New Start!

This week I started my first ever Lizzie Kate design – the Living With Charm Double Flip-It Banner.  This is soooo fun to stitch!  My other larger projects are two Chatelaines and an Heirloom VS pattern – all large and fairly involved with specialty stitches, confetti, etc. This design, however, is super easy in comparison!  Big blocks of color, easy counting, little sections that finish up quickly for a lot of intermediate feelings of accomplishment… I’m really enjoying it. Based on the comments in my previous post, I went ahead and used DMC to get started.  I’m going with the provided conversions except for the “Guacamole” color, where I’m using 471 instead of the recommended 3348.  I’m also using 3052 for the border.  I’m stitching this on 28 count legacy linen – which is the only cut of fabric I had on hand that was long enough for this design.  (I’d originally purchased the cut for the VS Heirloom Stitching Sampler, before I decided to do that on the recommended linen.) So…. voila… here is my new start:

 

 

I think I’ll stitch a couple more of the words on this before I move on to something new.  😀

Sweetheart Tree Biscornu Progress

Here is my current progress on the Sweetheart Tree Stitchers Favorite Biscornu.  I really love the ivy border!  This kit, in addition to beads, came with teeny little buttons that you sew on.  I finished the fob version of this as part of the 2009 Ornament project.

So far, this has been a travel piece if I’m out of town on the weekend or on vacation.  I’ll be going to San Fransisco in a couple of weeks, so I’ll probably get more done then.

Sweetheart Tree Stitchers Favorite Biscornu

I’ve made a little more progress on VS HSS, but mainly the over one viney border around the upper alphabet – not really enough to post a new picture.

I’m contemplating starting the Lizzie Kate Living With Charm double flip banner.  I’ve got fabric but not all of the overdyes that are called for.  I’m seriously considering just using DMC to stitch this.  It calls for 5 skeins of Gentle Art and 16 skeins of Weeks and I’m estimating it would be around $40 for fibers.  That doesn’t seem unreasonable, but I’m on a limited income right now and think about how far I could take that in a grocery store.  🙂  In pics I’ve seen online, I do see some variation in colors, but not so much that I think that the final product would seriously suffer from lack of overdyes.  What do you think?

Tree Frog Finish and VS Heirloom Stitching Sampler Start

I finally got a decent shot of the Tree Frog finish – framed by me!

Here is my start on VS Heirloom Stitching Sampler!  If you’re reading this in Google Reader, I originally posted the wrong picture here and reader seems to display the first post, rather than the most recent and updated version, you may need to go to my blog to see the VS HSS picture……

Its fun to stitch but I feel like the colors so far appear a little washed out on the recommended raw linen.  I originally got a piece of a lighter fabric, then thought that the ecru and cream colors would blend into the fabric too much and one of the things I like about this is that the hardanger and specialty stitches in the lighter colors really stand out on the recommended fabric.  I doubt I’ll start over, and I’m hoping that once I get some lighter and brighter fiber on the fabric, I’ll be a little happier with it.  What do you guys think?

My Two Year Blogoversary Passed Me By and Some Awards

My two year blog anniversary was last Sunday and I totally missed it!  I had a lot happen in the last blog year including:

• Celebration of Needlework
• My best friend moving to Texas
• Awesome vacation in Rocky Mountain National Park
• Rediscovery of my love of rollercoasters
• Breakup with 3 year boyfriend
• Lonely holidays
• Losing my job (but totally enjoying my free time!)
• Meeting new man friend
• Family member gone missing and found deceased
• Learning to Salsa (kind of) and Swing Dance
• Finding out that I will be an aunt again

How very nice of Christine to nominate my blog for these awards!

The rules for the Beautiful Blogger award are:
* Accept the award
* Thank the person who gave you the award
* Add a link to the person who gave you the award
* Put the award on your blog
* Write 10 things about yourself others might not know
* Pass the award on to 10 other bloggers

 The rules for the Sunshine award are:
* Put the logo on your blog or within your post
* Pass the award to 12 bloggers
* Link the nominees within your post
* Let them know they received this award by commenting on their blog
* Share the love and link to the person from whom you received the award

I’m going to combine the two awards…. 10 things about myself that you may not know:

1. I think Bella should have dumped Edward and hooked up with Jacob.
2. I like how Van Gogh paints stars.
3. There is only one stitching project that I don’t have a picture of on my webshots page.
4. I love anything with snowflakes on it
5. Earl Grey is my favorite tea.
6. I graduated from high school 22 (!!!!) years ago.
7. I got an A in partial differential equations but can’t add numbers in my head and don’t remember how to do partial differential equations
8. I play the flute.
9. I am such an accident-prone klutz that my mother once asked a boyfriend if he knew first aid.
10. Ticonderoga, NY is my home town and I’m related to almost everyone who lives there.

I’d like to pass these awards on to the following blogs:

1. Da Dinky Dyers Diary
2. Olenka’s Stitches
3. Bellastitch
4. Deep Inside Missy
5. Jenn’s Counted Threads
6. Afford Your Passions
7. Melissaland
8. Its Geek to Me
9. Random Stitching Ramblings
10. A Stitch in Time

Finished Frogs

I finally finished up the frog piece I was working on for a friend.  I took a pic over the weekend, but had forgotten my camera and the one I took with my phone didn’t turn out very well.  I finished it with a precut grey mat, precut foamcore, and an 8 x 10 frame, all of which I found at Hobby Lobby.  It looks great and my friend (a fan of frogs) loves it.  🙂

So I’m all ready to start on the Victoria Sampler Heirloom Stitching Sampler!  I did learn stitching from my grandmother (actually, she sent me my very first cross stitch kit in a birthday card and I taught myself), but I don’t have a daughter, so I’ll be replacing the verse as suggested on the VS website to the following:

“Grandma loved her fancywork and passed it on to me. I practiced well my needleart and share it all with thee. Our love and lives are intertwined for all of us to see. The threads with which I stitch today connect our family.”

Post Unemployment Stitching and Stash Enhancement

OK, so I’ve been unemployed now for about a month and have barely done any stitching!  I’m working right now on a frog pattern for a friend of mine… its pretty small and I hope to finish it this week:

So far I have the purple frog and half of the orange frog finished.  Its kind of annoying to stitch though, this is a dimensions kit came with aida fabric, so no quarter stitches were charted for the edges of the frogs.  I replaced the fabric with white linen so am having to rechart a little as I go as I cannot abide by half stitches extended beyond the backstitched lines as shown in the photo above.  🙂  I’m such a snob.

I’m feeling extra motivated to finish this up because I want to do a Victoria Sampler pattern!  I’ve had the VS Heirloom Stitching Sampler leaflet for over a year and can’t start it becuase I haven’t purchased fabric or the accessory pack.  I was inspired to get going on this by Christine’s fabulous progress!  So yesterday I made the one hour trek to House of Stitches and picked up what I needed to get started.  I spent about 2 hours this morning separating out all of the threads and becoming utterly confused by the difference between “Gray Brown” and “Gray Green Dark,” both of which just looked brown to me.  They had different yardages, so its not like I could just pick one and go with it either because if I picked the wrong name to go with the color, I’d end up short while stitching.  Finally I found that the VS website gives the yardages of each color, so I was able to figure that out.  At one point it seemed that I had an extra color, too, but I got that figured out after an additional half hour of puzzling.

Also, while at House of Stitches, I picked up leaflets and fabric for Lizzie Kate’s 2008  Double Flip Living with Charm.  This calls for several overdyes but I’m planning to stitch it with just DMC as I don’t think it will make much difference…  plus my income right now consists of unemployment from the State of Indiana (yay!  I was approved!) and after all of my other purchases, couldn’t justify spending the extra cash.  I’m doing the whole thing as a banner.  I’m not normally a fan of Lizzie Kate, but I happen to really like this one!

So…. I’ve got lots of stitching to do! 

I did have an interview last week for a temporary job which I think I’m a good fit for, but found out today that they offered the job to someone else last week.  The person hasn’t accepted the offer yet and I guess if it doens’t work out with that person, I’m still in strong contention for the job.

(Edited to fix multiple spelling errors!)