A Weary Stitcher shows up

I am popping my head out of my hobbit hole for a few minutes for show and tell. Yes I am still around and, thankfully, still stitching. I was at one point stuck on my current stitch because of the tedious alphabets, but I was saved by this pretty little basket and bird, which got me over the blahs!

The basket and bird are a tiny part of:

A Weary World Rejoices
by Shakespeares Peddler

I've been busy, mind a bit scattered with too much information (work related), and fighting the seasonal viruses. I'm fine, just keeping very low keyed. Hence a very quiet post.

Thank you for your comments and concerns in the last post. No one was hurt by the fallen tree as far as we know. We told my parents yesterday when we had lunch today and they both blanched at our lucky escape!

Sorry for this rather bland post. I had contemplated not posting but then a post with stitchy photos is better than no post, right? :-) I have enjoyed visiting your blogs though and seeing what everyone is stitching. That is always inspiring.

Till next time, thanks for coming by! Have a wonderful week, and a fun & safe Halloween!

ps Just finished reading Of Bees and Mist by Erick Setiawan - if you like Chocolat by Joanne Harris, I think you will enjoy this one, although it has one of the most vile characters I've ever met on the page! Email me if you want to chat about the book.

Things to be Thankful for:

One - See the dance of the wild happy turkeys - My Quaker House is finished!

My Quaker House by Blackbird Designs
from book With My Needle

Small changes - I changed the red bird to a blue one, being I like the idea of "the bluebird of happiness". I used WDW Dolphin, a lovely grayish-blue. I also changed the red door to a gray one and added a little red design on the front of the house. I've seen houses where they have a design tiled above the front door so this was just my nod to that little design feature for MY Quaker House! I really enjoyed stitching this one, but that's usually the case with Blackbird Designs!

From my last post asking for tips on better photos - both Irma and Jane recommended (1) take photos in daylight if possible (2) use macro setting and (3) use a photo-editing software. I had a very quick try with Picasa. What do you think? I only spent 5 minutes with it. It will take sometime for me to play with it and learn how to use it but I like the idea of being able to "brighten" the photo. Thanks for the tips, Irma and Jane!

While stitching this, I listened to The Whiskey Rebels by David Liss. What an absorbing story and it sure made me want to keep listening and stitching! Thanks for the recommendation, Siobhan!

Two - miracles:

There are many everyday things I'm grateful for so I won't bore you with that. I will tell you of a spine tingling experience we had two weeks ago Saturday. It was a beautiful sunny day but unusually windy. We were out and about doing our usual Saturday errands. For local folks, we were driving east on SE Marine Drive, heading close to Boundary Road. This is a 6 line semi-highway (3 lanes each way) lined with stands of tall skinny trees, maybe cottonwood?

As we were driving along, I was admiring the lovely weather then noticed a sprinkle of leaves coming down in front of us, followed by what I saw was a branch falling over the driver's side window. As I pointed this to DH, he looked and instantly looked in the rear view mirror. Thank God he didn't stop driving. He said 'Look behind us!' As I turned around in my seat I can see that a tree had fallen across the road and three lanes of cars were stranded behind us! (This all happened in seconds.)

Yes, we passed under a falling tree! It was a miracle it did not hit us or anyone else. Thank you God!

So, what did DH do (is this typical male)? He said 'hey, we should turn around and see how big that tree really was! I said 'Are you nuts? Are you trying to thumb your nose at fate and try for it the second time?' After all, there are tall trees on the OTHER side of the road too!

We did not turn back. We just thanked our lucky stars!

Now, look this photo.

Yesterday afternoon when my husband looked out from our bedroom window, he could see the sunlight reflecting off our room and onto the garage. Can you see the heart in the photo? I could see it instantly. Awww, isn't that lovely? Of course it was one of those fleeting moments and I was so glad he caught it with our camera.

Three - the long weekend was wonderful.

It's almost over now but it sure was a lovely break. Thank you too for your well wishes. I just love'em! You are such nice people!

All good things must come to a close, so now it's back to the busy-ness of the office tomorrow. But first, I still have tonight to enjoy and I will have to figure out what my next project will be. Oh, I had such a lovely visit with my local stitchy friend this morning too so I'm all filled with starry stitching goodness!

Have I shocked anyone besides myself with 2 days of consecutive posts? And you can notice the difference in tone between yesterday's and today's. One more day of rest on the weekend sure helps! Now it's back to burrowing in my hobbit hole!

I hope you are enjoying Fall (or Spring) in your part of the world. Look for those miracles...

Thanksgiving House

It's the Thanksgiving weekend here in Canada and I think my current stitching project certainly represents to me the spirits of thankfulness and contentment.

My Quaker House
by Blackbird Designs
from the book With Needle and Thread

Imagine the colours more vibrant than what you see. One of these days I hope to find out how other people get such nice bright photos! The camera probably has a lot to do with it but I'm sure there are other tips. I am using a Canon PowerShot A2000IS. While it's a lot better than my previous camera, it's still a pretty basic model. If you have any photo taking tips and tricks, I would love it if you could share!

I'm really enjoying stitching this design and that's generally true of any of the BBD that I've stitched.

I don't really have much else to say. I'm just keeping heads down these days, running that race to the finish (work to complete in about 2 months). I'll just keep on needling!

Thank you for stopping by and taking time to leave a comment. It's always nice to know who's checking in! And for those with blogs, thanks for keeping up with your blog posts as I always enjoying reading them too. Have a great week.

Happy News...

...for Theresa who won the Blogoversary Giveaway! I told Theresa I was amazed when her name came up because she seemed to have won a few of these (or at least one other) giveaways lately! Theresa, go get a Lotto ticket, you never know!

First year giveaway - Quaker Calendars by Plum Street Sampler

Thank you to everyone for entering the giveaway because it gave me a chance to read about your favourite stitch. It seems to be that most people's favourites are the ones they have made for a loved one.

Since my last post, I have put away my Windmill Sampler and have been searching for next projects to do. I will have to order some floss this week! Thank you to Barbara for pointing out something about the colour "Old Brick":

"I've seen that GAST "Old Brick" turn up in some REALLY different shades/colors. I had one skein I loved, that really did look like old faded out brick, but everything I've had since is either too pink or too brown."

Well, at least it was good to know it wasn't my imagination! But it's frustrating when you see such variations in the dye lots!

On Friday afternoon I received Sarah Woodham from Shakespeares Peddler. Here's a photo of it. I just love this design.

Isn't she pretty? I just love her. I probably won't stitch her for awhile yet. Looking at that all over one stitching, I know I will need a time when I am not so busy with work. But I can still just look and admire her!

As usual, thank you for stopping by. I hope I will have some stitching to show you next time. Thank you for your kind regard, as always.
Have a wonderful week. I am sending you "Rosy" thoughts!

Princess: where art thou?

On Princess' whereabouts

Yes, kiddies, lately I've shed my mild mannered stitching princess disguise and donned my suck-it-up-princess armor and I have been slaying dragons, always careful not to get blood splattered on my outfit of the day because it's hell on dry cleaning bills. Work has been consuming lots - ok - most of my time and energy so stitching has been slower than usual. On top of that, I'd picked the wrong design to wrestle with at this time...So, what's so difficult, you ask?

Regardez le probleme!

Here's the innocuous looking design and here is my progress on it.

The Windmill Sampler
by Examplar from the Heart

So, what's the problem? It's two fold actually. First, the symbols charted do not always match the colours in the photo of the stitching, and second, I'd felt some colours just did not go. There is a pink called GA Old Brick, which, while not pepto-bismal pink is a candy pink and you can see a bit of it in the flower by the bird. In the photo it looks innocent enough. But imagine when that big flower in the middle was stitched with that pink with brown. I did not like it.

I left it alone for awhile and tried to think "it might grow on you". Yeah, like a wart! It thumbed its nose at me and gave me the raspberry every time I looked at it, so Sunday night, taking a few deep breaths, I took out my wart-slaying scissors etc and ripped the whole thing out. I replaced it with GA Mulberry and will fill in with Flax. Much better.

Now, don't get me wrong, I still like this design but it takes more concentration to figure out each colour I should use for each motif. That's a lot more work than I can stand at this point in my stressful work period. I usually park my little grey cells for recharging (just like my cell phone) every night and I want to stitch something where I don't have to question if each symbol charted is correct or if I like the colour! So, after much wrestling about being a quitter, I think I should put this one aside for now, and do something 'easier' before I do something bad to it!

Barbara asked

... if there was a reason I'd left out the words in The Simple Things by BBD. The only reason I left them out is the over 1 stitching! I have a really tough time with over 1 and although I have done it (BBD's Where My Heart Blooms) if I can get away without doing it I will. So there, now you know my shameful secret! ;-)

TGIF!!!

You may notice that I am posting this on Friday morning. You may wonder "is she playing hookey from work?" Actually I went home feeling the chills and upset stomach yesterday and decided I would take today off as well just to recuperate. I do feel better this morning than yesterday, thank goodness! I am so looking forward to some sunshine though this weekend! The weather was fabulous in September but turned very fall-ish this week - rain and chilly weather, hence many people falling sick at work.

I am looking forward to going back to my quiet stitching princess garb and having some soothing stitching over the weekend, and some gardening if the weather permits!

Reminder that today is the last day of my giveaway. Please post a comment here, and I will announce a winner on Sunday. Here's a photo of the late September roses.
Thank you for stopping by, especially leaving me such well wishes for my blogoversary! Hope you have a lovely weekend where you are!