First Finish of 2017 and Happy New Year!

First, I want to wish everyone a Happy New Year!  Can you believe the old year has passed already?  Everyone has been remarking on how quickly the year went, and I know it sure did for me.

If you celebrate Christmas and New Year’s, I hope you had a lovely holiday time.

I was able to finish a small pillow I started one evening to send to my sister for her birthday:

Stitched on 32 ct. cream linen, a design tweaked from the July 2011 issue of Cross Stitch and Needlework magazine

and here’s the back:

I apologize for the picture quality; I took these photos with my cell phone.

I hope you have many happy hours of stitching ahead of you!  This past weekend has been very cold here; perfect stitching weather.  If you are a stitcher, a needleworker of any kind (crewel, embroidery, cutwork, cross stitch), or a knitter, or scrapbooker, writer, and love to express yourself through your art (and the beauty of the world around you), you have much to be proud of!

After seeing so many lovely finishes on Floss Tube videos, I really appreciate the individuality of each stitcher and their perseverance in creating a lovely stitched piece to display.  My goal for 2017 is to have many stitched finishes, and already I have two to show in my next post that are almost-finishes.

Until next time, happy stitching,

Theresa

Happy Easter

Happy Easter everyone!  I am going to do some stitching in the early evening while hubby and sons root for Syracuse basketball  : )  It is a lovely Spring day here.  Wishing everyone a lovely lovely Easter day!

Spring and St. Patrick’s Day!

Well here we are… I guess I win the poky blogger of the year award! Valentine’s Day is long gone, and yesterday was St. Patrick’s day, so a belated ‘top of the morning’ to you!  Winter is about over here, although mixed snow and rain is on the forecast for our area this weekend.

We had an unnaturally warm winter for a good deal of it, and snow showing up in mid to late January.  Very unusual for us!  my kids missed the snow but most adults I talked to were enjoying the warmer temperatures.

I am still stitching but not as often, as I decided to teach myself to knit!  I see so many wonderful things on knitting blogs that folks are making.   I was very lucky growing up.  A kind neighbor taught me knitting, and between my memory and the hints also from the kind check-out lady at our local JoAnn Fabrics store, I was ready to go!  I am making a scarf.  I can’t believe the availability of wonderful yarns out there!

For now I am just doing a catch-up post, but hope to show more photos in my next post (and post more often!)

In the meantime, here are some photos of some of the latch hook rugs my kids have made.  Every morning we did school I would read to them at the start of our day and they would get out a project.  Some of these rugs I am showing were done by my kids that have now graduated college  already!  my how the years fly by.

 

I am finding the days are flying by… it almost seems like yesterday that it was New Year’s!  I hope that you are finding time to enjoy the seasons before they are over.

Like everyone else, I am amazed at the creativity and variety of the new projects that came out recently from the Nashville show!  I love stitching and have a project I completed to show also, that I made into a pillow for a birthday gift for a friend.  Blackbird Designs are awesome!  Here is Octopus Garden from the Magical Mystery Tour stitched on Pearl Grey Belfast (and some colors I changed to suit my preference; mainly the octopus):

(I took the picture with my phone so it’s not the best photo).

happy stitching,

Theresa

Merry Christmas!

Wishing you all a wonderful Christmas holiday season and a very happy New Year!

“I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.”
― Charles Dickens

“Our hearts grow tender with childhood memories and love of kindred, and we are better throughout the year for having, in spirit, become a child again at Christmas-time.”
― Laura Ingalls Wilder

 

Christmas Tablerunners

Wow Christmas is almost here!  what a fast year it’s been.  I’ve been busy sewing up a storm… a tablerunner for each of my sisters.  They were mailed today!  Seven tablerunners for seven sisters  : )

It felt good to get them done!

 

and here they are ready for the mail:

now maybe I will have time to do a little needlework.

I hope all of you are enjoying these last few days before Christmas.  The weather here has been so warm, and we finally did get a few inches of snow, but for Christmas this year it does look like it will be a green Christmas!

happy stitching,

Theresa

 

Happy Thanksgiving!

Part 2

So in my recap of 2015 up to October, here are a few more photos! here is what our backyard looked like last Spring:

and my garden:

the boys enjoyed a croquet game over at Grandpa’s house on Father’s Day:

I got a little stitching in while babysitting one day:

And I started a couple of new Scarlet Letter samplers.  I love the Scarlet Letter samplers!  My goal is to finish five of them I have been working on this year (I am very close on three of them so far).  I will show more updates in my next post.  Here is a lovely Scarlet Letter sampler, Ann Brockbank:

Abbie Lucas:

A visitor came to our backyard.  We think he was after our chickens:

more camping (with some family coming to visit), and some fishing:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and more getting done on the house!

more from the Farmer’s Museum:

a pretty sunset taken in our backyard.

Next post will bring us up to date on my stitching progress.  But for today, that’s all folks!     : )

happy stitching,

Theresa

Fall is here? Already?

Where did the year go?

I have to laugh when I read my last entry… that this year, I would be updating my blog more often!  (good intentions!)

However, I really enjoy reading other people’s blogs (especially stitching and book review blogs!), so I am going to try to pick this one up again.  I find blogs to be more interesting to read than the quick entries on facebook or instagram.

We had a very long winter here, but Spring was lovely.  This summer I was able to start a perennial garden with the help of my English-born friend, Jill.  She is an amazing gardener!  I had bronchitis the day she came to help and after I picked up a (small : (  rock and started coughing, she made me sit in a chair and watch her work (sigh.  Not fun!)  However we still had fun and I am very grateful to her because she gave my garden a wonderful headstart.  Here are some photos:

We had a lovely summer with enough rain in our area, and only a couple of short-lived heat waves.  Here is my hydrangea bush in bloom:

We took a couple camping trips and trips to the Farmer’s Museum in Cooperstown:

My husband started a home renovation project, replacing windows, doors, and insulating, with the help of our boys:

and he installed a pool in our backyard for us to enjoy on hot summer days!

And my grand-daughter comes to see us every now and then:

We had some picnics, and enjoyed our summer!

I still found time to do some stitching, and will get my photos up in my next post of some of my stitchy-projects.

So now we are up to Fall!  this cool weather makes me want to huddle inside with a hot drink and do lots and lots of needlework.  I have so many things I want to stitch!  And needlework designers are always coming out with more and more lovely samplers and projects for us stitchers.  We are so fortunate to live in a time when stitching materials are so varied and we have so many choices of linens and threads to stitch with.

My next post will be part 2 of a recap of the year, with some stitchy photos thrown in.  Until next time,

happy stitching!

Theresa

January Stitching

I am determined to update my stitching blog a lot more this year!  I am really loving Mary Ann Hutton, a Scarlet Letter sampler.  I have made quite a lot of progress.  The Lakeside Buttercream linen is a dream to stitch on!  here is where I left off:

winter has really set in in our area!  it has been very cold and snowy!  but the week after Christmas we had a couple of backyard visitors:

I am coming along slowly on Jenny Bean, the Scarlet Letter stitch-a-long on facebook.  The linen I chose is a great color but for some reason I am finding it hard to stitch on.  It’s a Zweigart linen and usually that is one of my linens of choice, so am not sure if it’s the color that is the challenge (since it’s darker than I am used to).  However this weekend we have a three-day weekend with Martin Luther King day as a holiday, so I am hoping to put in plenty of stitching time and make some more progress!

There are so many Scarlet Letter samplers I want to stitch!

I hope you are getting through winter by keeping warm and having a fun project to work on!

happy stitching,

Theresa

Happy New Year!

And I am almost a week late in wishing everyone a happy 2015!  I hope this year to keep up better with this blog!

We are having a week of cold winter weather and snow.  Good stitching weather!

I started Jenny Bean, as a stitch-along (SAL) on the Scarlet Letter facebook stitching group.  Here is where I am right now.  I didn’t want to stitch on black linen; I knew I just wasn’t ready for that yet.

The dark cobblestone belfast I am using is enough of a challenge for me!  I loved the way the dmc floss looked on this color though.

I also wanted to stitch something Christmassy from the Scarlet Letter charts so I picked Mary Ann Hutton.  This is going so well for me.  I am doing it on Lakeside Buttercream (32 ct) linen and I love the feel and ease of stitching on this cadillac of linens!

All in all, it’s been a good stitching time for me!  The Christmas/New Year’s holiday season is a nice ‘down’ time to set aside the normal schedules and kick back with a hot drink and some new project.

I also won a Kelmscott giveaway from the facebook group and was so thrilled to win this cute package.  Paula was so generous.  It is (believe it or not), my very first needle minder so I am thrilled with this strawberry one.

So that is my stitching update for this week!  I hope you are keeping warm and enjoying some new project this winter!

Happy Stitching,

Theresa