Happiest of Holidays

Another finish!!! Woo!! Hoo!! I finished Happiest of Holidays from JCS Christmas Ornament Preview Magazine. Actually the same design is in the Ornament issue with the colors reversed. Have decided to give this to Morris's niece for Christmas. We drew names this year and I got hers. Where the stitchers initials were to go, I put hers. Tomorrow I will take this to the frame shop. I think I will have them put a mat on it to help bring out the colors a little more. Last night at Monday Night Stitch Therapy several thought that I had cut the thread to make the colors variegate like they did, but I did not. It just worked out that way. It's magic. The picture is clickable.

JCS Happiest of Holidays

28-ct Lt. Mocha Cashel

Needle Necessities - 151

Now I have started "Trick or Treat" from the JCS Halloween Ornament Magazine. Have made changes to the colors listed. It called for Needlepoint Silk and I am using WDW Mascara for the black and Sampler Thread Mistletoe for the green. I like the color changes in the green. The fabric is a mystery piece from my stash. I think it is Prairie Grain linen, 28-ct. The photo does not show the right color and is too light. To get good coverage with the black I am stitching the shoes/boots with 3 strands. The border is only 2 strands. Will experiment with the lettering, but I think I will do it in 3 strands too. Don't usually stitch 28-ct with 3 strands, but sometime it is necessary with black.

Spend today stitching on the design model for The Sunflower Seed that I have been working on for several weeks. That is when I was not on the phone. It seems everyone knew I had the entire day at home today and I got several calls. However, the one that I made turned out to be long. Will finish this up and get back to stitching.

Last Saturday, I spent several hours sorting through some boxes of stash. Preparing things for game prizes for our Monday Night Stitchers Retreat that is coming up next month. There will be 9 of us taking over a B&B for 2 nights. The B&B may never be the same. Have plans to play Stitcher's Bingo and Stitch Bag Scavenger Hunt. That is a new one. Have been working on the list of things that everyone will be looking in their bag for. I cannot even give any ideas of what I am going to use here, because all of them read my blog. Don't want to give any of my secrets away. Also, I am going to try to play the CLR Floss game that I saw on Martha and Deb's blogs. Hope they don't mind me stealing their game. Sounds like fun, especially if you are the winner and get all the floss in the middle of the table.

The last 2 Saturdays I have had off from KSU home football games. Our next home game is this Saturday and then again the following Saturday. Cuts down on the stitch time. Hopefully they can play well and win and then all is not wasted.

Thanks for all you comments on my Purple Quaker Cow, they are all appreciated. I will try to get photos of Joann when I give it to her. Several have wanted to know her reaction.

Off to stitch. Happy Stitching!!!!!

MOO-Cow

Finished the Purple Quaker Cow on Saturday. Took it to the framer yesterday. Of course, the only moulding that would work was a purple one. It matched the purple in the cow fairly good. Someone made a comment about the new fabric. Anita, at The Sunflower Seed did this custom work a few years back using Vintage Antique Tan or something like that and used bleach to make the splotches. Ask her about how she did it and said that it only worked on that Vintage fabric and she tried on other fabric and colors with no success. So I guess you could say this was one of a kind. She says that Vintage fabric has now been discontinued. I thought it was pretty cool stuff. She has a couple of shop models done on the same fabric.

Quaker Cow

by The Workbasket

28-ct Anita Original Fabric

Needle Necessities 196

After I finished the cow, I worked on Anita's design model and my Precious Baby Sampler. Then I got the itch to do a couple of the Halloween ornaments from the Just Cross Stitch Magazine and an ornament out of the Christmas Preview issue. Have fabric ready for 2 Halloween ones, the Trick or Treat one and the Owl one, but need to do some floss conversions to overdyes and might need to get a couple of colors at the LNS when I work tomorrow. However, I did start the Happiest Holidays ornament. Mine is going to be bigger because I changed the fabric. I may end up framing it and using it as a Christmas present for Morris's niece. Here is my start. The photo is a little blurry. It seems when I try to take close-up photos that they come out blurry sometimes. Not sure what I am doing wrong, but I am sure it is operator error.

Happiest Holidays
28-ct Lt. Mocha Cashel

Needle Necessities - 151

The red and greens from the overdyed of the floss do not show up as well as I thought they would. I figured if I added mats when I frame it, that might get the colors to pop a little better. You can sure tell that Needle Necessities is one of my favorite threads. Need to find time to try some of the new Threadworx to see if it is Needle Necessities reincarnated.

Another rather short post for me. LOL!!! Maybe I am learning to not be so long winded. Have my Google Reader down under 40. I really might get caught up soon. I want to get caught up before I take another trip and get behind again.

Have a Church ladies group meeting this afternoon. We are becoming a smaller group and it is difficult to keep things going. We lost one early this summer and another has had a stroke and is in a nursing home. Although these ladies are a lot older than me, I enjoy them so much and have learned a lot from them. Losing anyone of them is like losing my mother all over again. We are starting a new lesson year, so we have lots to look forward to.

Thanks to all who stop and visit and comment. Love getting your comments. Hope everyone in Texas is recovering. That has been such a tragedy.

Happy Stitching!!!

EDITED: I forgot to include that Muffin went back to the vet yesterday and they re-ran the blood tests. Her liver results were better. The one that she was to be under 100 was at 95 and the other that she was to be under 200 was at 185. I guess the meds, etc. worked on correcting the problem. We will wait another 2-3 weeks before we re-schedule the surgery to take off the fatty tumors. Hopefully, the liver enzymes will stay where they are supposed to be.

PCP--aka Purple Cow Progress

It seems I have been sort of obsessed with this purple cow. When I have not been working or stitching at The Sunflower Seed, I have been doing some stitching on it. Here is where she was at about noon when I took this picture. Since then I have finished the tail and most of the rest of the floral-type motif in the middle.

Quaker Cow by The Workbasket

28-ct dyed fabric by Anita at The Sunflower Seed

Needle Necessities 196 - Renaissance

We have had rain all day today. Cool front and remnants of Tropical Storm Lowell from the Pacific. Not long ago they even issued a tornado warning for counties east of us. The forecast is for continued rain through tomorrow. Managed to get out and go to the grocery store, but It was mighty wet.

Have gotten my Google Reader down under 100, but have mostly been reading not doing much commenting. For the longest time, I was up to date almost every day and with being gone a week in May and then again in August, I got way behind. I like to keep as current as possible. Hope to be caught up in a week. That is my goal.

Surprise! This is going to be the shortest post I have ever done. I am going back to stitching and watching a ballgame and keeping an eye on Ike. My thoughts and prayers are with those that are in the path of that dangerous storm. Hope everything turns out better than they are predicting.

Hope everyone as a great stitchy weekend!!!!

The Week That Was

When I last left you, I was preparing to go to the first Kansas State football game of the year. Since then I have attended 2 games, that one and then the second game of the season last night. They won the first one 45-7 and it was rather warm that day and into the evening when it started. Last night they won again with a bigger score of 69-10. The weather was totally different. It was about 60 degrees and drizzling rain. Some times it was more than a drizzle, but not a total downpour. You would still get wet if you did not have rain wear. We stayed for most of the game. I was ready to leave at halftime when it was still raining and there were little doubt about the game. However, I was not the one driving. Ugh!! Even with rain gear you can get a little wet. Not too bad considering it rained over half of the game. No more home games for 3 weeks. More stitching time, instead of losing time in travel and during the game. LOL!!

Last Monday being Labor Day the LNS was closed so our Monday Night Stitch Therapy Group could not meet. That did not deter us resourceful stitchers. Janet invited us to her house for a day of stitching together. Always a fun time. We all took something to share for lunch. I tried out something new called Hearty Penne Beef. I guess it turned out OK, everyone ate it and no one got sick. We had some great food including CHOCOLATE!!! We stitched from about 10:00AM until 4:00PM. I even was prepared for any quotable quotes, but we were rather subdued, I guess. I have no quotes. There was no tooting either. One of our group has told us that you can use Depends as mufflers. Guess everyone had their mufflers on. During the day, we had two finishes. Janet finished a little Halloween design from The Sunflower Seed, including the buttons being sewn on. Reita finished LHN - Home of a Needleworker, too. Great job gals. Marcia was 1 1/2 letters from finishing "I am of Ireland" by The Sunflower Seed. A couple of our regulars could not spend the day with us. We missed them. Maybe that is why we did not have any quotes or stories from the day to pass on.

I guess because it was a holiday weekend, I decided I needed to start something. So I started and finished on Tuesday this "Noel Santa" from the new Prairie Schooler - Santa and Snowman. Plans are to finish it as an ornament. The picture shows the choices of backing fabric that I found in my stash. Had to go to Joanns to buy some ribbon for the hanger. Changed the colors on the original pattern to using Weeks Dye Works and Sampler Thread. The red is GAST - Cranberry. Now I want to do one of the Snowmen from that book. Oh, I almost forgot, I stitched this on 28-ct lambswool linen. It was to be on Summer Khaki, but I love lambswool. Some of the oatmeal I used does not show up very well.

My startitis has come back to me. However, it is for a good reason. At least that is my story and I am sticking with it. One of our regular Monday night stitchers is an older lady that lives in a local retirement community. You saw pictures of her last year around Christmas, because she was the subject for annual friendship sampler done by The Sunflower Seed. Joann struggles with various health issues and had some problems going into the holiday weekend. So on Tuesday evening Anita and I took take-out Chinese food over to her and spent the evening with her. When I arrived she told me she had gone through all her fabric and separated the linen from the evenweave because she says she cannot stitch on linen. She did not know why she had so much linen. Told me to go through it and take what I wanted. I felt a little like I had died and gone to heaven. I found this one piece of linen that had be dyed and distressed by Anita. Joann kept saying that she always liked that fabric and now she just wished she could do Workbasket's Quaker Cow on it. So later in the week, I decided that I would stitch the Quaker Cow for her. First I thought for Christmas, but remembered her birthday is in late October. Now my intention is to get it done for her birthday. Us stitch gals are about all the family she has so I know she will love getting this for her birthday. Joann loves purple almost as much as I do, so I went to my stash of Needle Necessities and found a purple (196) and here is the beginnings of a Purple Quaker Cow.

Since this photo was taken, I have finished the head and started on a front leg. I just love doing these Quaker monochromatic things. Joann does not have a computer so I figure I am safe putting this on my blog. Now, the rest of you Monday night stitchers that do read my blog, DO NOT BLOW THIS!!!!!!!!

The following Lizzie Kate design has been framed for quite some time, but I keep forgetting to take a picture when I do the other pictures. Now I just need to send it to cousin Jackie in South Dakota. Hope she had forgot I have a blog or it might not be much of a surprise to her.

There was one other significant thing that happened this week, that I almost forgot to mention. My little dog, Muffin, was supposed to have surgery on Tuesday to remove a couple of fatty tumors. The key word there is "supposed", because she did not have it. During the pre-op blood test, they found that her liver enzymes were not right. The liver is what filters out the anesthetic from her system, therefore they would not do her surgery. Put her on some pills for 2 weeks and changed her dog food to Hills Prescription LD for liver function. We go back in 2 weeks for recheck. She has not really had any symptoms that they told me she might have. Doesn't seem to like the new food. Was not a big eater anyway, but she seems to need to be very hungry to eat it. Will see what happens at the end of the 2-week period.

This has turned out to be longer than I planned and my fingers are itching to get back to my Purple Cow. Still need to do a few pictures for the rest of our trip, but tonight I had problems with the pictures that I was preparing for a blog, so I gave up on it for now.

Happy stitching to all!!!!