Off to Carolina!

Hi everyone!  Hope your St Patty's Day is full of good music, food and green beer.  I love all 3 of them and for someone who doesn't have a drop of natural Irish in them, I still embrace the fun of the day,

The big reason for this post is to announce that I do have a finish that will soon be on its way to Faye of Carolina Stitcher fame for her special touch.  You may remember a few posts back when I  needed to sulk for awhile aftter making a horrendous goof on Ann Grimshaw.  Someone suggested a little "comfort" stitching to get over it, whick was an excellent idea.  So I decided to show a little love to my long forgotten Blue Dwelling is My Station, a purely impulse project I started several years ago and quickly lost enthusiasm for.  Here's how it was at the end of January when I found it in the box I  think of as my stitching orphanage.

Not much going on there, you'll have to agree.  But even after I made back up with Ann, I found it was fun to keep going on this little project as a way of taking a break from Miss Grinshaw's vast expanses.  Little by little (that's the time term, not the name of the design company!) I filled in the letters and then moved on to the borders and the actual blue dwelling.  Lo and behold, last night....it was done!

I decided to ask Faye if she could whip it into something awesome for several reasons:

• This little piece has been living on borrowed time for quite a while now and it deserves a little respect.  Faye's finishing will do that in a matter of a few weeks.  If finishing is up to me, it could linger again in limbo for ages and never see the light of day.  
• Even if I was up for the challenge of finishing it, the likelihood the end result would be anything I'd want to claim as my own is next to nil.  Bottom line - I will mangle it and then hate myself for even trying.  Faye will turn it into something awesome, worthy of showing off to sisters!

So I'll keep everyone posted as to it's future destiny with the amazing Faye.  No matter what, I'm sure it will be wonderful!

And speaking of  sisters, after I told the story  in my last post of how my sister Teresa got me terminally hooked as a stitcher, I wished I'd posted a picture of the two of us.  Unfortunately, I didn't have one in all our 1980's permed hair glory, but I did find this little sweetie, taken at an even earlier point in time.

I'm the one with the short pixie hair cut, while Teresa is sporting her famous blonde curls.  Funny thing is, all these years later we still have basically the same do's, only now the looks are mostly the result of hair color and skilled professionals.

Thanks for stopping by, especially to the new followers who've made their way here.  I love your comments!

The First and The Latest

Good morning everyone!  It feels really good to have the time to catch up on my stitching and blogging again.  The past month has been so off kilter, beginning with the sad dash to Illinois when Jim's dad passed.  Quickly on the heels of that trip were several days in Tallahassee for work.  I feel like I've been playing catch up for a long time now, but not really gaining much ground.  Still though, I have managed to make some time for stitching.  That's probably what's kept me sane lately!

I've so enjoyed reading all the recent blog posts that were prompted by Nicola's question about first stitching projects.  Mine was a sampler by Vanessa Ann (or maybe they were Shepherd's Bush by then, who knows?)  that I've completely forgotten the name of, but still hangs proudly in my bedroom.

You can tell by the date on this piece that I've been terminally hooked for 30 years now.

My sister Teresa was so excited to get me going with this new hobby she'd taken up, something called "counted cross stitch".    She showed me how all the floss colors had a different number and each color was represented on the chart by its own symbol.  And  it was done on this starchy background called aida cloth that made it really easy to count and see where to make each stitch.  I was a little nervous about it at first, this seemed sorta complicated.

But by the next morning, I was up to the challenge!  We convinced her husband to keep an eye on baby Jesse (who is a daddy himself now these days), put on our padded shoulder jackets and headed off to the Creative Hand Shoppe for all the necessary goods.  The rest is history, I've been stitching ever since.

So now we'll fast forward 30 years for an update on Miss Ann Grimshaw, my latest.  Not a whole lot of progress on her since the last update, given all the traveling and catch up lately, but still enough to have something to share.

I do love this sweet bunch of rosebuds....

...and am excited to have my first alphabet letter in.  I've decided the letters that are initials for family members  - J,E,H,T.M.D and R - will be stitched in the darker skein of Finnegan's Fog, while the others will be in the lighter.

Geez, on closer examination, it looks like that bottom eyelet needs a little repair work.  Don't you just hate that?!

Spring is definitely busting out all over in west central Florida right now.  Pollen is dropping, birds are singing and it won't be long at all before air conditioners are humming.  In the meantime though, Molly and Ruby are reveling in all the fresh grass and pesky squirrels in our back yard.

 
Molly tries to be friendly with them...

...but Ruby just tells them who's in charge.

Here's hoping a bright spring will find its way to your home too!