Friendship Compass finished

Last weekend I went to visit my mom, and the timing was fortuitous because I was able to make a stop at Welcome Stitchery and buy some beads and treasures to finish up my Friendship Compass freebie from Glendon Place:

It has been really interesting seeing all of the various color combinations in the FB group, and how different they can make the design look. Here is the designer's (Cheryl Granda) take on her design:

Quite a difference!

I finally received a Rosewood Manor model last week, and it's a big one, so I won't have too much stitching I can share for a while. I did get a couple of pieces of neat, painted fabric from HLC Fabrics that I will be playing with to find a great design to stitch on each of them:

I have three binders full of Halloween patterns, so I should be able to find something to stitch on these...

Hope everyone has a great stitchy weekend!

A finish and a new start

Shortly after my last post, I finished my version of Happy Halloween:

I'm really happy with how it turned out; the little peek-a-boo kitty reminds me of my Tailor Bean, and the colors are so bright and cheerful. I might have to get this one framed pretty soon so I can hang it up and enjoy it all the time.

I was still in the mood for Halloween stitching after the finish, so I decided to pull Glendon Place's Murky Manor out of the Bucket o'WIPs, where it's been residing for a few years. The fabric is a Silkweaver solo on Belfast:

After working on it a bit more, I decided to see if there is a Glendon Place stitchers group on Facebook, and there is. Right after I joined, they had a big push to get to 500 members; Cheryl, the designer, promised a free chart if they hit the goal. Not only did they reach that goal, but in the past few days they have surpassed the 1000-member mark!

So, Cheryl released a mandala design called The Friendship Compass. The chart does not come with a color key, so you are supposed to choose six floss colors and four bead colors and make it truly your own. I spent a fun couple of hours playing in my stash, and finally came up with this color scheme:

I'm going to wait to choose the beads until all the stitching is done, so I'll have a better idea of what I'm looking for. It is a really fun stitch, although working on the black linen is definitely getting harder as I get older!

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

A finish and an almost-finish

To combat the stitching blahs, I decided to put my large projects aside and just stitch up a couple of small designs. The first of these is from Sue Hillis' A Wintry Mix:

Sue had a name-the-chart contest on the 123Stitch message board when she designed this chart, and I had the second place name, which was Snowflake Forest. She kindly sent me a free chart even though I didn't win, and this is my favorite of the trees in the design.

I then decided to finally start on Curtis Boehringer's Happy Halloween, for myself this time. About a year ago I stitched this little cutie for someone, who wanted the colors shown in this picture:

The original chart only calls for three colors, which are orange, black and brown. I like the colors in this version, but I love the colors in the one I'm doing now:

I should have this done in the next day or so, so I'll share the finish in my next post.

Hope everyone in the US has a terrific Labor Day weekend, and to everyone a great stitchy weekend!