Fair and Square - Round 1

Thank you so much Annemarie and Vonna for setting up and hosting this wonderful exchange http://fairsquares.blogspot.com/. For me Round 1 is now finished as Donna received my square yesterday.

So here they are. This is Donna's square for me. It is very cute and certainly not "cutsie" as she had initially feared. Thank you so much Donna. This first square will always have a special place on my friendship quilt.


And here is the square I sent to Donna. She likes antique & country designs so I stitched the Snapperville "Homestead" by Bent Creek.

This has been such fun and I'm looking forward to Round 2.

Note about previous post
Many of you thought I had received two adorable pincushions from Lili and that is certainly the way it looked on the picture but I must clarify. In order to show you the entire pincushion on one image I photo-copied both sides, cut them out and then placed these images on top of the rest of the gift. Actually I thought I was being pretty creative (lol) but guess I wasn't.

Mail from France

This week the mailman brought a birthday package all the way from France!!!!


Lili http://anothercrossstitchaddict.blogspot.com/ has really spoiled me with her lovely birthday gifts. She made me a Spring & Summer pincushion which is absolutely adorable with colors so lovely and cheerful (the picture doesn't do it proper justice - the colors are much brighter). In order to show both sides of the pincushion I made photo-copies of each side first and then scanned the entire gift. It's been put with my favorite stitching projects so I can enjoy it daily.

Oh Lili, how sweet of you to remember my raving about "La Boutique" the moment it was introduced by CCN. I can hardly wait to start stitching it.

Lili also sent some wonderful Zweigart fabrics - a midnight blue cashel linen and dark moss green aida. The ideas for designs on these are already forming in my head.

I LOVE EVERYTHING!!!!! {{{Lili}}} thank you so very, very much for making this birthday so extra special with your lovely gifts and your wonderful friendship.

An old Friend and a new SAL

Welcome back Gail!!! It's so good to see you are blogging again. Many of you will remember Gail (MS Stitch) and just like me have missed her for many months - well she's finally back at http://ramblingstitches.blogspot.com/ If you haven't met Gail before you should check out her site and her beautiful work.

On Friday Brenda came over for a wonderful day of gabbing & stitching and we started the SAL that we have been planning for months. We are stitching Mirabelia's "Autumn In My Garden". I'm stiching my lady 2/2 on 32 ct platinum Lugana with the required DMC floss. Originally I considered stitching 1/2 but with the piece being so large I felt that the 2/2, which is what the designer Nora Corbett suggests, would be a better choice. Now I do have some ??? about her face. Would it be a good idea to stitch that either 1/2 or 1/1 (DMC 948) in order for it to be more delicate looking? Any thoughts/advice on this are welcome. A lot of my time on Friday was taken up by gridding the top left quadrant so all I have to show at the moment is a bit of brown border and some brown hair. As soon as she takes some sort of shape I will post a picture.

Last week I noticed that Blackbird Designs has a new freebie and, being the BD fan I have become, just couldn't resist 'Spring's Notice'. It is stitched 2/2 on 32 ct oyster linen with DMC floss and the finish is only 2 1/2 x 2 1/2 in.

On the Fair and Square front - I'm almost finished and will hopefully be able to mail my square to Donna by the end of the week. Once she has received it I'll post a picture.

Now for a little non-stitching news. Last night DH & I went the the Clint Holmes muscial JAM (Just Another Man) at the Nevada Conservatory Theatre at UNLV. For those of you who don't know Clint - he is the son of an English opera singer and an American GI/jazz singer who met during WWII. His voice contains the best of both parents and his performances are fabulous. JAM is autobiographical and a wonderful show. What is extra special is the fact that his real-life sister (Gayle Steele - another fabulous voice) plays his sister in the musical. JAM is playing here for a month while they get the kinks out and will then move to London, England. If you get a chance - SEE IT!!!

Special note for D

It's hard to believe your year in China is almost at an end. Enoy these final days and experiences in Longyan and have a fantastic trip to Shanghai & its 'silk market' and Toyko. Your emails and pictures this past year have been fantastic and always make me feel like I am part of your adventure. Thank you!!

Have a wonderful week everyone.

Tomorrow I'll Blog

Things have been hectic around here since I last posted and although I've often thought "tomorrow I'll blog" it has taken until now for tomorrow to arrive.

Last weekend DH and I were in Atlanta for a conference for online store owners. We took the redeye on Wednesday arriving in Atlanta at 6:00 am. By 7:00 am we were checked in to our hotel and actually very tired (not much sleep on the plane plus a 3 hr time difference). We went out for breakfast and then decided we might as well take a short nap in order to enjoy the rest of our ‘free’ day. Up again at 11:00 and feeling very refreshed we set off on a short tour of Atlanta. We visited Olympic Park, the Coca Cola museum store (outrageous prices), the CNN studios where we took a fantastic tour (it is great to watch the newscasts now with the knowledge that you’ve been there), and the State Capital building which is very impressive. By that time it was late afternoon and although there were many other things we would have loved to see we felt it was enough for one day. The following three days were very intense with lectures & presentations from 8:45 am till around 6:15 pm. After that we would freshen up in our room and head out for a relaxing meal. Atlanta has some great restaurants and we enjoyed some fabulous food & wine. Sunday we flew home at 10:00 pm ET and drove into our garage around 12:30 PT.

This past week has been spent in catching up on work & sleep. But now it's weekend and time for some stitching updates.

This is the lovely birthday gift I received from my dear friend Brenda. I'm afraid my image does not do proper justice to this pretty snowflake. It is stitched with sparkley white floss (we all know how time-consuming that is) on dusky blue linen. She's even had it framed in a sparkley white frame. You may remember that B & I are stitching to decorate seasonal walls and this adorable snowflake will always have a very special place on my Christmas wall. I love it B!!


Welcome to the Tuesday Frederick SAL 'Berta http://busyhandshappyheart.blogspot.com/ Bliss and I are happy that you have joined us in our journey. I've managed to run out of two of the flosses and although Dimensions offers to send them I was lucky to have some help from an SP friend who knows that Dimensions floss is based on Anchor, so I'm taking the easy road and just replacing it myself. I don't know if I would do this with any other pattern but with all the small color areas the dyelot differences should be no problem.

And a finish - "High Hopes" by Just Nan . What a wonderful pattern this is and what an absolute gem to stitch. Helen you must re-start it and stitch 1/2 as I think you will love the result. I still have to attach the fountain charm and find a discreet spot for my initials and the year.

I'm sorry if this post is going on and on and will certainly try to write more often so that I don't have so much to tell and possibly bore you to tears.

For those of you who haven't heard about it please visit Fair and Square http://fairsquares.blogspot.com/ which Annemarie http://wackywanderings.blogspot.com/ and Vonna http://thetwistedstitcher.blogspot.com/ have organized and are hosting. Thank you so much ladies. When we returned home from Atlanta an email was awaiting me with the name of my exchange partner so I immediately started looking for just the right pattern for Donna. I think I've succeeded and am now busily stitching away on this fun project.

A special note to Gail (MS Stitch). It was so good to hear from you Gail as I've missed reading your posts. Thank you for your birthday wishes. I'm so sorry you were receiving inappropriate emails and can understand why you stopped blogging. Hopefully you'll be back soon and otherwise perhaps we can talk via email.

There's more to tell about projects which have been kitted and are ready to start but I think I'll leave that until next time. Now it's time for me to visit all of you.

Have a good weekend everyone.