I'm Back

 Hi!  You might think after a month absence I might have something great and wonderful to show for myself, but I don't.  I have been busy and stitching has not made the progress that I could hope for. On St. Patrick's Day weekend, my Guild had a retreat at the Oak Brook Hills Marriott.  We got to do a little shopping and lots of stitching.  I worked on the background of the Princess and Me ornament above.  The background was an easy thing to do in a group setting.  The weather that weekend was beautiful so this was also an easy project to take outside.  I also worked on Frog Stew which is pictured below.  I mainly worked on the sky and the purple sleeve. 

 The next weekend was a pilot class for Night Owls.  This will be taught by Diane Herrmann at EGA National Seminar in the fall.  It is an excellent class.  I will learn a lot on this piece.  I did not take a picture of the canvas because my little bit of progress and spaghetti is shameful.  Once I get a little more done I will show you a picture of the piece. 

Since it is pretty obvious that stitching has not been my only focus let me tell you about some of the other things that are going on around here.  Last weekend I made a last minute trip downstate to my parents home.  My mom thought she could use some help since they just moved back North from their winter home in Florida.  My dad has dementia and moving was very stressful on him and the rest of us.  It was a very welcome bottle of wine when I got home.

My DH has moved to North Carolina for a consulting position for six to nine months.  He is going to come home on the weekends or I will go down there.  I am not used to having to do everything around the house.  I am more accustomed to being the Queen of the house!  I do have Seattle Sutton doing my cooking.  This food is pretty good and I have even lost a few pounds.  I am getting used to living on my own.

I have been reading.  My reading goes up when the weather turns nice and I can sit outside.  I really enjoyed Mill River Recluse, Divergent and Slaughterhouse Five.  My book club picked Fifty Shades of Grey for our next book.  If you want to get your smut on, it is really good but not for the those apposed to a dirty book.  I said it will be a $30 dollar book club because I am going to have to finish the trilogy. 

Well that is about all that is going on in my world.  If you celebrate Easter, have a wonderful holiday!  We are not doing much for Christian Easter but I am going to Greek Easter next weekend at a friends house which is always fun.

Happy 2012

Happy New Year!  I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season.  I decided I really liked not working but life would not be as much fun without the paycheck. 

I finished the Night at the Opera ornament by Princess and Me.  He went to the finisher on Saturday.  I think he turned out cute and he was a fairly quick stitch. 

I did finish stitching Beautie Spot while I was in Naples for Christmas.  When I got home, I ironed the piece and a little bit of color ran under the deer.  I fixed the problem by picking out the black and adding a couple more rows of stitching so all is well.  I am adding the spangles which are not in this picture.  I added all the spangles that I had but I am about 20 spangles short.  They were shipped yesterday so this is getting so close to finished and I will post a final picture soon!!

Our guild had a stitch-in on New Years Eve day.  We had a great turnout of 15 ladies.  I worked on Windy City Santa but I did not take a picture.  That night we had a dinner party for eight friends and two babies.  DH made southern appetizers of shrimp and grits, chicken and waffles, and biscuits and gravy.  For dinner he made a filet, twice baked potatoes and creamed spinach.  It was a wonderful meal and lots of wine.  It is great to live with a man that loves to cook and he cleans up.

I hope 2012 brings much happiness, good health, and lots of stitching time.  

 Hi,  I am back from the Turks and Caicos.  Considering I have been traveling every other week this month, I have a lot of stitching to show.  My first picture is of Beautie Spot.  I am currently working on the bunny and the boarder.  The bunny is a little creepy without his eye and his ears.  They are soon to come.  Hopefully the next time I blog about Beautie, it will be done and ironed. 

 Santa was my pool buddy on vacation.  I spent my mornings under cover and stitched on this Princess and Me Santa.  I have him finished down to the background which I hope to finish up on Friday so I can take another ornament to Naples.  I might have finished him but security did not like my little kid scissors so they took them away.  Some countries don't allow points so these had rounded ends but they were too big.  No big loss.  I only carry on scissors that I don't care if they are taken away.  Hopefully the scissors will be donated to some school kid.  The poverty is pretty bad on the island. 

 Before I left I finished this Princess and Me Snowman.  He is so cute with his fringed scarf.  My finishing bill early next year will be huge. 

Finally, let me leave you with a couple of pictures from the Turks.  The water in the Turks is beautiful.  DH got in 9 dives on this trip so I had a lot of time at the adult pool.  I did spend a couple of  days on the beach but I am really more of a pool person because I don't like the sand in everything and on me.  We stayed at the Veranda which turned out to be condos.  It was nice to have a washer and dryer in the unit.  This was an all-inclusive vacation.  The food was good and the booze was top shelf.  We meet a lovely couple from Chicago and we shared many bottles of Champagne by the pool one afternoon. 

While my mornings were spent with Santa. My afternoons were spent with Kindle.  Let me just say that I love that the library loans books on Kindle.  All three books I read came from the Chicago Public library.  My first book was a little older, The Story of Edgar Sawtell.  It was pretty good.  I had a hard time with this book because I kept waiting on the dog to die.  The death of animals makes me cry and I knew this was going to be part of the book.  I will not read Marley and Me because I heard the dog dies.  The second book was The Night Circus.  I really enjoyed this book.  Finally, I read Girls in White Dresses.  This is a girly book and this is not my usual genre.  I only read this because the author was from Chicago.  This book is good if you are looking for this type of read. 

I leave on Saturday for Naples for a week.  I am done with my Christmas shopping however most of the gifts involve cash, checks, or gift certificates.  DH ordered his own Christmas present before the Turks.  He got a dive computer which he used on vacation.  The only other gifts I bought were for my parents.  Part of those are already in Florida and I will bring down a few gifts.  New Years Eve is a stitching day with the guild ladies and we are hosting a wine tasting party for a small group of friends. 

I hope everyone has a wonderful Holiday Season.  Enjoy your family and friends but I hope you can find a little time to stitch.

 Hi,  I am back from my trip to Florida and trying to catch up with every one's blogs.  Thank you for the kind comments on my last post.  I did not respond to everyone individually because I did not even look at the blogs for about a week.  I am getting caught up and everything is pretty much under control.

I did get a lot of stitching done on this trip.  I started the snowman ornament that is pictured above on my plane ride down.  He turned out really cute.  I still have the background to work on but that is a good task for my next trip. 

I got to visit Needlepoint in Paradise while I was in Naples.   They are having a fun trunk show with Edie and Ginger frogs.  I did contain myself so far but I am bidding on Ebay for a frog.  I bought the thread to work on the flamingo scissor fob from the EGA National Seminar.  This is done on 40 count silk gauze with one strand of Splendor.  I added one strand of Accentuate to the blurry, blue swirls.  These may be famous last words, but this project is moving along quickly.  I should have the motifs done shortly and then I will have to work on filling in the background.  This whole picture will only be around 2 inches by two inces when complete. 

While I was in Florida, a professional sand castle event was going on.  The sand castles and artists are amazing.  Here is a sample of my favorites. 

A nod to the Chicago Blackhawks

Time to get back to work.  This work stuff allows me to afford what I want to do but boy would I rather be stitching:)   Happy stitching. 

 I finished Hog Wash by Teresa Laymen in the past week.  The pink fabric will be used for the finishing.  I just love dupioni silk for finishing.  I usually buy my own so the finisher has the color I want and it may be more expensive than what a finisher wants to charge. 

 I made progress with Beautie Spot.  I spent the week working on the final bunny motif.  I also did some of the boarder that you can see in the picture.  For me, this was a big week. 

I did pick up some finishing over the weekend.  I gave these projects plus some others to the finisher last March.  She did a nice job but since it took so long she did not even charge me for the finishing.  She did have four more pieces to finish but she did not even get to those. I asked for my other pieces back because eight months is ridiculous.  I got to worrying about never getting my projects back.  I will let my friend finish my pieces and she will have them back to me in a month or so. 

I am all packed and project ready to go to Florida tomorrow.  I have some very high expectations for the projects.  I spent more time gathering projects than I spent on packing.  Plus, I have three library books for the trip.  The evenings are quiet and there is not much to do after we eat on Thanksgiving so I might manage to get some things done.    We are going to the Club for dinner so no one has to cook or clean but the food is not the same as homemade.  My husband usually does all the cooking but he has to stay home due to work.  I am grateful he has a job but I like it better when he consults because he does not work as much and can play with me. 

I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday with lots of good food, family, and friends.

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween!  My blog is looking a little more like Christmas than Halloween.  I have had a big couple of weeks of stitching but my picture taking is more limited than my stitching.  On Saturday, my Guild had a stitching day at the Oak Park Library.  My friend that finishes for me was there so I wanted to get this ornament done.  I don't care if she has it done by Christmas but it gave me a goal to get the stitching finished. 

 The same goal applies to Hog Wash but a week later.  Next Saturday is our Libby Sturdy, Windy City Santa class and my finishing friend will be there so I want this one done by next Saturday.  As you can see from my current picture and how it looked two weeks ago, I did get a lot done for me. 

Currently

Two week's ago

I have also been working on Frog Stew and my Long Dog Sampler but I had an early morning meeting and did not have a chance to take new pictures of my progress.  That is fine, because it will give me an excuse to blog about these projects. 

My weekend was filled with stitching and very little else.  This should be a good thing but I did go a little stir crazy just hanging around the house.  I have three trips booked between Thanksgiving and New Year's so I should take advantage of this down time.

Enjoy your Halloween and the little Ghosts and Goblins that will hit the streets tonight!

Hey!  Still not much stitching going on but I thought I would update my blog with the bits I got done.  I finished the wreath, the candy canes and started the background.  After I finish the background, I will go back in and add French knot snow flakes and I need to add beads for the berries on the wreath.  I love the wreath.  It really stands out on the canvas. 

I am pretty much done with family for the summer.  I only have a bridal shower for my niece on Saturday.  Three weekends of family is more than enough:)  The Cubs/Cardinal game last Saturday was fun and the kids and my brother got to go on their first subway ride to Wrigley.  Sunday we spent a beautiful day on a friends rooftop deck watching the air show.  It is amazing how quickly summer is going by. 

Well things are not real exciting around here so this is a short post.  I hope everyone is enjoying summer and avoiding earthquakes and pending hurricanes.

Summer is not made for stitching

Hi,  I have been a little lax on posting lately mainly because I have not had much to show.  Yesterday, I did make some progress.  I finally finished the roof on Gretel's House.  The stitch guide called for the Souffle stitch and I could not make that look right.  Instead I used Nobuko.  First I layed three strands of white DMC then I went back over the stitches with white opal Ribbon Floss.  I like the look now.  I know people can do DMC and Ribbon Floss at the same time but mine looked like crap.  I like my snow now.  Yesterday I also finished the door and started the wreath.  The wreath is going to be cool.  The ladies in Needlepoint in Paradise had me buy Boucle'.  The wreath is all French knots and you know I love doing French knots.  The red berries are going to be beads.  Maybe I can finish the wreath tonight. 

My parents were in town this past weekend.  We had a good time but having someone around all weekend is a lot of work.  Friday they went shopping on Michigan Ave. while I finished up my work week.  Friday night we went to Via Carducci in Bucktown because I had a Groupon that was expiring on Saturday.  It was a nice restaurant.  It was crowded so I think everyone was there trying to use up their Groupon's as well because I don't typically think summer and Italian food.   Saturday Mom and I spent the day shopping in Oak Brook and my Dad and husband golfed.  Saturday we ate at home and DH made biscuits and gravy for Sunday breakfast which were delicious. 

The month of August is turning out to be all about family.  Next weekend my brother and his family are coming to town and the following weekend is my nieces bridal shower.  I will be ready for Labor Day and no family:)  Then the following weekend starts ten days in Naples for EGA and vacation.  I cannot wait for that week. 

Hope you have a wonderful week with lots of stitching.  Thanks for reading my blog. 

Soon to be released!!

Blogger is not cooperating with me and will not allow me to delete this picture so you get to see my backside...

Hello!! A friend of mine who just finished NAN training and designed Mayan Lightning was asked to write a chapter for a book. The book is Crafting by Concepts: Fiber Arts and Mathematics. You would never guess she is a Math professor. The cube is a diaper pattern and there were some pretty big math terms in the directions. My finishing is not the greatest because I misunderstood the directions which as a pilot stitcher this is part of the process. This cube and some others were stitched last summer and it is in some of the pictures in the book. This is the second math/craft book these ladies have written. The first book was so wildly successful that they were asked by the publisher to write a second book. Who would have guessed?!

I figured I would lose followers if I did not get off the slow progression of Beautie Spot. I finished this small ornament /necklace. I do not see myself wearing this. Orna Willis gave this to me because the first on I did was so short on thread she felt bad. I changed the colors in this one so it would look a little more like Christmas.

Finally, I want to show you my progress on the Pig. This Teresa Layman project has a ton of Colonial Knots which move much more swiftly than the French Knots. I finished the water, the tree trunks and started on the grass. The flowers will be fun so I am saving those for when I get tired of grass and sky.

Today is my birthday so we are going out to Moto tonight for dinner. This restaurant has been all over the Food Network, it was one stop Anthony Bourdain made on No Reservations when he was in Chicago, and they have their own show Future Food on Planet Green. We are having the ten course meal (opposed to your other choice of a 20 course meal) with the wine pairing tonight so it should be yummy! DH did not think he could take 4 hours in a restaurant to eat 20 courses. I figured that would come with 20 small glasses of wine and I would be drunk before dinner was over.

I hope everyone has a nice weekend with many hours of stitching and sunshine.

Stitchers are so kind

All these ornaments are being sent to a family that lost their home to a gas explosion last December 23rd. The Windy City Chapter of The EGA donated all these ornaments. They are spectacular! I am sure the family will enjoy these ornaments for many years to come. They currently living with family so hopefully, by next year they can be in a new home of their own.


Thank you, ladies of the Guild for all your hard work!!

I really should not talk about my pathetic stitching progress but I wanted to post something before the holiday. Yesterday I needed something brainless to work on so I worked on the large mushroom that is part of Beautie Spot. That went ok until I got bored with my DVR and decided to get a manicure, pedicure and eyebrow wax. Now I have pretty sparkly toes for the holiday.

Margie wanted me to post the bunny. She took a field trip to my desk and helped me figure out the leaves on this canvas. They are a raised closed herringbone. It is a pretty neat stitch for leaves. They are done in a sparkly, chartreuse Kreinik braid.

Here is my attempt at finishing. I really do not enjoy finishing and it really should be left up to the professionals. I had to do this one myself because I have an ornament exchange in a couple of weeks and just did not have time to get it finished any other way. My finishing skills are far from good but sometimes you have to make do.

I am all ready to take off for the holiday. I will get to enjoy the sunshine and warm weather in Florida. I still need to gather my projects and pack my carry-on entertainment but that is fun packing. I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving Holiday with lots of good food and time for stitching.

This is my latest finish. Since I have so few finishes, this is exciting. I am trying to get some of my stitching done for the holiday's so I can send them off to a finisher and have them back before I need them. This is a La-D-Da pattern from the Just Cross Stitch ornament preview magazine. This is some of my tea dyed fabric from Joann's. I believe it is 32 count and I stitched this over one using Fall Maple from Artfabric. I am going to have this made into a needle book for a friend. I am also going to stitch one of the motif's so I can have a matching scissor fob made. This is an easy project and only took me two evenings. I am thinking about stitching it again for an exchange. I have some Vicki Clayton thread in red that would make a beautiful Christmas ornament. I would also like to stitch this on some really nice linen. This crap from Joann's is all I have until I make my way to one of the cross stitch shops or get online and order something.

The bunny is my travel project. It has been hanging out in my stitching bag for a couple of years. I want to get this done and out of the bag. It is cute & colorful. This is a punch needle project by Charlotte Dudney done in DMC floss. Let me tell you, punch needle eats thread. The pattern suggests using Weeks Dye Works for this pattern. Unless you consider punch needle projects heirloom pieces, buy DMC. I think I priced out the threads and it was going to be something like $40.00. It takes 20 skeins of floss. This project is more an effort in threading the punch needle rather than fun do.

This weekend we are going to be in a car a lot. I am not sure if I will finish my punch needle project or work on something more fun. I think it is going to be in the 90's until next week so that should make me stay in and stitch some.

A happy thought...We are half way through the work week!! Kelly

Oh Chrismas Tree and Other fun

Hi, Above is a picture of my new travel project but I was having so much fun, I worked on this a lot of Saturday. This is from the 2009 JCS Christmas Ornament magazine. This will be Oh Christmas Tree by Charlotte's Web Needlework. I had a hard time getting this project centered and counted correctly. The pattern was not real clear to me that there are four threads difference on each level. Now I am on my way and I am getting the counting thing down. I am going to make a few ornaments for a friend. Her home blew up due to a gas leak three day's before Christmas. They all made it out safely but their home was a total loss. Their son will be three next Christmas so I thought they would like some ornaments. My guild friends are going to make some as well so this will be one of my donations.

This is what I worked on Saturday night and some of Sunday. This one is moving along quickly.

Here is what I accomplished on Beautie Spot. Hopefully, I can spend some time with this piece and get some of this filled in.

My friend was here on Tuesday and Sunday night from Paris. She is a flight attendant so she occasionally gets the Chicago route. We were up way to late last night but I think I can do this work thing today without a nap. It was great catching up with her!!

Last Thursday we got a nice surprise. We have been in the middle of charity season and DH bought some raffle tickets at one of the events. The sound system at the event was awful and we could not hear anything so on Thursday the charity called and said we had won the raffle. It is two tickets on American Airlines for a trip to London or Frankfort. We go to London fairly frequently so we are going to take the tickets to Frankfort and go from there to Prague and Berlin. At least this is the tentative plan. Nothing has been booked or finalized. DH has a new consulting job lined up for June to October so this is cutting into my vacation time again. We have a year to use the tickets so we have plenty of time to get this in. We also have the trip to Santa Fe to use, I am spending a week in Columbus for ANG, and we are going to Sao Paulo for the Grand Prix. Work pays for my play but it can cut into my play time.


Finally, I will leave you with a picture of my little old man, sunning himself on the glider. Dillon will be 17 in June. He spends lots of time on the terrace in the summer. When we are home we leave the sliding glass door open so he can go in and out. Yesterday I was reading outside and I see something big fly into the condo. I get up and look and see a little yellow bird sitting on a pillow. I screamed! DH went to the bedroom and shut the door and got the bird back outside without harm to the bird. That sweet little bird did not even pooh in my room.

Happy Monday! Kelly