Limoges Box Giveaway

Kim at Wisdom with Needle and Thread makes these sweet little porcelain boxes and is giving one away.

Like Kim, I too remember the frozen pot pies. They were 4/$1 when I was in college. I ate them so often I could actually tell the difference between the chicken, turkey, and beef pot pies at a glance. I wonder if that's why I prefer to cook from scratch today....

Go check out her blog. If you win the box, she'll put your initials on it for you.

As my dear daughter said when SHE was in college, "Swe-e-e-e-e-t."
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If you like offers that include FREE shipping, Beach Cottage Stitchers is taking signups for the Little House Needleworks Mystery Sampler. Free shipping on the charts with Auto-ship. I really don't need another project. I have enough, I have ENOUGH.

But it sounds like so much fun.            Darn it.


In the meantime, I'm still trying to get a new battery for my watch before I finish stringing all the beads. And I've received the last house for Santa's Village, the Christmas Tree Farm.

The house and the roof are WDW threads that I purchased a few weeks ago for this. As I've said before, the designer posts the threads for the piece on the website before the chart is released. But can I find where I put them? Of course not. They must be tucked away in that magical "safe place" that's so safe even I can't find it. That spot is more secure than Fort Knox. Or perhaps it's in Area 51 and the aliens have my thread. Wouldn't you like to see THEIR stitching?

In the meantime, I've begun work on a new hardanger piece. This beginner level kit from Nordic Needle is a white-on-white runner. Stitching the kloster blocks is quite soothing. This is how it should look when it's finished:



Very pretty isn't it? It's counting but since it's stitched almost entirely with #8 white pearl cotton, I think that it will make a good piece to take on a trip. First I need to complete the inner part of the outer edge, if that makes sense. The very outside edge is done in buttonhole stitch to keep the edge stronger. The section just inside that is all kloster blocks which are essentially satin stitches. If I've counted correctly, the stitches will meet when I get all the way around. In the meantime I check to see if my stitches are lined up by tracing my needle across the piece. If I end up at the mirror image of my last stitches then I'm probably okay.

Santa's Village

I've been working away on the Santa's Village piece from Cottage House.

Here is everything I've done so far. I chose to stitch it on the suggested 32 count Wichelt Lambswool linen, though now I wish I'd gone with a frosty blue color. I'm also using the buttons and will attach them after the piece is washed and pressed.

Here are the individual buildings.

Santa's House

Poinsettia Place

North Pole Post Office

Reindeer Stables-in process

Santa's Stocking Store

Mrs. Claus' Cookie Shop

Each house requires one or two skeins of a specialty floss so I've been adding to my stash at a nice slow pace. The threads needed for the next house are posted on the Country Cottage Needleworks website before the chart is released so I have time to have it ready before I receive the chart. I'm getting monthly shipments from Beach Cottage Stitchers and am very happy with the service.

Cleopatra's Cat

I have finally gotten back to working on my cat. If you looked at my stitching plans for 2013, you'd see that, in this fourth month of the year, I am about four months late.

Most stitchers would probably consider me right on schedule!

Here she is now. Cleopatra's Cat is a group correspondence course from the Embroiderers' Guild of America. She is charted for blue tones but I changed her over to red because I like red better and have a lot of it in my stash. I changed her eyes from gold to green.

The technique is called or'nue. It's a, get this, "laid filling stitch." Wha-a-a-t?

It works like this: you put down ("lay") metallic thread, then stitch over it to form the design. The original model was stitched on white-with-gold-metallic canvas. I used that same canvas, though it doesn't show up in the photos very well. And her face looks weird in this photo because I've only got part of the stitching done. She uses threads of wool, silk, cotton floss, pearl cotton, solid colors and over-dyes. She also uses just a little red metallic in addition to the gold thread.





 Here is the original photo from the EGA website.

You can see how different the design looks in a color change.

 Here are a few close-up photos of the various sections. If you click on them, they should get bigger and show more detail. See the gold flecks on the canvas? It looks really pretty in real life.

Soft little kitty feet.

This is over-dyed floss and gold thread.

The eyes will have a metallic gold iris.

Several of my EGA friends are doing this project also. We all made different choices. One stitched her on 24-count congress cloth instead of the 18-canvas, one stitched her on black canvas, etc. If I can, I'll get a photo of as many of the cats together as possible. Stitching with friends is just one of the many good things about being an EGA member.

I've been working on other projects as well. I still have to post my photos of Santa's Village from Cottage House Needleworks. I've also completed a cross-stitched quilt square for World of Charity Stitching. I'll get more photos up soon.

Christmas in March

I seem to have Christmas in my needlework right now. I signed up for the Santa's Village series from Country Cottage and am doing a SAL with a local group. I'll post pictures soon. I also just finished up four ornaments. The first three are a set of perforated paper gingerbread houses from the book "A Cross-Stitch Christmas: Handmade Holiday," and they have lots of beads.

Here is the first one. I added the Santa buttons for fun. I had three red bird buttons so each ornament got a bird.

Then there is this next little house. I opted for snowflakes on the roof. The bird is tucked on the back by the snowman.

This last one has a snowman button in the doorway on the front and it's little bird perched on the doorway. I have two different trees on the back. These little guys were more work than I'd anticipated but they were fun to make!

Then this ornament is actually a pattern from by EGA magazine of December 2011. My local EGA chapter, Baldy View, gave us all the materials for this as a gift. The kit even included precut cardstock, padding, and backing material. They even twisted up floss for the cording! Thanks, guys! It turned out really cute!

Santa's Village

Here is the first house in the collection, Santa's House. I'm picking up the Crescent Colors floss for the house tomorrow. This was two days of stitching.

Santa's Village from Country Cottage

I found out about this SAL for this adorable project, and then discovered that it was on sale at Beach Cottage Stitchers. I ordered the lambswool linen to stitch it all on one big piece.

Here are the first two houses. More information is at Country Cottage Needleworks. I'll be getting a chart each month. I've got a little bit started, but I don't my camera handy so I'll post photos when I get a chance. Unfortunately I discovered the SAL too late and it was already full.

I made my stitching plans for 2013 and can now report that I have done a big nothing on them. Cleopatra's Cat, which could not be finished by the middle of January anyway due to waiting for my thread, had not been touched. I have been working on my Ink Circles design because I was so close to getting it and it is finished and soaking in Orvus right now.

Christmas Stockings

Before I put all the Christmas things away, I thought I'd show off my stockings.

 I love seeing these over the fireplace. My stocking is the red plush from my childhood. Most are from felt embroidery kits.

Michal's stocking is the oldest dating from 1988. Kaitlyn's is next oldest, dating from 1990. Kaitlyn's looks a bit ragged because she loved her stocking and refused to let me put it away one year. Leigh's was made in 1996.

Timothy's stocking was made in 1998 and Alfred's in 1991. Most years I hang them in story order: Santa in his workshop (Leigh), Santa in his sleigh (Kaitlyn), Santa on the roof (Michal), and Santa in the house (Alfred). Tim's big Santa and my red plush went in some random place.
 

  When my daughter Michal got engaged to Jonathan in 2009 I decided to make him a stocking too. I wanted to do a cross stitch stocking and he chose this design "Bad Landing" from the book "A Cross Stitch Christmas/Season of Joy." It was my first all-over cross stitch.

The quality of this stocking is so much more than the felt ones that I toyed with the idea of making everybody a new stocking. I've decided that I won't do that after all. Each stocking represents where my skill level was at the time and really, each is done very well. They hold such sweet memories, too, of my children's excitement on so many Christmas mornings.

But I really should make a stocking for me.






For needleworkers Christmas is all year long. I've decided to start the Country Cottage Needleworks Santa's Village, a monthly mystery series. I also picked up some of The Victoria Sampler Gingerbread series charts at the Needlepoints Ltd. after-Christmas sale. Cute, cute, cute!