Sale and Inventory

Hi Everyone,

It has been quite the time around here. Our computer went down a few days before Christmas...great timing right? Actually there is no good time to be without the computer. But I had told people to email me for the Boxing Day sale and of course the computer wasn't back until well after that!

Thank goodness for generous friends and relatives who graciously allowed me to check my emails on their computers.

All in all the Boxing Day sale went very well and I thank all of you who participated.

My next project is to do a complele inventory of the shop. I have been finding that I have often been remiss in removing sold items from my website so it is due for a major clean up as well.

I do have a pair of socks which I knit to show you but so far I have not taken any pictures so that will have to wait. Right now the priority is the inventory and I had best go off and get started.

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas. We certainly did!

Judie and Judy

Here are the flatfolds Judie (ie) and I made a couple of weeks ago. The red one is mine and I am keeping it. The Peace one is a gift Judie made for a friend of hers. We were pretty pleased with our handiwork. Judie (ie) stitched this Pawcasso piece and had it framed for her step daughter for Christmas.

Judy (y) has been very busy with Christmas items. Here she is with a tree skirt..

This table runner has a candle and poinsettias on the other end as well!
And last but not least here she is with Sue Hillis' "Stitchers Days of Christmas"

All the finished projects are gorgeous and beautifully finish finished!

And I really did think I should include a picture of the watchdogs! Here they are guarding Dan's crocs!

Friday Stitchers

The finishes by Judie, Judy and Janice will have to wait while I display the suprise that came to me on Friday...

These are the core Friday stitchers...left to right.. Sharon, Catherine, me, Anne, Fran and Cheryl.

Lucie who comes as time allows and Paddy are looking on.

Apparently as long ago as last August they hatched a plot to create a unique sampler just for me and here it is. I cried! They all had a hand in it and I must say it ranks right up there with the best all time gifts I have ever received. Thank You so much girls!!

Kathy came late to the group and as stained glass is really her forte she made me this gorgeous guardian angel. Kathy is also an aritist with paints and we are slowly converting her to cross stitch addiction as well. Catherine only started Cross stitching this year. Not only did she do a portion of the sampler but she also made each of us a lovely ornament with our initial. Here is mine on the tree.


I am thankful every day to have so many wonderful friends.

Boxing Day Sale

I have some pictures of great finishes by Janice and the two Judys (ies) but they will have to wait till my next blog. Dan has been bugging me to post the information about the Knowledge and Needles Boxing and Dec 27 Day Sale.
I will be offering 25% off anything in the store.
You can drop in between Noon and 6PM either day or email me starting at 12:01 AM on Dec 26.

I need to clear out some inventory to make room for all the fabulous stuff I am planning to buy in Nashville in February.
So if you have had your eye on any charts, kits, fabrics or threads let me know and they can all be yours at 25% off on Dec 26 or 27!

Current WIP

When I finally got back to stitching last week I picked up the stocking and made some progress. It always seems like you do more at the beginning of the project...I know it just seems like more because the additional stitches are more apparent.
At any rate my stitching has become very slow with the sore finger. Ethan will not be enjoying his stocking this Christmas. These are the other two pieces in my rotation...Sunbathing...

and A Virtuous Woman stocking....

Linen does wrinkle doesn't it??

The tree is up and has lights but no decorations so far. We bought a real tree this year and it does smell wonderful. We mainly were rebelling at the effort of getting the artificial tree up the basment steps ... but for all that avoidance I still had to de-vest it of the strings of lights which I had oh so cleverly left on last year thinking I was saving myself some aggravation...wrong again. It is a pain the remove lights from a tree tucked in a corner between shelves and a hanging bicycle...especially when I had wound the lights on every twig and branch so expertly last year!

So this year's tree has one less set of lights but fortunately it is smaller so it looks OK. It doesn't know how close it came to having no lights at all.

It's good to feel good again

I think I am on the road to recovery although I may be coming down with something even more serious. When I got up today and looked around the house I had the overpowering urge to clean and vacuum..the morphine must have caused some brain damage after all!

I felt fine on the weekend and we were able to travel east to the Ottawa area to my family's annual McDonald Christmas. Everyone of my side of the family was in attendance ... all 34, from my oldest brother Stuart to my youngest great nephew..William, the recipient of the stocking.
My Santa ornaments were well received and changed hands a few times during the game finally ending up with my niece Karen. My brothers and I had our annual Christmas photo taken..I think I was standing in a hole.

As you can tell my sister-in-law had their home beautifully decorated and it was all very festive.

This is William, who is a couple of weeks shy of being one year old in the arms of his doting aunt Andrea and you can just catch a glimpse of the stocking in there as well.

As I predicted Christopher asked me if I would finish the stocking for William's older brother Ethan, which Christopher started stitching at the same time as I stared William's...early this summer. "It's almost finished Ann....will you just do the rest???" What could I say? My family doesn't ask for much...

This what he dropped on the table in front of me.

Misadventures I could have done without

I really do try to keep this to a stitching blog but for reasons which will become apparent I have no stitching to share.
Without going into the gory details of my own carelessness and inattentiveness I will tell you that last Saturday I broke the ring finger of my left hand.
Off we went to Emergency at Trenton hospital were I was treated promptly and very well...I was X-rayed, IV'd and given a Tetanus shot. I was able to get my rings off without their having to resort to cutting them off which was a good thing.
Then back on the road to Belleville Hospital to see the surgeon. I did have to wait for him but I prefer to think he was busy for those two hours with a patient who needed more urgent care than I did.
Once with him I was dealt with efficiently...frozen, bone and nail restored to their proper places, sewn up, bandaged up and given prescriptions for infection and pain and sent home.
All in all I cannot complain about our Health Care system. It worked very well for me.

Unfortunately, I woke up in the night in incredible pain and my only thought was..that morphine isn't working! I had always heard it banished pain miraculously! Unfortunately, not being in my right mind I did not know and continued to take it ...turns out what I thought was my body responding to the assault of the injury and surgery was really my body reacting badly to the drug. I finally clued into that fact and saw my doctor here in Brighton who told me stop taking it...which I already had but the damage was done.
I was flat out in bed for two days, flat out on the couch for the next two ...Today I am taking it very easy but the dizziness, nausea, lack of appetite, and massive headache are gone.
I think I may survive but it is a sure thing that I will never take morphine again.
I had lots of love, support and help from Dan who cared for me faithfully, even staying home from work on Monday and from my good friends Judie, who visited, stayed with me and brought me some excellent soup, Sharon who also visited and changed our bed for me . I was still pretty fuzzy that day. And Harold who came and walked the dogs.

Today I will venture out and if the headache and wooziness don't return I should be OK to go to my family's Christmas party on Saturday.

Obviously with only one hand in commission and my head not working I have done no stitching but fortunately I did finish finish the 4 Santas into ornaments last Thursday so I will have them to take to the family gathering.

I hope the finger gets better fast, and it seems to be responding well soI will soon be stitching again.

Moral...don't break bones or take drugs especially one's that don't agree with you.

The Absent Blogger

I have been negligent in my blogging duties ...so here is a bit of a catch up...
Last weeked was the annual November retreat at TimberHouse Inn here in Brighton. We all had a wonderful time and pictures of the retreat can be viewed on Beatrice's and Dani's blogs.
I had a miserable head cold all weekend long and so did nothing but sit like a lump and stitch ornaments all day every day. The ornament pictures follow...
However I have to share this fantastic towel Bernie made for Dan. The Butthead part is the nickname Dan and his friend Bruce have. They are One and Two respectively but the title can change when one makes a particularly spectacular bonehead/butthead move. Dan holds the # One title at the moment. Bruce and Luci were here all weekend to give Dan a hand with the preparation, cooking and cleaning up of the feast we had on Saturday afternoon.
Here are my Santas...all finished and backstitched...I am planning to give them as a gift at my Family Christmas party next weekend ...so very soon I'll be getting out the glue and felt and backing fabric and prepare to burn the tips off my fingers with the glue gun.

Ornaments

I have been stitching and finishing ornaments on this round of my rotation.
We have been invited to a Tree decorating party early in December so I made this little ornie for the hosts. The name of their house is Cressyview because it is in Prince Edward County and appropriately enough has an impressive view of the Lake from Cressy.... Some ornaments also got finish finished and here are a few of them. I had done a couple of the JBW angels on a black background also but once they were made up I decided that they were not right to give my little great nieces. I have therefore stitched a couple more angels on white and will make them up with the lace sometime before our family Nov 27 get together.

JBW French Country angels + sunbathing

This is my progress on Bizzi Creations "Sunbathing" I actually bought the chart about 5 years ago on my first trip to the Nashville Needlework Market. Stitching began in 2008 and then it languished but I am back at it now and it is coming along very well. The fabric is linen from Crossed Wing Collection. I took some time out to make these 4 little JBW French County angels. I have 4 great-nieces so they will become ornaments for the little girls for Christmas. All were made from scraps of left over fabric and left over variegated silk. I love these tiny little stitches. 25 ct is really one of my favourite fabrics! Also I used some feature, for which I always have to search, on my computer to flip the chart so that two of the angels face in the opposite direction.

JCS sampler

This is my latest finish. A sampler designed by Sharon Cohen of Nostalgic Needle which appeared in an issue of JCS magazine in two installments last year...or maybe the year before. I used the recommended GAST thread but only one strand and did the piece on 40 ct natural linen over two threads. I am delighted with the result. Of late I have returned to a rotation of sorts. I have spent 5 days on Sunbathing by Bizzi creations. This is a piece I began in 2008 and have just returned to. Next I spent 5 days on Carriage House Samplings A Virtuous Woman Stocking on 40 count. And finally 4 days doing 4 tiny JBW French Country Angels on 25 count to be made up into ornaments for my 4 great nieces. Now I am back to Sunbathing...we'll have to wait and see how long I can keep up the rotation idea!

What a wonderful turnout!

We had a fabulous turn-out for Adriana's Art Show yesterday. The house was wall-to-wall people and the lawn/parking area was full, including some brave souls who parked on the side of the road.
Everyone wanted to see Adriana's amazing work and visit with her in person!
Fortunately I took all these pictures before anyone arrived so you can all see for yourselves the quality and quantity of her cross stiched pieces.
After people started coming I had no opportunity to take photos but perhaps Beatrice or Fran will have some shots of the crowd.
We met Adriana's family...children, grandchildren and great grandchildren; most of the Thursday and Friday stitchers, stitchers from Cobourg and Kingston area; friends from the retirement home where Adriana lives, church members, friends of the family, neighbours and complete strangers who saw the ad in the paper. It was an excellent day and I am so proud to have hosted it!
Special Thanks go out to Anne, Nan and Angie who made it so easy set it all up.
Enjoy the show!

A big upcoming event

October 17 from 2 till 4 pm we are having an ART SHOW featuring the cross stitch art of Adriana...
Everyone is welcome to come and view the amazing work of this wonderful woman. Adriana is 94 years old, still stitching on 28 count fabric and a definite inspiration to all who know her.
The show will be at 190 Smith Street in Brighton on October 17 and I do hope we will have an excellent turnout.
I will post photos next week and you will all be amazed and impressed at the quality and quantity of Adriana's stitching!

Fairies are finished

Well there were only kms of backstitching, not miles as I thought and considerably fewer than one million beads...maybe only a hundred or so! Therefore it did not take as long to finish as I originally thought.

This is my next start. I don't know why I like this stocking...it just amuses me I guess. Anyway the plan is to do it on 40 count over two. However since I already have a project on the go in 40 count over two, I will endeavour to finish it before I start this one. It is about 3/4 done. It is the Sharon Cohen sampler that apeared in JCS magazine a couple of years ago.

If I am desperate to start something new, I can always start Mirabilia's Shakespeare's Fairies which I have been threatening to start ever since it came out. I have the most perfect fabric from Crossed Wing Collection on which to stitch it.... and of course all the threads are kitted up and ready to go!

Fairies

This is where I am currently ...nearly fnished except for miles of back stitching and about a million beads!