It's cool enough to stitch, wahoo!
It was simply too hot yesterday to do any stitching. With temperatures over 30 degrees Celsius and no airconditioning in houses or most offices, after a week, it's really getting to you. Well, at least it is to me. I took a nap yesterday when I came home from work, watched some tennis and soccer, read a little, but basically, it was too hot to do anything at all.

Today, however, is entirely different. I think it's at least 10 degrees cooler and boy, do I feel a lot better. I did some grocery shopping, watched some more tennis and finally got to cleaning the livingroom. This evening it was time for more stitching. I worked on Heartstrings' Strawberry Season. I started this in the plane to Dallas, did quite a bit while in Dallas, but need to finish it up. It's for our Strawberry Month of July and I'd love to be able to have it nearly done by the end of next week when the shop is open again. I made good progress and am about 80% done with the strawberry. Hopefully I can do all the remaining stitching tomorrow. I still need the metallics and beads, but they arrived at my parents so my mom will bring them Wednesday.

About 3 years ago I stitched the Bittersweet Season as well. I needed to add the beads and for some reason never got to that. And right now I have the beads but have no clue where the stitched piece is. Kind of annoying. I would love to finish this piece as well and have them framed in a similar way.

I am almost done with my Gingerbread Boy canvas that I started in Dallas. I need to add three Rhodes stitches for the nose and cheeks and several beads around the body. Once that is taken care off I can start my Halloween Cat canvas. This will be my next lunch project I think, though for the first 2 days of the week, I have meetings during lunch time.

Here's the Halloween canvas that I finished while in Dallas. It's a Melissa Shirley design and was stitched with Burmilana wool, Kreinik 1/16 braid and a few black beads. Lots of fun to work on. There's a cat design in the same series and I'll stitch that as well with the same threads.

In between these projects I need to stitch two exchange gifts. One is already stitched, but I might stitch a second project as it was quite small. The finishing is new to me and I think it'll look quite nice. I haven't decided yet what to do with the other exchange gift. It's a summer themed exchange and I will ask my recipient what kind of designs she likes best.

If the weather stays this way, at least I'll be able to get quite a bit done this summer.

More news today
I finally got the pictures downloaded to the computer and couldn?t resist sharing my recent finishes. Here?s the santa that I stitched a while ago, it was my first needlepoint project and it?s a design by Kathy Schenkel.

Then there are two santa?s by Pat Thode from Heartstrings. She is by far my most favorite santa designer. The first one is called Stocking Santa, the second Vest Santa. They?ll both be finished as stand ups as well.

Then I also finished a small canvas, called Garden Boy, don?t know who the designer is. I stitched him mostly in Mandarin floss by Rainbow Gallery. It?s one of their newer threads and made out of bamboo. It has a definite silk feeling to it. He?ll be finished as a scissor fob.

There is still more to share, but I?ll save that for another day.

I am back home!
My vacation in Dallas was wonderful, I got lots of stitching done, though not a lot of cross stitching. My friend who co-owns a LNS is into needlepoint and everytime I'm with her, I seem to needlepoint all the time. I finished three projects that I had started before and left them with her to send them to the finisher. I started and finished a Halloween project and took that back home as I will needlepoint a second canvas in that line. Pics of the needlepoint canvases will be up later this week.

When I got back home there was a pile of mail and packages to go through. I am mostly up to speed now and will start sending out packages for the shop at the end of this week.

While going over some French blogs I found several wonderful finishes that really made me want to get two books. So I browsed through www.amazon.fr and ordered the following books:

I am especially looking forward to the first two. It will be great to have some new ideas for finishing. I hope the finishing instructions come with pics as my french is really non-existent.

I haven't stitched a lot since I got back, partly due to the work that needed to be done, partly due to the weather. It is exceptionally warm here, today it'll be around 30 degrees Celsius and that's way too warm to stitch. Luckily, the weekend should be cooler, which I think is wonderful. I want to get back to my stitching.

More needlepoint news will be posted once I have the pics uploaded to my computer.

Back to stitching
It's been two slow days for stitching, Wednesday I spent most of my evening on the phone and yesterday I did all the shipping for this week for the shop. Tonight I finally sat down and worked further on my mystery gift. It's coming along nicely, I had to frog a part as I didn't read the pattern correctly, but that's been restitched.

I also got my Caron order in and now I have all the threads to start Catherine Agnes. I will have to decide upon the fabric, I'm really tempted to do it on 32 count black evenweave. I saw a picture of somebody who did it on black fabric and it was stunning. It's quite a challenging piece, lots of stitches I haven't tried before.

I also got two more boxes to store my fabrics, one is meant for my stitching fabrics, the other for my finishing fabrics. And let me tell you, my finishing fabrics are almost as much as my linen-evenweave collection. I just love picking up these fabrics and always think I'll find a destination for them. Usually I do, but it may take a while (that's my excuse and I`m sticking to it).

And to enlighten this rambling with a picture, here's what I stitched for an exchange. The recipient received her package, so I can show it now.

It's a free chart by In A Gentle Fashion and it took me two tries to get it right. No, the stitching is not difficult at all, but I had miscalculated the placement and didn't have enough fabric for the finishing. It's a cute way of finishing a triangular design.

Annemiek

More work on the surprise gift
No finishes to share this evening, but I got a good bit more done on my surprise gift. I am enjoying it more and more. I need to reorder some threads as it takes more than I thought it would. Using two strands definitely takes up more thread. I will probably work on this project until I`m out of threads and then work on something else while waiting for the new threads to arrive.

I haven't yet decided what I`ll bring for my new lunch project. I may kit up LHN Daisy Lane Cottage, or stitch another of the Garden Gloves. I have that one all ready to go so I will bring that one tomorrow. I think the one with the beeskeps is going to be next. Or the house.

And I definitely have to do 3 rows on my SB BeeKeeper's Cottage. I do want to work on some of my UFO's and this one is so pretty. I wonder why I lost the momentum on working on this piece. There are some rather time consuming rows ahead of me but I do want to have it done by July.

OK; hopefully I can share a picture tomorrow of one of my other projects. I just remembered that I haven't touched Himmel und Holle in quite a while, I need to move that up in the rotation too. Can I just ask for another day off LOL.

Two finishes
A 4 hrs trainride and a day off can make a difference in your stitching LOL. I managed to get two projects finished, the Prairie Schooler was started and finished on Saturday and Snowden today. I got all the stitching done on Friday while taking the train to Utrecht but saved the felt for tonight.
The Prairie Schooler is a small project, though since you have to fill in the background, it takes a while. I will finish this as one of the gloves, just need to cut the gloves and sew them together.

I also made good progress on my surprise project for my friend. I had to rip part of my stitching tonight though, as I misplaced a motif and of course didn't figure that out until I had done half of the other motif too.

I got tagged by Ashleigh to answer these questions. I need to pick five answer them and send to three other people. I've not decided who to send to yet ... most of the people I know will just delete as spam, so I might hold off on that bit :)

My answers are below.

If I could be a scientist . . .
If I could be a farmer . . .
If I could be a musician . . .
If I could be a doctor . . .
If I could be a painter . . .
If I could be a gardener . . .
If I could be a missionary . . .
If I could be a chef . . .
If I could be an architect . . .
If I could be a linguist . . .
If I could be a psychologist . . .
If I could be a librarian . . .
If I could be an athlete . . .
If I could be a lawyer . . .
If I could be an inn-keeper . . .
If I could be a professor . . .
If I could be a writer . . .
If I could be a llama-rider . . .
If I could be a bonnie pirate . . .
If I could be an astronaut . . .
If I could be a world famous blogger . . .
If I could be a justice on any one court in the world . . .
If I could be married to any current famous political figure ...

If I could be a librarian, I could finally read all those books that are on my To read list. I have a pile of books that I haven't read and with the shop, my job, the designing and my stitching I don't have much time to read.

If I could be a gardner, I would have a wonderful garden, filled with flowers, fruits and vegetables. As it is, I don't have a green thumb at all.

If I could be an inn-keeper, I'd have the most welcoming inn in the Netherlands. It has always been one of my carreer options, so who knows...

If I could be a world famous blogger, I'd make sure that everybody would at least try to stitch and find out if they like it.

If I could be a professor, I'd be a professor in stitching. Just imagine, doing what I love most and even getting paid for it :).

Second UFO finish
This is a workshop I did last year for the shop: stitching on silk gauze. I had about 75% done and then it got neglected. I picked it up yesterday and got it done today. I had forgotten how much fun it is to stitch something this small. The design is only 13/4 inches square. I'll have to decide about how to frame it. It certainly feels good to have another UFO finished.

I will probably finish Snowden tomorrow, he is coming along nicely. And my next two projects are already kitted up. I want to stitch my new design and I have everything ready for Prairie Schooler's Garden Gloves. These are rather small designs, though they are 100% filled with cross stitches. The gloves look so cool and I can't wait to try to sew one together. I have this nice piece of Weeks Dye Work felt and plan to use that.

Another LHN finish
I put in the final stitches on Spot of Coffee this evening. This was so much fun to stitch. I have no idea yet on how to finish it. Maybe LHN will come out with another coffee sampler and I'll just wait to frame them in the same style.

Now that this one is done I will have to think of which other project I will kit up. I would like to finish my lunch project before I start anything new. It is so easy and tempting to start something new, but in the end there are only so many hours that you can stitch. My lunch project is well on its way to being finish and I might want to wait till the new LHN Daisy Lane Cottage arrives so that I can start that one. I would like to stitch this one and finish it into a little wallhanging and put it on the door to my livingroom.

I am also working on a surprise for a friend. It's a new design and I hope it'll work out the way I have it in my head. It feels good to be back at the drawing table.

I did it!
I gathered all my courage and made a start on Mouline Rouge by Long Dog Designs. For me this design is HUGE. It's 364 x 364 stitches and must be the largest project I have ever started. I will be taking it slowly with this project, probably stitching on it every Sunday evening. The picture below is after roughly 2 hours of stitching. It is the upperright corner of the design.

I use 100/3 silk from Au ver a Soie and the colornumber is 524. It is a really deep burgundy red color and I love how it shows up on the 40 count antique white Newcastle linen. The total project will be 45,5cm x 45,5cm.

I am almost done with Spot of Coffee. I made a mistake in the outside border and of course didn't find out till I was working on the last side. I just need to add a couple more stitches and then this one is done too.

Annemiek

The Bookshelf is finished
I got some more stitching done tonight and finished The Bookshelf. I love how this design turned out on the 40 count fabric. And working with just one strand is a lot easier than working with two. Here's how The Bookshelf turned out:

And of course I needed to put in a few stitches in Spot of Coffee as well. This design is just as addictive as the coffee it praises.

I think that I'll be able to finish this before Friday when the shop is open. It'll be nice to show it to the customers.