Stitching, Stashing and a drawing.....

GR&DF I do thank you for your kind words about last Friday's post. I am also pleased that you enjoyed the murals from last week. I know there are loads of them all over the city - as I run into others I will get snaps of the more interesting ones.

This past weekend started off with a nice cosy dinner over at Dale's house. It wasn't just for dinner as Dale wanted a "reading." A Tarot card reading that is and Rico was happy to oblige - after smudging his apartment they got to reading, I of course sat in the living room and promptly fell asleep - typical.

Saturday was laundry day - and after 5 loads I was beat but had that sense of accomplishment from getting it all done!! The rest of the day was spent stitching away on my Alphablocks.... here is a snap of where it stands at the moment -

Sorry about how wonky the piece is - but you can see that the vine met without mishap - I was so happy when that happened!! You might also notice that I have started the block fill. I figured that this will be the year of "stitching from the stash" and so that's what I did. I went to my extra over dyed floss' and found that I had quite a few OWS floss' I had gotten for an earlier project. There is plenty of floss there so I am doing the fill with the lovely softly coloured OWS floss. So far I am very pleased with the result and may have to pull other bits for the fill from that ring of lovelies.

Yesterday we made a pilgrimage to NIAH. Specifically to meet up with Susan, who had very generously offered to loan me the "Alpha" charts I was so desperately obsessing about. I had already gotten as a gift the first chart - Thank you so much dear Sherry!!!! So I was only going to have to borrow the other two charts..... When I got there I went on over to where the Sheepish charts where hanging and right there in the little pile of them was the third part - "Alpha Sheep" - damned if I didn't do a jig right there in the store!!!! I completely thought I would have no chance at finding this chart just out for sale. I know that many stitchers are looking for these three charts and they just do not appear that often on eBay or anywhere else for that matter. While looking around, we where there a good 2 hours, I saw lots of other charts that are either out of print or ones other stitchers have mentioned looking for - If you have a chart need or hard to find chart I would suggest emailing NIAH with any requests you might have and you might just luck out. Now with my having the first and third charts I only needed to borrow the middle chart from Susan - which of course dear Susan loaned me!!! I am totally stoked to get this going....

Here is a snap of the three charts and the Belle Soie conversion I made. The piece is charted for NPI, DMC and Anchor - but I wanted to do this in over dyed silks (You know how stubborn I can get about some things!!! ) - so my conversion is mostly BS but there is a Gloriana skein in there for the Olde Gold colour. I had most of silks and only need to get a couple from NIAH. I think it will work up quite nicely. I do not have a piece of linen yet - but I did pick up apiece of linen for my next piece......

The memorial sampler I wanted to get going last year - I just never had a piece of linen I liked or that was big enough - so I made my decision and got it yesterday - it is vintage navy bean (I think) and is nice an lightly splotched - I have had the floss kitted up for the longest time and now with the fabric it will certainly be the next piece after Alphablocks.

We had the drawing for the JCS yesterday....


and from the BOD a name was pulled - and after being checked out by The Peach....

It was Donna's name that was pulled and is the winner of this the First Drawing of the Year!! Congratulations, Donna - I have emailed you for your snail mail address.

There you go sports fans!! Another low key weekend - Thanks for stopping by and thank you again for your kind comments!! Such nice things to read on a cold a windy Monday morning!!!

Take care,
edgar