Aug 27/18

This picture is horrible which pretty much sums up my feelings about stitching with gold filament. The end result will be lovely. The cursing during the stitching will be plentiful. Ugh.

Happy stitching!

Aug 26/18

Stitching has been part of my sanity maintenance program this past week. The fella's two youngest children are visiting for 2 weeks and it is an adjustment to go from 0 kids to 2 kids. Our days are jampacked and busy as we try to cram in as much time 'doing stuff with Dad' in a meaningful way. For instance, our base community centre organized a whale watching tour for today for an incredible price so we spent the day out on the Bay of Fundy, looking for whales. All of the fresh air and fun with the children of friends of mine who also went on the tour have worn us out. The kids fall into bed every evening with the fella' only moments behind them. I enjoy the few hours between their bedtime and mine to stitch and to have some Me Time as I am more of a night owl than the fella'.

The full cross stitches of floss have been completed tonight after much squinting at the pattern and the stitching to fill in all of those stitches that somehow I overlooked when I did the first round of stitching. No matter how careful I am about counting, I always miss a stitch here and there and end up filling in the spaces while doing the back stitching. Next, there is gold filament to cross stitch and then the back stitching. Hopefully, these will be done in time before Christmas! There just seem to be so many other things to do right now like the kids' visit, my continuing education for work and fun things like book club and walking the dogs.

Speaking of fun things, I did this last week:

A co-worker of the fella' called the other night to see if I wanted to go to a paint night with his wife. It was totally last minute and I was totally intimidated because she is an artist who paints, but I am always game to try something new so off I went. While this painting is so very badly amateurish, I did get lots of compliments from the other people who were also at paint night so perhaps I am not as hopeless as I had thought.

Well, tomorrow is another day of refereeing and entertaining kids while trying to wrangle our two dogs and two cats so this stitcher should take her behind to bed! Happy stitching!

Aug 21/18

Today's adventure in needles and thread had more to do with upcycling than cross stitching. One of my things in life is that I never ever hang a tea towel off the stove handle after learning from my volunteer firefighter brother that it is a major fire hazard. We have been draping the tea towel over the cupboard door under the sink and in the process, ruining the finish on the door. I recently bought some tea towels that had a little tab on them so they could hang off the knobs on the cupboards. Um, where has this been for my adult life and how did I never notice them before??

So, I went through the kitchen linen drawer to find all of my tab-less towels and dug out the ribbon that had been used to wrap my recently purchased towels. I cut the ribbon into short tabs and roughly sewed them on to the towels by hand.

The end result is not super pretty, but I am pleased with being able to recycle and to stop destroying my kitchen cupboard door by ripping off the veneer every time I pull the towel out to use it. Some of my tea towels should be relegated to the rag pile as they are wretchedly stained thanks to someone else in this house who uses them to mop up whatever mess he has made because it is too difficult to reach into the sink for a dish cloth. Grrrrr!!!

Happy stitching!

Aug 19/18

I had to stitch tonight to regain some of my sanity. Between work and home, life has been stressful this week. The fella' flew to Toronto and back today to pick up his two youngest children. There were a few hiccups along the way and the relief that I felt when he called me from the plane to say that they were onboard was so immense that a migraine kicked in. Boy, oh boy, that made the last minute grocery shopping so much fun. The cashier probably either thought that I was stoned or had dementia because I was struggling to see and think until the meds kicked in.

So, here is my wee bit of progress from this evening while I watched "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society" after everyone else collapsed into bed.

That's all for tonight. Happy stitching!

Aug 15/18

Between the tropical heat and humidity that we are wilting in this summer and not being able to see properly, my stitching mojo was in a funk until recently. The heat and humidity have not relented, but bifocals have made life easier. To be more precise, I have tri-focals for close, middle and far where I need to use a computer at work along with being able to see the markings on tablets and capsules up close. Stitching is not the struggle that it has become in the past 6 months. A few stitches here and there have suddenly started to add up to something as you can see by my progress photo. I am probably not alone in starting out on a project and looking at the pristine threads and fabrics while thinking, "this is going to take a long time". Then, for the longest time, the piece does not look like a whole lot of anything but some blobs of colour here and there. Suddenly, one day the piece starts to jump to life with each and every step until I put the last stitch in to the piece.

We did a little sightseeing and exploring this past weekend, taking in some places that we have not been to before. The Lookoff certainly lived up to its name as we had amazing views of the Annapolis Valley from high up on the side of the mountain. From there, we drove on to Blomidon so that the dogs could get out of the car and have some fun. High tide limited the size of the beach to a mere 10-15 feet wide strip and there was another dog close by so the dogs could not run free. They did, however, run into the water to cool off, pulling the fella' with them. The collie had a blast paddling around while the Lab was content to just get wet enough to cool down. We are so fortunate to live in such a beautiful place.

Happy stitching!

Aug 7/18

Hmmmm.....I have been either too busy or too hot to stitch. It took me a few weeks to adjust to the bifocals, but I have the hang of it now. My eyes and brain do not feel all wonky when I try to stitch now. Here is the current status of the Design Works ornaments.

In other stitchy news, I have started to go through all of the patterns that I have accumulated over the past 30 years. There are so many patterns in the boxes in our spare room that it would take several life times to stitch them all. I even found a few patterns that I do not remember purchasing and two stocking patterns that were stitched up. Honestly! I need to sort out that mess and get it under some kind of control. The "no" pile will be going up for sale some time soon on one of the selling/buying cross stitch facebook pages that I belong to so hopefully, I will make a little cash and the patterns might get used.

Happy stitching!