A Finish, Progress and An Award

Although it has been a while since I posted, I will try to keep this from being a novel. Sometimes I get carried away.

American Baby is finished and at the framer. Finished it on March 1st after starting it on January 1st. As documented during stitching, I made a few changes in the colors of the sheep and the bunnies. Then at the end, instead of stitching the stars on with floss, I used gold looking star charms. I think they add just the right finishing touch.

American Baby

by Willow Hill Samplings

28-ct Heritage by Picture This Plus

GAST and Crescent Colours Floss

Have been spending a lot of time stitching on LHN "From Sea to Shining Sea". The first photo was taken on March 8th. Had plans to do an update around that time. Then something happened and I did not get it done. This was a few days after I worked the election board for the city election when I knew I would have plenty of time to stitch. For a 12-hour day working the election we had a total of 32 voters. Very slow day. The most we had in one hour was 7 voters. Got to get quite a bit of stitching done.

This photo was taken after a weekend of stitching at Heartland Stitch-In 2009. It is a weekend camp sponsored by Heartland Stitch Counters Society out of Leavenworth, Kansas. Usually they have a designer come in for the weekend. This year they decided to have no designer and make it a relaxing weekend to just stitch on whatever you wanted. I was able to finish part 3 and make a good start on part 4. Got a little more border done.

The weekend stitch-in was great fun. It had a 50's theme and was decorated accordingly. Everyone won a door prize and was given a chance to delve into the big grab bag barrel. Lot of fun, good food and stitching was going on for the entire weekend. I had a very pleasant surprise too. A friend that I had met at another camp in 1995 was there. We had not seen each other for at least 5 years. We had gone to the other camp together for several years. She is from Arkansas and although we had each other's contact information, we had not kept in contact. Tammy it was so good to reconnect with you. The camp where Tammy and I met was the first camp for each of us and the other stitching friend with me. We really connected since we all showed up with a small stitching bag and a pair of scissors and everyone else in the room had big magnifying lights, special chairs, and lots of bags. We soon learned that you practically move your stitching nest with you to camp. LOL! Along with seeing Tammy again, I made friends with 3 other stitchers from Texas. Thanks, Wanda, Eileen and Helen for a great weekend and we will do it again next year. Actually, Wanda came into the LNS when I was working on Thursday and during the course of the conversation, we found out that we were both going to the same camp the next day. Then we sat at the same table for the weekend. Have already had e-mails from both Tammy and Wanda, since this weekend. Stitching friends are the best friends.

Michele-X Marks The Spot made a "Special Friends" award to me several weeks back and I am just getting around to thanking her. The description for this award reads "These blogs are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers aim to be friends. They are not interested in self-aggrandizement. Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these kind writers. When you pass the award along please include these guidelines. I am to choose eight friends to share this with." Receiving this award is very special because it states that just exactly how I feel about my blogging and stitching friends and why I do this. Thanks, Michelle.

I am not sure that I can choose only 8 people to pass this award on to. There are so many special friends in my stitching blogging world and many have already received this award, so I think I will just leave it at that. That way I don't have to make the choices and leave off some deserving ones.

Still working on a design model for The Sunflower Seed and will continue on From Sea to Shining Sea. Had a little visit from the frog on the SS design, but have it fixed and moved on. Should have it done by the end of the week. Preparations are in full swing for the Shop Hop that the Sunflower Seed participates in that is April 30th, May 1st and 2nd. Hopefully I can have From Sea done before then. Today I am off to a meeting at the church and then more stitching later.

Happy Stitching.