Two finishes and a challenge

I get to do a happy dance for all my work this weekend. I finished Safari in time for my Guild meeting. Actually, at the meeting I was working on the seam allowance but all the other stitching was done and I finished the seam allowance Saturday afternoon. Since this was my 2010 Challenge piece the Guild gave me a pair of scissors that I should have taken a picture of. They have purple handles and I like purple. Only four guild members finished their challenge pieces this year. I am not sure what I am going to do with Safari now that it is done. If you have any great finishing ideas, I would love to hear them.

A second cheer needs to go out for Santacile. After I took this picture, I continued stitching and the seam allowance on this piece is done all but four rows. I would have slept better last night if I would have just completed the four rows but it was getting late and I needed to re-thread my needle. Plus, my fingers were getting tired. The purle cotton I used in the seam allowance was a little thick for 18 count canvas.

Saturday was our regular Guild meeting. We had a fun meeting because we had a stash sale and we voted on next years challenge piece. The members voted that I should finish Beautie Spot. I took a picture of Beautie Spot as of the start of the challenge. I have a row of motifs across the top and the boarder to finish. I should be able to get this piece done in a year. The other two they could have voted for were Funky Rose by Terry Dryden or Witches Brew by Debbie Stiehler. I was kind of hoping for one of those projects because they will be more of a challenge to finish but Beautie Spot is older.

I am planning our Guild retreat in March. I have the retreat pretty well organized and I am looking forward to shopping and the stitching time. I am looking for a stitching related game that we could play on Saturday night. I am looking for something to break up the evening. Around 9:00 pm everyone gets a little punchy. If you have done anything fun at any of the retreats you have attended, I would love to hear your ideas!!

Other fun things that happened this weekend were we visited two new restaurants. On Friday night we meet friends at a new brewery in my hood called Haymarket Brewery. The hostess was a hot mess so we went down restaurant row to my favorite Indian restaurant, Jaipur. On Saturday we had a friends 30th birthday party at Moe's Cantina. Since we had to go to River West for her party we decided to eat at Prosecco. Prosecco has been around for a while but it was the first time we had been there. It was a beautiful restaurant with tons of class. Opentable said the dress was business casual which really did not work for us since we were going to Moe's after dinner so we wore nice jeans. It was really interesting to see how the dress was so generational. The older people were in suits or sports coats. The ladies had on furs. The younger people in the crowd had on jeans and sweaters. At first I was horrified that I had picked such a nice restaurant and worn jeans and even worse is DH wore his Carhartt jacket because it was below zero with the wind chill. Once we checked the coats, I had a glass of Prosecco and a half bottle of wine, who cares what you wear. The food was delicious and we are looking forward to going back.

Well back to the work week. I am not sure where my projects will take me now that I am done with Safari. I will work on a WIP but not sure which one. I am enjoying everyone working on the Crazy January Challenge. Some people are taking on some pretty big projects and I am enjoying seeing all the patterns. Some are new to me and hopefully I will be able to resist temptation.

Happy Stitching.

Happy New Year!

I hope everyone had a great holiday season. This is my last day of a two week holiday break. It has been a busy two weeks. The first week was full of holiday preparations, six days in cold, Florida with my family, a New Years Eve party at our house, and pretty good stitching progress.


I am working towards a deadline of Saturday on Safari. I have the basket weave to complete at the bottom and beads to add. The basket weave is slow going. My Guild meets on Saturday and this was my challenge piece for 2010. I know I had a year to get this done but I am working hard this last week. I will have this done before the meeting. I have to pull a few projects together so the Guild can vote on my challenge piece for 2011. Only once since we started this, I did not get my challenge piece complete so it is motivating and makes me get one old project complete.

Santacicles was my travel project in Florida. He stitched up very quickly. I only have the band on his hat to complete, I need to add eyebrows, and I am going to do basket weave around the outside for the finisher. My last Santa by JZC I did not go around the outside. This made the finishing more difficult and super expensive.

Good luck to everyone doing the crazy challenge. I am enjoying your blogs and seeing all the new projects. Having 15 more WIPs would make my skin crawl so this challenge is not for me. If I was not working on Safari, I might have tried to spend a day with each of my WIPs but I don't think I have 15 going at this time.

I hope everyone has a healthy, happy and productive New Year.

Lucy is Done

Lucy was finished last weekend. Even though I only seemed to have a little bit of work left on her, it took me several hours to finish the background. I think I will have her made into a Spring Pillow. The instructions said she was finished with pink with white polka dot material.

This is the Santacicle canvas I took at ANG. My stand made a hole in the canvas so I ordered a new canvas and I am taking this as a class through the Shinning Needle Society. I am not sure I like the red sparkly stuff I am putting in his hat. That is why I stopped on this project until I could see it in the light of day. With the petite very velvet it looks crowded. I may skip this stuff and just add the beads.

You may not be able to see my progress because it was only a few hours of work. I put in four lengths of thread around the brown spots. I put in a couple more lengths of sea grass in the area below the spots. I need to get in the sea grass so I can tell where to put in my spots. This piece is my challenge piece for my local guild. I think it could be possible to finish this piece by the second week in January. This piece is too big to travel with but I am off of work and home 8 days at the end of the month. I may travel with Santacicles. (Yet another opportunity to trash this canvas) :)

I have a few new followers that I would like to welcome. Longtime or new followers I would like to thank you for joining me on my stitching blog. If I don't follow your blog or if you start a new blog, leave me a comment or an email and I will be happy to follow your blog.

This weekend is the big party weekend. Both parties should be fun. I am blowing off my Guild Meeting tomorrow morning because I am afraid there could be a fine line between the party tonight and Saturday morning. The EGA party is also in a far away suburb and the weather could be icy tomorrow morning.

I hope everyone has a warm and stitchy weekend.

A Small Packing Tragedy Strikes

I am back from Seminar and about recovered. I was one of the younger seminar goers and I found the week to be exhausting. I met one lady who had an ANG number in the 300's, who drove herself from Pennsylvania, had two fingers in a splint, and was well up in her senior years. She was amazing! Me...I have an ANG number in the 40k+, flew, two perfectly working hands, and in my 40's and this week kicked me in the butt. I am still going to bed at 8 pm. To be fair, I think I have a mild cold or allergies and I partied like a biker most of the weekend.

I had a small tragedy. I think my stand went through my canvas. I was packing my stand in the hotel lobby and did not put it on the bottom of my suitcase and I think it went through Santa. Fortunately, I do not have much work done on this canvas and I can buy a new canvas from Janet or try to draw this on a new canvas. I know some of you would repair this because it will be hidden in the finishing. Most likely, not going to happen!!

I wanted to show you a better picture of Frog Stew. Still love this class and Debbie. I found out Debbie Stiehler is my friends NAN sponsor so maybe our paths will cross again. BTW...Her peacock feather piece at ANG Seminar next year is amazing in person.

This is what I accomplished in two days on Funky Rose by Terry Dryden. I really enjoyed painting/coloring the canvas. I am not a huge fan of silk ribbon embroidery yet. This is the reason to take classes so you can learn new techniques. Some people finished the rose in class. I picked most of mine out in class. Maybe if I work on this in my own environment, I will enjoy this process more. I love the piece and I will continue to work on this. The colors are so me!!

On Wednesday afternoon, I had a class with Orna Willis. I heard she was one hot mess in the morning class but she pulled everything together for the afternoon. My kit was short some threads but she gave me a new kit, in a different colorway to make up for it which was very kind of her. I like Orna's designs and I would enjoy another class with her in the future.


I thought I would share some of my stash enhancements. First, Shapes of Needlepoint, by Sandy Author (I apologize, I had the wrong last name yesterday) was "The Hot Book" of the show. It is nice especially if you have a circle, square or rectangular area to fill in. However, more than likely you have all these stitches in one of your other books, just not organized in this way. I bought a Tekobari laying tool. I had heard so much about Tekobari laying tools and how hard they are to get. I mentioned to Janet Perry that it is about like my BLT and she came back with Shay Pendray is a Japanese Needlepoint artist and the BLT is basically a Tekobari. It is OK with me. It fed my obsession with laying tools and my Tekobari is a little smaller than the BLT so it may be a little more comfortable for me. Finally, the white thing on the chair is a mini Ott light that came from Joann's. With the coupon, this cost $10.00. This looks perfect for traveling. I have a couple of trips coming up out of the US so the batteries and the size should work great.

My regular EGA Guild meet on Saturday. Our group has Spooky Surprise in October. It is usually a quick project with a Halloween theme. This year we made the scissor fob. Mine is done!! Mentally, this is about all the stitching I could take this week. I have not done anything since I finished this on Monday night.

After my long post, I thought I would share my progress on my French Knot scissor case. I am so close to done. I have some finishing to pick up next weekend. If I can get this done, maybe I will turn this in for finishing. We are having a big dinner party on Saturday night so I may not have much time this weekend. We have friends in from San Francisco and Brazil.

Finally, I would like to welcome my new followers and say Thanks to my other faithful followers. It is kind of you to read my weekly drivel and comment. I am not the worlds fastest stitcher but I do enjoy my projects. The blog keeps me working on my projects because I want something stitchy related to say. Someday, maybe I will even be able to take a decent picture:) Also, keep updating your blogs. I may not always have time to comment but I am out here lurking and enjoying all your projects.

Happy Stitching!

Half way done

Seminar is a blast!! I have just finished 2.5 days of classes. Two and a half days left. I arrived on Sunday afternoon. I unpacked and hurried up to the book store and the shop. I only picked up a couple of threads at the shop and nothing at the book store. My shopping is being held back because my bag weighted 49 pounds. Never fear... I still have room in my carry on and UPS is available if I need to ship home my dirty clothes. Sunday night was the banquet which was ok. We were served typical, banquet, dried out chicken. They did try to class it up some by adding blue cheese to the salad and feta and olives to the chicken even though those really do not go together. Half the salads at my table were returned because people would not eat blue cheese. The real crime was the chicken but it was what I have come to expect at a big dinner. After dinner, the awards for the judged pieces were awarded. There are many beautiful pieces in the show. I have not spent a lot of time looking at the juried pieces nor next years classes. That is a field trip in a little while.

Monday and Tuesday was Full Moon Frog Stew by Debbie Stiehler. I made some good progress. Debbie is a wonderful teacher. She teaches with so much personality and makes everyone feel good in her class! If you ever have a chance to take one of her classes, run to it. The stitches are not that difficult but she shared some great ideas. Notice the beautiful sky and the grass. When I finish the frogs, they will have their little tongues sticking out. Monday night I meet up with a friend from Chicago and she said there was a bus trip to Dublin, OH. The bus dropped us off at What's the Point. It is the cutest little stone cottage full of needlepoint and they even served dinner and wine to the seminar ladies. They do offer a 10% discount to ANG members so good for mail order too. Tuesday night was the auction. There are many talented ladies in this organization. I did not buy anything but I do have some regret that I did not bid up a monkey. Many of the pieces were selling for $200-$300 dollars and many of the pieces had that much or more in supplies and finishing. (Sorry for the crap pictures. My first pictures with my i Phone.)

Today was Santacicle's by Janet Zigler Casey. It was a fun class. This one has hope to be finished sooner rather than later. This afternoon I have class with Orna Williams. Tonight is the Teacher's Showcase and tomorrow is Expo Night so this is where my bags could become full.

Between all of this, I have been working 4 or 5 hours a day for my real job. I want to keep the job so I can go to seminar next year. It is an exhausting week but so much fun!! If you have never been to a seminar, save your pennies and go.

Off to shop and my duties as a Class Angel this afternoon. I miss keeping up on all the blogs but not enough hours in the day to do everything. More posts and better pictures soon!! Happy stitching.