Progress, plans for 2018, etc.

Hi all! Coming to you from central Arizona where it's 65 degrees! Short sleeve weather! I know, I know...some of you are trying to keep warm! You have my sympathy believe me. This is the weirdest weather here. No rain since maybe August or September, certainly no snow. Last week, however, it dipped into 18 degrees in the early morning hours. That set off a rush of insulating pipes. It lasted just one day though! We're getting spoiled!

So I have progress to show, a new start, new stash, my reading plans, and plans for 2018. 

I continued stitching on Christmas Garden up until this past Wednesday. It's coming along nicely! The before picture....

and now

This pic shows the correct color of the fabric which is 30ct French Vanilla. I have to admit that this fabric is driving me nuts! You can't see it from the picture but I'm either pulling my stitches too tight or something. It's not warped from pulling stitches too tight, it's just the fabric strands have all been squeezed together in between each leg. It shows up through each flower and vase. Of course, it's probably just me and when it gets framed, non-stitchers won't notice it's there! I know it's there, lol! It still looks real nice. My plans for the next couple of months don't include Christmas Garden. So it's going byebye for a bit.

I mentioned joining a Harry Potter SAL in my last post. Here is what I've stitched so far...

This is Class Schedule. On my dyed fabric that was to be with another project but I decided to use it on this SAL because it needs a big piece of fabric. The vertical stitched line is part of a square. There are more squares stitched on either side of my start, and I think, two more rows of 3 squares below all. On the 1st, we will get the first pfd of what is stitched inside the first box. There may be a total of 10 squares but I'm not sure. Justine, I noticed you're tempted although you've joined other SALs. I say just do it! Life is too short, lol. So in the next couple of days I will try to get another square stitched in, the very first one. It's nice to have this new start.

In the last couple of month, I have picked up a few new charts...

I don't know when I'll stitch these but at least I have them. Once again, Christmas and Halloween! I need to branch out more!

So for 2018 I've decided to do a few new starts, beginning with Class Schedule. Every few days I'll just do something else. Next week I want to start this...

My Confederate Gray fabric looks nothing like the models version. This looks like a fairly fast stitch. 

I wish there were 5 more hours in the day for all the things I want to stitch!

I have my 2018 reading together...

Fiery Cross is what I'll begin reading. It takes me an entire month or two to get through these Outlander books! By the time I'm done with the series, I'm hoping her new one will be out. We shall see. The Widow of the South will be my 2nd reading, love it, and the rest are all new. I have to throw a scary one in there too with Daughters of The Witching Hill. 

Kay and Sharon W have received their gift card funds from my giveaway last post. That is always fun!

The Mani di Donna contest winners have not been announced yet. I'm not on pins and needles about it. Being the holidays, people are just busy. Speaking of holidays, a chart I ordered has gone missing. Last known location is Iowa on the 15th. It was the Stacy Nash Winston, the mouse. So cute. So I'm hoping it'll show up soon.

Our Christmas was wonderful, lots of eating, chocolate, tamales, chocolate. Yeah, I can't look at chocolate at all. I received from my daughter a heating pad! And chocolate! Dinner with daughters boyfriends family. Good food.

Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas! I thought I had more to talk about, guess not. I haven't been feeling the FFO bug so everything continues to sit and wait. I will be home for New Year's Eve trying to keep my cats calm because my town has chosen to set off fireworks twice! At 8:30 pm and at midnight! 

Oh, yeah. I have plans to do some craft fairs and farmers markets in 2018. One of my cousins does candles and soaps and I do sewing and needle crafts. I have ideas to use up some of the cotton fabric I have, things that I won't use on stitched ornaments. I have some DIY pallet crafts in mind. A coworker has already cut up some pallet board and even loaned me his saw. I have some neat stencils to apply to the pallet board, just have to buy paints, sealers, sanders and sandpaper. Ideas and more ideas. I have a glass cutter and tons of glass bottles to make candle holders and pendant lights out of them. So yeah! Wish me luck!

So now I'm just blabbering!

Happy New Year everyone! Hope 2018 is the best yet for you all! Thanks for hanging with me throughout the year! 

and the winners are....

KAY and SHARON W!!!

Congrats ladies! Contact me with your email address at ...........It takes at least a day for 123stitch to send you a gift card notification. By Thursday this week, you should see something! Thanks for playing everyone! Wish I had gift cards for everyone!

So how are you all? Keeping warm? Two weeks ago, our summer turned to winter in one day. I'm not sure we had an Autumn! I broke down and turned on the house heating and it's been on ever since! The older I get the colder I get. People are saying that for here, it's going to be a dry winter. So no white Christmas this year I guess:(

The stitching continues, however!

On December 1st, I picked up Christmas Garden by BBD....here is what I've stitched so far..

The lighting is not so good...below is the before picture...

I have already made a small counting error on this! At least I'm consistent! See the beginnings of the large flower at the right with two buds and the vertical stitches that look like a sideways J? They're 1 stitch too many. I'm not going to remove it because it won't throw anything off. I believe the light gold partial border below everything on the newer picture is the halfway point and I've almost stitched a quarter of the entire design. That huge flower is the center of the top portion. I'm enjoying this. A threat to Garden is a SAL that I joined. It's called Harry Potter-The Class Schedule SAL. Right now most people are stitching in the words Class Schedule and a bunch of boxes below it. I have the perfect fabric for it. I'm just clamping on the bit about starting this now but I really need to stitch on Garden more. The moral of this story is: never get on the internet first thing after waking up! I woke up, got on FB and someone was asking about this SAL. They had me at Harry Potter! I don't have a link for the SAL but if you search Armada Designs, you'll see it.

Before all that above, I had more done on the Christmas Carol Sampler. Here is what it looked like my last post..

and how it looks now...

I have turned the corner at the bottom. As you can see, I have the background houses in, the rest of the left-side border, and the top of the black carriage. I'm sure there are more snowflakes to stitch here and there. I'm more than halfway done. I'll be working on this more in January. Unfortunately, I ran out of the GAST Moonlit Path, the blue/gray of the big house. So I'm worried what a new skein will look like and hope the dye lot matches that one^.

I also FFO'd a little Christmas design and made it into a flange pillow via Vonna the Twisted Stitcher and her tutorial...

I don't know the name of it but words on my copy are Jura point de croix. Anyway, I love it! I made a mistake while cutting but it's not noticeable in the picture. First time making a flange pillow so this is my practice pillow. I love that kitty peeking behind the snowman. On the chart he has red eyes and red whiskers. Well, that won't do! So he has white eyes and whiskers now. I coffee dyed the ribbon at the top left. I have another flange pillow candidate so be watching for that. This was so easy and Vonna explains it very well. Thanks Vonna!

So that's is it! I wanted to announce the winners, show my progress and the one FFO. I have a work Christmas party next week so I have to find something to wear. I have Christmas cookies to make for gifts, a few more gifts to buy and wrap. Yesterday, I bought a few things and wrapped them. My daughter is 22 so she likes gift cards along with stocking stuffers. For my brothers who live in Phoenix, I send them gift cards. They say not to buy them anything; well, I'm the big sister and I do anyway!

Stitching-wise-I'll keep stitching on Christmas Garden while fending off Harry Potter and his influence! This 53 year old loves Harry Potter! I may use the last week of December and this year to start the HP SAL. We'll see...

I'll be back the end of December with an update on this past year. I had lots of finishes too. Happy about that. 

So I'll take this time to wish you all a very Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and happy days!!