Be Mine HD

Finished be mine by Lizzie Kate today. Border done in cranberry GAST. I sort of lost some of the "V" in the border because it was so dark. But, I still like the effect of the darker border anyway. The fabric is a pale pink and as usual the flash has washed out the color. This is my first finish for 2008 and I am thinking of completing it as a pinkeep or a cube finish. I haven't quite decided. I am off to bed now, I hope your week is a good one.

A couple of wip's ...

African Lady



Be Mine



Happy New Year again to everyone! Thanks so much for all the comments on my previous post. They are as always so very much appreciated. Here are my two current wip's. I have been working on these pretty much the last week or so. The first is African Lady by Bleu de Soie. You can see a picture of what she will look like finished here . This is a French designer I discovered in my eternal quest for patterns. I am stitching her on 32 ct. apple brown bindy and she seems to be flowing quite well. I hope to finish her soon, but I am beginning to feel the pull of other's-lol.

The second piece is be mine by Lizzie Kate. I find myself in a Valentine's kind of mood here so I have wanted to stitch Valentine related things. Now this is a sweet little design that has caused me no end of trouble. I am having issues with counting again-lol. I had to compensate on the right side some-but I refused to frog. So, don't look too hard. The border actually worked out okay. I have made some changes in color on this one. The heart was supposed to be done in WDW love, but is done in CC prickly pear. The word Valentine was supposed to be done in purple haze and I changed that to CC plum paisley. I also changed the ribbon on the flower to WDW aqua. My last change on this piece involves the border. The pattern calls for WDW linen, but I like the bolder look and I am using GAST cranberry. I think it looks okay. What do you think?

Hope the rest of your week is a great one and happy stitching!

Final 2007 Finish

Here is my final finish of 2007. Salem Sister's by Plum Street Samplers. It was done as a SAL with Ranae and Lizzy . Ranae, speedy stitcher that she is finished first. I don't know if Lizzy got the chance to finish hers. This was stitched on days gone by linen by Silkweaver with V. Clayton silks in deep purple, inky depths, and fire dragon. Conversion courtesy of Terri . She does great conversions to Vikki's silks. I enjoyed this SAL, even though I am such a slow SAL partner. Thanks for the invitation Ranae!

I completed 23 or 24 projects this year, I can't find my notebook at this moment to be sure. This is the most I have ever completed in one year! I think that being inspired by all of you my wonderful stitching friends and your fabulous stitching projects has moved me stitch more ;) I am not going to post any goals, but I will post a list of some of the things I would like to stitch and they are as follows:

African Lady-currently working on this
Valentine Snippet-currently working on this too.
Still Waters
Dawn Fairy
LHN Coffee/Tea packs
Lizzie Kate Double Flips
African Beauties
Cirque de Circles
Fear Not
Halloween Lineup
Eloquent Christmas
Circe the Sorceress

I am sure there are many more! It will be interesting to see where I get with this list at the end of the year. I wish all of you health, wealth and happiness in 2008.


Happy New Year!!

Be Silly Cubed!

Well, Christmas is over for another year. Mine was great and I hope yours was too. Today, I finally got around to a little finishing and completed be silly by My Mark Designs into a cube. As you can see it is very pepto bismol like as it is going into my daughter's room-which is very pink. I love the batik fabric I found to go on the back! I think the front is a little plain, but for the life of me I couldn't think of anything I would like to add. Sometimes less is more!

Thanks for your comments on my last exchange, they are much appreciated. I am still off a few days here-don't go back to purgatory-LOL until new year's day. I think I am beginning to feel the onset of some startitis-lol. Whatever will I get up too? Hope your week is a good one. Catch you all later and happy stitching.

Stitching Bloggers Christmas Exchange

This is my stitching bloggers Christmas exchange for Jenna from Tale of a Shooting Star. She is my partner in the stitching bloggers Birthday/Christmas club 2007. I sent her this little pillow with the stitched design called snowed in from Stone and Thread. It was an fun pattern to do and came with the cute little snowman button. The original model was done on tin roof by WDW. I chose to stitch this on a pretty blue opalescent instead and placed it into a prefinished pillow. I also sent her some charts by JBW, some Christmas themed threads, fabric quarters, candy, note cards and sticky notes. A very fun exchange to gather items for! Enjoy Jenna!

Thanks too for all your comments regarding my exchange to Carol! They are much appreciated. I hope everyone has their holiday shopping done, because the days are slip, slip slipping away! I just have one more giftcard to get and then I am done! Yay! I must go and get some shut eye! Duty will be calling Take care and thanks for looking:)

Autumn Seasonal Exchange for Carol!

This my autumn seasonal exchange for Carol. Carol received it today and says she really likes it-yay! I was a little anxious over it, but now I can breathe a small sigh of relief. I don't know about you all-but I tend to get a little anxiety ridden when I send off exchanges-lol. This is called the autumn house by The Trilogy and I finished it into a little pincushion with tassels. It has the sweetest little leaf buttons. This was also my first time making tassels and I definitely need to work on them some more. I didn't get a good picture of the pincushion by itself, but here it is with the rest of charts and threads I sent with it. The charts are from Carol's wish list-my fave of them has to be the winter floral chart by Knotted Tree.

Now onto winter-which I am really feeling here today in Northwest Florida-it was a lovely 33 degrees this morning. I know not very cold to most of you-but freezing to me. Yes,I am pitiful-lol. Thanks for looking and thanks for your comments on my last exchange and Christmas display! Happy stitching and to all a good night! Okay, I couldn't resist that last one-hey it's the season right?

Stitching Bloggers Christmas Exchange!

Running behind seems to be what I do these days! The day before yesterday I received this lovely Christmas exchange from Sharon of the Seaside Stitcher. She is my partner in the Stitching Bloggers Birthday/Christmas Club. She says this her first "small finish", as she usually frames her stitching. I think it's lovely and that she did a great job! The tree has a lovely Christmas plaid fabric on the back. She also sent me a pair of scissors and cute little container of M & M's that my youngest son has already absconded with-LOL Thanks so much Sharon, I have enjoyed receiving from you this year!



The above picture is my cross stitch buffet decorated for the holidays. I just thought I would share a picture of it. It is definitely one of my favorite pieces of furniture in my home and is such a great place for displaying my cross stitch and the exchanges that I receive. I also want to thank the Christmas elf that is sending out those lovely skeins of thread to various stitcher's. I too received a lovely shade of mistletoe. I keep forgetting to take a photo. But thank you so much! I would love to know who it is.

Today, I have two exchanges going out. One to Carol for our Autumn seasonal exchange and one to Jenna for our Christmas exchange! I hope to post these soon and I am sorry that they are running behind-I meant to get them out before now! Thanks as always for visiting me. Take care and happy stitching!

Autumn Seasonal Exchange from Vonna!

Today I received my autumn seasonal exchange from the magical Vonna! She sent me this exquisite tin with a Prairie Schooler design on it! Isn't it gorgeous? She also spoilt me silly with Crescent threads, needles, a lovely stationery set and another tin of chocolate dipped Altoids. Which are yummy by the way-LOL Thank you so much Vonna! I absolutely LOVED everything!

Thanks to everyone for your comments regarding my daughter. She is well now and hopefully we can go a long time without another episode. Now, just to be fair to the hospital. Alexis did receive pain meds as needed, but I was angry that after about 3-4 hours it was pretty obvious that we would have to be admitted to further manage her. It was just the process of how they went about it, how long they took and the fact that you just don't want your child to hurt! Though these things are hard to go through. I want you to know that we are blessed and certainly there could be worse things. Thank you for caring-it is so much appreciated. I hope you all have a great week!

Dreams and Life......

Long time no post! Life here has been very busy and I will get into that in a minute. But first, here is dreams by M Designs all framed. I finished this in 2006 using passion waterlilies silk thread. I don't recall the color of the linen. It was little hard for me to pick framing for because of the colors. I used double matting in the same colors and picked a dark green frame. It turned out better than I thought it would. The second photo is not a stitching finish but a lovely little print that I got from the Etsy store and had framed. I liked the colors and the simplicity of the design.

Now, as for life. November has been sort of a poor month for me. First, all the trouble with my teeth. Then the day after Thanksgiving, my daughter Alexis had a severe sickle cell crisis and she was hospitalized for four days. We had a terrible time in emergency room as I thought they took entirely too long to effectively manage her care and get her any pain relief. Twelve long hours later, they had her on a morphine pump and finally the beginnings of some relief. But, of course I had to show off my nasty side. It's ridiculous when a child is involved and they are in pain to take that long. Thankfully, she is better now and at home.

I know that I have never spoken of her condition before as we haven't had a major crisis in about 3-4 years. She has hemoglobin SC disease which is usually a much milder form of sickle cell anemia. But, she can have pain crisis's too. Her condition was something we found out only after she was born. My oldest son is okay and my youngest has sickle cell trait. Then on top of this work and more work. I even worked when Alexis was in the hospital and ran between her floor and my floor while on duty. So, needless to say, very limited stitching here. I am almost finished seasonal exchange though. So, I have accomplished a little something. Anyway, things in life could be much worse. I hope to post more soon. Take care and have a great weekend!

Full of Hope Finish

Here is my latest little finish full of hope designed by Mary Kathyrn of Handcrafts Online . Designed for October's Breast Cancer awareness. Mary Kathyrn had these available as kits with a donation going to charities supporting breast cancer research, education and support. It is such a sweet design and has special meaning for me as my Mom is a breast cancer survivor. Her cancer was found during a routine mammogram. Thankfully for her and us it was found very early and today she is cancer free! Though, I didn't finish this for October, we should always be aware of this devastating illness to women every month. Ladies, get those mammograms done and perform those monthly self exams-they can save your life. The design is meant to be finished as a pin keep-but I may put it in small frame.

Thank you too for the compliments and comments on Jenna's gifts. I appreciate them very much. Thanks too for the well wishes for my oral surgery. The surgery itself went well. However, the cavity that I had that they couldn't fix till my wisdom teeth were removed started acting up. I had a horrible weekend and resulting week last week. I can't believe a tooth could give a person so much trouble. I did get it pulled however and even with that had days of discomfort. But, all is better now, still an occasional twinge. So very little stitching here due to all of that.

Currently, I am trying to get back into the swing of things. I am working on a couple of exchanges and just trying to keep my stitching organized. I am off the next couple of days, so hopefully some stitching then. I have however started Christmas shopping. Hey, if you can't stitch-shop! I love to online shop-so painless-LOL. Anyway, I hope you all have a great week and lots of stitching.