Jumping on the Dandy Wagon

I've seen quite a few versions of Silver Creek Samplers' Dandy Dreams floating around, and while on vacation, I started a new one. I ordered the recommended Picture This Plus linen in Chime from 123stitch - it took over two months to get but it was worth it - I love the look and feel of it. It's a very substantial fabric in a light mottled yellow color. So far the stitching has not been without its issues. I thought I had brought all the required floss with me, but found that I had left the skein for the lettering at home. So I ran to Michael's five minutes before closing, only to find that they were out of that color (don't you hate when that happens?) I looked yearningly at the WalMart nearby, remembering when they used to carry floss - oh the good old days. So I focused on getting the border done. A cautionary tale for those who plan to stitch this - the grids at the bottom of the chart only have nine stitches, even if it looks like there are ten. Unfortunately I realized this only after I'd stitched the left hand border and bottom row, so the frogs came to visit - how did they know to follow me to Florida? Here's my progress so far (I made one slight change - I didn't like the unfinished look of the little round things in the border, so I made them symmetrical). In other stitching news, I finished June's owl for the Oakhaven Designs SAL:

Here's what the first six months of owls looks like:

And that's about all the news from here. Hope everyone is having a good summer so far!

A Finish and a Find

The North Wind has finally blown and it's finished. You might be forgiven for thinking that this is a spring scene rather than a winter one, since the Icing Belle Soie for the snow just didn't show up very well on the blue linen. You can see it a little better in real life than in the picture, but all-in-all I'm a bit disappointed. Oh well, it's still a pretty design even if it's not that snowy.

The North Wind
Little House Needleworks
Belfast linen - Meadow Mist
Crescent Colours, Belle Soie and DMC

After finishing NW I went back to Jenny Bean's Christmas Sampler. This one has its own issues with the loosely woven linen, but it's a lovely design. It's about to go on hiatus again though, because the June Oakhaven Designs Owl chart just came out, so I'll be working on that for a bit.

This weekend my sister and I stopped in at an antique mall, and I decided to see if I could find a flower frog to use to store my scissors. I didn't see any, but then my sister asked about them at the checkout counter. Lo and behold, I was thrilled to be shown this one. It has a base and a lid - isn't it pretty? It cost a grand total of $6.75 - quite a bargain. My sister was very surprised to see it - she thought I really wanted something that looked like a frog!