Tusal update and WIP update

Happy February!  It's been a windy and wild February for us in the Midwest.  Wednesday we got socked with quite the winter snowstorm - lots of snow and high winds made for getting out of work early, having the next day off AND being paid for it.  Yippee!  Thursday morning we woke up to a foot drift in front of our back door and 4 foot drifts at the bottom of our driveway.  Fortunately, my wonderful brother in law brought his snowblower over after he finished his own clearing and then cleared our driveway and our sidewalks.  He spent over an hour on our place AFTER spending an hour doing his own.  He looked like the abominable snowman when he was done, complete with icicles in his beard.  I really should have taken a picture, but I didn't.

I worked for two weeks on my daughters birthday present, Winter Queen and here is where she was as of Sunday this week.

Next, we have Quaker Sampler from The Workbasket.  I just started working on this again after a 3 week hiatus and here's where I ended last night after Glee was over.

And last, but not least, is my Tusal for the new moon.  I did change the container as I found a little bit bigger one.  It doesn't look like much, but it's about a quarter full.

Well, that's it for now.  I'm going to be working on Quaker Sampler for the next week and then I'll switch off to my Papillon Castles in the Air.  I decided to rotate each piece and work on each for a week so that each one gets a solid week of stitching.  In between, I'll work on any smalls I want to do.  I've just about finished up my piece for the Yahoo ILCS froggy exchange in honor of our moderator Rene who passed away in January after a very sudden cancer diagnosis.  After the recipient has received it, I'll post pictures.

As Porky Pig would say....That's all folks!

Winter Queen WIP

Here she is!  I made a tiny start Friday evening and then worked on her both Saturday and Sunday in between household stuff and doing things with my boys and dh.  I had to force myself to put her down last night in order to go to bed shortly after 11pm.  If I hadn't I probably would have stitched on her all night.  I kept saying "I'll just do this little bit over here" LOL!

I believe it to be a respectable start. 

Thanks for looking and comments are always appreciated.  Have a great week!

A few pictures of my Granddaughter Emma - Picture heavy!

I just wanted to show off my beautiful granddaughter.  It's so hard to believe it's been over a year since she was born.  These are random photos taken over the last 6 months or so.

Can you tell I love my little Emma? 

Another WIP

Now that Christmas stitching is all done (someday I'll post those also), I've been able to also work on my Quaker Sampler from the Workbasket.  I couldn't find the most recent picture I'd taken, but here's where it is today.  I'm stitching this on 28ct Lugana with the called for Gentle Arts floss.  I really like this one and hope to do more Quaker pieces in the future.

Mirabilia "Winter Queen" floss toss!

My daughter fell in love with this piece and so I am stitching it for her 21st birthday in December.  The fabric is a 28ct hand dyed Jobelan called "SummerSky" that I bought at a LNS.  I've converted the DMC floss to HDF from Vikki Clayton.  Don't they look just yummy?

Here's the fabric and floss along with the picture of the finished piece.

And here's just a picture of the fabric by itself.  I just love this fabric and will stitch it so that the piece will be top to bottom as it's shown in this picture.

I'm planning to start her this weekend.  I need to dig out my scroll frame and see if the one I have is wide enough for this piece.  If it's not, I'll go ahead and start it with my Q-snaps and then order a longer rods.

Again, thanks for visiting!

Stichy update

I decided to pull out my very long neglected Papillon "Castles in the Air" SAL this past weekend.  I haven't worked on this in months and months - probably since before summer.  The frogs had come to visit the last time I worked on it and I put it away in extreme frustration.  Enough time had sufficiently passed, that I decided to pull it out again.  I figured I'd work on it all weekend AND Monday since I had the day off for MLK Day and my kids didn't.  Here in Wisconsin not all school give the day off.

Anywho, Saturday ended up pretty much being a wash for stitching as my daughter and grand-daughter came in to spend the day with us.  They live just about 5 miles away out in the country, and dd had been sick and really needed some adult time.  I had told her last week I really needed a Saturday to just clean the house and get some things done as we'd had Emma for the last 3 weekends for various reasons, but I sucked it up and told her to come on in to town.

Then yesterday, the schools had early release because of snow coming down pretty hard and blowing and drifting.  Being a small town, we have a lot of rural bus routes and the roads were starting to get bad by noon, so my day of stitching was cut short.

I did, however, get to watch 3 episodes of "Bones" on Netflix and between the scattered stitching I did over the weekend, managed to finish Part 2 of the SAL - like I said, I'm WAY behind! LOL  I also started part 3 last night after supper and will be able to stitching during Biggest Loser tonight, so hoping to get a good bit in.

Here are my before and afters

Thanks for visiting!

Here is my 1st Tusal for the next year. A few days late as I realized my camera batteries were dead AND I had none left in the house. Considering we bought tons at Christmas, that's saying something! LOL

This is fresh threads, all started January 1st, so there's not much there yet. I guess that's a good thing, because it means not much frogging right? In the background you can see a new WIP - Bent Creek's "You Are My Sunshine" birth sampler. I always sang this song to my daughter when she was little and now I sing it to my Granddaughter Emma. I bought a Lavendar & Lace piece to do as a birth sampler, but I know it will take me a while to finish, so I decided to do this in the interim so she can have it to hang in her room.

Emma turned 1 on December 1st. I'm stitching it on some miscellaneous 28ct hand dyed linen I got in a grab bag from Ebay with the called for Gentle Arts Sampler Threads.