T.G.I.F.!!

Evening all!

What an exhausting week this was. And we went past Spring and right into Summer! Today the temps here where I live reached 94 degrees! Phoenix reached 111. I'll be staying out of Phoenix until November unless I suddenly receive a lot of money and then I'll have to make a fast trip to Attic Needleworks!

I have some finishes from my Crazy list. Here they are


Candy Corn
With They Needle and Thread
Called for linen and fibers

Sorry for the dark pic. I'll be finishing this into a candy corn shape.



Antique Locks and Keys
Shakespeare's Peddler
Called for linen and fiber

 This is the second time I've stitched this one up. I'm out of the fabric now but I still have more silk to do another later on. As for the finish...don't know. I just know it won't be a pillow! Time to branch out, put on my big girl panties, and try some different finishes! I may try putting this on a box. So stay tuned for that!



Stars and Angels
JCS Ornament '11

This design is very nice in person. FYI: I ran out of the WDW Navy using an entire skein. I'd buy 2 skeins for this one. This will be a flat ornament in the same shape. HOORAY! I now have 4 Crazy finishes with 11 to go. Buuuutttt, I started a new stitch couple weeks ago and it's this one

Fancey Blackett-The Harvest Dance by Pineberry Lane. I'm stitching this on 28ct Antique White linen instead of the 28ct Ivory called for. I recently put in part of the border there on the right. Tonite when I get off of here, I'll stitch on her while watching my 2nd favorite paranormal investigator Zach Fagan with Ghost Adventures. I'm happy to throw in a somewhat big stitch into the mix..kind of challenge myself. It's already the half-way point of the year so I'll stitch more on my Crazy WIP's after I've had some progress on Fancey.

Recently, Theresa of Shakespeare's Peddler put out a call for help on her blog for donations to buy a kitty jungle gym for her local animal shelter. A lot of great needlework designers/companies donated a bunch of stitchy stuff and Theresa offered a $50 and $20 bag of asstd. items...I bought the $20 bag. Here's what arrived (above)-a biscornu pattern from Ink Circles, a freebie from Chessie & Me, a large count linen, the Belle Soie Peacock, that very cute pin with the pumpkin, and a Red Velvet Cake lip balm. Oh, oh, oh..I just love Red Velvet anything so I thought this was weird that I should receive a Red Velvet Cake lip balm. I felt like buying a lottery ticket! Anyway, I've been wanting to try to stitch and build a biscornu so here's my opportunity.

I also put in an order at 1-2-3 Stitch for two pieces of fabric for these two designs

In the Meadow by Country Cottage Needleworks. I haven't stitched anything by this designer so I'm lookin' forward to it. But I'm most excited about this next design that came with the silks

Vintage Stars by Jeannette Douglas. I've separated the silks but I'm confused about two colors that are almost alike. It would've been nice if the silks had been in little separate baggies and labeled. But oh well, I'll figure it out somehow. I'm waiting on two Cross Eyed Cricket leaflets, both Halloween-y and one had to be backordered. I've re-acquainted myself with Cross Eyed Cricket after looking for more carrot patterns, which I'll eventually purchase. I really like 1-2-3 Stitch because they ship so quickly. Come to find out they're up north in Utah, right above me! And their 13 x 17 fabric prices are agreeable to me.

We've finally arrived at the end of this here post and to my ongoing Prickly Pear Jam/Jelly installment. For those of you who are new, for the past few years I've been faithfully watering my Prickly Pear cactus so in the Fall I'd have all these wonderful Prickly Pears to make jam/jelly with. Well, just when the fruit turns a nice dark red, something like skunks or javelina, below, eat my fruits! Well, it doesn't

help when I forget to cover my cactus with something to keep those critters from eating them. My cactus looked like this last week, covered with these really pretty yellow flowers. I should have a

bumper crop by the time Fall arrives. Tomorrow morning I'm gonna cover these up with chicken wire. I don't know, those javelina are pretty crafty. Amazing that they'll eat the fruit covered in sharp spines!

Alrighty, time to stitch on Fancey. Thank You for all your comments on the last post. Jeanne, I'm sorry I didn't get back with you about the freebie of the carrot I stitched. I'll search for it but I may have thrown it out..I'll check. And Dulcinella, I have kept the Halloween fabric. I may use the pumpkin faces fabric for the back of Candy Corn.

Here's to a wonderful stitchy weekend to everyone!

Trip to the Mother of all LNS's! IMHO!

That just means that I haven't been anywhere else! This past Saturday Daughter and I went back to Phoenix to see a hockey game and for me, the Attic. Attic Needleworks, of course. Saturday morn, before we left, I checked their website and found that it was Nashville Market day. I had a feeling that it was going to be busy there. And was I right! First let me say that the front of this shop has reflective film on the windows and the door. When we drove by looking for a parking spot, my daughter said "It looks closed" (wishful thinking on her part!). I said that it couldn't be, today was Market day. We parked and I talked her into coming inside with me. Wow! It was crowded, and I felt I had arrived in Heaven (can you tell I haven't been in a needlework store in awhile?). By the way, my daughter ended up going to the car and waiting for me! Off to the right was a table with a class in session and a long line checking out. There was all the samplers on the walls, samplers that I've seen other bloggers stitch. But let me tell you, they look so much better in person. Especially the Sarah Elizabeth Brooke sampler. That was front and center, first thing you saw when walking in. This one was stitched on what looked like a stained fabric. It wasn't as huge as I thought either, and all the samplers were framed without glass. Made me think of framing without glass. You could spend 3 or 4 days at the Attic and not look at the same thing twice. All I wanted to do was look at the samplers!

To make a long story short, I found almost everything on my shopping list, plus a little bit more. Take a look

I had been looking for this chart and always thought it was a stand-alone. It wasn't until recently that I learned it was in the Joyeux Noel BBD book. I also got a cut of Lakeside Vt Pear, right below the book, to stitch it on. I'm not a big sampler stitcher, having stitched only one, but I've admired the Christmas Garden design by BBD and grabbed it as it was the last one left. The other fabrics above are 40ct Vt Meadow Rue and 36ct Vt Maritime. Below are leaflets that were NOT on my list!

It wasn't until I got home that I noticed I had bought all Christmas and Halloween. Beginning at top left, left to right: The House that Jacks Built II by Prairie Moon, Fancey Blackett-The Harvest Dance by Pineberry Lane, by golly be jolly by LK w/fabric, Ghostie Manor by Bent Creek, Bringing Home the Tree w/fab and fibers by LHN, and Dead of Night by Funk and Weber Designs.

In another room was all the new Market stuff. By then I had all the above in a basket, which was getting heavy. I was trying not to add it all up in my head. I looked around at all the things in the Market room but decided I'd better quit while I was ahead. Besides, my daughter was still in the car! Luckily, the weather outside was a pleasant 70 degrees or so. The whole 2 hours I was in the store, I stood in line to checkout for 30 minutes of that. I know for a fact that a lot of money was spent in that store. One woman in front of me had dozens and dozens of skeins of fibers, fabrics, and a few charts. She put it all on credit. Then it was my turn..ouch! But you know what? I'm good with it. I kept it below $200! And it'll keep me out of trouble!

February is basically the time when me and my daughter do a little splurging. I receive my tax refund and do some of the things that we don't get to the rest of the year. After the Attic, we headed out west to go to Cabela's and to the Arrowhead Mall, to look around and kill some time before the game. Unfortunately, the Coyotes lost 4-2. Here's where they play, Jobing.com arena

It was a great weekend!

Last week, for the first time ever, I took a stitching of mine to Michael's to be framed. I already had the frame. I am very happy with it!

This was one of my WIP's from 2011. I had non-glare glass put on with spacers. The framer did an excellent job stretching the stitching and the cost wasn't all that bad. I'll have to wait another year to have anything framed because I know bigger things will cost more. Here's another side of the frame

I stitched on one of my Crazy starts the last week of February, Candy Corn by With Thy Needle and Thread

She's coming along. I began my Freebies Madness Challenge on the 1st. I don't have a pic of that but I should be done stitching it this week. I hope so! At the rate I'm going, I'll have dozens of WIP's for next year!

I just received more stash in the mail today

More needed floss, yet another scary design, and a needleminder that I really, really needed! This is seriously the last of the Stash that I will be buying (lol!). I'm counting on my willpower to not start any of my new purchases and just concentrate on my freebies for March and go back to CJC starts in April. When I've actually finished a couple of designs, then I may reward myself with a start on something new! We'll see!

Thanks for coming along for the re-cap of my trip! Since I spent enough at the Attic, I will wait for another year to visit! I know, very hard but if you've been to Phoenix in the summer, you'll understand!

Renaissance Festival pics and yapping

WARNING: Pic Heavy and Dungeon Torture pics! Just wanted to warn you!

President's Day found us (me, daughter and daughter's friend) heading down to Apache Junction for the annual Arizona Renaissance Festival. It looked like it was going to be a nice day. One of the first things we did was visit the Dungeon! Ooooohhh!

The Chastity Belt! Daughter and her friend couldn't believe this kind of thing existed! These are all dummies BTW! Can you see the big padlock on the side!

The Executioner! Pretty creepy huh?! Most of the displays came with explanations.

This torture form is pretty self-explanatory! You might start confessing to something when those rats start sniffing around the face.

This one is pretty gross! According to the explanation, a cut is placed into the belly of the prisoner and part of their intestine is pulled out and wrapped around the horizontal bar above. Then the handle on the side is rotated, slowly pulling the intestine out. I'm not sure anything coherent could be spoken!

O.K., what happens here is the prisoner is strapped to the wood X and then turned around while someone strikes in various places with an iron bar. This one is not so grisly as the one above.

Alright, this is the last one. I know, it's been torture hasn't it?! What you can't see is the saw blade off to the left. The prisoner sits on a wooden board and is moved forward a little at a time toward the saw blade. Perfect for obtaining confessions! There were other forms of torture that I didn't take pics of like an Iron Maiden (a cage in human form with spikes on the inside pointing to the unfortunate person).

My daughter and her friend rode an elephant and a camel but here they are on an elephant. My daughter is on the left.

And this is real cute! It came out great.

Throughout the whole festival are tradesmen, purveyors of fine clothing, and demonstrations of glass blowing, candle making, and more. The clothing always draw me because they are just pretty

The dress at the top is a wench's dress. Above, the one on the left looks like a Naval officers dress (or pirate!) and on the right, a church official. They would make great Halloween costumes but expensive ones. The wench's dress was $135!

And look who we ran into!

Captain Jack Sparrow! We saw two of these guys and they look like the real thing! It takes a whole day to take this festival in and I always spend too much on sourvenirs and food and drink. But we always have fun!

Today, I started on my next CJC start but Frog visited and I had to rip out all the black because I needed to place the design to the side so I'd have enough fabric to use for the backing. It's to be finished like the shape of a candy corn. And oh my, what's that around the fabric?! A Q-snap, or one like it!

I usually stitch in hand but I've started noticing that when I'm ironing the finished product, the wrinkles where I held it are tough to get out. So I thought I'd give the faux Q-snap a try and so far I'm liking it. I have tissue paper under the bars to protect the fabric and I like the idea of keeping my hands off the fabric. I'd like to buy longer rods for bigger projects too.

So have you all checked out all the new stuff coming out from Nashville? I haven't seen anything that interests me. There's one ONS that I buy from, Stitching Bits and Bobs, that has updates from Nashville. You should check it out. This coming Saturday, the 3rd, is our trip to Phoenix to take in a pro hockey game and my destination-the Attic! I have my shopping list ready and just can't wait! I'm looking for the BBD book that has the 'Tis The Season design in it, among others. Edgar just finished his and I saw it framed over at Keeper of the Crowes (you can click on that link). I'm in total love with it! I'm also looking for some fabric and whatever strikes my fancy. I've seen the book on eBay and here and there but it's like going to the movies, you've just got to buy the popcorn and the soda. I couldn't NOT buy anything from the Attic! I just hope I don't bankrupt myself! Wish me luck!

Thanks for coming by and have a super week! I'll leave you with a pic of the Psycho Sisters (Mo behind E.T.) :))

"Whould you shut that camera off? We're sleeping here!"

Procrastination rears its ugly head!

Well, I pulled it out! Barely! I know the rules aren't set in stone but still...! Here are my starts for the last 6 days, counting from the last to #10

I thought I had a picture of the chart but I didn't. This is 30ct WDW Gold linen, using WDW threads. How shameful, lol!

O.K, here's my 14th start

This is the beginnings of the pattern at the bottom, the pillow. Using 32ct Queen Anne's Lace jobelan with a mix of CC threads, DMC and some beads. That's a pretty fabric; wish I could find it in linen.

The 13th start is a re-visit to my favorite WIP-Winter at Beacon House or WaBH, from the Jan/Feb '10 issue of JCS. I stopped stitching on this in August to start my holiday stitching. Here's what it looked like then, here's what I stitched Saturday and was having fun, I might add.

I'm hoping to have this finished by the end of the year. Just being realistic!

The 12th start

This is Stars and Angels and I don't have a pic! Sorry! It is stitched on 30ct Parchment by WDW with just two WDW threads.

11th start

Christmas Magic, on 32ct white linen using DMC threads, Mill Hill beads. Still no pic! I'm almost to the finish line! Here's #10

Meet Tweet stitched on ?ct Days Gone By linen with a mix of GAST, WDW, and Kreinik braid. I stitched up one like this, different year from a JCS ornament magazine and same designer, and it was enjoyable so going to make this my focus point for this week. Another Yahoo group stitcher mentioned she was going to spend a week on one of her new starts and then move to another start the next week and I think that's an excellent idea!

Whew, my computer is really acting up. I have a blank square smack in the middle of the screen so I will apologize first-hand for any punctuation, spelling and whatever else mistakes are in this post!:))

I now have 17 WIP's (2 are ones that I already had) and will spend tomorrow and the following days on Tweet. But for now I'm going to read Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban while listening to Kill Bill 1 on the t.v. I know, a bloody, bloody movie but it's entertaining!

Have a super week! And a big WELCOME to the new followers!