A spring surprise and a sigh of relief

The other day I got the nicest surprise - a mysterious envelope arrived with a lovely skein of Crescent Colours floss - Ripe Melon. Enclosed was a note and a card with the url of a really neat blog: http://www.themovementyourturn.blogspot.com/. Here you are encouraged to do nice things for somebody, and post comments about what you did or how someone blessed you with a kindness. It was such a treat, a real pick-me-up, and I'm having fun deciding what to do now that it's "my turn." Thank you, anonymous friend (I have a sneaking suspicion that I know who you might be, but it's fun to speculate)!

The sigh of relief is because I am just about finished with Always and Forever (everything except the initials), and the border ends matched up! I can't tell you how scared I was as I approached the finish line, but all was well. I did make one mistake with this piece - I started the border one stitch above the tree more than there should be, but even though the bottom of the border was thus closer to the lettering, I think it looks okay.

Moon and Stars is still perking along - I'm just doing the finishing touches. So I hope to post pictures of that soon. Of course, soon for me could mean weeks, but I'm trying!

My First Needlebook

For better or worse, here's my maiden journey into the world of making needlebooks. I used this tutorial, and got a lot of help from Jean (thank you, Jean!) when I was having trouble figuring out how to attach the felt. She also gave me some nice ideas about attaching edging to it - I didn't have anything to use on hand so that step is still ahead of me. I wonder if I could navigate the mysteries of making twisted cord. Gotta hide those lumpy edges! Meanwhile, it's certainly nice to have a place to keep my needles. This was really fun to put together and I'll definitely try it again.


Mystery Sampler (Scotland)
The Gift of Stitching July 2008

Cashel linen, DMC floss

New Start and Book Find

Thanks for all the feedback about my needlebook fabric. By a landslide it's the darker material. Now all I have to do is make it. We've been in Florida visiting my mother-in-law so I haven't had a chance to tackle it. Maybe this weekend I'll get up the nerve.

I'm almost done with Moon and Stars, but I started LHN's Always and Forever while I was away. Stitching with silk is so nice - it just glides through the linen. I was relieved to find that this floss (Mer Blue) doesn't stain the fabric when I've had to frog. At first I thought the chart had a mistake in the border - I counted the left and right top stitches and it looked like there were 11 stitches on one side and only 10 on the other. I wrote to Diane Williams who told me there were 10 on each side, and I realized I'd been counting using the grids, not the actual x's. The grid on the right side only had 9 columns, not 10 like is usual. That'll teach me to make assumptions! At first I wasn't sure the floss was variegated enough but I'm happy with the way it's turning out. Here's what I've gotten done so far:

I am now the delighted owner of a book I'd been coveting. I don't usually find designs I want to stitch in books, but I found America's Best Cross Stitch at the library, and it has some lovely pieces. While I was in Florida I visited an amazing used book store called Haslam's, and lo and behold they had the book! They had two copies, and quite a few other cross stitch books. If you are ever in St. Petersburg Haslams's is well worth checking out.

I hope everyone has a lovely weekend. I'm looking forward to catching up on all the blog posts I've missed.

My Trip to Joann's

Being at loose ends the other day, I decided to take a step closer to putting together the needlebook I have been promising myself I would try to make. So I took myself off to Joann Fabrics to see what I could find that would get me nearer to this goal. I found two different fabrics to use for the inside of the needlebook, and I'm in a quandary about which to use.

On first glance the darker fabric looks far more interesting than the light one (the purple color is the felt that would hold the needles). But the lighter fabric picks up one of the greens in the peacock and flower, and I am wondering if the white felt I'd use with it would show the needles better. Then again, maybe it's too boring. What do you think?

Here's the rest of my haul from Joann's: the linen is so I can try Vonna's baste and bake method for coloring fabric. I bought some fray check so I could put cording around an ornament and try to hide where the cord begins and ends. Now of course I have to make the ornament! You all are so enabling. Everything I see I want to be able to do. I hope that as I slowly pick up the tricks of the trade I'll increase my output of finished pieces. Thanks for all the inspiration!

Special Friends Award

Rachel over at Willing Hands kindly bestowed the Special Friends Award upon me - that was so nice of you, Rachel. I am so glad to be considered your friend. 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."

I appreciate every comment and piece of advice I receive whenever I post, so it's hard to single anyone out. These are some of the bloggers who have been especially patient and affirming to me: iStitchaholic, Just Another Stitching Blog, Kathy's Sit and Stitch, Linen Stitcher, Purple Wildcat, Snippets and Stash, Stitchful Thinking, and Stitchyangel's Treasures. Thank you all for being so friendly and helpful to me.

Leaf me alone!

I am so sick of leaves I could scream! They seem to go on and on. I've finished the leaves on the border but the trees need a bunch. I have to keep cutting the overdyed floss so I can make the leaves look variegated, and I've got little snippets all over the place. On the bright side, my border matched up! I did find one stitch where I crossed over three threads rather than two, but I'm leaving it. I'll just invoke the "nothing is perfect but God" rule.

This was so strange - I uploaded the picture to Blogger, and it rotated on its side. I did it three times, and it wasn't until I tried it on the left side that it uploaded right side up. Then I centered it again and it came out right. Blogger continues to be mystifying to me. I still haven't figured out how to make the pictures clickable - does anyone know? Do you do something special, or do they just turn out that way? Maybe it's my template. I'm long overdue for a change anyway.

Well, I'm off to do some lettering, till I get sick of that. Then I'll go back to putting foliage on the trees. Hope everyone has a good weekend!

A BIG visit from the frog

See this? It's Moon and Stars by LHN - BEFORE I discovered I'd left out four stitches at the top of the border where I started the piece. Therefore, it wasn't wide enough, which I only discovered when I got to the D in thread. I couldn't believe it - I had counted the border three times (so much for my math ability). There was no way to fix it - it had to come out. So I ripped out half the border and the tree branch on the right. Since then, I've restitched it and the D now sits in its rightful place. But it sure set me back awhile.

Borders make me so anxious. Whether I stitch them first or last, I always hold my breath when I reach the end and start doing the rest of the design. I live in fear that what happened to me with LHN's Where There is Life will happen again - I did the border last, and ended up one thread off from meeting the stitching on the other end. You'd think I would have learned.

I went off to my local needlework shop because I needed a skein of Crescent Colours Desert Mesquite for M&S, and came home with another LHN chart that uses silk - Always and Forever. I love the feel of the silk sliding through the fabric. This time I'll center the stitching properly!

I followed a link on this great blog (thank you for visiting me!) to the Cricket Collection's website, a company new to me. I fell in love with this project, perhaps because I grew up reading a wonderful children's book called The Sherwood Ring, which set its story at a house called Rest and Be Thankful. I feel an order coming on...

Boy, I sure am into linking things today. I guess I'm making up for not posting for quite awhile. It's nice to be back.