Lazy Sunday

I LOVE lazy Sundays. My husband is out of town this weekend, which should make it a busier weekend, right? Nope. Max has been the angel child I wish was here all of the time. A stitching friend from EGA came over this afternoon and we spent some time cooling off in the pool and then I was settling down to stitch, when Max woke up from his nap. But I am all set to stitch after he goes to bed.

This week I have brought out a UFO and turned it into a WIP. It is Sunflower House by Blackbird Designs. The house is what I have added this week. I will finish this into a gift for my Aunt's birthday (which was in June). But I won't see her until the end of August, so that's not too late.

Hope everyone enjoyed the weekend!

Sandy

Happy Dancing!

I have FINALLY finished Hannah Skinner - my contribution to Lisa's tombstone angel round robin. I haven't finished anything in ages, so this feels really good. In a previous post, I had said that I had this RR kicking around for a year, but that was incredibly inaccurate. As I looked back in the journal that came with the project, I see that I didn't get it until the end of April this year. Although I am still in the doghouse and I have had it for three months and it was supposed to be a six-week (more or less) turnaround. Here it is:


Photo hosting courtesy of www.photobucket.com

Next up for me is to finish stitching the sampler I have designed. It has presented challenges to say the least. I still need to design one small part and that is giving me the most trouble! Maybe I will be inspired and motivated now that I am out from under the cloud of a late RR.

Happy stitching everyone!
Sandy

Almost Finished!

I am so close to being finished with Lisa's tombstone angel RR, that to post a picture now would ruin seeing the finished picture. I will definitely finish it tonight. I got up early this morning and squeezed in an hour of stitching before I had to get ready for work. Does anyone else who works full-time do that? Pre-child I stitched all the time and now it's in bits and pieces, but I am definitely making an effort now. For the last year I had hardly stitched at all and I was such a grouchy bitch! So now that I'm stitching, I'm much nicer to live with.

I saw a book cover recently called Woman First, Family Always by Kathryn Sansone. This woman has TEN children and doesn't look completely insane. She must have some good advice to share with me - I'm completely harried and I only have ONE child. I would like to have another, but I wonder if it would drive both me and my husband over the edge. Hmmm. It sounds like one of her principles is to take care of yourself first, which will make you happier, thus everyone else happy. Like if "Momma ain't happy, ain't nobody happy," right?

And today's picture is Moon and Stars by Little House Needleworks in honor of my son, Max, who loves to say Moon and Star and point up at the sky. I stitched this for him before he was born and still need to frame it! (He's two now).


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Merry Cox Finish & UFO

It's only noon on Friday and I have NO work to done. Nothing. Not even a piece of paper to file. Hmmmm. Maybe I should have taken half a vacation day or something. But I didn't want to use them all up too quickly, you know? I will have to spend the rest of my workday ready all of your blogs - now that doesn't sound so bad, does it?

I didn't get to put a stitch into anything last night - Max was high maintenance. But he was also being cute, so it didn't hurt ... so much. But I love to post photos, so here are some oldies. The first is one of my Merry Cox UFOs - it's so old it has my maiden name. Could that have been 6 years ago? Wow. From the Swan Lake Mending Bag:



And an actual Merry Cox finish - the Red b Needlecase, front and back. The closure is an antique shoe button and inside are two small pieces of antique linen for the pages. The inside is lined in a slubby gold dupioni silk.





In Other News:
I was up from 2:30-5:00 last night/morning. I woke up to pouring rain (thanks TS Beryl) and realized the windows were open, so went around closing the ones where the rain was making puddles, wiped up said puddles. Realized one of (the four) cats was outside, let said cat in, realized the windows in DH's car were open, went outside and closed said windows and then was too awake to sleep and too sleepy to stitch. So I read instead. I finished my third Undead book. They are just too funny and a great quick summer read. Vampire fiction meets chick lit. Try it, you might like it. The first one is Undead and Unwed. Also on the reading front, I found Lauren Willig at the end of last year and just love her. She weds romance with historical fiction and it's very entertaining and interesting. Her first book is The Secret Identity of the Pink Carnation; the second book is the Masque of the Black Tulip and the third yet-to-be-released book will be The Deception of the Emerald Ring - due out in November.

Happy Stitching (or reading)!

Sandy

Progress Report

Finally, a picture! This is my progress on the Tombstone Angel RR I'm in. It's actually a Chartmakers (Carriage House Samplings & Goode Huswife) RR, but then we each chose our own theme. Lisa's choice was tombstone angels. I am stitching Hannah Skinner, but I changed the colors from the original to go better with the fabric. You can see the original at http://www.carriagehousesamplings.com/antiques.htm. The fabric is lighter than it shows in the scan. I had to use the ancient scanner here at work. I hope to have it done within a week.

While you're there, you might want to check out the home page and see the incredible Village of Hawk Run Hollow. I haven't even started the Houses of Hawk Run Hollow yet, but that Village is definitely calling my name. Kathy is such a prolific designer and her designs just appeal to me so much. I could probably spend the rest of my life just stitching her stuff!

We are having gorgeous weather here in Southern Maine, unfortunately, I am stuck behind my desk at work. I can at least see out the window, but that's really a tease when it's so nice out. I'm taking the boy to the beach on Saturday to play in the sand and surf. That is really the best part about living here. I can deal with the long, long winter in exchange for being 30 minutes from the beautiful Maine coast.

Thank you all for visiting my blog and leaving such lovely comments. I truly enjoy reading what other stitchers are up to (even when it's not stitching). Have a nice day everyone!

Sandy

Another Weekend Over (sigh)

Thanks for your lovely comments everyone! It feels good to know that people are reading my blog. I am really enjoying reading everyone else's and it gives me such inspiration!

Don't you just hate the end of the weekend? I know I do! I took Friday off from work and spent a lovely morning stitching. Then I went to see Pirates II with my husband (it felt like a first date, that's how long it's been since we had a night out alone - although this was more decadent because it was the middle of the afternoon), and then hung out in the pool until it was time to pick up "the boy" from daycare. A very nice day!

On Saturday morning we went to the beach and came home around 2:00 and I got to stitch in the afternoon while the wee one took a nice long nap. And a few more dips in the pool were warranted due to the rare heat and humidity here in Maine.

Today I thought might be more of the same. I took Max to the beach by myself this morning and was hoping to stitch while he slept in the afternoon, but he threw a wrench in the plans by sleeping in the car and then refusing his afternoon nap. Aargh. The little bugger is on my lap right now, watching a Kipper episode while I type this. He's so ready to crash.

Another wrench in the works this afternoon was that my husband decided to be a MAN. Do you know what I mean? Instead of relaxing while we were gone this morning, which was the general idea, he decided to do a floor to ceiling clean of the house, mow the lawn, take out the trash, etc., and by the time we got home, he was exhausted, cranky, and not ready to take over the handling of an exhausted, cranky child. Bummer. Neither of us is very happy with each other at the moment. This too shall pass I am sure. As it does when this occasionally happens. Thanks for letting me vent.

And the batteries died in my camera, so no progress pictures today. But I will put in an old one, just to make it interesting, but it's new to you, right?

Hmm, blogger photos isn't cooperating. I've tried about 7 times. I'll try tomorrow. It was a good one too! I stitched it in 1997 and it's by Eileen Bennett of The Sampler House. The verse reads
"Oh heaven preserve us from a wife with fancy work run wild. With hands that never do aught else for husband or for child. Our clothes are rent, our bills unpaid, our house is in disorder, and all because my lady wife has taken to embroider." Kind of fits what's going on at our house lately!


Happy stitching,
Sandy

Still Learning

I'm new to the blogging and html thing, so please bear with me while I work out the kinks! My pictures are not showing up for some reason, so please feel free to click on the flickr link to see what I have posted there. I need to take more photos of my completed stitching and hope to add more links as well.

In stitching news, I'm working on a design that I hope to publish. I've got many more ideas that I have yet to put to paper (or in this case PatternMaker). My first one is almost stitched. I can only work on it once "the boy," my 2-year old son is in bed, or before he wakes in the morning. And because I work at a computer all day, it is hard on the eyes to start stitching at 9 at night. But I'm trying. I hope to have at least 5 designs ready for publication by the time market rolls around in February.

We have short summers here in Maine, and had a very wet, icky spring, so I am trying to soak up every bit of the sunshine and warm weather while it lasts. Our new house also has a pool and I want to take advantage of that while I can as well, so my stitching time has been greatly reduced. By winter will rear its ugly head soon enough and because I'm an "indoor girl," I have more time to stitch in winter.

In other stitching news, I'm stitching on a round robin for a group that I've been with since 1999 or 2000. We initially started a rr devoted to the Chartmakers (i.e., Carriage House Samplings (f/k/a Barrick Samplers) and now defunct Goode Huswife. We have repeated this three times in the 6 or 7 years (how can it be that long?) that we've been together. My first one was huge, the second one a little better and this last one tiny and much more manageable. All in all, we've had good experiences with our little group. This is the last one I need to stitch on for this round and it is taking me an inordinately long time to get to it. I just realized last night that I've had it for close to a year. [BAD STITCHER] But we're a very easy-going group. I've put a renewed effort into finishing this one and will post a picture of my progress tomorrow after I've worked on it some more this evening. Her theme is Tombstone Angels and I'm stitching Hannah Skinner by Chartmakers (http://www.carriagehousesamplings.com/antiques.htm) but I've changed the colors to go better with the lovely gray-green of the RR fabric.

Happy stitching,
Sandy

The Throne Room

I am so lucky to have a craft room of my own. After having lived in small apartments (one as small as 500 sq. feet), having enough space was a huge consideration when we were house hunting. Sam needed an office, Max needed room to play, and I needed my own craft room, where I could shut the door to get away, or shut the door to hide my stuff from sticky toddler fingers. We finally found what we needed and now complain that we don't have enough "stuff" to fill it. If only everyone could complain of such things, eh?

This is the door (did I mention that I love having a door?):


Here is the wall with my shop-style Weeks Dye Works and Gentle Arts Sampler Threads storage:


And a shot of my Throne and floor stand. It's a Gazelle II and was a present from my husband for my birthday this year. I had a floor stand for years, but after we moved a few times, I lost of of the pieces, and just needed a new one in general. I like this kind much better than the one I had before and highly recommend it!


I need to take more pictures of the room. There are two windows which provide some good light in the morning (one faces the pool area and the other the back yard). There is also a bookcase with my stitching reference books, a desk with my computer, a counter for my scrapbooking, and lots more baskets with stash hidden inside. It's like Christmas whenever I open up a basket to look for something. I do need to get better organized.

Happy stitching,
Sandy