Schools Out!

Whew! What a last week of school, busy busy busy. We've got our plane reservations all scheduled now, and DH's mother gets to see both her boys and her grandchild the same week this summer. I know she must be excited, I would be.

For my stitching report, I did manage to finish an ornament, see it here? It's Celestial Santa by Pat Thode, of HeartStrings/The Artists Collection and appeared in the 2004 Just Cross Stitch Ornament issue. I received materials for it from a club I was in several years ago, so some of the details are different. For starters, I ran out of the Buckeye Red fiber and had to do his hat in the Midnight blue. I rather think that gives him a more patriotic and less celestial look. When I was digging for fibers for the next ornament last night, guess what I found? Two more cards of Buckeye Red! Sheesh! Oh well, I placated myself, the dye lots would be different, right? And indeed, the other two cards are a bit darker than this one was.

I did manage to start a new larger project, The Old West by Little House Needleworks. I promise I'll post a picture of my progress soon. I am missing about half a dozen colors for it, and went to Walmart to gather them last weekend. Only to find that WM doesn't carry the newer 100 numbers (two of which I need for this project) and was out of the rest! I haven't decided what to do about that yet, my options are to 1) order online, which I hate to do when floss is all I need, 2) drive 100 miles to Tuscon and back to visit an LNS, which would cost more in gas than shipping, or 3) pull out my handy dandy DMC floss sample chart and get creative with some color changes.

I have a few more WIPs that I would like to work on so that I can clean the drawers out on my coffee table. That's where I keep the projects "in progress" so I don't have to keep digging through the guest room closet, LOL. I also would like to post some pictures of the projects I have going on here, perhaps that would motivate me to finish them! Some have just gotten too big to comfortably handle without a stand of some sort, and being a military family and moving around frequently, I (or rather, the movers) destroy stands. So I've decided not to purchase one again until we buy a retirement house. DH has 8 years left before retiring at 20, and several options containing many potential moves, so there's no telling where we'll end up or how long it will take us to get there, LOL.

marisa

Saturday

Sorry, no pictures today. I've set the ornaments aside momentarily, in favor of starting a larger project I've been taking a little heat for not starting yet on one of my yahoo! groups. It's The Old West, by Little House Needleworks. I haven't gotten much stitched on it yet, perhaps I'll make some identifiable progress on it today and post a progress piccie later on. I'm stitching it on a terracotta colored piece of evenweave found deep in the dark confines of my fabric stash bin. The fabric is exactly the color of the clay and sand in my front flower beds, which I spent much of this week disturbing in order to plant new pretties.

That's been my main focus this week, planting new pretties. This will be my first experience with desert gardening, but so far it's been successful. Okay, so it's not even broken 100 for temperatures yet, but it is dry as a bone down here and I frequently find myself watering twice a day. I've found that most plants that liked full sun in my Arkansas garden appreciate quite a bit of shade here in the desert. Surprise surprise! My herbs, as usual, are thriving, and Emily's strawberries are having a bumper season, so much so that I told her next year we'll buy a flat or more of young plants. They just keep blooming!

My back yard is almost "done", which is a good thing since we'll be having parties back there this year. The good thing about living here is that you can be comfortably outdoors pretty much all season long. We are big outdoor people, so we find that a huge plus. I like the back yard to be like an extra room in the house, so hubby spends a large portion of his "free" time trimming grass, fertilizing, and helping me with larger garden projects. Today, we are tackling the rose bushes. They are well established, but the beds need cleaning out and the bushes themselves need to be fertilized and trimmed up a bit. They seem to continually flower, the more I deadhead the more they bloom!

More to come later.

Good Tuesday to ya! Here is my most recent finish, started yesterday and finished just moments ago. It is Woodland Snowfall, by Little House Needleworks and appeared in the 2004 Just Cross Stitch Ornament Special Issue. It was, needless to say, a quick stitch. I did take some liberties with the piece, the chart calls for all DMC fibers, but I substituted a WDW variegated green for the leaves and a GAST fiber for the squirrels' tales. I also used a larger count fabric than the design called for, so my piece is a bit bigger. I'm not sure how I will finish it yet, but I'm leaning toward a cube-it. I was originally thinking pillow, and may still do that, but we'll just have to wait and see.

I went stash fondling yesterday while I was searching for my cache of small ornament cuts. I found several larger pieces of linen and evenweave I didn't know I had, in addition to a few errant pieces of aida. I long ago quit working on aida, and thought I had gotten rid of all my leftover aida pieces by sending them to stitching friends as RAK's but alas, a few pieces remain. The larger pieces of linen and evenweave may find themselves being stitched upon soon, as I have set them aside and will do floss tosses with several LHN designs I recently picked up. I'm under alot of pressure from a friend to catch up to her on The Old West, a design which I didn't think I had fabric for, but I found several pieces that just may be perfect for this design.

For now, I'm off to decide which ornament to stitch next. Dancing with the Stars results show is on tonight, and I can't watch it without a stitching piece in my lap!

Happy Monday! Here is an ornament that I started a year or so ago, I had all but one petal of one of the red flowers stitched in when I either ran out of the red or put it away or something, but I could not match it when I went to finish the ornament. So, I had to frog all the red flower that had already been stitched and change colors. Actually, although I hate frogging with a purple passion, I'm glad I did because I like this shade of red better. It has more varigation than the other color did.

Particulars, the design is called Quaker Motif Ornament, is by The Samplar Workes, and can be found in the 2004 Just Cross Stitch Ornament Special Issue. I have a nice collection of these special issues and have actually stitched quite a few of them. If you'd like to see more than is posted here, you can acces my gallery at Cyberstitchers. www.cyberstitchers.com, and my gallery name is Marisa's Stitchworks.

I suppose, at some point, I need to stop stitching and start finishing. LOL I have a colleciton of holiday fabrics I've snagged from remnant bins hither and yon, but they are in the sewing/guest room, on the bottom of the closet, and holding up . . . goodness knows what. Currently, my daughter is occupying that room because hers is getting a facelift. Her bed has been disassembled and is in the process of being repainted and put back together. So when I'm not stitching ornaments, you will find me in the garage sanding or sniffing paint fumes. LOL

Speaking of which, I guess I better get busy with . . . something!