Saw some pelicans (I think!)...

...so it must be time to start Seaside Tiny Town! Honestly, the timing of this was so fun; I went for a walk this morning and saw a group of pelicans (I think that's what they were, but feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) swimming and feeding:

Then the charts arrived in the mail this afternoon:

I'm going to pull the threads tonight (I know I have at least some of them) and pick a fabric, then I'll be ready to start it either tonight or tomorrow. First, I want to do about 20 stitches on Black'd Skie to finish up the border of the fifth square:

I finished the fourth square last week, and am hoping to get back to this within the next couple of months:

This past Saturday I went to a local stitch group for the first time and had a really nice time meeting and chatting with the five other stitchers who attended. I wasn't sure what the room set up would be, so I didn't want to take Black'd Skie, which is pretty large; instead, I took a piece that I had just barely started a few months ago:

The group will meet again in June, so I'll probably take this piece again since it's an easy one to work on while chatting (though I did have to frog a bit because a couple of those bricks are six stitches long instead of five like the majority of them were!).

Yesterday I pulled up Cathy's finishing video for the Polar Plunge series and got the matboard and batting cut for all six ornaments:

That's all of the preparation I can do for these now until they are all stitched. I finally ordered the next two Sunday night, but they probably won't ship for about a week--that gives me just enough time to get the Seaside Tiny Town done before they get here.

I'm a bit surprised that I got quite a few crafty things done last week, since I finally spent a couple of days cleaning out the garage. It only took three trips to the dump this time, instead of the four it took for the basement, and now I even like taking the kitchen garbage out to the bin because it looks so nice out there. :D

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Gather Round club halfway done

Last Monday morning I finished the stitching on HOD's Gather Butterflies and then did the final finishing that afternoon, so two of the four seasons are now fully complete:

I'm looking forward to seeing what gets gathered in autumn; leaves or pumpkins are probably two likely choices, but I'm thinking Cathy will do something different--will hopefully find out in June!

The next two HOD Polar Plunge charts should be in shops soon; while I wait to order them, I decided to get started on the finishing for them. I painted and sealed the ornament boards and picked up a big piece of matboard that I'll start cutting to shape this week. I decided not to cover the boards with scrapbooking paper, as I like the look of them plain like this:

While I wait for the new Tiny Town, Polar Plunge and Quilting A-Bee-Cs charts to arrive in shops I decided to pull out Primitive Needle's Black'd Skie. I looked back in my blog and saw that I last worked on this in December 2021, so I guess it was time to get it back out and finish at least one more square!

I should be able to finish square four today, then I might start on square five so I can stitch on it in between working on the Polar Plunge finishing preparations. 

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Almost made it

I was hoping to have all three of the Hands on Design Gather Butterflies pieces stitched by the end of the weekend, but as I predicted I wasn't quite able to make it. I came pretty close though (and my inner 5-year-old had a gleeful laugh at this photo):

I'll have the stitching done later this morning, and I think I might try to do the finishing this afternoon so I can get a start on some housework tomorrow. It's funny that I'll have the spring and summer sets of designs done, since apparently we're still in the midst of winter here:

My bleeding heart was just starting to flower, so I'm going to be pretty bummed if this kills off the blossoms:

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week (and better weather than I do)!

Part 1 completed, on to part 2 (of a different SAL)

Last night while watching the final (finally!) episode of Sanditon I was able to finish part 1 of Erica Michaels Quilting A-Bee-Cs, using the recommended Classic Colorworks floss (except for subbing the dark green and adding a purple):

Part 2 will be coming out next month, though I don't know exactly when; hopefully I'll be able to finish Hands on Design Gather Butterflies before it arrives. I'm having a hard time settling down with my stitching lately, but I would like to have this done by the end of this month (or, more likely, early next month):

Also in May Heart in Hand's Seaside Tiny Town will be released, so of course I'll have to make time for that as soon as I get it! And there's another Tiny Town coming out in July called Any Town Tiny Town:

This was designed for the 25th anniversary of Keepsakes in Ohio; they had a pre-order on their site that ended on April 15th. Their shop is the white house to the left of the center, with their little black shop cat, 310, next to the door. The chart will be released to all shops next year, and the idea is to personalize it to look more like your own town. I might try to make the cross stitch shop look more like my LNS, The Stitching Bee, and there's a local flower shop that I would love to try to imitate:

I've messed around a bit already, and it isn't going to be quite as easy to translate into a "tiny building" as I had hoped, but I've got plenty of time to work with it and see what I can come up with.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Oops, made a new start!

I truly intended to work on Firefly Fairies until the next set of HOD Gather Round designs arrived, but I got distracted by a Market release from Erica Michaels Designs called Quilting A-Bee-Cs; part 1 (of 5) and the threads arrived last Monday and I couldn't resist making a new start. I had a piece of Access Commodities Heron Gray 38ct linen on hand, which is being stitched 1-over-2 with the recommended CCW floss (except for a substitute for the dark green and adding a purple):

Gather Butterflies is supposed to be mailed today, so it should arrive later this week. I'm going to work on this until then; the next set of blocks will be released next month, so I'd like to have part 1 finished before then. It's nice to have some small finishes along the way as the whole piece takes shape.

Rosewood Manor just released a design that I stitched the model for over two years ago, called Strawberry Wishes. I love the font in this, as well as the pretty colors:

I've been cleaning the windows and doing some other spring chores lately, which has cut into my stitching time, but it's nice to finally feel like winter is on the way out (even though it snowed a bit this morning). Still need to clean out the garage and get going on some yard work, but even doing those things feels nice when there's good weather to enjoy.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

More Firefly Fairies

The next Gather Round club kit was supposed to ship now, but it's been delayed for a couple of weeks so I'm going to keep going on Firefly Fairies for now. I haven't been doing a lot of stitching lately, but have made a bit more progress; here it is as of this morning:

I've always loved this design just from the chart photo and it turns out that it doesn't even come close to showing some of the details, which makes it so fun discovering and bringing them to life. It uses four colors of Kreinik braid, though I'm switching some of it out for beads of similar colors, which really makes it look like it's sprinkled with fairy magic:

Those little feet peeking out of what will be her underskirt have always been one of my favorite parts!

Since there's not a lot of stitching to show I'll share the final three framed pieces that I recently got back, all of which were Nora Corbett designs; this is Miss Moth, stitched on a Silkweaver solo:

Miss Dragonfly, stitched on SMF MacMillan (I think that was the name of the fabric):

And the Mirabilia ornament from the 2000 JCS ornament issue:

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Not much stitching last week

I was able to finish the first three Polar Plunge designs from Hands on Design last Tuesday night, and now have to wait until May for the final three charts:

The boards that these will be finished on are arriving today and I already have the rick rack trim, but I'll probably wait until all six are stitched before I start the finishing; better to get it over with all at once!

That was most of the stitching I did last week as I finally bit the bullet and started clearing out the basement. Three trips to the dump and three trips to Goodwill later and we finally have a fairly organized space again! I still need to go through some of the individual plastic bins, but the worst part is over. Now when it warms up we'll have to tackle the garage--ugh!

I did do a little bit of stitching on Firefly Fairies this weekend, and am getting close to finished with the greens in the first fairy:

It seems like some of the greens in this just shouldn't go together at all, but the shading is so clever that they all seem to work as a whole. I'm planning to work on this one until the next set in the Gather Round club arrives, probably in two to three weeks.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Almost finished

I'm still working on HOD Polar Plunge and hoping to have all three of the current releases finished by tomorrow night. The Field of Greens floss finally arrived on Saturday and it is a really pretty color; I like how it pulls some of the greener patches of the fabric together into the whole design:

The fabric is Song of Sirens on Belfast linen from Nicholas Flamel Design on Etsy; I originally bought it thinking it would look good with a Mirabilia mermaid on it, but I really like it with this series. I don't know when the next three will be released, but I'll be ready to go when they are.

Last July I took six pieces in to my framer and I've been getting them back for the past month or so. Last week I finally picked up the last one, Jardin Prive's Au Fil des Nichoirs:

I like how the blue frame picks up the blue in the design and in the variegated floss I used to stitch the border. I also had Madame Chantilly's Cats in the Rain done:

And Blackbird Designs America:

I thought this frame was fun with the design; it comes in white, red and brown. It used to come in blue but that's been discontinued, which is a shame because I probably would have used that if it had been available.

When the woman called to say the final one was finished, she said the owner said to tell me that framing should be getting back to a more normal time frame and to bring some more over so I took five more in (I still have a backlog of gift certificates that my wonderful husband has given me); we'll see how long these take to get back.

For now it's back to work on Polar Plunge, and then hopefully I'll be able to get some more stitching in on Firefly Fairies; I'm trying very hard not to keep starting new projects and then putting them away for years at a time.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Taking the plunge...

...the Hands on Design Polar Plunge that is! I've been excited about this series ever since I watched Cathy's Market preview FlossTube and I ordered the first three charts as soon as they showed up at 123Stitch. They arrived Saturday, so after I finished A Honey of a Tiny Town I put all those supplies away and pulled what I needed for a new start, and this is where I am so far today:

My old skein of Tartan Plaid doesn't look anything like the chart photo/DMC 3768 reference so I'm going to use Chesapeake Bay instead, which is almost a perfect match for 3768. I haven't found the new floss color Field of Greens in stock yet, but I'm hoping 123Stitch gets it soon, and I'm really happy with this fabric that I had in my stash. I'm enjoying every stitch and looking forward to the final three designs--if I remember correctly they will include puffins, penguins and a narwhal. 

Yesterday I finished Heart in Hand's A Honey of a Tiny Town with A Honey of a Frill added to it, and it turned out really cute:

The fabric is probably a little light for the white in the design, but overall I'm happy with the way it looks. Now I have to wait until May for the Seaside Tiny Town, and then I'll send them both to the finisher so they can join my Tiny County:

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Everything must stop for a new Tiny Town!

Last Friday I was happily stitching away on Firefly Fairies when a surprise gift arrived in the mail--the new Honey of a Tiny Town by Heart in Hand Needleart. As this is one of my favorite series of designs, I promptly finished the thread I was stitching on FF and set about pulling floss and fabric for the Tiny Town. So, after a week of work Firefly Fairies looks like this:

I'm still really enjoying working on this one and I look forward to getting back to it in a week or so, but for now it's time to create a Tiny Town. I started it Friday evening but I didn't do a lot of stitching this weekend so I've only gotten this far:

The skein of Whitewash that I have that was used to stitch the house has a bit too much beige in it, so it kind of blends in with the fabric, which is PTP Crystal Legacy on 36ct linen. Instead of changing the fabric I've decided to use Snowball for the rest of the design, as it's a nice, bright white and should show up better. There's also a Honey of a Frill chart that I'll be adding into the Tiny Town as I did with the Halloween town. Speaking of which, last month I received the Blooming and Halloween towns back from Faye Riggsbee, who did another beautiful job on the finishing:

And in another exciting piece of news (to me anyway!) Cecilia has another town that will be released this May, a Seaside Tiny Town:

I think this might be my favorite of the seven so far, just so cute! 

I have the Honey Frill and a few colors of floss on order that I'll need to finish the Honey town; hoping they'll arrive later this week and I can have this almost done by next Monday. The weather has been getting a bit better here in Wisconsin and I'm trying to get back into a walking routine, which always cuts into stitching time. My husband officially retired on February 28th (even though he made one more customer visit on March 1st), so he's trying to figure out what his new routine will be. We're hoping to go through 20+ years worth of stuff in the basement and garage this spring, so I'll be less productive stitching-wise for a while, but it will be nice to have a good clear out.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!