Fall is in the Air!

It seems overnight the weather has cooled and there is a hint of Fall in the air. The days are still bright, book-ended by it being darker in the mornings and an earlier "lights out" in the evenings. I like this slow transition. You know the cold, dark months are coming but you can still enjoy the bright days. It also means it's easier to stitch with a drop in temperature! I think heat just fogs my brain. (That's my excuse and I'm sticking with it!)

I have one finished piece to show you.

Salina Dunwoody

by Sheepish Designs

AVAS silks on 35 ct WDW Parchment

One thing I've learned with the older Sheepish Antiques designs - there are mistakes so expect them and double check the chart against the photo.  After you accept that then it's not so bad. I did end up changing the colours around a bit to suit myself.  I really like this one and I'm definitely hooked on her designs!  So, naturally, the next project is...

Betsy!  I'm stitching on 36 ct Straw but using the HDF silks conversion. While I have enjoyed stitching with HDF silks in the past, I regret getting this conversion. Others have warned me that sometimes the conversions don't work out very well. In this case, the colours of the border vine, leaves, stem should be dark, medium and light green. Well, they are blue-y grey. It didn't dawn on me until I had stitched quite a bit (remember, I blame the heat?) and then I pondered what to do. Since I did not have anything in my HDF stash close to those colours I decided just to leave it.  

Overall, the colours are much softer than what shows on the chart photo. Oh well. It is a fun design to stitch.  (Sorry for the bad photo by the way!)

Not much else to report. September is just around the corner - how insane is that? I leave you with a photo of my kitties while we still had our heat a couple of weeks ago. It was hilarous how they were trying to stick their heads out of the window to  get some air!

Oh, to be able to just chill out completely like these cats! 

Thank you for your visit! I really appreciate your stopping by and reading your comments just make my day! Enjoy your Sunday and the rest of ...August! Take care!

The Spell is Broken

I was on a reading binge, enjoying the Millennium Trilogy, as you saw on my last post. Then all it took was a couple of not-so-great books and the reading spell was broken. I couldn't find anything that could keep my attention, despite a stack of books available. Oh well, that just opened the window back to stitching.  And back to the needle I went! 

Here's the silver lining:

Mary's Best Handworke, by With Thy Needle and Thread. Finished! Ta-da.   It took me two months to finish it and I'm so happy it's done!  

After that I got back some of my stitching groove, so I went back to an older piece from May. This is how I left Salina Dunwoody, with a bunch of stitches to be frogged. 

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And here is how Salina looks today - much much prettier! 

Hmmm, I just noticed the photos look very different in colour. I would say the first photo of Salina shows more of the colours in real life.  

And if you are thinking "Gee, she must not be so busy at work if she is stitching again", you'd be absolutely right. "Feast or Famine" as they say when you are doing free-lance work. 

Last time I showed you photos of Daisy. Now, I must give equal time to Mr Julius.  He is a pretty rumbunctious cat and the first  one shows him in true form. The other two, well, you can't blame a cat for wanting to chill out in the summer heat. 

The photo above shows three of my favourite things - Mr Julius, cross stitch and books.

I love this last photo even though it's a bit fuzzy. Julius is tucked in under a chair in my room, in his little Buddha-cat pose. So sweet.


That's all for now. Thank you for stopping by! Have a wonderful week ahead!

Reading Binge

Hello, my friends! It is a local holiday here which means a wonderful 3 day weekend. And how did I spend it?  Well, unintentionally, I tapped into a great trilogy and have had my nose stuck in these 3 books.

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If you haven't heard of them, it's the Millennium Trilogy from Stieg Larsson of Sweden.  It's the latest best selling phenomenon out there.  This news article out this past weekend talks about the books.  


I bought the first book, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, about a week ago, thinking I would give it a try.  It was a bit tough going at the beginning because the author was jumping around trying to set the stage for the story, but it soon settled in and woo-hooo, the roller coaster ride began. By Thursday I asked my DH to pick up the second book for me, knowing that I would jump right into it on Friday. By Saturday morning I was half way through and said to my DH that we have to go to Costco and buy the third book, which is only out in hard cover. Boy am I ever glad I did that. I finished the third book late yesterday evening. Yes, I'm a fast reader but I also did nothing but read! 


What a luxury that was! 


The books are dark, violent but oh so good! The characters are well developed and it was just really interesting to read it from book 1 through 3 all in one go.  At the heart of it is the theme of violence against women and political corruption. The three books individually could be viewed quite differently. The first is more a mystery, the second an action thriller, the third a crime/political thriller but they all tie in beautifully.  It was also interesting to read something from Sweden, a country I've never been to. These books will wipe away any squeaky clean "IKEA" images of Sweden. 


It is too bad that the author died, at 50, shortly after he delivered the manuscripts for all 3 books. There's a lot of buzz around the author too, making the books all the more interesting. There are loads of stuff on the Net about these books (and movies) so there are better words than I can conjure up. 


I have hardly done any stitching since my last post, but that's how it goes. Sometimes as hard as I try to look for books to interest me, I cannot find any. Now, I have a huge stack from the library to devour! "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth" and all that...


This morning, I visited some blogs. I always love to visit Barbara's as it's always full of great fun with her family.  On today's post on Barbara's blog, Annemarie left a comment, which I'd like to "borrow" coz I loved it so much. Annemarie said:

"I found a sampler ‘verse’ on a website a couple of days ago and it had me in stitches: ‘Patty Polk did this and she hated every stitch she did in it. She loves to read much more.’ Speaking of subversive cross stitch! I am determined that one day, I will build a little sampler around these words"

Annemarie, I hope you don't mind me sharing that. I love that verse because sometimes I just want to read much more than I want to stitch! And I hope you do stitch it up one day! 

Now, with all my working I haven't been able to stitch much but the flip side is, I can buy some stash. Here are some recent releases:

 
If I can't stitch so much, at least I can stash-and-dream! 

Again, I close with flowers and with thanks for visiting and commenting. As a reader, you know how much I enjoy your words! By the way, how did we get to August so quickly?!!!