Finishes and Flowers ...

Happy Wednesday! Can you believe that August is almost over! The weather here is lovely, sunny and 70-80 with that cool autumn feeling in the air in the morning .. Autumn is my favorite time of year, sliding right into Winter which is almost my favorite! lol ..

I'm doing a bit of Halloween stitching right now .. if you remember if stitched up BBD's Cat last week ... this week I finished La-D-Da's Smell My Feet, which was from last years JCS Halloween mag (as was Cat). I used GAST Raven and DMC 368 (I think that's the right number lol) and stitched it on some of my coffee dyed fabric .. I'm thinking of having this made into a cube, which some fun black Halloweeny fabric that I have .. maybe a really wide black satin ribbon wrapping along the sides up to the top into a bow .. hmmmmmmm :)

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I was really behind in a private ornament exchange I'm in .. well I'm now officially caught up! wooo hoo!!! All three ornaments and goodies have arrived :) Here's a picture of the ornament I made for Karen. The design is called The Bird's Carol by Praiseworthy Stitches, from one of the JCS Ornament Issues, but I don't remember right now which year :( Included in the picture are some goodies I sent along with the ornament. I forgot to take pictures of all the ornaments before they left for their new homes .. so I'll have to wait until the other two owners post pictures before I can share with you ...


I was playing around with my camera yesterday and some pretty Sunflowers I had picked up at the grocery store over the weekend .. I love how Sunflowers come in all kinds of combinations of yellows and oranges and reds .. aren't these lovely??

I really like this view ...

makes me smile :)

Hope everyone is having a great week!

Find your joy in your stitches ...

I'm grateful for Sunflowers ...

What I did on my long weekend ...

Last week I took a couple of extra days off work and made a nice long 4 day weekend for myself. With money being tight, our vacations this summer are just hanging out around home. I decided this long weekend was going to me all mine, well at least the days were all mine .. I still had the family around in the evenings .. damm lol

I spend my days reading (Dark Lover), cleaning and organizing my stitching room (why don't I put my threads away when I'm done with them??!!), finishing a couple of Christmas ornaments (yea I do finishing when I have to! lol) and stitching stitching stitching .. it was heaven!

I stitched on Earth Laughs .. omgosh I love how this is coming together .. makes me smile to see all the flowers ..

I worked on Coffin Buzz .. I had to frog the scroll at the bottom right. I hate frogging but frogging over one is just nasty! Unfortunately I didnt' frog this sooner and there is some discoloration .. I'm bummed, but almost done, so I'll finish it and hopefully it won't show up as much as it does now ...

And I finished up this Halloween cutie. This is Black Cat from BBD's Trix or Treat book. I stitched on some orange linen that I had coffee dyed and I used WDW Guacamole in place of WDW Caper. I really like how the green looks against the orange ..

I love productive but relaxed vacations .. don't you? lol I have another 4 day weekend coming up soon .. wonder what I'll get accomplished then?

Thanks everyone for dropping by for a visit, I love reading your comments.

Find your joy in your stitches ...

I'm grateful for days off ...

She's on the move again ...

nope it's not me, although I would love to be travelling to places unknown. Instead it's the Sisterhood of the Travelling pattern that will be travelling soon. Sharon has finished Sisterhood and is ready to send her on her way. Good Luck ... but of course she's coming to Washington next *smile*

and here's a lovely lovely blogiversary giveway that Lynn is having .. check out her blog and have a kleenex for the drool :)

Exchanges ...

Look what came in the mail today ... it's my Lizzie Kate Exchange from Melissa. I just love this pattern! Kinda perfect for me, don't ya think? lol .. she did a lovely job finishing it and it's now sitting happily in my kitchen. Thank you so much Melissa for stitching this for me :)

And my exchange piece arrived at it's new home too .. this was a surprise exchange, we didn't know who was stitching for us. I got Sharon's name and thought this August flip it would be really fun to stitch. Karen finished it for me ... I think it turned out really cute ... I'm glad Sharon likes it :)

Before I get back to stitching and watching Tuesday night tv I wanted to share a picture of one of my wips ... it's called Earth Laughs and is by MDesign. The fabric is a very pretty light blue, the same I stitched Joyful Summer on. Someday I'll get a better photo of the fabric ... this is really a fun design to stitch ... I was only going to stitch one flower a week but looks like I'll be stitching a couple more before I put it away again ...

I hope you find your joy in your stitches ...

I'm grateful for pretty coffee cups ...

Some Stitching ...

August already and summer is definately here. After our record breaking temperature last Wednesday (officially it was 103, but there were a lot of cities claiming 107!), our weather has steadied at a very comfortable high 80's/low 90's, with the evenings cooling off and letting us all sleep a good nights sleep.

I did get one more 4th of July design stitched last week ... I'll blame this one on Staci ... ever since I saw this design finished on her blog I knew I had to stitch it for next year ... here's Bent Creek's Celebrate Freedom Snapper ... I think I'll have a fun group of new pinkeeps next 4th of July :)

Back in April when I went to Arizona with the Grand Canyon Girls Club I took Karen some things to finish for me ... remember, I hate finishing! Karen loves it ... so I took about 10 projects to hand off to her. Since they are all for me, there wasn't any hurry in when she finished them and got them back to me. Last week I received a few of them back ... and all I can say is woo hoo! They are lovely! I took pictures of 3 of them before my battery died ... may I present to you ...

Lizzie Kate's Chicky Easter as a floss tag ... adorable isn't it :)

Last year Jennifer stitched two lovely squares for me when we were paired up for a Fair and Square round ... Jennifer knew I loved Sunflowers and red and I was sooo pleased when I received the squares from her ... but you have no idea how excited I was when I saw the pincushion Karen made out of the squares ... too pretty to use??

the back ...

and the side ... look at those stithces ... perfect!

This no-sew cube was made from squares Amy stitched for me a couple of years ago ... I think it was my first Fair and Square exchange ... turned out pretty sweet didn't it ...

and here's the back ...

I took a picture of the bow cause I thought it was sooo nice, but didn't seen the tiny bow peeking out until after I'd taken the picture ... how cute is that!

I'll post the other finishing she sent me in my next post. Allow me a minute to plug Karen's new business ... Finely Finished ... Back in June, Karen decided to leap into the world of cross stitch finishing. Check out her services, I know you won't be disappointed.

I've been stitching a lot on Kindered Spirits so I thought I needed a colorful summery change of pace so I dug out MDesign's Earth Speaks. I started it sometime last year. I thought I'd stitched more than two of the flowers ... funny how sometimes I think I'm futher along on a wip than I really am. I forgot how much I enjoy these flowers. I think I'm going to start a rotation again so I can schedule stitching one flower a week. I'd like to get it done before Christmas ... I've decided it's going to be a Christmas present.

Time for me to rotate the laundry ... lol

I hope you find your joy in your stitches ...

I'm grateful for flowers ...