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Showing posts from December, 2005

More Gifts

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Not mine but worth sharing just the same. My mom stitched these for my aunt. Both she and my aunt have the large Lee purses and these are the wallet and checkbook cover to match hers.

Thanks Santa

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Santa apparently decided that I didn't have nearly enough projects to keep me busy this year. I saw these clowns while I was in New Jersey for Thanksgiving and talked myself out of them, instead buying "Cerise" by Amy Bunger. "Santa" however, after pointing these out to me to see if I liked them, made sure I was distracted and got them anyway. And a Lee canvas & purse!! My LNS had a trunk show in July and I keep looking at this one, finally talking myself out of it. Again "Santa" was right there keeping an eye on me. Christmas overall was great here. The family was here, nothing decided to break on us unlike last time we had family over and I found myself on the floor in the kitchen trying to clear a block in the drain, ugh! I Hope everyone else had a great holiday as well, and now back to work I go, darn... I miss that 2 week Christmas break they give kids in school, why can't work be like that? ;)

Its Begining to look a lot like Christmas?

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Not so much, nope not really... I live in Michigan, a nice cold snowy state in the winter. Most years on Christmas we are outside atleast twice clearing the walks before everyone comes over for Christmas dinner, so what gives with this weather?? This poor little snow man can't even handle it. Right now as I type this its 35F outside and raining. White Christmas... right. Ahh well. The bright side is I don't have to go out in it and shovel it as it falls I guess since its been raining since some time yesterday afternoon. :) Happy Holidays to all :)

Winter Cape

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I'm on to the trim on the winter cape, I'm rather glad it doesn't have sleeves as I don't know that I'd really want to fight with trying to make them to fit the small opening for doll's arms. Hannah was available last night so I tried it on to make sure the length was coming out right. Someone is in desperate need of a brush on her hair, perhaps I should have gotten her a brush instead. I decided to add some velour trim to the ends instead of getting new yarn to add the white fur. The velour will work perfect and I have in my stash so no new partially used skein of yarn sitting around. I finally got the ecru boarders in on Baroque, now I'm just starting on the red bands. Getting the design base in should help as this piece progresses to reduce the amount of counting and keep everything consistent.  After these there are a few "circles" or smyrna's I have to put in before I start the fun part of the stitching. There are so many pretty th

Christmas is coming...

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Here is the photo of my rabbit as promised, as you can see he's almost there. The flowers and some fo the details which I'm hoping distract from the things I dislike about the way this stitched up. He won't see completion for a while, he is going into the pile until after Christmas, to work on this... This is the Start on a cape and hat set for an American Girl. My niece got one for Christmas last year and the poor thing is still without a winter coat. We were at the store in the fall when I went to Chicago with my mom but oddly didn't see much in winter wear, it is a doll after all so I'm knitting this one up. If I have time there are boots as well that I will get made to go with the set.

Progress on Baroque

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I actually did manage to get some stitching done on Baroque. This piece is worked by doing the outline first and then filling the areas in with the decorative stitches so you have a place to anchor the threads which sounds like a plan to me. I HATE waste knots mostly because I have to go back after I'm done with the piece, cut them all and then bury them which just seems like entirely too much work ;) This one is coming along nicely though. I've also got alot of progress done on my rabbit, but I left him at work so I can't post a picture that will have to wait for tomorrow. I just have to do the outline, one ear and a few flowers and he will be done YAY!

A New Start

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I got a start on Baroque on Friday and this is my progress so far. I was hoping to get some stitching time in this weekend but as I sit right now that's just not happening. With the weather being unable to decide what season it was we've had alot of ice back up on the roof and there was a nasty ice damn on one side of the roof that I spent a good 4 hours outside with ice melt and a iron mallet trying to break it up before we had water come in the house. Good idea I guess but I'm paying the price for that mallet now. I have carpel tunnel type wrist immobilizers on both wrists, I seem to have overdone it a bit and now I have some extremely sore wrists :( Hopefully a nights rest will make them feel better that I can get a bit of something done tomorrow, we'll see.

Progress on Rabbit

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This has got to be the slowest progress punch needle piece I've ever worked on, it seems like I am stitching forever and getting no where. The forest green section of the background is actually an ENTIRE skein of sampler thread - I will never get used to how much more thread this uses. Fortunately I had some more here in the house since I've banned myself from going to stitching stores until after Christmas. I got this from 2 of the ladies I stitch with on Thursdays. They each got one at a class they attended to hold thread scraps and thought they were so cute that they came up with a way to make their own for the group of us. They don't know me at all from the fabric they picked here *insert sarcasm* Strawberries and Fairies are the "theme" of my stuff, my stitching bag has this same fabric, I have a smaller bag with strawberries embroidered, my basket has strawberries. All my tools that I've beaded have one or the other with the main theme of color b

Amulet Bag

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I would have titled this another happy dance but really I have no good excuse why I didn't do this a while ago. I got the brilliant idea to make I-cord on my 0000 needles for a strap on this, which was a good idea in theory until you have to knit 36 inches of I-cord on those bitty needles. It was cast aside as I really wanted to do something different for the strap but couldn't decide what, and I completely hated the beads that came to embellish it. Last night I finally made the decision a twisted cord would work, I just made it thinner than most so it didn't look too heavy with the bag. Overall very happy with this one though I don't know why I didn't consider a thin cord sooner so this would be done. Thanks to everyone for your comments on pig and for stopping by to visit me, helps keep me motivitated to get things done as I can't wait to share them

Happy Dance!!!

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Its done! Horray! *throwing streamers about* Can you tell I'm a bit excited to see the end on this one? I love him but oh was it boring to do that much basketweave!  I didn't get it done Monday evening as I had planned. We stitch at a local shop and everyone decided to bring a dish in to have a pot luck for the holidays. Well.... several bottles of wine later stitching just didn't sound like such a good idea after all ;) Off to the finishing pile it goes! This was intended to be a pillow which is why I did it in basketweave and probably still will, I will just have a bit of a hunt to find fabric that I like with it. This is my next intended start, Baroque by Jean Hilton. This piece is part of a series that in includes Rococco and Mystique. For the record that canavas is hunter green not black as it looks here on my screen. No more black for a while if I can help it. I have quite enough with my Still Stitching pocket to make me blind right now

Out of thread?

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I can't believe it, I just can't. *sigh* Here I was making excellent progress and almost complete with pig and I run out of the main color I need for him with just a small bit to go, doesn't that figure. Needless to say I was annoyed enough at this development to stop working on him all together for the weekend until I can pick up some more pearl cotton tonight. I also realized I didn't have the pink that I need for his nose so I'll have to pick that up as well. Not bad though, I just have the small area on the bottom of his chin, the nose and the ear of corn which I may be able to get finished tonight when I meet for stitching, we'll see.

Almost there...

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My two active projects are coming along, slowly but they're getting there. Pig has just a bit on the border left besides the face itself which should go much faster as I won't have to jump around and change colors so often

Early Christmas

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A bit of an early Christmas this weekend... A friend I haven't seen in a while was visiting and wanted to get me something "stitching" for Christmas so off we went to the store. I was actually looking for one book in particular but I am a train wreck in a store finding 10 things I didn't know I wanted anyway. The book of Thread Painting. I have yet to open a book in the A-Z series that I didn't love; this one is no exception. And lastly, the final Jane Nicholas book that I didn't have. I learned stumpwork from her at the EGA National convention in 2000, It was an excellent class and I love the technique. This of course reminds me that I should really stop procrastinating and get my stumpwork WIP finished. I really tried to get some stitching in, just nothing of any great significance as things have been hectic with all the Christmas things going on. Hopefully I'll have something to show off by this weekend, I'm hoping Earthdancer will be

Christmas Party Fun!

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Tonight was the Christmas party for my EGA Chapter, always fun :) Each year the committee makes a gift themed with strawberries. This year we got the small strawberry pouch you see toward the left of the shot along with fabric to make a larger one. Apparently we're having a class on how to do this, I tried to bribe the woman who's teaching the class to make mine but she wasn't biting. Rats! :) We did our ornament exchange as always. I brought my punch needle sheep. It was a tough choice but I completely forgot to make another ornament for the exchange so I just brought one of them I had newly finished. I gave up one of my 4 punch needle ornaments and got this hardanger one in its place. All kinds of fun things for everyone though. Along with the charts below I got this pack of DMC Linen thread, not sure what I am going to do with it but I can ALWAYS use more thread This was in a bag on our chairs when we arrived. Some small charts, samples of new colors