Christmas Stitching

I did some secret Christmas stitching last night that I can't show as I think the recipient looks at this blog frequently. I did take a small snap of one corner, here it is...


I am using some Desert Sand linen I won from eBay and a Vikki Clayton silk and they seem to be working fine. After Christmas I will reveal the entire thing.
We got some really nice veggies from a friends garden. They live up in Bodega Bay (the Birds the Birds) and have a bumper crop of stuff and were generous enough to pass on some lovely things. Here is a snap.



This will become some great guacamole!!! Delicious!!

That wraps up the week and now on to the weekend!! Thanks for stopping by!!

Take care,
edgar

Free Stiching Beatrtix Potter

Last night was free stitch night and I went back to Beatrix Potter.
Here is a snap of the piece as it stands now.

I did not realize until I was almost finished with the last motif before the turn that it is a bug and snails. I guess when you are up on top of something you just can't see the overall picture.

Going into fall the flowers on the balcony got changed and here are some snaps of the plants/flowers out there.




One of my favorite kinds of plants/flowers is the geranium. So here is the fall selection this year, very spindly and interesting.



As you can see the rotation list has changed. I need to get busy and work up 2 Christmas presents and get them to the framers. I had to drop Garland Fair to work them in. I already have one Christmas present ready to pick up at the framers. Christmas will be here quicker than you think, it is only 89 days away, you can practically hear the silver bells now.

That's about it for today, thanks for stopping by!!!

Take care,
edgar

It's Tuesday so it was VOHRH

I kept to my rotation and worked on the VOHRH. I finished the roof and started to work on the stripes of colour that run vertically. Here is a snap.

It is coming along but the colour changes are so subtle.

When I was catching a pic of the VOHRH I looked over at the Pete poops and there he was just snoozing away but hanging half out of his bed. So of course I snapped a pic as I thought it was pretty funny. Now remember this is a little 4 1/2 lb chihuahua and the basket is pretty big....so why was that butt just hanging off. I guess this is what is called "living on the edge." :)


Sometimes he is just the funniest thing, he is the most timid little dog you would ever want to meet and we just love him to pieces!! After I snapped this he woke up startled and I know he was thinking "what, who, where.....the flash...what was that????"

That's about it for today. Thanks for stopping by!!!

Take care,
edgar


I got rid of that extra "n" from yesterdays title...where did that come from :)

Rotation stitching Monday

I am trying to stick to my rotation and so I stitched on VOHRH last night while watching, you guessed it a movie. The movie last night was "How to Steal a Million," 1966, starring Peter O'Toole and Audrey Hepburn, more on that later. The progress on VOHRH is here in a snap...


I almost finished the roof on the forge but came to the end of the floss and it was late so left it to tonight.

I also mentioned that I was going to finish the fall flat fold ( how's that for alliteration!! :) ) and here is a snap with some pumpkins from Half Moon Bay.


Half Moon Bay is famous for the Pumpkin Festival that is coming up around the 13th of next month. There will be about 2 gazillion people descending on this little community, but it is always lots of fun, I am told. Since huge crowds do not appeal to me I will not be attending.

I got the directions for the "Focus on Finishing" site, excellent spot for the newbie to finishing!! I learned a lot from doing this. As I am really not the crafty type the end result is pretty good for the first time out. I will know in future to NOT use foam core board and to double up on the batting when using the thin kind. They will get better with time, but this one looks alright for the fall and I'll haul it out for a decoration for years to come I am sure. :)

The movie last night was pretty entertaining Audrey and Peter were directed by William Wyler, one of my favorite directors very slick and really wonderfully shot in Paris, worth a look if you have not seen it yet.

That's about it for today, thanks for stopping by and for the super comments!!!!

Take care,
edgar

It's Monday again......

...... and here I am yapping about my weekend!! Well let me start with Friday when the weather was so weird and the sky looking towards Twin Peaks was just awesome. Here is a snap.


Those were total rain clouds rolling in from the west. Now, for those that may not know San Francisco's rainy season does not start until November - late. For us to get any rain this early is really unusual. It only sprinkled for a little while and then on and off all day Saturday. At least the car got clean!! I really enjoy the rain and can sit and just watch it for hours. I love the gloomy and dank over the bright and sunny. Very strange I know but hey, ya like what ya like!! :)

I did do some stitching over the weekend. I worked on VOHRH and here is a progress snap.



I also worked on the Beatrix Potter SAL piece. I realized I had not worked on this in a really long time. When I got it out I remembered that I really liked working on this and I think it is coming along nicely. Here is an overall picture of the progress.




And here is a close up of the area that I worked on last night. I am working this in a clockwise direction around the chart. I am stitching it 1 over 2 and really like the overall lite and fragile way this is looking.





My Mom as you may remember lives in Daytona Beach. She has this Persian lime tree in the backyard that just produced the bumper crop from hell this fall and so everyone that she knows has gotten an pile of limes. me included. :) They a beautiful and look really great on the kitchen table but really.... how many margaritas can a person drink!!! :) Just kidding,I don't drink so I will make at least one pie ( she included her special lime pie recipe) out of these and probably squeeze the rest of them and freeze the juice for use later this winter when limes are really dear. Right now though we will enjoy them just sitting there being aromatic.




You can also see that we got some black and red plums. They are really nice this year.

I also worked on the flat fold but will not show a picture until tomorrow when I have the entire thing finished.

Hope you had a great weekend!!! Thanks for stopping by.

Take care,
edgar

Shopping instead of stitching Thursday

After work it was off to the doctors for a checkup, you know the kind, "turn your head a cough" along with other poking and prodding!!!!

When the doctor was good and done I got home and then it was off to go shopping in South City for some crafty supplies........
I needed to get a glue gun ( can you belive I didn't already have one) and some cording ( I got two colours as I could not decide in the store which to chose and they were on sale!!) and a piece of foam core.....guess what I am going to try and create....... I am going to try and make a Flat fold for the fall out of that piece of needle work I finished and couple of weeks ago. I was originally going to try and create small pillow, but the sewing machine is just way to daunting to try an tackle!!!! I have read an reread the instructions and find them quite confusing. :) Instead I found some instructions on how to create a flat fold and I think I can do that! I actually found to variations on the creation of FF.
Wish me luck!!

Have a great weekend, and Thanks for Stopping by!!!!

Take care,
edgar

Ground stitching on VOHRH

Last nights free stitch was once again VOHRH. I am really liking this project. I knew going into it that there would be lots of detail and colour changes, but really did not see this until I started to stitch the squares. Some of the detail is so subtle but necessary for the overall effect. I did finish the ground last night while watching a couple of Doris Day movies. Let me show the snap of VOHRH before I go off on a tangent.....

As you can see there are some blank spaces. These are where some horses legs will go but for right now they look kind of silly and empty.

The movies I watched were from the Doris Day Vol II DVD box set of her movies (I got them on Monday using a 40% off coupon :) ) I want to watch them chronologically so I started off with "Romance on the High Seas" 1948. This has been one of my favorite movies for a long time and now I have 2 copies (If you would like my extra DVD copy let me know in the comments and I will send it to you). "ROTHS" is Doris Day's film debut and she really sparkles!! The next movie was "My Dream is Yours" 1949. This is another wonderful little picture featuring two of my favorite character actors Jack Carson and Eve Arden. Just a nice film with nice music and a nice story.

Thanks for the suggestions about organizing the floss monster!! I use now the bobbin/card keeping system but that is just not really working for me the way I want it to. I really like the idea of the Floss-a-way system and have ordered it and will try this next. Jan asked what I do where we have a kitty running around. I manage/run the warehouse for a film company. Not the most glamorous job but it pays the bills....and we get to have a sweet kitty. :)

Tonight it is back to the rotation with Garland Fair!!
Hope the week is treating everyone well!!

Thanks for stopping by!!!

Take care,
edgar

Short post about the work Kitty

At my job we have a kitty. Her name is Nefertiti. But she is called Titi-kitty (short "i's"). Today she is being very sweet and helping me with everything so I took a snap of her on my desk....


She's a big help with the stapler!!!. I know why she is sitting here....the weather has gotten cooler today with a cold front pushing through and I have my electric fire going under my desk...making it a very warm place to be.
So where she is sitting is basically on top of a heater!! :)

She is very sweet a very loved!!

Thanks for taking look!!!

Take care,
edgar

VOHRH a little stitching

I did very little stitching last night as I went out to dinner with a friend and we got to talking and then went to a recently opened Halloween store. They had the creepiest looking rats and crows on GGE (Gods Green Earth)!!! So after I got home pretty late I only had a short time to put needle to linen. Here is a snap of the progress.


I was wondering how if anyone could answer or give a suggestion as to how to handle the silks for VOHRH. There are 55 different colours of silk that are used and it seems there has to be a way to organize and keep these straight. If you have a way to organize lots of silks that is good (I think my way sort of stinks) let me know what you do. I might let you know later on how I do but not just yet, as I think it is not very efficient!!

I did not mean to come across yesterday that I did not like the movie "Artimesia." I just think that if the real story is there you should probably follow it closer than just make things up. I thought the movie was visually gorgeous and very entertaining. It is just her life was so interesting that there was no need to fabricate a new yarn around the preexisting life.

It is hump day and so the big slid to the weekend!!

Thanks for stopping by!!

Take care,
edgar

VOHRH border stitching

Last night was VOHRH stitching and since I had finished the square for September I kept on with the border stitching.
This allowed me to watch two movies I had gotten from Greencine. Here is a snap of the borders as they stand now.

Sorry about the poor picture but you get the idea and the borders they grow.

The two movies were "Artimesia,"1997 and "Richard III,"1995.

"Artimesia" is about the painter Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1653). She was a Roman painter from the school of Caravaggio. Her father was the painter Orazio Gentileschi (1563 - 1639). The movie was pretty good but had many if not most of the major points of her life wrong. It is a foreign film with French being the language spoken, but is subtitled in English.

"Richard III" is the play by Shakespeare but redone and set in a Fascist England. Excellent production!! Ian McKellen is just superb as Richard and leads an all star cast including Annette Benning, Nigel Hawthorne, Robert Downey Jr, Maggie Smith, Jim Broadbent and others. Although the entire play is not presented nor is what presented correct in the timeline of history.....
the character of Richard is so well crafted that you really see
how self serving and unscrupulous he really was,
as presented by Shakespeare.
I have always enjoyed this version on film and would highly recommend it to anyone.

That's about it for today, Thanks for stopping by!!

Take care,
edgar

Lizzy's RR is Finished

I worked on the Heartfelt Friends RR square this weekend. As you may remember we are using LHN designs. This was a really fun project to work on. Lizzy picked the Dear Diary Series for her RR and let each of us choose the chart that we wanted to work. I really liked the Savannah one and so that is the one I interpreted with only a few colour/design changes. Here is a snap of the finished square.


The most obvious changes are my name/city and the addition of a squirrel. I lifted the squirrel from the Lakeside Lodge chart. I also dropped the little girl to the right of the house and changed the colour in the two large flowers on either side of the name.

Not too much else happened this weekend as it was pretty laid back with movies and work.
I had ordered from DVD Planet the double disc set of "Anne of a Thousand Days" and "Mary Queen of Scots" so had a nice double feature last night.

On the MQOS disc was a preview for the upcoming movie "Elizabeth:the Golden Age." It has Cate Blanchett reprising her role as Elizabeth I and looks spectacular!!!! It comes out in late October and I can't wait. You all know what a huge Cate fan I am!!!!! I also watched "From Here to Eternity" from 1953, for the millionth time on Saturday and you know.... I never get tired of that movie. Donna Reed and Deborah Kerr playing against their usual character's is really something to see. Montgomery Clift and Burt Lancaster also give just great performance's with Frank Sinatra really giving a superior performance. The movie was nominated for 13 Academy Awards and won 8 so there has to be something there!!

Hope everyone had a great weekend. Thanks so much for stopping by and all the wonderful comments that are left, I really appreciate it!!!

Take care,
edgar

VOHRH Square 1/5 il est finis!!

Oui, le square is finished. I just took needle in hand and finished stitching that sucker up!! Only 11 more to go. Here is a snap of the "breezy" square....


I will start on the next square 6/2 on Monday. That way I can get ahead in case I run into trouble. You never know... :)

Not too much else going on, last night TCM was showing "Moonstruck." A really superior movie from 1987, I can't believe it is 20 years old. Boy do I fell old, and getting older everyday, with a birthday coming up next month, it is just one more milestone to the grave!!! Oh boy, is that a depressing thought.... better get busy stitching up some of this stash I am acquiring. There always seems to be so many really cool things out there to get and never enough time ahead to make them. I guess we just do what we can do and that should be good enough. Sorry about the maudlin tangent this has taken.


Woo Hoo!!!! a square is finished, lets focus on the good!!!! :)

Have a great weekend!!! Thanks for stopping by!!!!

Take care,
edgar

VOHRH Free Stitch

I worked once again on VOHRH. You know how you get when you are working on something and it just keeps calling to you to finish up....?? That's what Village is doing to me. I set my own goal of a square a month...but if I can get ahead on this as some squares I think are going to be waaaay harder than others. This first square that I started on is mostly just words and that works up really fast and the trees are coming along quickly also, but the house and buildings that are in most squares are going to be a bit slower on the stitch. Here is a snap of last nights progress.



Those are some funky birds I must say!!
I think I may skip the rotation and work Village again tonight to finish the square up.
I have an exchange and the RR that I want to finish by the end of the month and I need to get going on those. Hope the week is treat everyone well!!!

Thanks for stopping by, and I really appreciate
the nice comments that you leave!!

Take care,
edgar

VOHRH Stitching and some stash

Well I worked in rotation so Tuesday is VOHRH (Village of Hawk Run Hollow - Carriage House Samplings, thanks for stopping by Jan!!) I really like the subtle colour changes in the greens of these trees. Here is a snap of last nights work.

It looks kind of funny with just the stumps of the trees, like it has been clear cut or something!!

I also received my overdyed floss for "Forgiveness." I had ordered it from Drema at Needlecraft Corner. She came through again with my order!!!! As you remember "Forgiveness" is charted for silk in HDF by Vicki Clayton. I want to frame and hang both "Forgiveness" and "Serenity " together so I recharted in the same colour scheme in overdyed floss' so that when these pieces are next to each other they will be a pair. Here is a snap of the pile of floss Drema sent me.


You can see that I stayed with the pale greens, peach and golden yellows that Vilma originally charted in silk. I am really excited about getting started with this piece on Saturday where it falls into the rotation list. I put the floss' on the linen that this will be stitched on which is a great match with "Serenity."

Last night on TCM they showed the 1939 MGM masterpiece.... "Wuthering Heights." (Back to the those great B&W classics!!) What a great movie and superb performances by Lawrence Olivier, Merle Oberon, Flora Robson and Geraldine Fitzgerald.
If you had not had a chance to see this I HIGHLY recommend this movie.

Thats about it for today, thanks for stopping by
....and remember I always appreciate those great comments!!!

Take care,
edgar

VOHRH stitching and a movie....

Monday nights are VOHRH and I worked on it a little and got some of the green words done as doing brown lines was getting a bit tedious. Also if I am to finish a square a month then I need to work on the actual square don't ya think!! :) I don't know why but I was a bit intimidated to start this last night, but I overcame that little bit of trepidation and dove right in.


Sorry that it's all crooked, it didn't look like that when I took the picture,
it must have happened in the camera, yea, that's right.... in the camera!! :)

I also watched a movie last night. Now hold on to yourself, (drum roll) it was actually a movie from 2001!! Can you believe it, a colour movie and from this decade!!! The title was The Shipping News. I checked it out through Greencine. I threw it onto my queue because the actors are Cate Blanchett, Judi Dench, Julianne Moore and Kevin Spacey. I really liked the Cate/Judie dynamic in "Notes on a Scandal" and thought this earlier piece would be really worth watching. It starts off in Upstate NY but most of the Movie takes place in Newfoundland. The cinematography is just gorgeous and the story although odd is really quite good. The novel won the National Book Award in 1993 and the Pulitzer prize for fiction for 1994. It was written by Annie Proulx who also wrote Brokeback Mountain .
This is worth a viewing.

Thanks for stopping by, and thank you all for the nice comments,
it really makes my day to read the nice things people have to say!!!!!!!!!!

Take care,
edgar

Working on HF RR - Lizzy's Dear Diary Series

I worked on Heartfelt Friends RR this weekend and thought I was getting ahead and the evil frog appeared. I had stitched the house, which is the centerpiece of the stitching, one row to tall, one row to wide and the entire thing ONE thread over!! I was not a happy camper. This mistake put me behind where I wanted to be, but it happens. So I spent a good long while pulling out the house and now a corrected version stands in its place.
Here is a snap.


I really like the "Dear Diary" series and have ordered them to do at a later date.

I am really excited about getting my first name and address for the SBEBB Specific Designer Exchange. It will be my first exchange
and I have already sort of decided what I think I might do.

I had a couple of questions about what BAP means. It means "Big A$$ Project." Those really big pieces/projects that take months if not years to finish and take up the most time but are the most rewarding in the end when you have a finish.

Thanks for stopping by!!!! Hope everyone had a great weekend!!!

Take care,
edgar

New Start - Garland Fair

I had a new start last night with "Garland Fair." This is #16 in the Loose Feathers series by Blackbird Designs. The suggested fabric is 30ct La Crosse blend by RR Reproductions and GA Maple Syrup overdyed floss. I changed the fabric to WDW 30ct Cappuccino and the floss to GA's Cinnamon. I did not care for the Maple Syrup colour and RR fabrics cool finishes on the fabric fade so quickly that I went with Weeks Dye Works instead. Here is a snap of the start.


I also changed my stitch rotation, boy that lasted one little day didn't it. :) I switched out "Emblem of Love" and put in "Forgiveness." I'll throw EoL into the Thursday spot when GF is finished.

Not too much else going on. The cable for the TV has been acting up so I have been watching a mini series called "Aristocrats." It was done in 1999 by the BBC and tells the "true" story of the Lennox sisters, Caroline, Emily, Louisa, Sarah and Cecily during the 18th century. They where great grand daughters of Charles II and his French mistress Louise Renée de Penancoët de Kérouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth. Their father was the 2nd Duke of Richmond. It is a really nice series and well acted in some of the same large houses and places that the actual sisters lived and built. One of the best performances is by Clive Smith as George II. If you have ever seen "Keeping up Appearances" he is the ever repressed husband Richard to ever social climbing Hyacinth Bucket (that's bouquet).

Have a great weekend, and thanks for stopping by!!!!!!

edgar

Free Stitch - VOHRH

Last nights free stitch was working on the sable borders for VOHRH. Not the most exciting stitching but necessary for the finished product. Here is a snap of more sable silk on linen.


Tonight I will have another new start as I will begin "Garland Fair" by Blackbird Designs. It is an older pattern from the Loose Feathers series that I won on eBay as it is OOP. I saw it as a finished piece a long time ago and it just took a long time to win the chart. You would think that it would come up often but in fact I only have seen a handful of these charts come up in the past year. It is a small project so it should not take very long to finish. Thursday nights will be "small project night." Then on Friday's I will work on the Heartfelt Friends RR. Right now I am working on Lizzy's piece. She has chosen the Dear Diary series from LHN. I chose to do Savannah as my fathers family is from there. They came over from England in the early 1730's. I'll post a picture on Monday of the progress.


This morning I had in my mail box the SBQ.
The Question is:

Would you ever stitch one of your BAPs a second time?
(This does not include starting over because of mistakes, bad fabric, etc. rather stitching something from the first stitch for a second time.)

I don't know..... it would depend on the BAP and the memories I retained from the first stitching. If asked for by a family member or someone very close and the project was fun to begin with I might just restitch that sucker. I might also restitch a BAP if knowing at the finish I could make the piece way nicer if I was to change the floss or linen colour it would be a better piece.
I do think that I would wait a year or so before I restitched some BAP just to get some space between the two pieces. If there were bad memories or the piece was a true pain I probably would NOT restitch the BAP because by then it would become a PIA-BAP. :)

I got a container yesterday of one of my favorite things - JellyBelly's!!!!
Here is a snap of them all delicious in one of my yellow ware bowls.



I don't know what that piece of paper is in the bottom of the picture,
but it sure wasn't there when I took the picture. :)

Thanks for stopping by!!!! Love those comments, keep'em coming!!!!!!!


Take care,
edgar

Started on the Village of Hawk Run Hollow

First off, thank you for the kind words about the finish of "Serenity." As my Grandpa used to say.... for me the finish was like "killing a bear!"
The plan for this piece is to frame it but not until I finish "Forgiveness" as I want them to be framed at the same time. I do not want to take the chance that if I get "Serenity" framed now that when I go back to get "Forgiveness" framed that the frame molding would have been discontinued and I would have to frame it in something different.

Last night I started on the "Village of Hawk Run Hollow." The snap is not that exciting as I am working the borders first, or I should say I am working the borders until I can't do them anymore and need to do something else. I plan to work square 5 first and then spiral out counter clockwise to the last square, the grave yard with all the black background......I really like that square a lot!! That's the plan right now, but who knows what the plan will be later on. :)
Here is the snap of some brown silk on linen.....




As you know the plan is to do 1 square a month and
then start "Houses OHRH" next September when this is finished.
Boy, do I have a lot of plans..... :)

I have put up my rotation in the side bar so lets see
if I can keep up with it.I know it will probably change,
but if it is in writing then I can see it
daily an try and follow it.

Thanks for stopping by, and for all the encouraging things everybody writes!!!!!!

Take care,
edgar

A Serene Finish

I put everything else aside and finished up on "Serenity." Woo-Hoo!!!!!!!
I have It is now ironed and put away until I finish "Forgiveness." I already have the chart and am waiting on the floss to arrive form Drema at Needlecraft Corner. I have recharted the colours for over dyed floss' instead of the recommended silks as I want these to be a pair and to hang together. Here is a snap of the finished "Serenity." I think it turned out quite nice.


Stitched on 28 ct Weichelt - Country French Cappuccino
using the recommended Crescent Colours over dyed floss'

It was lots of fun to stitch. I can't remember when I started it. I think it was in April.
Oh well on to "Forgiveness." I also picked up some DMC floss colours that I did not have so that I can start on Lizzy's RR.

We got some lovely roses last Thursday and they have really lasted. I think they are called Magic or Magician or something like that.
They are a really nice orange colour and perfect for the fall. Here is a snap.

I will put my rotation tomorrow as I still have not tweaked it to where I want it to be.

Hope everyone had a great day off yesterday.

Thanks for stopping by!!!!


Take care,
edgar