October WIPocalypse update, and a little BAP too

Good morning!  I hope everyone is staying safe and dry on this blustery morning.  I'm certainly thinking about those of you living to the north of me here on the east coast.  Sandy has brought us some high winds, and the rain started overnight, but nothing like what seems to be in store for others.

It's time once again for a WIPocalypse update.  If you want to learn more about the WIPocalypse fun, check out Measi's blog.  I certainly got some stitching done since the last update, but not a lot of it was truly WIPocalypse related.  However, I'm going to share everything that I have been stitching on recently.  First up is my Girafa sampler, which has been slowly coming along.  I have my doubts about whether I'll finish it this year or not... I think the siren call of Christmas themed stitching my pull me away from this one.  Here's where I was last update:

 And here we are today:

Lots of progress, but a lot left to go as well!

I took some simple stitching with me on our trip to D.C. earlier in the month.  This piece is from this year's JCS Christmas ornament issue, and I used the called for threads.  I can't remember who this is by off the top of my head, but I'll be sure to include that info whenever I 'finish' the ornament.

Wow, that's a really crooked looking photo!

I've been stitching like a madwoman on the newest Blackbird Designs pattern.  But I'll be taking a break for the rest of this week because I need to acquire the rest of the threads I need to stitch it.  But I got pretty far with what was already in my stash:

And finally, the only real WIPocalypse piece.  I started stitching With Thy Needle and Thread's "Boughs of Holly" last holiday season.  Since I didn't finish it before Christmas, I put it aside.  I really didn't have that much left to go.  Here's where I was when I set it aside:

 And with just one day's worth of stitching, I am done!!!

I have already picked out the fabric I want to back the pillow with, so as soon as I'm in a finishing kind of mood, I'll whip this baby right out... well, unless I decide to finish one of the half dozen or so ornaments that need finishing first!

Ugh, I had thought that I might hobble out today for a much needed shopping trip.  I completely failed to consider Sandy and her rain.  Hmmm, not sure whether this will deter me or not.  For the rest of you, stay safe, stay dry, and maybe work in some nice crafty time while you are stuck indoors!

PS.  Don't forget about my giveaway from two posts ago.  The chance to enter ends on Halloween!

TUSAL and BAP, how about that?

Yup, it's time for my monthly TUSAL update:

That Prima jar is filling up nicely!  If you want to learn more about the TUSAL, follow this link to Daffycat's blog.  I've started thinking about what I'll do with all these orts at the end of the year.  I believe I've seen a couple of fellow TUSALers stuff theirs into clear glass Christmas ornaments.  Given my adoration of Christmas ornaments of all kinds, I'm thinking that might be the way for me to go too.

I've spent most of last week and all of this week working on my Giraffa sampler for BeckySC's BAP challenge, which you can read about here.  I'm quite pleased with my progress.  However, I'm about 4 lengths of thread shy of being completely out of the pale yellow thread, and I've got yellow all the way around the border.  Guess I'll be making an emergency stash run of some sort here in the near future!  Which is bad because emergency stash runs often involve the purchasing of non-emergency patterns.  Anyway, here's where I am on Giraffa as of this morning:

Look, there's a man leading a giraffe in this sampler!  And even though it's kind of hard to tell from this photo, there's another robe floating behind the giraffe, waiting to be filled in with a head and body.  Then it's palm trees and the borders.  Lots of palm trees and lots of border.  I will probably set this sampler aside at some point over the weekend and pick up Soleil again for at least another week.  

Lest you think that the scrapping bug has left me, let me share the two layouts I punched out yesterday afternoon and early this morning.  This first one is a layout about my many trips to Biltmore Estates for their Christmas candlelight tours.  That house is gorgeous on an average day, but in the evenings at Christmas, there's something magical about it.  I caught this picture of the guardhouse at dusk, and it's one of my favorites of the estates.

And finally, I made a multi-photo layout inspired by Lisa Andrew's layout.  Among the many CHA-related scrapbooking challenges going on at Two Peas in a Bucket, was a challenge to create a layout based on her lovely work.  And here's what I made:

Look at all the pretty little fishies!  Of course, I realized this morning that the song I'd been humming while I made this layout (and slapped that lovely little title on the page) was actually "Under the Sea" instead of DOWN by the sea.  Which makes a lot more sense given the subject of both the songs and these photos.  Sigh.  I can be such a dingdong sometimes.  Regardless, I'm excited to have made the first of many layouts documenting our honeymoon in Hawaii.

I guess that's it for today.  I'm off to put some more stitches in Giraffa.  Til next time, I hope everyone has a happy, crafty day!

How I spent my holiday week (and behaved very badly)

Wow!  It was a very busy week last week.  I didn't even get a chance to do any stitching from Tuesday until Monday of this week.  To begin with, we left for a whirlwind retreat to the NC Outer Banks on the 4th of July.  I haven't been to the Outer Banks since I was young, and I was looking forward to seeing everything there is to see there.  While we did not visit any of the lighthouses (we're saving them for another trip, ideally when the temps are in the 70's rather than the 100's), there were plenty of other things to keep us busy.

Among other things, we drove through the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge in search of black bears and red wolves.  Sadly, the animals we saw were dragonflies and one very nervous blacksnake.  But we did see lots of scat along the road.  It wasn't horse scat, so I proclaimed it to be bear scat (it probably wasn't) and decided the bears were taunting us.  We did get to see watch the zookeepers feed some baby alligators and admire some adorable little turtles at the NC Acquarium:

Doesn't he look like a wise old man?  I loved all the fish and water animals we got to see at the acquarium.

We also attended the outdoor drama The Lost Colony.  I think I might have enjoyed the play more if I hadn't been marinating in my own sweat the whole time.  But check out Queen Elizabeth's costume.  It's simply delicious!

I wonder if someone hand embroidered all that lovely gold work on her skirts.

We returned from the Outer Banks late on Friday evening after a quick visit to his father's home on one of the sounds.  The next day, we hosted both our families at a cookout.  Almost everyone came, and Alton grilled some delicious burgers, dogs, and braats.  I think everyone enjoyed themselves.  I know I did.  But I was way too busy to take any photos!  After almost everyone had left, Alton and I and my mom and dad all piled into their car and headed over to the state fairgrounds to check out the antiques show that was going on that weekend.  And that's where I got into trouble.  Because I spotted this little beauty and I just HAD to have her:

I'm such a bad, bad girl, because she wasn't cheap.  But she's mine now!  I know it's not the best of photos, but surely you can tell how gorgeous she is!  Susannah Turpin stitched this sampler in 1742.  It's on a fine, fine piece of linen, probably about 50 count, although I've not had the courage to try and count all those threads.  There are gorgeous shades of red, blue, green and yellow in this piece.  She used satin stitch, montenegrin, long arm cross, rice stitch, eyelet, and a couple of others that I'm struggling to identify.  The workmanship is so fine and delicate.  I am just beyond thrilled to have her in our house.  Mom, of course, is itching to get her own hands on her.

I know that this piece came from England, but I had two conflicting locations to start with.  I've tried an internet search of her name and came up with a possible candidate for being 'my' Sussanah.  If I found the right one (and really, how likely is that), she would have been 7 years old when she stitched this.  I'm going to try to dig through some of mom's reference books to see if I can find any similar samplers pictured there with more definite provenance.  Beyond that, I'm not sure what else I could do to learn anything more about the maker of this sampler.  If any of you have any thoughts on other avenues I could pursue, please feel free to share!

In other stitchy news, I have decided to set aside Penny America until September (or until the Olympics strikes a need to stitch something patriotic) and returned to my BAP challenge piece.  When last I left my giraffe sampler, I was slogging through the bottom half of the piece.  Well, I decided that I was tired of all that ground and feet, I wanted something identifiable on my sampler.  So I parked the thread that was in progress in the ground, and turned to the upper left corner.  I've been stitching since Monday, like I said, and I'm almost down with the first page of the pattern (only bits of the border left to stitch in).  I am so happy to have palm trees and most of a person now living on my sampler.

Here's where I was at the last update:

Here's what I've finished this week:

I plan to stick to this piece for the rest of this week and all of next week before (probably) returning to Sous le Soleil.  I'm also working on getting together the pictures I want to use for my shower, wedding, and honeymoon albums.

That's it for now, I suppose.  We've finally gotten some rain here in the past day, and it's just started up again as I sit here typing this post.  I'm glad, because it makes things cooler and we needed the water.  Hope everyone is having a cool, crafty week!

May Ort Report, BAP Challenge update, and other stitching thoughts

It's time for my monthly TUSAL update.  If you want to learn more about the TUSAL, check out Daffycat's blog here .  As I have moved since my last TUSAL update, I have to find a new location for my ort jar photos.  So I decided to give the birds a chance to admire all my lovely orts:

In retrospect, this may not have been the wisest decision.  Don't some birds find that bits of thread make excellent additions to their nests?  Stay away from my orts little chickadee!  Seriously, I am having such a great time watching the birds that gather around our little bird feeder.  It's right outside the kitchen window, along with a humming bird feeder, so I can watch them any time that I'm doing something in the kitchen.

I spent a week working on my BAP challenge sampler.  It's not an impressive amount of progress.  I went from here:

to here:

I've only been devoting about a week a month to this piece.  I may have to bump the stitching time up later in the year, but for now, I think I'll stick to that schedule.

On Wednesday, I drove over to Mom's house for an intense 'framing' session.  For many years, I have not had the majority of my finished pieces framed.  This happened for several reasons: I didn't have space to hang the pieces, I didn't have the money for framing, and my mom doesn't really love the whole framing process all that much (I mentioned in my last post that my parents are photographers, which also means that they are able to provide me with a large selection of framing options for a far cheaper price than your average consumer can find).  But now that I've got this nice big house to fill up with stitching, I feel like it's time to put some of these beauties on the walls.  We started by dragging out every single stitched piece of mine that we could find.  This in and of itself was a bit overwhelming as Mom had finished pieces, both mine and hers, stashed in several places in the upstairs of her house.  Much of our work is hidden under piles of class kits and stitching models, etc, etc.  It took a while to find everything.

Once we had a nice big stack of needlework, we carefully measured the size of each piece and wrote it down on a master list.  I forgot to bring my camera with me, which is a shame, because you might have gotten a kick out of seeing that big pile of stitchery, just waiting to be framed.  We also found two Christmas ornaments, one large pillow, and a needleroll, all waiting to put into their finished form.  The ornaments and needleroll have come home with me, to be worked on here at my house.  After we finished with the measurements, I selected a half dozen or so pieces to be the first to receive their frames.  We spent another hour or two picking out the frames for them.  Dad has ordered one of the frames, and will hopefully order the rest when they return from Connecticut later this week.  Next week, I will return to Mom's house for a training session in pinning.  No, not Pinterest, pinning the linen to mounting boards so that each piece will be smoothly stretched across it before going into the frames.  Sigh.  I'm not really excited about learning how to pin.  But I will learn, and I will do it, because the end result will be worth it.  Sigh.  So hopefully I will have photos of one or two beautifully framed pieces sometime next week, followed by many more in the weeks to come.

Having been inspired by this week's trip down memory lane, I've pulled out some of my patriotic finishes and put them up around the house.  I figure they can stay out from now through September 11th and be perfectly appropriate, right?  Anyway, I only took a photo of one of the pieces before I sat down to blog, so that's the last photo that I'll share with you today.  I have a fondness for stitching sheep.  Don't know why.  I just do.  So here's an oldie but a goodie:

I spent my stitching time this past week working on Sous le Soleil.  But I don't feel like I stitched very much. There were just so many other things going on.  So I'm going to keep working on Soleil this week.  Til next time, I hope everyone has a beautiful, crafty day!

WIPocalypse and BAP challenge updates

Most of this stitching (actually, all of it) took place before I got married. I was just too busy to take the time to post updates on my blog. Things are calming down now. I'm finding time to stitch again, and I'm really looking forward to scrapbooking all day long on National Scrapbook Day.

First up, my WIPocalypse progress. I have been working on Reflets de Soie's "Sous le Soleil de la Lune." In my last update, I was slogging through an endless field of green grass.  I am happy to say that I have finished the grass and moved on to more interesting things.  Here's where I was at my last update:

And here's where I am now:

Not only is the grass done, but all the dark green in the border as well.  And I've added a vase and a pair of pretty blue birds:

You can read more about the WIPocalypse challenge on Measi's blog, here.

I also had a little time to work on my sampler for BeckyBee's BAP challenge.  You can find her blog here.
I've been working on the Gyrafa sampler from SANQ magazine.  Here's where I am now:

This last section has been attacked by frogs, and the frogs have destroyed my desire to work on the project.  This is just a temporary setback.  I'll be back to my dear giraffe in a couple of weeks, I'm sure.  Meanwhile, Saturday is going to be all about the scrapbooking.  Well, the crafty side of the day is going to be about scrapbooking.   My husband and I are planning a walk to the local farmers' market (there'd better be fresh strawberries!) followed by the debut of our fancy schmancy waffle maker.  THEN it's gonna be all about the scrapbooking.  Happy National Scrapbooking Day!

March WIPocalypse update and a BAP update too

Where does the time go? This has been a busy month, trying to close things out at work, packing, and planning. And for the past week or so, there hasn't been a ton of time for stitching. I imagine things are going to get even busier for the next month, and then things will hopefully slow down some.

On to my stitching: I had to set aside my BAP Challenge piece about a week and a half ago to work on some gifts, and here's what it looks like so far:


You can finally see where the giraffe's legs are! Hooray, the big blobs of color look like a bit of something. I hope to put in another week's stitching later this month.

I also worked on two WIPs. This first one is a Halloween ornament that I did the actual stitching for last year. I didn't completely finish it, but I did do the outlining of the pillow, cut it free from the larger piece of linen, and cut the backing fabric out as well.

Finally, I picked up Sous le Soleil de la Lune by Reflets de Soie. I bought and started this sampler after seeing progress photos on another blogger's posts. It was just so beautiful that I had to have it for myself. And I am loving all these gorgeous overdye Gloriana silks it is stitched with! Here's what it looked like when I set it aside sometime last year:

And here's where I'm at as of yesterday morning:

I added some more to the green border and worked on the yard and houses. I know these photos aren't very exciting, maybe next month will be better. Maybe.

I'll be posting photos of the gifts that I'm working on after this weekend's shower. Then you can see what I've spent more of my stitching time on! My goals for this month are to put in a week or so on my giraffe sampler, maybe another 2 weeks on Soleil, and to finish at least one pillow (maybe the Halloween one, or maybe one that's non-seasonal).

That's it for today. I hope this post was mostly coherent. I've caught some nasty little bug and I'm feeling a little loopy. And I'm in the process of losing my voice. Hopefully, this won't completely ruin this weekend's shower for me. And maybe this will be my one time to be sick this spring and that I won't be sick next month for my wedding and honeymoon. Til next time, I hope everyone has lots of time to be creative!

TUSAL Ort Report for February and BAP Challenge update

My ort jar doesn't seem to be getting any fuller. It travels with me back and forth to my fiance's house, and I think the vibrations of the car must be shaking the threads into a more compacted state. I swear there was stitching done this month!

Most of my stitching time this month has been dedicated to the Gyrafa Sampler I'm doing for BeckySC's BAP Challenge. It still doesn't look like much to me. I've decided that I really don't love the colors of this sampler. It's far to dull. But I'm fascinated by the fact that the sampler is about a giraffe, so I'll stick to it. I'm basically stitching it one page at a time. There are 8 pages and I am entirely done with one page. So just over 1/8 of the way through. I think I will keep working on this one until Friday, at which point I will put some time in on some thank you gifts I'm making for some of my wedding assistants (you didn't think I could make it all the way through a post without mentioning the word "wedding" did you?). I took two photos of Gyrafa, one of the whole thing, and one a little more closeup of the most finished section.


In non-stitchy news, I had to take the littlest guy in to have his little unmanning operation. (why is he still here? He was supposed to move into a nice, shiny new home shortly before my grandmother passed away. Sigh) Unfortunately, I waited a wee bit too long for this operation, and he discovered the joys of spraying the week before his operation. In a word, disgusting. But he seems to have gotten over it now, thank goodness. He had to spend several days away from the other cats, and the day after I brought him back home, I discovered this for the very first time:

I think Lucky might have missed him a little bit.

Well, that's it for now. I'm fighting something nasty in my throat and nose right now. I'm not sure if it's a cold or if it's my allergies as I was doing some more cleaning/sorting last night and I'm allergic to dust mites. Whichever it is, I don't feel very good, and I'm starting to sound a little nasty too. Hopefully, it will pass quickly.

Don't forget to check my last post for the names of the winners of my de-stashing giveaway.

WIPocalypse, February check-in

I an't believe it's already been a month! Where does the time go? (possibly into planning a wedding, but who knows!) I am happy to announce that there have been several items marked off my WIPocalypse list, even one that I didn't know belonged on the list! IF you want to learn more about the WIPocalypse, or see what others are working on, go here.

I think I'll go in reverse order here. This week, I spent a little time working on my Sarah Johnson reproduction sampler. I got this little piece several years ago. It's only a little larger than 5x7, and I quickly stitched almost all of it. I ran into difficulties when I a) ran out of the color of silk I needed and b) ran out of stitches to put in the piece except for satin stitches. Satin stitches tend to bore me. Especially the kind of free form satin stitches that were needed to stitch the leaves on this tree. Sarah has spent a loooong time in the ufo pile. Here she is when I finally picked her back up:

And here she is, finally finished as of last night:

See how little was left in order to finish this piece? Shameful really. But now she's done, and ready for a frame. Hooray for the WIPocalypse to inspire me to finish something!
This month, I also found this ornament and finished it off:

Another Sarah, Sarah Hatton McPhail, went from looking something like this at the beginning of the year:

To a complete finish earlier this month:

I also started, and finished, three other pieces. I'm not sure if those count for the WIPocalypse or not. But hey, they are FINISHED!!!
I made a small bit of progress on my BAP challenge piece as well:

It still doesn't look like much, but still, progress is progress. I think this month's stitching goal will be to continue working on my BAP piece, work on several small gifts for people who are helping me with my wedding, and MAYBE finish off one of these little pin pillow or ornaments that's lying around waiting for finishing.

Don't forget about my giveaway. There are still a few days left to join in, if you'd like. You can read about it here.

BAP progress and another finish

Hello, hello! Since my last post on the 25th, I have been working on two stitching pieces. First off, I started (and finished, gasp) "Breath of Spring" by Blackbird Designs. I stitched it using the called-for threads on 36 count Aerial fabric from Picture This Plus. I trimmed it using some Prima lace and the backing (which I forgot to take a picture of) is from Blackbird Designs Blueberry Crumbcake. Here it is:

I have also made a good bit of progress on my Gyrafa sampler for Becky's BAP Challenge. This border is a wee bit boring, and I'm looking forward to moving on to other parts of the sampler. The main part of the border kind of blends in with the fabric in this photo. I like how subtle it looks, though.

The tan part of the border stretches out a good bit further, but you couldn't really see it in the bigger photo I took, so I suppose you'll just have to trust me!

In other news, the wedding preparations are moving along in good order. I picked up my dress this weekend, this time in the proper color. On Sunday, my brother, sister, mom, dad, and sister in law all joined me in a rather crazy (but fun) day of wedding work. My brother showed off his musical skills and we discussed potential ceremony music (some serious ideas and some not so serious). My sister, sis in law, and I worked on the centerpieces, which I am happy to say are now complete. We talked about shower plans. We raided Dad's studio for props that could be used during the ceremony/reception. We even found another bird cage! I've almost completely finished addressing the invites, with lots of help from Alton. And the honeymoon plans are moving ahead as well. There are still a million things to do, but I feel like we've entered the more fun stage of the planning (ie, the part where we get to think about all those sweet little details instead of worrying about the big issues like where and who is available to help us). I am about to start working on a little stitching project for a few of the people involve in our wedding, so there MAY not be a lot of progress photos in the near future. Oh, except for the photos of what I stitched for Mom. I'm still waiting on images of those, and will share as soon as I can.

Don't forget about my giveaway. You can find it here.

TUSAL, BAP Challenge, and a birdcage

I've seen Totally Useless Stitchalong (TUSAL) posts on many blogs over this past year. And this year, I'm joining the madness. So here's my first TUSAL update:

Hmm, I should have taken a photo where you can see all the pretty, bright colors from my model stitching. Oh well. There are several projects' orts stuck in that little jar. If you want to learn more about the TUSAL, or join in the fun, head on over to
Daffycat's blog . There are tons of people playing along, all over blog world!

In other stitching news, both my threads and my fabric for my BAP arrived over the weekend. (BAP stands for Big A** Project) As I was checking my thread list versus the actual threads, I came to a horrible realization... there was a second page of the magazine where additional fibers are listed. Quelle Horreur! Now I must place yet another order for NPI silks. Sigh. At least I have the ones I need to get started! This poor project seems a bit doomed at this point, but I will press on. Here's a photo of the pattern I'm stitching, and the fabric and threads that I have thus far:

I put about 20 stitches in the fabric over the weekend, but it doesn't look like anything, so I"m not going to try to take a progress photo. I selected this piece to participate in BeckyBee's BAP Challenge this year. The idea is to stitch one really big project from start to finish during the calendar year. Who knows if I'll make it, but I'm certainly going to try!

I finished the model that I was working on for Mom this weekend. She and Dad drove over to Durham and met Alton and I at "our" house (soon to be plain old our house, giggle). She picked up the model, and dropped off another. She is doing a series of small designs that can be either framed or finished as a pillow. The one I'm working on is actually an engagement pillow (bet you can't guess whose engagement the pillow celebrates!). I'll probably finish the stitching tonight or tomorrow, but since I don't think I have the finishing supplies she'll want to use, it probably won't get finished until sometime next week. I wonder how long it will be before I can claim the model as my own personal property? I will have photos to show you what I've been working on soon, but not yet.

The other thing I've been working on is, of course, the wedding. I have chatted with the dj, and addressed what seems like a million invitations. It wasn't a million. It was probably closer to 50. But it felt like a lot. THere are still more invites to go, but the bulk of them are done. I also worked on some decorations for the reception. This is a work in progress, but it gives you an idea of where I'm headed.

What do you think, adorable or hideous?