Wednesday, December 18, 2013

The stockings were hung..

We have had a mantle built around our fireplace. It provides as excellent place to display my stitching.
Anne P. You are not the only one with a mantle now! You can officially tease me  back if you like.
 Here is my progress on Giovanni's alphabet. I am loving the the little filigreed flowers  adorning the piece. It is slow going, requiring  the magnifier all the time so I have branched out and started an ornament  for next year. Before I could work on it though I had to get some thread. I found I miss being able to go to my boxes of  thread stash...all of which are still in Brighton. Do not despair...I have started a Florida thread stash  to keep here. The DMC is much less expensive here anyway!

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Latest finishes and the latest antics of the crazy doodle.

I have been working on Giovanni's alphabet  but I still  have two little motifs to finish on the current row so I will finish them and post the alphabet the next time. 
Meanwhile I have finished one sock...see below...
and the 4th block for my quilt. Here it is. This bird is a Carolina Wren which probably bears about as much resemblance to a wren as the  blue jay did that I posted earlier. ( 4 blocks appliqued and 21 to go...not to mention the 64 small  blocks of two leaves each that also have to be done)

Which brings me to Macy the crazy doodle.  Here she is destroying her second toy of the day and it was only noon!


Shortly after pulling the stuffing out of that poor annoying teletubbie, she pulled a baggie containing two pieces of pizza  off the  counter and ate them both. She then  destroyed a ballpoint pen and a piece of paper which had instructed me to return the top portion with payment. The payment happened, the returning  of the paper did not.
Good thing she is cute and we love her. 
She had had a bath earlier in the day and somehow that seems to have made her more crazy than usual.

Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Giovanni's alphabet

Here is my lovely Giovanni's Alphabet. It is slow going, being over 1 on 28 count.I guess it is just as well that Giovanni had fewer letters in his 16th century alphabet than we have now.



And here are a couple of shots of my all cross stitch  Christmas Tree. I will take a few shots up a little closer  to show off some of  the lovely ornies I have. Barb, did you remember that I got your ornament in the exchange last year also? I only remembered myself when I hung the little polar bear on the tree  not far from the PS Santa! There are ornies from Bonnie, from Sharon, from Bernie, from Kathy B, from Luci F, from Ann M, from Fran,  from charts, from magazines and from kits and I love them all.


Wednesday, November 27, 2013

From Florida

After reading on Facebook this morning and looking at the pictures of the weather  and snow in London, Brighton, Orangeville, Orleans , Camden East, Ottawa, and Chesterville, I have to admit it is kind of nice to be here in Florida. Dare I mention that I am sitting outside typing this post? Maybe I had better not!
Anyway here we are in Florida and  I have been enjoying this rather different lifestyle. Here are some of the projects I have been working on.
These socks had one already knit when we got here and I finished the mate. There is another sock on the needles but it is not progressing very far very fast.

 I have begun my appliqued quilt and I am thoroughly enjoying  the work. There are a few pitfalls like this red bird is facing in the wrong direction but I figure in the long run it really won't matter too much. I just finished this blue jay, which does not look like a blue jay, today. Would have finished him sooner but I lost his wing and had to cut out another one.
 Here are a couple of shots of Macy. There is not much doubt that she is a water dog, especially after falling in a few times the first few days we were here. Now she goes in quite voluntarily, often more frequently than we would like.

 And here are the two buddies. When we leave the house, Macy goes in her crate but Mollie has the run of the house, having long since stopped chewing everything is sight.  It is not unusual to come home to find Mollie in the bedroom beside the crate, keeping her company.
I am cross stitching on Giovanni's alphabet  and will post a photo when I finish the first alphabet. It looks great. I think I have about 4 letters to go.

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Ornament exchange



At our November stitching retreat we had our annual ornament exchange. Here are some pictures of the treasures which were exchanged. Everyone went home happy with a lovely new ornament.











Saturday, November 16, 2013

Two remarkable women

I lost two dear friends last weekend.

The first was Adriana Valks , one of the original Thursday Stitchers. Kathy A would pick her up and bring her to my house to join Wendy, Carrie and Christine for a couple of hours of stitching around my dining room table. That was back in 2002 or so.
Adriana was an excellent mentor and and an exquisite stitcher. We all loved her and welcomed the opportunity to let her mother us a bit, especially those of us who had already lost our own Moms. Beatrice always said, her Mom had plenty of love to give everyone.
We will miss her very much.

The second  remarkable friend I lost last weekend was Anne Hundevad. I met Anne in 1975 when I moved  to Brighton. I met her for the first time when my Mom and I drove to Brighton that summer to sign the lease on my tiny rental house, next door to Anne and Jim. They were charging me the princely sum of $140/month  to live in the best place in town. I loved it so much that I finally bought the house  and still live there. The path was well worn between the two houses and many are the days I came home to find tomatoes and zucchinis on my back porch fresh from Anne's garden. We spent many days and evenings in her kitchen discussing all manner of things. Kentucky Derby day was always a special one as the three of us would gather around the TV  with a glass of wine and watch the race!

I will miss my two dear friends, aged 97 and 96 respectively, but will always treasure the memories I created with them and the lessons I learned from them.



Saturday, November 2, 2013

Anita's Amazing Arboretum

Antia has been planting, pruning, stitching, and  embellishing these trees  for months..but was all that work ever worth it!!!











Then on the same day we were admiring Anita's trees.. one of ours came blowing down. It did slow down traffic on the road for a couple of hours. I wish I had taken  pictures when we had the police car with flashing lights, the town works truck with flashing lights, the front end loader, and the gas company truck with their lights as well. 






Here is the cuteness factor for the day!

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Finally! Finitiative!

I spent the weekend finish finishing ornaments. The inspiration for this sudden burst of finitiative  came from two sources...Kim who finished this fabulous Christmas piece..


and Bernie who gave me this ornament. I think there was finiative hiding in the stocking because when I got going on my ornaments I kept going for three days!
I spent Saturday destroying my first two ornies by trying to sew them on the sewing machine...big mistake! so I went back to my tried and true method of getting glue everywhere...it seems to work for me.
Everything got glued on Saturday. On Sunday I decided it was time to glue some more and add trim or cord  but alas all my ornies seemed to be in non-traditonal colors and my dwindling supply of trim and cord came in red and the wrong shade of gold and various other in appropriate colors.
So plan B...try beading around the ornaments...I did quite a few that way till I got too many painful little holes in the tips of my fingers.
Monday demanded  a trip to numerous shops to find lace, braid, trim or cord... The Dollar Store was the last place visited..really I should have gone there first...then came more gluing and success in the form of lots of finished ornaments.

The above lot were stitched by Joyce but I finished them for her. She was delighted with her collection when I took them to her today.

These 4 little dancers are for my 4 great nieces. I love the way they turned out.

Above and below are my other finishes.



This little purse from the 2012 JCS magazine is for my sister-in-law Susan. You cannot read the writing on the back but it says..." the children were mestled all snug in their beds"...a bit of a family joke which I know she will love!

This is the one Macy helped me with. And below are a couple of pictures of Macy looking pathetic after  her female surgery last week. No more puppies in this household.


Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Cool news

Knowledge and Needles can now accept credit cards!!!
I am now the proud owner of an iPad mini and a nifty gadget called a square which allows me to accept credit cards and debit cards too, I think.
I just tried a sale with my own card and WOW it worked like a charm.
It will take a bit of getting used to but hey...now I am in the 21st century!

Monday, October 7, 2013

CGNA 2013


Okay so this is what I have stitched lately. It is a little  smaller than the piece below  but then it did not take me a year and a half at 15 hours a day either.
This gorgeous  wall sized  piece of cross stitch  is based on a scene from a famous Chinese novel. It was on display at the Cataraqui Needle Arts Guild  Needle Arts Fair on Saturday. It was another excellent day.

Below are a couple of  photos of my booth. My best selling  item on Saturday  was the new  boxed set of  16 new DMC colours . People were also taken by the selection of 28 and 32 count fabric.
 I was very tired  but happy  at the  end of the day.