Almost there!

We're in the final countdown to Christmas; are you ready?

I was able to get some progress done on my ornaments, although not as much as I wanted.  I need like 4 more days added to my weekend. *sigh*  In the end, I decided that my final to "maybe" projects that I was hoping to get done before Christmas will absolutely not get finished before the holiday.  So I've decided to save those two for next year and find an alternative small present to send to my aunt and uncle. 

I did finish-finish up my Holiday Stamp project, so that was ready in time to be sent off to my exchange partner:

So that left me free to focus on starting what will now be the last gift stitching project for the year.  This is Floral Watering Can by Mill Hill. 
 

I will be finishing it up as an ornament as a present for my paternal grandmother who loves gardening and flowers.  When we were younger and her garden was much bigger every trip my brother and I would tail her around the garden in the morning helping her water the plants with her beat up green plastic watering can.  I had a babysitting job Saturday night so I made some decent progress on this start after the kids went to sleep for the night. 

I was able to finishing the beading on Love Potions and attach the backing paper and bead hanger in preparation for it's "finish-finishing".  Now I just have to cut it out. 

I decided not to do the bead swags that were charted because I didn't really like them and didn't think they added much to the design, but I think they look oka without it.  Luckily the heart treasure covered up the giant green space left when I took out the "No 9" as charted, so overall I'm liking how it looks. 

I also finished the same steps on Stars and Stripes.  I'm really pleased with how this turned out.  The beading totally makes this one.  I made a few boo boos on the placement of blue and yellow in the lower left corner of the star that I had to improvise a bit to fix, but hopefully it doesn't look too bad. 

If there's one thing I'm disappointed in with this one it is that it is rather small, even for a Mill Hill kit.  It was originally intended to be a pin, so I guess that's why.  But I think the recipient will hopefully not mind the smaller size.  This was my favorite of the Americana kits I could find, and he is very patriotic.  I just need to cut this one out and it will be done as well.


All of the stitching and backstitching has been done on Cookies for Santa.  I'm a little disappointed that the photo washed out the light green "sprinkles" stitching on the white star cookie, but I'm hoping once the beads are on it will stand out more.  Next up for this one is adding previously mentioned beads and then cutting and backing and hanging. 

This weekend I also made some progress on the 11 fleece blankets I'm tying for gifts this year.  Which leaves me with a pillowcase, an apron, two batches of soap, two batches of lotion, and 13 felt snowman ornaments to finish before 7 days are up.  But this weekend I also completed 2 sewing projects that I can't show yet in the very chance case the recipient reads this blog.  I was extremely proud of myself since I have extremely rudimentary skills and my mom is such a good seamstress I always feel embarrassed asking for help because my sewing always looks childish at best. 

Anyway, I'm very proud of this project, which will be extremely useful (I hope) once the cold weather hits full force.  We haven't had more than a half dozen nights or so that have been cold here in Mississippi yet, but since this is only my second winter here I'm not sure what's typical yet. 

Funny side note about cold in Mississippi and cats:

Last winter Brownie took to "burrowing", which is what I called it when he wanted under the covers with me so he could snuggle up closer to my body warmth.  I tend to "cocoon" myself when sleeping in the winter and seal myself up so no cold air can reach my body, but when Brownie burrowed in, I would usually leave the end of the blanket by my face untucked so he could crawl out when he was done with being under the blankets. 

Well, last night I was woken up by him pawing and nipping at my hand... which was wrapped in my blankets.  Apparently he either burrowed in while I was sleeping or I let him in and didn't remember it at all during the night.  It took my sleep deprived brain about 5 minutes to realize he was trying to get my attention because he was trapped under the blankets. 

Christmas Countdown Progress Update

Most of my time these days is spent frantically trying to finish as many Christmas presents as possible before the looming deadline.  Which of course means that my Mill Hill stitching has been coming along.  So here's a quick look at my most recent updates. 

First off, I finished Holiday Stamp for my partner exchange:

I'll be finish-finishing it hopefully this weekend.  I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out; the petite seed beads are perfect for the scale of it.  I think the regular size Mill HIll beads would dwarf the design too much, but they fit perfectly here.

I also got the stitching all done on Love Potions:

I left the "No. 9" off the green bottle on the right, so I'm hoping it won't stick out because it's the one with the least amount of beading.  This will be hopefully be beaded by the end of the weekend, along with Stars and Stripes which I showed in my last update. 

I've also gotten quite far on Cookies for Santa now:

No longer just a green blob in the middle.  Just a bit more white to go, then backstitching and beading next for this one, again hopefully done by Monday.  Notice a pattern?  Then it's just 3 more kits to start and finish by the end of next week and *phew*, the Christmas stitching will be D. O. N. E., done.

Of course, then there are about 17 other projects I need to finish before the holiday that aren't stitching.  *sigh*

Mill Hill kits everywhere!

To my US readers, I hope that you all had a good Thanksgiving with lots of good food and good company.  And for everyone, happy first part of December!

I must admit, December is one of my favorite months, and Christmas is probably one of my favorite holidays.  I just love the ambiance of love that (usually) surrounds this holiday.  Around here I'm falling behind on production schedule of Christmas gifts though, so things are about to get crazy!  But here's what's been happening on the stitching front. 

Before Thanksgiving I managed up a finish on my band for the Antique Band Sampler project in my latest sampler Round Robin. 

Sorry for the black smudges, but I bled out my last name and city for security purposes, for what it's worth on the internet anyway.   I didn't really enjoy working on this one much, sampler bands just aren't my thing I guess.  But I am excited to see what project comes next. 

The day after Thanksgiving my cousin and I sat down and had a huge marathon of all 6 Star Wars movies back to back.  It took 14 hours, but was a good excuse to get a good chunk of stitching done.  The cross stitching and backstitch is all done on Holiday Stamp:

And as you can see, I'm starting to bead too.  I like that this kit came with all petite seed beads.  Not sure why, but those are my favorite.  Soon it will be ready to go to my exchange partner. 

Speaking of Friday again, since one of my gift recipients who is normally home had to work on Friday, I pulled out Love Potion, which will be for her, while she was at work.  I got a good part of the stitching on this one done, and now it looks like this:

I also pulled out Stars and Stripes just to change things up a bit.  This one is the smallest, so it had the least amount of stitching to be done.  I hadn't worked on this one since last year's January challenge, but now it's done and ready for beads. 

I didn't have Holiday Stamp with me to finish during my last stitching session, so I pulled out what will be the next kit to work on.  This one is called Cookies for Santa:

Not much to see yet, just a green blob.  I love the design of this one, but it will probably go slower than the others because it has a LOT of color changes and detail stitching.  But at least it seems to have more minimal beading than some of the other designs, so that will help. 

So other than these WIPs that leaves 1 more kit to start and finish before Christmas, 2 more I would like to start and finish (but it's okay if I don't), and 11 fleece lap blankets to fringe and tie in the next two weeks.  Plus a secret project that's a present for another family member that needs to be finished and ordered ASAP.  Whew!  I'm going to be BUSY!!!!

Vaction Stitching

Well, I'm back from a vacation last week, and managed to snag a bit of stitching while I was in the airport waiting for various flights.  The main project I worked on I can't actually show, since it's for someone for Christmas that sometimes pops in and reads the blog, so that one will have to wait until after the holiday to show. 

I pulled out the Mill Hill Love Potions kit to work on since I forgot Holiday Stamp at home in my work bag.  Not much progress, but the first of 3 bottles is mostly done now (sorry for the blurry picture):

After getting home, I put a significant dent of progress in my project for the latest round of the sampler round robin I am participating in on Facebook. 

This project is an antique band sampler, choose your own band.  Which when I read that I went AHHHHHHHHHH because I've never done a band sampler before and had absolutely NO ideas on what to do for it.  But since I'm familiar with blackwork, I found a nice pattern of leaves and vines that I figured I could make into my band.

In other news, I've already put up my page for the Debbie's Crazy January Challenge 2016.  For some reason thinking ahead and planning this is way more fun than actually doing the stitching sometimes.  Once my Christmas gift stitching is done, I will be back to doing a few charity squares, since the last two themes that have been opened in one of my groups really appeal to me.  January will be on us before you know it!

Back with more stitchy progress

I guess my intentions to blog more than once a month have been in vain so far.  Work has been so busy: we got a new computer system a few weeks ago and things have been crazy and in turmoil since then.  Makes me just want to go home and sleep when I get off. 

But I have managed to do some stitching, mostly round robin progress again.  First off, I finished the last round for the Frosted Pumpkin Round Robin.  It's a little acorn to go with my night sky from last update:

After that, I worked on the next round in the Sampler Round Robin, which was this Tulip Sampler design by Rosewood Manor.  Since it's been so long since my last update, I actually completely finished it before I could post any updates:

And speaking of the sampler round, here is some progress to show on Halloween Quaker.  This is the project I'm sending around, so not all of the stitching is mine, but it gives you an idea of how it's coming so far. 

I also have a long overdue new start to show you.  This is for an ornament exchange, and is called Holiday Stamp by Mill Hill:

The stitching itself is almost done, then some petite beading and a few backstitch and french knots and it will be done.  I haven't really worked on one of these Mill Hill kits since last January, and I forgot how fun they are.  I have a few more of these to complete for various gifts over the next month or so until Christmas, so I need to stitch faster!

Progress: Mostly Round Robin stitching

Well, it's been almost another month since I posted, so I guess it's time for another update.  I haven't been getting too much stitching done lately, mostly round robin stuff.  Actually, now that I think about it, all round robin stuff.  Although I have my stitchy bug pretty much back all the way, I have had some health problems that have really slowed me down. 

If you don't enjoy reading about personal issues, you can skip down a few paragraphs.  But for anyone interested, I was diagnosed with Grave's Disease about a year and a half ago.  Graves is a form of hyperthyroidism, which means my body makes too much thyroid hormone.  It's sort of like my body's thermostat is permanently set too high. 

Anyway, long story short, I've tried a few different treatments, gone through a lot of tests, and my doctor and I came to the conclusion that either my thyroid needed to come out, or it needed to be killed.  So at the beginning of the month I took a large dose of radioactive Iodine 131 isotope, which left me in quarantine for 5 days.  I'm still kind of dealing with the after effects of that, which is why things have been slow in the stitching front. 

So personal issues over. 

In other (more happy) news, our little kitten is getting so big.  Her official name is Bitty (as in itty bitty) because she was so tiny when we found her and we decided that it will be ironic when she's full grown.  She and Brownie have finally decided they kind of like each other.  I snapped this pic of them being all sneaky and sleeping together in the same cat bed when I was in my 5 day isolation. 

On the stitching front, I finished my portion of the Gingerbread Lane project for the second to last round of the Frosted Pumpkin Round Robin group on Facebook:

Sadly I forgot to take a picture of the whole thing as it looks so far before sending it off, but it was a super cute project that I might stitch myself one day. 

I also started on Autumn Sampler, which will be my last project for the Frosted Pumpkin Round Robin (except finishing my own project, of course).  This pattern was temporarily discontinued, although the designers brought it back after popular demand.  I bought the winter version of this in February or March, and I'm liking this one so much that if they also decide to re-release the spring version, I might just also purchase autumn, spring, and summer so I have a full set. 

For my piece I'm stitching 2 of the 25 boxes the sampler is divided into.  I've finished one, a night forest landscape with a big harvest moon, and have started on the second, an acorn with oak leaves.  Here's what the forest looked like when I finished with it:

I also finished my first project for the Sampler Round Robin that started in September.  This is what my portion of the Jane Austen sampler I showed last time looked like when done:

And here's what it looked like as a whole before sending it off.  It's really cute, I bet it will look great when it's all done. 

Next I need to start my second sampler project which I just got in the mail.  That one will be a quilt block style sampler if I remember correctly (still need to pull it out of the envelope).  The sad thing is, I still haven't started up my Christmas gift stitching, and I really need to get that done if I want to finish in time.  Hmmmm...

Latest Stitching Updates

Well, I kind of fell of the stitching bandwagon for awhile, didn't I?  I can't believe it's been almost a year since I posted anything.  To be honest, I've kind of lost my stitching bug a bit in the last couple months as well.  I think I may have taken on a little to much this year, and it burned me out in the year.  Don't get me wrong, I love monthly SALs and everything, but I think I will lay aside all the obligation they present for the rest of the year and just focus on what I want to stitch.  Of course, I will be doing the Crazy January challenge (31 projects, one for each day in January) again this year, or at least I plan to right now.  But other than that for next year I'll just see where life takes me.

So although I got burned out, I have been doing a little bit of stitching.  I finished the Cinderella/October block in my latest Frosted Pumpkin Round Robin piece, and got that sent off.  Here's a (kind of dark, sorry) photo of my finished portion:

Once that was sent off, it was time to pick up the next RR piece, since I'm a little behind.  The next one is Gingerbread Lane.  My part is to stitch the skaters on the pond below the middle house.  This is what I have so far:

I love this pattern so much, it's really fun to work on.  I'm ashamed to admit that I got burned out on the Once Upon a Time pieces, even though I love fairy tales.

Speaking of the Frosted Pumpkin Round Robin, I got my piece back recently (yay!) but forgot to take a picture of it.  Darn!  So I guess I will save that for another post.  

The other project I've been working on is for the newest round robin I've joined.  This one is sampler themed.  I sent out my Halloween Quaker project that I've stalled on to be worked on, so when I get that back, it will be almost finished for me!

The first project I'm working on is Simply Jane Austen, a Motif Sampler by The Sampler Girl.  This blog has a picture of what it will look like when finished.  I love Jane Austen, so although my part in this piece is pretty small (4 words and key) I'm enjoying it a lot.  Here's the latest progress pic:

We're taking a road trip this weekend, so I'm hoping to get a lot done during that (at least the first leg of the trip).  I need to finish up these Round Robin projects because I'm down to crunch time on Christmas projects!