Happy Thursday,

I have a new finish and start to show you all today! I haven't taken part in IHSW for a LONNNNG time, despite my best efforts. It's easy to let life whisk away your weekend I find, so hermitting can be a bit of a challenge. This weekend past however I found myself with a little extra time on my hands than usual and decided that some quality time with my stitching and netflix was in order :) I stitched until my hands and fingers went tingly and watched a season and a half of Bones. Yup I think I'd qualify this as a successful weekend!

I finished another house in the Santa's Village series by CCN and have another waiting in my WIPs bag just waiting for a start. I have 5 out of the 12 in the series right now... and NOW CCN has announced another series called Frosty Forest! I'm going to have to speed up because I find myself already loving the concept of Frosty Forest... oh dear ;)

Santa's Stocking Store
Country Cottage Needleworks
Stitched on 32ct Opalescent Belfast

I also put a start in on L*Ks new Mystery Sampler, Holly and Hearts.

I've been dying to start in on this sampler and have had it waiting in the lineup for a while. But I was being very disciplined and made myself hang off on starting until I finished my Santa's Village WIP! YEY for willpower.

Unfortunately, Santa's Magic has been neglected over the past week or so... just because I'm working with Kernik thread now and I hate it.

I figure once I've put the last stitch in part one of the L*K mystery sampler I'll kick my but in gear and continue on with Santa's Magic. I find with large intricate projects I always like a little side project just so I can take a break from it from time to time. Anyone else do this?

Also, do you notice how everything I'm working on right now is Christmas related?! I must have an obsession subconsciously... 

Ciao for now!

Melissa

Happy Friday!

Welcome to the long weekend everyone!!!! I am just so excited to take a break from building and spend it with lots of family and friends. Unfortunately that likely means very little stitching will be done… if any. BUT I certainly have made up for it!

I have tons of stitchy stuff to share with you!

First up, I finally finished Old Nantucket by LHN a couple of weeks ago.

I also finished part 3 of Santa's Village just last night - with the help of Annette over at California Stitcher! Here is North Pole Post Office by CCN in all it's glory :)

I also finished Part 1 of LHNs Seasons mystery sampler:

I know… not a finish picture but I'm too lazy to go take ANOTHER picture and then have to upload it and fiddle around with it haha. The couch is too comfy. 

And finally the postman made a visit today:

That my friends is the delicious floss I received after finding out that I was one of MANY winners during Nancy's Birthday Giveaway at The Victorian Motto Sampler Shoppe. I couldn't wait to take a picture and the light was just right to capture how vibrant and beautiful these skeins are :) Thanks Nancy!!!

Have a great looooong weekend everyone!!!

Melissa

Happy Wednesday Everyone!

Welcome to the end of the month already!!! Unbelievable. Where has this month gone at all????

Well I think I have an idea what I have spent my time doing... stitching and house building of course! I can't believe it's been just a little more than a month since we started building our house and all our hard work, sweat and even some tears (from pain) have produced this:

Coming right along. We're in the process of trying to get the garage up in the void you see on the left hand side of the house. Many thanks to my family for being such hard working people. Who would have thought you'd be working your day job AND moonlighting as construction personnel in the evening/weekends ;) We're also stillllll waiting for the town council on some critical decisions so we are trying to do what we can until those decisions have been made. But, I'm afraid if there isn't some kind of decision soon then it may well hold up construction!!!! Grrrrrr town council why do you have to do everything so slow!!! 

On the stitchy side of things, I wonder if it's possible to legitimately have a happy dance for getting long awaited stash in the mail??? Legitimately or not I was dancin away when I opened the mail box to find my order from 123stitch had arrived! 

You can probably remember my lamenting that I had run out of the floss I needed to finish off Nantucket. Well here is the lone skein of floss in all it's glory:

But wait there's more - you didn't really think I would order only one skein of floss did you???? Given that the shipping costs have gone up considerably recently I've been putting off purchasing stash (which is probably not a bad thing) until I absolutely need it and get many things at once to justify the extra shipping costs.

I decided to purchase the first part of Little House Needleworks Mystery sample + all the goodies.

Doesn't that over dyed floss look delicious???? I absolutely love the colours and cannot wait to dig into this sampler while waiting for the fabric for Santa's Magic (yes I decided on a fabric!!!! Thanks for the suggestions everyone!!!!)

I also purchased a couple more charts, floss and buttons from the Santa's Village Series by CCN.

I've been really enjoying stitching these little houses up and cannot wait to have all 12 completed :)

Speaking of the Santa's Village, I'm very near a finish with the North Pole Post Office. 

Unfortunately I neglected to order the floss to finish to roof as I thought I already had it... which I didn't. So once I finish the snow flakes and top boarder it's off to the WIP pile for this one until I get a chance to order that floss. I should mention that I was going to simply use the DMC conversion for the roof, but I simply could not resist the lovely variegated floss that is suppose to be used... I know I'm a sucker for specialty items haha. 

Until next time my dears!

Melissa

Happy Wednesday everyone!

Well after months of sparse stitching, I think I am finally FULLY back on the stitching train! All I can say it's about time. Between house building and constantly fighting the tendinitis in my wrist (which made stitching fairly painful after an extended stint in the stitching chair...) stitching has not really been a priority. Luckily, after a couple of months rest it seems that my wrist is finally getting back to normal... and the guys are currently roofing in the house - you will not see ME on that roof - so that means more time in the evenings than I've had in months!!!

I guess you could consider this as a mini-finish:

I've gone as far as I can until I get some more dark brown floss from 123stitch. I think I may have ran out of the required floss partly because I stitched on a higher count fabric than the model. Either way it was still agonizing to run out as I'm seriously one motif (a bird), the rest of the boarder around the word Nantucket, and a couple of finishing stitches away from putting this one in the 'Done' pile. 

OHHHHH WELLL!

So I moved onto my next (mini) project.

This is the 'North Pole Post Office' which is number three in the Santa's Village series by Country Cottage Needleworks. I'm stitching them all separately as I have vision of what I'm going to do with them in my new house... since there's 12 in the series that means I'm going to have to find 12 identical frames (GOOD LUCK WITH THAT haha). The best thing about this stitch is that it's fairly quick and you can see it come together in a flash. Very rewarding :)

I've also been thinking ahead to my next stitch... Santa's Magic. Not sure if I'll stitch this as a gift yet or keep it for myself. I guess it'll all depend on how easy the stitch is... however, since it's a Mirabilia I'm guessing it'll be fairly complicated. But I'm up for the challenge :)

There is one thing that is bothering me however with this chart - I've now sized it up several times... - and that is Santa's sleeve is empty of stitches for the most part, allowing you to tie in the colour of the linen with the overall design of the cross stitch. PROBLEM: the recommended fabric is called Desert Sand (which remarkable I have managed to find online) but it's yellow... very yellow. There are a few stitches you can see that complement the yellow fabric to shade in the said sleeve I was talking about earlier in the model picture. I don't like the fabric simply put. I can't imagine stitching on something so yellow and having it stand the test of time and still look good years from now. But how do I change the fabric colour so that I can alter the sleeve colours and still match Santa's hat????? What a conundrum! Please feel free to leave some suggestions because I don't think I can possibly decide what I can do without some input!

Model pic

Until next time!!!

Melissa