Stitching green snowman in sunny April
Topic: Cross Stitch

This past week the weather changed a lot. Last weekend it was warm (27 degrees Celsius) and then on Tuesday it got a lot colder, I think Thursday was even colder, temperatures dropped almost 15 degrees to a meager 12-15 degrees Celsius. So during the weekend we wear our summer clothes and during the week we put on sweaters, jeans and wintercoats. It doesn't make any sense to me, but it is nice to be able to sit on the balcony on Sundays and enjoy the sun.

As for stitching, I have abandoned my workshop project as well as my 48 count project. The first got delayed because I was so inspired by my current project, the second because it is in the shop and I forgot to bring it home. Now you might wonder what my current project is? It is a design my Marjorie Massey and it is called La Ballade des Cerfs. It is stitched in two colors of green and comes as a kit. I decided to change the DMC to needlepoint silk and got started sometime November last year. 

Originally, I wanted this to be my parents' Christmas gift, but I wasn't sure if my mom would like a green snowman. As I just LOVE the design myself, I thought it would make a fitting gift to my living room. The design is stitched on 40 count Lambswool linen and it goes rather quickly. Part of the reason it goes so quickly is that it is all cross stitch and like I said before, there are just two colors. This is how far I got:

Now I will be stitching on my workshop project from Quieter Moments a bit more later today. The design calls for a lot of attention and concentration and during the week I don't always feel up to it. But boy, do I like how this is coming along. I really hope to get the top part done today and start a band or two in the middle. 

I have also taken on another task, I really need to sort out my personal stitching stuff. There are threads, fabrics, designs and accessories all over the place and I need to take a good look at them. Some have simply lost their charm and I'd like to have it all a bit better organized. Oh, the good intentions one makes on a sunny Sunday.

And because she is so sweet and enjoys being in my weblog so much, here's another picture of Miss Murphy, happily snoring away on the couch.

That's it for today, I'm going to stitch a wee bit more and enjoy the sunshine.

I can't seem to stop.....
Topic: Cross Stitch

stitching on my 48 count project. It is so addictive to see the design grow and realize that despite the measurements, it is not going to be huge. The design is 48 x 253. I inserted my needle so  you have an idea of the height of the design. It really is tiny. Working with the soie surfine is wonderful, I thought it would knot more (it is a twined thread) but I seem to be doing OK. The design is by Marjorie Massey.

I remembered that I never showed my progress on Stop and Stitch the Flowers. I really enjoy working on this piece. You'll notice that I have some leaves and stems scattered over the place. My philosophy is to not change threads too often, so once I thread up a needle with a certain color, I try to keep stitching until the thread is gone. The colors are a lot brighter than you can see here.

And since Miss Murphy enjoyed being in my weblog once again, I thought I'd share two pictures I took today. She first cleaned up and then curled up in her "Do not disturb" position.

I think she's adorable when she has her paw over her nose. She's been sleeping most of the day, in various poses. The life of a cat........ 

Small happy dance
Topic: Cross Stitch

The past couple of days I worked on a small project. That is, the design is not really that small, but the linen is. It is 4850 count linen which hopefully will arrive in the shop next week. I am so thrilled about this. We have been working on this for a while and when things work out, that is if the postal services do what they are supposed to do, we'll have more colors in 48 and 40 count. This is a neutral colored 48 count, which stitched wonderully. The design is by The Gift of Stitching magazine, it's a free chart they put out a while ago. The thread is from Tentakulum and it is 114 Lawrence in Soie Surfine. I put my scissors next to it, so you'll have an idea of how big the heart turned out.

I am currently working on another 48 count project and hope to show some progress tomorrow. I wanted to stitch up some models for when the fabrics arrive, so this means And A Forest Grew is back in the closet once again. There are still workshops that need my attention, so I've decided not to get frantic about AAFG, I will get back to it when I can.

Below is a picture of Miss Murphy. She's laying besides me when I'm stitching and as you can tell, thinks she's the most adorable cat in the world. I have to agree.

 Now if the weather will be cooperating tomorrow, I can envision a morning coffee on the balcony in the sun. It's supposed to be really good weather over Easter.

Spring
Topic: Bits and Pieces

This week I had to go to a meeting and when I biked back to work, I passed this pond where I knew momma Duck usually has her ducklings swimming. And I was right. She was there with 9 ducklings. They were swimming behind her and looked so sweet. Of course I didn't have my camera with me, so I just biked on.

However, yesterday I was a bit smarter and put my camera in my bag, just in case I might see her again on the way back. And there she was. Not with 9 ducklings but with 10. Good golly, she's got her work cut out for her. One of the yellow ducklings was wandering off by itself, going way to far to my taste and then of course got anxious and raced back. It's amazing how fast they can swim. Here's a pic of momma Duck with all 10 youngsters.

It's almost a puzzle to see if you can find all 10 of them LOL. Then there is a close up of the family.

It doesn't look as if daddy Duck is playing a big role in taking care of the little ones. I hope I get to see them a few more times. 

A work shared is a work .....

done in little time. This is the Country French Cat by JBW designs, that I started in Nashville and my mom finished her shortly after Zwolle. She is stitched with WDW Kohl. When we picked up the charts in Nashville, I told Ria I simply HAD to start this one. So we raced back to Weeks Dye Works and told Miranda to add another skein to our order. Miranda just laughed and told us to take the skein and start the project.

 

Then one of our customers stitched up her cute little rooster. She stitched him on 28 count Graziano light green linen with Crescent Colours Just Rust. Isn't he gorgeous?

I will be working on my Stop and Stitch the Flowers tonight. The boxes are slowly filling and I am enjoying myself immensely. I have a 50 count project waiting to get started as well, I just have to wait for the right thread. 

Some stitching
Topic: Cross Stitch

Well, it's been a while since I updated my weblog. It seemed that ever since Zwolle we've been busy. We had a great time at the show in Zwolle and Rijswijk. It is so good to meet customers in person and to be able to share the joy of stitching.  So thank you to everybody who came to visit our booth. Below is a picture of the booth in Rijswijk.

We had some visitors while we were there. These are all models from The Workbasket. I am sure you will recognize some of the Quaker animals and the Quaker Santa which I stitched for my parents for Christmas.

In between Zwolle and Rijswijk I stitched on a few projects. I am making very slow progress on And A Forest Grew. Maybe I can post a picture after the Easter weekend. I did finish a free chart from Kit & Bixby. I am so much taken by her sheep that I simply had to stitch this one.

And finally, after being ignored for almost a year, I managed to finish my letter A. My friend Pam has stitched numerous letters this past year and I am so glad that I can finally show her my letter A. It is a gorgeous design, I stitched it on 40 count linen with 100/3 silk from Au ver a Soie.

Right now I am working on the Queen's Regalia from Quieter Moments and on Stop and Stitch the Flowers by Blue Ribbon Designs. I will show pics later on. I have about 25 blocks done of SSTF and have 75 left. It goes pretty quick and I am so pleased with the colors.

The Queen's Regalia is beautiful, I am so impressed by the design, I never knew you could make so many variations on a Queen Stitch. My colors are completely different from the designer's, but they work up really nice. More about that later this week. 

Back home!
Topic: Cross Stitch

I am back! It feels as if I have been away for a really long time and it sure feels good to be back home again.

 

Ria and I left for Dallas on February 2^nd and had an uneventful flight to Atlanta and from there to Dallas. Uneventful flights are in my opinion the best there are. We slept a while, stitched a little and talked and talked and talked. We hadn’t seen each other in quite a while so there was a lot to catch up on. I stitched on Stop and Stitch the Flowers from Blue Ribbon Designs and made quite some progress on the lines that form the 100 squares.

 

Denise picked us up in Dallas and we went home to have a wonderful meal with the family. And even though I have “only” visited her house 6 or 7 times, it feels like home everytime I walk in the door. On Saturday we went with Denise to the shop and she and Lou Ann have an amazing shop. There were new threads for us to explore, new canvases, new cross stitch books and new linens. Since they sell a lot of needlepoint canvases in the shop, most of the threads are rather different from the ones I sell. Most of them wouldn’t be usuable for linen, but they sure are a lot of fun to play around with.

Of course I couldn’t help myself and start a new canvas while I was there. This has become a sort of tradition. My challenge is to get the canvas done before I leave so that Denise can send it to the finisher. Mind you, it wouldn’t take much postage to send it to her later, but a challenge is a challenge. This year I stitched one of the Halloween birds from Melissa Shirley Designs, called Crow with Spots. It is so much fun to select threads and stitches for these canvases. I used a Diamond Ray Stitch turned sideways for his body, which makes it look like he actually has feathers. There is another birdie in my stash that I hope to get done before Halloween this year.

Apart from this canvas, I picked up quite a few more. My favorite must be the one from Pat Thode, it is a Halloween/Fall design and I hope that once it is stitched, I can finish it as a pillow. Heartstrings, the company for which Pat Thode designs, has a website now and I just LOVE it. There is so much to see!

 

While we were there, the ladies had a trunk show from Associated Talents. This company has some very neat canvases. I managed to find a heart scissor fob, a scissor case and an Easter egg that just had to come home with me. The scissor fob and scissor case are not companion pieces, but I think by using the same threads, I’ll be able to make them companion pieces.

 

Let’s see what else made it into my bag. I got a really cute canvas that will be turned into a cell phone pocket once it is stitched. It is in gold, white, dark brown metallic and black with some grey. I think this will be a fun piece to play around with stitches. I got some nifty threads for this one and it shouldn’t take that long to stitch up.

 

On Thursday we left for Nashville. We both got a tiny bit of stitching done on the plane but there wasn’t much room to stitch, so we gave up. In Nashville we had diner with Mary, Nicky and Candy from The Workbasket. We have been going to the same restaurant for three years now and it’s a hoot. It’s real Southern food, meaning everything is deep fried, you get everything on one platter and it is all very yummy.

 

Friday was spent in classrooms, Ria and I had both 3 different classes. The new concept of each class lasting 1.5hrs was interesting, though I am not sure if it will be repeated again. Personally I think I prefer to have a little more time to learn a new technique or stitch. The classes themselves were really interesting, I learnt how to do more with beads and how to combine scrapbooking with stitching. I also learnt that I do not particularly like stumpwork LOL. Ria learnt a new finishing technique as well as the peyote stitch to be used for beads. She also did a canvas class and managed to get the piece finished while we were still in Nashville. I am sure that apart from the stumpwork, you will see more of these classes in the shop at one point or another.

 

Friday evening we went to the Meet and Greet. Designers can rent a small table and give you a sample of what you can expect the next day in their suite. And after seeing boxes being delivered all day on Friday, I can tell you that we both were more than ready to see some of the new stuff. The suspense was almost too much. So we did tour all the tables, picked up our paperwork, picked up a few chocolates as well and were back in the hotel around 9:30pm. We went over the paperwork to decide which designers we definitely needed to see on Saturday and which ones we’d do on Sunday.

 

Saturday morning we could hardly wait to get started. As usual we went first to The Thread Gatherer to pick up more of CeCe’s beautiful threads. After that, well to be honest, most of that is a blurr. We did go up to the 6^th floor to R&R Reproductions, went down again to the 4^th floor and spent considerable time there. There are always a lot of designers that we need to see on the 4^th floor. We managed to get the 5^th floor done as well and a few designers on the 2^nd floor. By 6pm we were really done for the day.

 

So up we went to Denise and Lou Ann’s room to eat pizza and start checking orders and pricing everything. Of course we needed to see what everybody had bought as that is part of the fun. We were really happy with everything we bought and going over all the charts and kits while pricing them, makes you realize that there just aren’t enough hours in a day. Once we got back to our own hotel, we had to do more checking and pricing and to give you an idea of what that looks like, here are Ria’s and my bed.

Sunday was another day of shopping. We had to fix some orders from Saturday, but could spent most of the day shopping for more designs, accessoiries and threads. We did pick up some Dinky Dye silks for those who would like to give them a try as well as some Carrie’s Threads (cotton). And we got some emery strawberries to keep your needles in. Sunday evening is pretty much the same routine, checking and pricing, ordering diner and some stitching.

 

Monday morning we packed our suitcases, wondering if we’d be overweight or not. It is too bad that no decent hotel has a scale that you can use for this purpose LOL. We tried to estimate the weight of our suitcases and we must have done a pretty good job as neither one of them was overweight. Of course it did help that all the large size leaflets were in my new Vera Bradley bag.

 

Flying back home was again very uneventful. We both didn’t sleep very much on the plane, it looked as if we had less leg space than on the way over. Upon arrival we had a welcoming committee waiting for us, which was sooooo nice. We had coffee and finally it was time to retreive all items from Ria’s suitcases and be on our way. We drove straight to the shop as it didn’t make sense to carry the suitcases up 6 flights of stairs and then down again. So we got everything sorted out in the shop and made sure everything was ready for the Nashville preview afternoon. I was back home around 4pm and Miss Murphy was so enthralled to see me again, she didn’t leave my side. It is funny how she’ll loose hair because she is so happy. After an hour or so it is over.

 

Well, this became a really long post and there are still more pictures to show. I hope that my internet connection will be restalled soon so that I can do that over the weekend.

Almost ready
Topic: Cross Stitch

With just 4 more days to go, I am trying to get as much done before I leave as possible. This weekend I finished the Drawn Thread workshop and even though I am not very fond of stitching lazy daisy flowers, I like how the project turned out. Drawn thread is such a wonderful technique. Below you can see a picture of the workshop, this is Wildflower Drawn Thread by Linda Driskell.

 

And on Saturday evening I stitched on And A Forest Grew as planned. Once I got started it was so hard to stop! I stitched till midnight and am done with section 14. I think the chart would be easier to read if it had overlapping columns, but apart from that, it is a pleasure to stitch on. AAFG will be in the drawer though for a while as I don’t fancy carrying my box with 100+ Venus threads in my suitcase. So once the show in Zwolle is over, AAFG will be back in rotation.

 

And as this is another workshop, I started a new project on Sunday. This is a project I have been looking forward to for quite a while. It is The Queen’s Regalia by Quieter Moments. I changed the threads to Tentakulum threads and 100/3 silk. The colors are quite bold, but I love it. And the design is breathtaking. It is hard to imagine you can stitch so many different stitches, flowers, stripes with basically a back stitch that varies in length and direction. I think I will bring this with my to Dallas, it is too addictive to leave at home.

 

News about Nashville releases is coming in bits and pieces. It promises to become a very interesting market and I can hardly wait to see all the new goodies. I promised myself that if JBW Designs comes out with a new French Country series design, I can start it right away. After all, there’s Weeks Dye Works at market too, so I can pick up a skein of whatever color I need.

 

I hope to have some finished projects when I am back. I will be bringing along my letter A, a santa canvas, a Sous Mon Arbre design that is half finished and of course Stop and Stitch the Flower. Betty, you were right about this one.

Oh La La!
Topic: Cross Stitch

No, this is no picture of my secret stitching, this is a picture of the upcoming releases from The Cat's Whisper. I am completely in love with the stitching chair. What a clever idea and how lovely does it look. Think of all the fun you can have with selecting threads and fabric. The finishing looks a bit intimidating, but I know it will be worth the effort.

There are more new designs on her website, all to be released in Nashville. I have to say from what I have seen or heard so far it seems that Nashville market will be soooooooo exciting. Just 2 weeks and 3 days to go.

 

Happy dances
Topic: Cross Stitch

One of my goals for this year is to finish more pieces that I have already started. Might sound familiair but if I keep up like I do this month, I should be able to get quite a few pieces done. Last week I managed to get the final stitches done on my 1803 Pennsylvanian House by Carriage House Samplings. The house took quite a while to stitch, but I love how it turned out.

The picture is not very good, the sun is shining outside and I think the light in the livingroom is just a bit weird.

Yesterday our little stitching group got together and on the train ride to The Hague I could stitch for 2 hours. It was wonderful, uninterrupted stitching time, it seems like it's been a while since I have been able to stitch that long in one session. We exchanged our ornaments as we didn't have a chance to get together in December. These are the ornaments we stitched.

I stitched the Christmas Chorus in the front, Pam stitched Joy on the right, Ria stitched the strawberry and Candy stitched the Country Cottage Needleworks design over one. I received this ornament and it is just gorgeous. It was funny to notice that we all finished it in different ways.

Then while travelling back home, I finished this piece by Bent Creek that I started last August. Ahum, yes, that's almost 6 months ago. It will be a gift for a dear friend and I hope to get it finished in time. Every now and then I love stitching something on a large count linen. It is sooooooo relaxing.

In the meantime I am still working on the drawn thread workshop, it is progressing nicely, I have 1 more band to do with drawn thread work, three bands of decorative stitches and the top and bottom flowers. I'll share a picture when I'm done.

Now after all these finishes, I really needed LOL to start something new. This design caught my eyes the first time I saw it and I just love it. Now that it arrived in the shop I could not resist starting it. It's a pity that you can't really see in the picture how vibrant the colors are. They remind me so much of spring. Do you have an idea of which design this is?

Now that I finished 2 left over projects from 2006, I need to find another one that will get my attention until it is finished. I think I will do my letter A from Reflets des Soie next. As far as I recall, I don't have that much more stitching to do and it would be nice to get it framed. These letters are really gorgeous.

I will leave for Nashville pretty soon. I am so looking forward to this trip. I will travel with Ria to a dear friend of ours in Dallas, spend a few days with her and her family and then go to market. Little tidbits of information are coming in about what to expect. I set up a page on my shop's website to share that with you. And right after Nashville, we will have a booth at the Handwerkbeurs 2007 in Zwolle. Really, February is always a great month.