Some finishing and a new start

I decided to use the Victoria Sampler Halloween bookmark I finished a little while back to make a needle minder holder for some of my favorite Halloween minders, and it came out fairly well (though a tad crooked!):

These are really easy to make; I start with my finished piece (or just a plain piece of fabric) and a canvas from the craft section at Target (or wherever they sell them), and stretch the fabric over the canvas and glue the edges to the back side along the edges. Usually I try to have enough fabric so that the fabric can go all the way around to the back, but in this case it was a bit small on two of the sides so I had to glue those sides to the sides of the canvas instead of the back; here's what the back looks like:

Since the two "short" sides looked a bit sloppy like that, I used a ribbon trim to neaten them up:

I attached the sawtooth hanger to the back, added some of my favorite needle minders (using the magnets right through the canvas) and now I have a pretty and functional piece hanging in my craft room!

I received Mirabilia's Lady Justice last Friday, so I took the weekend to make a start on her; I'm using a piece of Sugar Maple Fabric's Heavenly Sky Belfast:

And here's my start:

I should be finishing a model towards the end of the week, then I'll probably take a week or so to work on this one; I'm thinking about using my DMC Golden Skein (floss made with a 24K gold wash) for the scales.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Mirabilia's Lady Justice

The newest Mirabilia was released at midnight today, so I can finally share pictures of her:

I really like this one, so I'll have to stitch it for myself one of these days.

I'm getting close to done with one of the two Nora Corbett models I currently have, so I don't have much stitching I can share right now. I did get all the way around the border of Bent Creek's The Haunted House (including the "Secret Lair" hidden down in the basement):

Thank you to those who left comments about my sweet Chloe. I was really going to try not to get another dog this time, but even with my cats it just seemed so empty in our house. We've had at least one dog for 25 years now, and I guess I'm just not ready to give that up yet, so meet Murphy:

He is a 3-year-old Miniature Pinscher that we adopted from our local Humane Association, and he is such a little lover. He follows me around during the day, sleeps happily in the chair behind my stitching table and burrows under the covers at night to sleep next to me. He is definitely easing my heartache.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Sad days

Two weeks ago this past Saturday we had our sweet Chloe put to sleep, and I'm still at a loss without her. We had her for more than 14 years, which was actually a lot longer than we thought we would have her when she was diagnosed with a rare blood condition when she was 3, and we have treasured every one of those years.

For once even stitching hasn't provided the solace that it usually does, though I have been doing some off and on. I have a couple of Nora Corbett models that came in a few weeks ago that I need to get back to, but right now I don't really have the concentration for "work". Last night I spent several hours in the mindless task of cutting about 300 yards of silk into usable lengths. I had bought this hank from Silks4u about 4 years ago:

And now it is in about 300+ yard-long lengths ready to use:

I've been thinking about getting Long Dog Sampler's Death By Cross Stitch, and this might be the perfect floss to use with it.

It seems like a long time ago now, but I did get Lady Mirabilia back from the framer, and am very happy with how she came out:

Some of the stitching I have been doing is a Halloween bookmark SAL that was handed out in four parts in the Victoria Sampler Chat group on FB. Part 4 was released last Friday, and as with a lot of VS charts it had some Hardanger at the bottom; since I have yet to learn how to do that, I just added some other stitches and called it good:

I've also started a Bent Creek design called The Haunted House:

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week, and if you have a fur baby please give them a kiss or pet in memory of my precious Chloe.