Sad News

The world has sadly lost a wonderful woman, a talented stitcher, and a good friend to many....

Rest in peace Rene LaFrog....you will be missed by many.

You are thought of with every stitch.

Update on Fairy Tale Baby

Here is my progress picture on Fairy Tale Baby - it's a fun project to stitch on, and it's been the only thing I've stitched on since I started it. The baby is 3 months old already (in my defense, her parents didn't pick it out until after she was born).

I've made a couple of modifications to it - the face on the clock and the white on the wallpaper weren't stitched in the original pattern. But I didn't like the "negative" space aspect to it. I'm not one who needs the whole thing to be solidly stitched, a lot of patterns obviously call for unstitched areas. But on this one since the whole frame area was stitched (except that area) I thought it looked funny. The other thing is the stars (which you can barely see in the sky because of the angle) are also unstitched, and I'm going to fill them in with white as well.

The other thing I'm going to change is the lettering in the middle (which will be the baby's vital statistics - birth date, time, weight, length, name, parents' names, etc) is supposed to stitched in blue. But since it's for a girl, I'm going to use a dark pink color. Stereotypical, I know, but since there are both blue and pink in the design, I think it will work.

Thanks for checking it out.

Birth Announcement

Since all my Christmas stitching was done pretty early, I've been focusing on the birth announcement for my niece's first baby.

The baby was already born (in fact, she'll be 3 months old tomorrow!) but my niece and her husband didn't pick the pattern out until after she was born. I had given them their choice of about 15 patterns at the baby shower. They didn't let me know until Payton was about two weeks old which pattern they had chosen. This is it! LOL

The middle will have the critical stats - name, date, weight, etc....

It's a fun one to stitch, I like the colors. But there are a LOT of fractional stitches, which can get a little crazy, but it's worth it for the effect. Also SOME blending but not a lot. The grass is two shades of green, and some of the sky is two shades of blue. Also, there are a couple of other areas that are blended...I'm hoping maybe it will be a 6 months birthday present!

(For those who might want to know - it's called "Fairy Tale Baby" by Bobbie G Designs).

Thanks for looking!

It's Been a While....

So.....first I had computer problems....then I had camera problems.....now I seem to have ALL of those resolved, so I am finally posting some pictures of my finished Christmas ornaments.

First off are all my Prairie Schooler Santas - I know I've mentioned previously that my siblings are all hockey fans (I'm not - funny how that happens! LOL). We're originally from Chicago, and last year the Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup for the first time in almost 50 years. So even though stitching the same ornament FIVE times was not my idea of fun....I did it for them! Here is the finished product. The first one I stitched came out a little too big for an ornament. So, I finished it the same way as the ornaments but with a longer hanger, figuring that my sister (who has a small apartment, and doesn't really feel she has room for a tree) could hang it on an interior door knob or hook or something. She seemed to be happy with it..

Next up is an ornament from the Just Cross Stitch Ornament issue. I made some changes to it. The original pattern called for the house, roof, and the lettering were all in black. I felt that was too severe for the ornament, so I changed the colors up a bit. I used a grayish blue for the house, a dark gray for the roof, and did the lettering in the same green as some of the decorations on the house. Hopefully, I remained true enough to the original pattern....but made it my own at the same time! This one went to my dad and step-mom.

And now my two cute / too cute Mill Hill kits. These are for my niece and her family. With four kids, I'm sure there are Naughty days and Nice days.....and probabably some days that are a blending of both! These were a ball to stitch, and I plan on doing more like this in the future. The beads don't show up real well, but each letter has one row lengthwise of beads...and all of the lights on the strings of lights are beads.

Last but not least, this one may not seem very Christmas-sy. But Las Vegas has a lot of special memories for my mother and me, so I stitched this one up for her. She hadn't gotten it yet when I talked to her on Christmas, so hopefully it will show up in her mail box tomorrow.

That last onrnament has some other emotional significance for me. A stitching friend that I've been blessed to meet on line, and then was lucky enough to get to meet twice in person lives in Las Vegas. We have recently found out that she is very ill, and not expected to survive much longer. She is in my thoughts with every stitch, and my prayers are with her and her family. Loss is never easy, and particularly at holiday times.

This holiday season - hold your loved ones for an extra second or two, and make sure to tell them how much they mean to you......

Thanks for checking out my blog! And I promise it won't be four months before I post again!

BIG stitching news! (Well, big for me!)

Well....I finally did it.....yep, I did it....and I was going to try to upload a video of Snoopy happy dancing but obviously, Snoopy happy dancing is copyright protected, so.....picture Snoppy happy dancing all over the place.

Now...you may be wondering what I finally did. Now, in the big scheme of things, it's not a life-changing event or anything. But I did finish something that I posted my first progress picture of a little bit over 2 1/2 years ago - January 2008.

Have you figured it out yet? If you have, then you've obviously followed my blog for a while....if not, here it is - ANGEL OF CROSS STITCH!




The bottom picture is obviously me with the finished product. Not the best ever picture of me, but you should be looking at the project, not at me anyway!

Last weekend I picked up the fabric for two more projects - one is by "The Needle's Content" and it's the Spanish Geometric Sampler (I think that's the name - all greens and purples) and the other is Just Nan's Queen of the Needle. Haven't kitted them up yet (going to use the DMC equivalents not the specialty flosses, and I can get those locally - just have to travel a little ways to get fabric). Meanwhile, I'm working on ornaments, ornaments, and more ornaments. I think I mentioned in a previous post that I'm stitching last year's Prairie Schooler Santa FIVE times for my hockey fan siblings (our home town team won the Stanley Cup for the first time in 45+ years), and I'm on number 4. Plus yesterday I started a Mill Hill Christmas ornament for my niece (who hates hockey with a PASSION).

So...all is well in my neck of the woods. Thank you for checking out my blog - and for those of you who have been following my progress on Angel for 2 1/2 years....can you believe it's actually DONE?

A Little Finish

I finished this a couple of weeks ago, but my computer died....now I have a new laptop (YEA!) soI could actually get the picture OFF my camera card and ONTO my blog. I'm still figuring out how I'm going to do it, but I'm going to make this into a Christmas ornament. I'll figure out in the next four months! Hope all is well with everyone - thanks for checking out my blog.

And....my next entry will have BIG stitching news...and I'll be posting that entry momentarily, so most of you will see this in backwards order anyway! :-)

A little Finish

This isn't the best picture - neither setting on my camera seemed to be "right" - this was on "Auto". I sometimes take my stitching pictures on close up, but the ones I took on close up weren't any better....

Oh well - this was a quick project I did - I still have charms to attach. I did a little changing - it's for a friend that we play bingo with whose birthday is October 27, 1949. So...I changed the B ball to 10, the I ball to 27, and the G ball to 49. All ten digits appeared somewhere, I just shuffled them around a bit.

Anyway, thanks for checking it out!