Dec 31/17

Some Christmas vacation stitching! A Janlynn ornament on perforated paper. I chose this one because it fit nicely into my suitcase and it should not take long to complete.

Happy New Year and Happy Stitching!

Dec 27/17

Another Christmas season is almost over and now I look forward to the New Year. We spent the holidays at my mom's home in New Brunswick although most of the celebrating took place across town at my youngest brother's home. Lots of memories were made as we hung out, ate, assembled gifts for kids and chased dogs all over the house. My favourite memory has to be of my 18 month old nephew running up and down the main hallway with our puppy running along side him as she licked his fingers.

On a holiday and craft related note, I made an awesome find when I was digging around for gift wrap in my mom's spare room. My mom used to weave on a large floor loom when I was a kid. She recently sold the floor loom as she had not touched it for years and I thought that was the end of the weaving stuff in the house. I had recently been looking around on the Internet for a small table top loom, but was not willing to pay several hundred dollars to try out a hobby so it was thrilling to discover a loom that looks very much like this image that I have borrowed off the Internet!

Mom said that I can borrow the loom to try it out! I did not bring it back with me on this trip as I have just far too many things on the go at the moment to add something new into the mix. The puppy, the French lessons, work, my new position in the Rotary club, the Christmas letters and projects that still need to be completed and the general healing from this round of illness all kind of take up all of my time. I still can not believe my good fortune that Mom just happened to have one of these and somehow I had never noticed it in her house!!

Well, I should go get a few things done before I settle in to watch Canada play Slovakia in the World Junior Hockey Championships.

Happy stitching!

Dec 21/17

The ort jar overfloweth although I am not sure how considering how much my stitching time has been impacted by the pneumonia that felled me in November. Six weeks later, I am still coughing and looking for my get-up-and-go.

We are heading to Mom's for the holidays tomorrow morning, gifts and dogs in tow, so there will not be any more stitching until we return home. Happy Holidays to everyone who reads and comments on my blog. I wish you all happiness and good health and time to indulge in your crafts!

Dec 17/17

I finished the piece on the left tonight. The piece on the right is from the Dimensions kit titled "Cardinal Joy" with 14 count Aida and threads from the kit. The piece on the left is on 28 count white Monaco with some threads from the kit and many others from my scrap thread bag. Now, onto the washing of the pieces tonight before I go to bed and maybe finishing them tomorrow. They will be sent to my longtime penpals who live in Norway and Sweden once I return from my Christmas visit home.

In other news, the puppy has struck again. We are now up to 1 phone card, two pairs of sandals and 1 library book that have been replaced. Fortunately, the librarian was good humoured about it and told me to just buy a replacement copy.

The puppy is most fortunate that she is both cute and amusing as these replacement costs mount! When she is not pestering her big canine sister, she is wrestling with and chasing the cats around the house. Yesterday, she jumped onto the back of a child who was enjoying our recent snow falls at the local sliding hill and took a trip down the hill. What a little card!

I doubt that I will get much more stitching done this week as I try to get ready to head to my mother's for a Christmas visit. There are gifts to wrap, work shifts to get through, gifts to exchange with friends and co-workers, laundry and packing and possibly another visit to the doctor for the results of the repeat chest x-ray that I had done on Saturday. I have pulled a muscle from coughing and 5 weeks later, I still have a very wet, congested cough so my doctor is trying to figure out what the heck is going on. It is frustrating because I am barely able to visit with friends or get more than 1 or 2 things done per day. A close family friend recently had heart surgery and I may not be able to visit with her at the nursing home because of this awful cough. Anyhow, I will recover. I just need to be patient!

Happy stitching and happy holidays!

Dec 11/17

Here are the finished ornaments! The blue felt has been a bit challenging to glue, but I think I fixed it this morning. Three of these ornaments are wrapped up and in their mailing envelopes for drop off at the post office this morning.

Happy stitching!

Dec 10/17

So, I took a look at this tutorial this morning to finish some ornaments and realized as I was reading through the tutorial that today was the day that I really needed to buy the proper tools to do my crafting. Off I went to brave the mall this close to Christmas to our local craft shop, Atlantic Fabrics, to buy an Olfa cutter and mat and look what I came home with! Finishing the ornaments was a breeze with the right tools. You will get to see the final products once the glue has dried.

The Christmas parcels are piling up in the kitchen so that I can take them to the post office either tomorrow or Tuesday in the hopes that they arrive in time for Christmas. My energy levels are so low that I did not start anything until 1pm today and it took me all day to go to the mall, drop off a few gifts to my neighbours before they all start leaving for Christmas leave, prepare parcels to go to the fella's kids and finish the ornaments. I also had to mop the floors because the puppy is in the early stages of house training and the fella' has been busy doing the list of things that I had for him to do.

Happy stitching!

Dec 9/17

This hockey logo was stitched 1 over 1 on 28 count Monaco, leading me to fully accept that I will need bifocals sometime soon. There were moments where I had to take off my glasses to confirm that I had completed the crossing stitch if I was also trying to watch something on the television at the same time. Much of this soon to be ornament was stitched with my glasses off as I listened to what was on television. At this point, I must say that I am a Montreal Canadiens fan and the only reason that I stitched this logo was as a special request by the fella' for one of his sisters. My fingers did not shrivel up and fall off so that is a good thing!! Hockey rivalry in Canada is our way to vent any aggressions and keeps us one of the most peaceful nations in this world.
(Came back to add that I found this on pinterest)

I hope that tomorrow will be a finishing day as our parcels to the fella's children need to go in the mail on Monday. Today is a day of rest for me as we have a work Christmas party this evening and my cough has been increasingly bothersome again these past couple of days.The fella' is busy playing with the dogs in the back yard and winterizing our yard as the first major winter storm bears down on us this weekend.

Happy stitching!

Dec 4/17

Three weeks and two antibiotics later, my life is slowly starting to come back together. I had finished a 10 day course of antibiotics on Thursday and went back to work that same day. I was exhausted, but glad to have a bit of normalcy after being in bed for 2.5 weeks. The next day, the phlegm changed colour so my doctor saw me on an emergency visit. He heard some stuff in my lungs so he prescribed me an antibiotic to take if my symptoms worsened. I started it that evening after hacking and coughing all day at work. I am resting lots in between things like the Christmas party that I went to last night for my Rotary club and only doing what is absolutely necessary around the house like letting the dogs out.

Now that I am no longer bedridden, I am resting in the living room with a needle in my hand. Here are two ornaments that I have stitched this week for friends and family. I found the pattern on pinterest and added the heart in because pets have a big piece of my heart!

The first one is for one of the fella's sisters as her family has a chocolate Lab.

The second one is for a friend of mine who has five dogs and a puppy. The colours represent the different colours of the dogs. I am going to stitch one in all black for another one of the fella's sisters who has a black Lab mix.

Happy stitching!