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!

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!

Nov 26/17

There are some signs of life out of me. We went to the grocery store this afternoon because the cupboards were bare and the fella' did not want to brave the grocery store on his own for a long list of items. I took forever to go from aisle to aisle and the fella' had most of the groceries packed in the car by the time I made it from the store. The small victories can mean so much.

Here is a photo of our new puppy with Maggie in the background. This was taken last week when getting out of bed was akin to climbing a mountain. The easiest way to supervise Tillie, the puppy, was to keep her in bed with me. She is a mutt although we strongly suspect that Australian shepherd may be her breed. She has two speeds: a million miles a minute and stone cold asleep. We are constantly trying to find new games for her to keep her busy and to stop her from chewing on things that we would prefer she not chew like my phone charging cords.

I picked up my needle the other day and started to stitch during the moments when I was out of bed and feeling energetic enough to stitch. Here is the second version of this cardinal kit. I can usually make 2-3 versions of the Dimensions kits with the leftover threads from the kit, adding in threads from previous Dimensions kits when needed. The fabric is 28 count Monaco from my stash.

While watching a movie this evening, I closed up the backs of the CADPAT bibs as one of them needs to go into the mail soon. After two weeks on not being able to do anything beyond walk to the back door to let the dogs out to pee, getting even the littlest thing accomplished feels awesome. I still have a long way to go as I learned when I went upstairs to fold the four loads of laundry that had piled up. Walking up a flight of stairs and folding sheets should not have left me winded.

Enough whining from me. I hope that you all are well and are happily stitching away as the holiday season arrives!

Sept 19/17

Hello! Long time, no blog.

Not much stitching happened during our vacation as I was busy enjoying time with family and making sure that my fella's kids had the perfect time with us at a cottage on Lake Simcoe in Ontario. I usually stitch during the long stretches of highway from Nova Scotia to Ontario and back, but I did not stitch on the way home because I was showing signs of a tenacious virus that is still hanging on two weeks later.

Before we left on vacation, I dropped off a piece to the framer to be framed. I had stitched up a beautiful design of a black Lab that looks exactly like our Maggie, right down to what I call the goober expression on the face. Our Maggie is a happy dog who is eager to please. There was a message on the phone from the framer when we pulled back into the driveway after 6000km of driving. Here is the final result:

The pattern is so safely tucked away that I can not, for the life of me, find it to give credit to the designer or the website where I made the purchase. I am very pleased with the end result of both the stitching and the outstanding framing job. Now, we just need to install it on the wall.

Aug 16/17

The dog days of summer have seen a whole lot of this (the dog is not dead, I promise!)

and not a whole lot of stitching. I have been busy enjoying the beautiful days and evenings by being outside as much as possible, walking the dog when she looks more alert, swimming, sight seeing or reading. My French lessons are coming along nicely as well. We rarely have such a glorious summer, being on the Atlantic coast of Canada, so we are all taking full advantage of this gorgeous weather.

The fella' is in the military and his kids live a few provinces and 20-25 hours of driving away from us so when I found these cute little bears, I thought that they would be perfect for the kids to cuddle when they are missing their dad.

Then, I came across some of his old badges that he no longer needs for his uniform so I asked him if it was okay to personalize the bears with his badges. I tried to figure out how to also include his chevrons, but I did not want to destroy the chevrons as I removed them from the epaulets so they are set aside for another project that I have yet to dream up. The kids are going to love these bears!

Happy stitching!

June 4/17

We were away to Halifax on Friday night to visit with my brother and his girlfriend so naturally no stitching was done that night while we enjoyed supper at a seaside restaurant and watched a wonderful movie , "A Monster Calls". I did get some stitching in last night and this picture shows where I ended up. The lovely Maggie was resting nearby as I picked up my needle and thread this lazy Sunday afternoon.

Here is where I ended up this evening:

I considered pushing on and completing the bib tonight, but I am just too tired to do so. We have had a busy few weeks with friends visiting or dropping over and our jaunt to Halifax to run errands and to stay over with my brother. Even today as a lazy day found us on the lawn of a local park listening to the base concert band and being entertained by the children who were wandering around the audience with their super hero swords and dogs. I also helped one of my neighbours make some decisions about her flower beds. Our housing organization allows us to put in flower beds as long as they are not huge or in the way once we move out. My neighbour gave me a piece of a bleeding heart that I planted alongside some lilies and irises that I found while out walking Maggie. Those flowers were planted over our two dear kitties, Leila and Penelope, who have passed away since we moved into this house, or PMQ (Private Married/Military Quarters) as we call these houses. Anyhoo, I am going to finish watching a documentary on Prince Philip before heading up to bed.

Happy stitching!

May 20/17

Here is a little peek into the shoreline near where I live. The temps were hovering around 30C yesterday in the Annapolis Valley so we loaded up the dog and headed to The Shore aka the Bay of Fundy to find some cooler temperatures. Our Maggie loves to explore the beach as you can see in this photo of the cliffs.

My stitching mojo kicked in a little bit this evening while we watched "Hacksaw Ridge" after a lovely afternoon on the South Shore of Nova Scotia. This bib is almost completed now and will hopefully be done tomorrow if something else does not come up on this Canadian long weekend.

 I also flipped through the latest issue of Just CrossStitch and found a few projects of interest as well. There are some Charlescraft tote bags in my stash so they may be the next items to be stitched up with the pattern I found in the issue.

Happy stitching!

April 30, 2017

Wow! I have really slowed down on the blogging as it has been a week since my last post. My stitching drive has slowed down as well, thanks in part to some tough days at work and an arthritic knee that has decided to be a pain in my.........knee. I am gaining a new appreciation as to how pain can tire a person out and I just have arthritis in my knees! The bib is CADPAT bib number three. I posted a picture of a completed one on Facebook to get some feedback from my friends and the response was quite favourable so hopefully I can sell a few as I had hoped!

The warmer weather has arrived and today was a great Spring day here on the East Coast of Canada. We cleaned up the yard, emptied out and reorganized the shed and I dug up more area for our many tomato plants. My fella' checked over the lawn mower and made it ready to mow the grass that has burst out the ground this past week with the lovely Spring rain. I took the dog for a run on the woods trails and she spent the rest of the afternoon like this:

I guess being out in the yard all afternoon and a rip around the trails wore her out! Now, if we could only convince her that she loves baths because she stinks like the swamps she ran through this afternoon.

So, today I dove into the boxes that hold my patterns and kits because I was looking for some booklets on origami that were given to me by my grandmother. A friend of mine wants to do origami in her classroom so I offered to lend her my books. Somehow, I had forgotten just how many patterns and supplies I have managed to collect over the years until I started going through those boxes. Those boxes are like the last frontier of de-cluttering in this house so my next project is to go through the boxes and sell off some of the patterns are realistically never going to get done. I recently joined a group called Stash Unload that seems like it could be a good site to use to sell some of my patterns once I decide which ones to part with.

Happy Spring and happy stitching!

March 20, 2017

Instead of posting a picture of the progress being made on my bib, I am posting a photo of my thread palette which I keep on the arm of the couch while I am stitching. The chart was done in Anchor colours so these are my best approximation in DMC, thanks to an online conversion chart.

When I looked to my right this afternoon, I saw this:

Maggie is such a goofball!

Happy stitching!

March 2, 2017

After finishing the last mitten the other, I dug around in my craft pile and came across this scarf that was maybe 1/2 finished and left in a bag. I suspect that it is a leftover project from a summer road trip as knitting is the only project I can do without getting carsick when we drive from Nova Scotia to Ontario for summer holidays. The yarn is Briggs and Little wool, a wonderful scratchy wool from my home province of New Brunswick.The pattern is not from pinterest for once. I do not know the proper name for this knit pattern, but I would describe it as a knit 2, purl 2 to form a box type stitch. The scarf is a bit short, but long enough to cross in the front and then fit nicely under my jacket without creating bulk.

Spring had been here briefly but Winter has rolled back in with lots of wind and that sneaky white stuff called snow. Maggie is as done with winter as her humans. Life is beyond rough in this house for this dog.

Happy stitching!

February 1, 2017

Does any one else find the first day of the month impossible? I think that I wrote January on every thing I dated today at work before remembering that we are now in February. 

I managed to wear out Maggie, and by extension me, yesterday. Doesn't she look adorable when she is passed out on the couch between my fella' and me. Her head was resting on my leg when I took this photo last night.

No stitching was accomplished yesterday as the day was full of continuing education, walks with the dog and curling. I had a harrowing drive home after work in a snow storm which added a half hour to my commute. The road conditions were quite slippery so it was a great relief to chill out and make some headway on the fourth mitten of my series. I would stay up late to finish this piece from pinterest, but I need to be up early tomorrow to run an errand before work. Happy stitching!