year.  Four years ago I made a friend Patience in the Christmas Virtues Series I by Thea Dueck.  I made it for the only person I knew at the time who would appreciate Patience.  It had significant meaning for her.  Each subsequent year I have made another Christmas Virtue, Faith, Hope, and now Charity. 

This is Moonie's Harvest Pumpkin Pillow.  It was made especially for a certain little girl named Gracie.  Gracie has some serious physical issues.  She had extensive surgery this summer to help relieve the issues.  She has a little black cat named Moonie.  I got this cute freebie pattern from her grandmother and decided to stitch it for her customizing it to more closely resemble Moonie.  Moonie has amber eyes and I know that the eyes do not go very well with the pumpkin.  Moonie also has black lips like my black cat Mooch but I made the lips pink because black would not show up very well; I already knew it would not show up well.  I tried using black thread with black blending filament for the nose which is black like Mooch's.  It did not show up so I stitched on a small black button.  I stitched in whiskers with charcoal gray thread because her whiskers are black like Mooch's; it is subtle but the whiskers do show.  I pieced the pillow top with red fabric because red is Gracie's favorite color.  And, yes, I know it does not go well with the pumpkin.  The name of the game is this is specifically for Gracie. 
The horizontal paisley stripes at the top and bottom of the top are leftovers from my sons' Siamese twins costume for the musical the high school did during their senior year; that was back in November, 1987.  They became the Siamese twins because they are twins, because one of them worked on the production crew for several years, and because they were seniors.  We called the character The Meezies and we still call the character The Meezies.  The fabric in the vertical stripes close to Moonie are from the leftovers of the Meezies' coat; it is the yellow diamonds on red.  We still have one of the coats and I wear it during the winter.  When one of the guys saw the pillow, the first thing he said was "The Meezies." 

Little Bo Peep is coming along.  This is the top and I think you can see some of the glitter in the stripe fabric.  For family privacy, I have blotted out her name and birthdate.  The top is still missing its ruffle.  It will be the dark pink fabric and maybe there will be a second ruffle of white eyelet. 

First Stitches is finished with all the beads.  I need to stretch it on some mat board and pop it into its frame.  Finishing these last two may be interrupted.  

I have to fuse a transfer on each of 100 tote bags for our church.  I am also expecting a new project from Just Cross Stitch.  Speaking of which my white poinsettia is in the current issue.  That is what I was working on when I broke my arm earlier this year. 

In the evenings I feel the need to stitch so I am working on a new design which will become a pillow for another child.  I will show that to you next week, maybe.  There is just too much in this post to do it now.  I am also digging out another XOUFO and lining up the threads for it. 

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.