Backstitching and stash

It's been a busy week at work and at home, again, at some point I would think things would settle down. However, as we are going into our year end at work, I don't think it will be soon. Therefore, poor Garfield didn't get worked on again as I didn't get any lunch stitching in.

At home, I have gotten a couple of evenings to stitch while I watched DVD's with my DD. She keeps encouraging me to work on the backstitching so I can get Dogs of Duckport done, as she's picked out what she wants my next project to be, which will be for her. So...the faster the backstitch gets done the faster I start Flower Dragons for her. However, we still have not settled on what fabric she wants yet, as she wants an overdye not a solid color.

Dogs is now almost a third of the way done with the backstitching. I've started on the right side and will move across the picture. As much as I dislike doing backstitch, it really is making the piece pop and the dogs will be so much more distinctive now. I've made two small changes to the pattern already, the bottom flower farthest out on the right and the middle flower farthest out to the left were only designed as partial flowers, the outside edge cut off abruptly and had a straight line for a finish. This would work if it was matted right to the flower edge where the pattern stopped, but as I'm not sure how I want to finish it yet, I didn't want to have two flowers that were only half there just sitting. I tried to make them look like the other flowers that were totally done, and think they turned out ok. The other change I'm still thinking of making is the bottom portion of the fence on the right side. The pattern stops where it is shown now, but in looking at it, it seems the fence should continue down below the little dogs tail, it seems to stop mid air right now. It is this way both in the pattern and in the picture of the finished one, so it would seem to be correct, it just looks odd to me. So I'll be going back and filling in the fence color there so that the fence looks like it continues down below the dogs.

I got the last of my stash, so here is the the rest of what I got when I went to the stitching retreat a while back. Hmmm can you tell that I seem to be on a Little House Needleworks and Country Cottage Needleworks trend at the moment? The material I didn't order at the retreat. I recently joined the fabric of the month club with Shakespeare's Peddler and this is the May fabric. It is 28 ct Navy Bean by Lakeside Linen. The timing was perfect, as it looks to go with quite a few of my new stash (as well as the Country Mocha fabric I got a bit ago) so I should have plenty to stitch away on for a while.

We went to see the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie Friday night. While I really liked the movie over all, I would have done the ending a little differently. Oh well, for it being the third in a series, when generally the sequels start not doing so well, I was happy with it. It has finally stopped raining for a bit (it has been raining here off and on almost constantly since Thurs. night) so I'm off to run some errands. Hope everyone is enjoying the holiday weekend and I'll be catching up with what you've all been doing on your blogs later today.

Stashing and Stitching

While I haven't gotten much stitching done this week, I did get some lovely stash. First, here is a picture of my finished and framed Chocolate Shoppe,
I really like how it turned out. I decided to go with a simple frame (except for the cute edging along the outside edge) and no mat, as the ones I looked at seemed to start to overwhelm my finished piece. I haven't gotten it up in my kitchen yet, but it is hanging in my back room where I have various assorted finishes that I haven't placed yet.

The other items I got in my stash were these three lovely pieces of fabric.
They are all 28 count Vintage Cashel in Country Cream, Country Mocha, and Antique Green. I got quite a large piece of the Country Mocha as it was on sale for 20% off and I've really come to love this fabric. Mocha is what I did Chocolate Shoppe on, and I have several other projects from Little House Needleworks that I think would go nicely on this. The real color is much closer to the color shown in Chocolate Shoppe, for some reason my picture of the fabrics made Mocha look darker than it really is, the other two are very close to their real colors.

For patterns I got Charmed Tea For Two by Hinzeit I earlier got the Charmed Coffee by Hinzeit and think the two will make a fun pair.

As to Dogs of Duckport, here is where I am with this one.

While I have worked on this a couple of evenings. The starting and stopping with the flowers and wording seems to take longer than planned, as I'd hoped to get this portion done sooner (since it just doesn't look that big). The other part of this that takes me time is the end points on the wording are all french knots, which I hate doing as they just don't work well for me. I thought about using seed beads instead, but thought they would look odd with this piece, so just kept working with the french knots and I'm actually pretty happy with them now. So now just have the last half of the bottom left flower to stitch and this will be done except for...........backstitching. :(

I've received several comments on poor Garfield, who has been sadly missing of late. While he hasn't drifted into a UFO pile, he hasn't had much headway either. I've gotten no stitching at work done this week, so no headway on Garfield. However, I promise he will make an appearance by next weekend, him and his bunny slippers are just to cute not to finish.

Finally, I've been tagged by a couple of people for the 8 things about me that is making the rounds, and actually Lizzy tagged me a while back too and I'd forgotten. So I'll work on my 8 things and get them posted soon. Since I generally have a pretty boring life, this will be a bit of a challenge. Back last December or so I did the 6 weird things about me, and that one was hard to get items to list, so coming up with 8 new ones could be tricky. However, when I told my DD that I needed to get 8 things she started to smile and say she would help. It was a wicked type of smile, so her ideas could be, ummmm, interesting?

Hope everyone is having a lovely weekend. It was raining here earlier, but is starting to get sunny now so it looks promising. In addition, tonight I'm going out to dinner and to a play put on by our local play group, so it should be a fun evening.

Some progress

Well I've made some progress on Dogs. I now have all the inside section done (except for the backstitching) and just have about a half dozen flowers and the wording to do on the outside area (plus the backstitching).
I'm still enjoying working on this, and now with it starting to look so springy outside the grass and flowers on here even go along with the season. The flowers and wording seems to be going slower now though, as there is more starting and stopping.

Garfield only got worked on one lunch period this week, so in two weeks that is only about 45 minutes of stitching on that poor little guy. He's moving along, but slowly. Either work needs to settle down a bit (unfortunately not likely) or I'll need to bring him in and work on him at home. I really should have him done before all that is left on Dogs is the backstitching, otherwise I'll have two of them dragging out.

Thank you all for your kind comments and concern on Sasha and Jazmine. They are both fine now. This past week my DD has been battling a nasty cold, but that seems finally to have passed as well, and (fingers crossed) I don't seem to have caught it. Now that everyone seems to be better hopefully it lasts for a while.

I went to a lovely Mother's Day brunch today with my DM, DD, and my DSIL Kim. It was fun and nice to get together as a group. Kim was the hostess of our table and so was in charge of decorations. She did a great fruit centerpiece that looked like a flower bouqet, very cute. When I got home from the brunch I had a note in my mailbox saying I had a package at the post office ready to pick up. I can't pick it up until Monday, but then I'll have several new items to add to my stash, as well as having my finished framed Chocolate Shoppe back. I can't wait, I'm so looking forward to picking it up Monday and being able to hang it.

Well I'm off to try and catch up on what everyone has been doing. I've gotten behind in visiting blogs, so I'm sure there are lots of lovely projects that you all have been working on that I need to see. Have a wonderful Mother's Day tomorrow everyone.

Slow week

It's been a slow week, or at least a slow week for stitching. Lets see, my two main WIP's that I'm trying to work on are-

Garfield - Only managed to work on him one day at lunch this week, therefore, not enough got done to warrant posting a picture.

Dogs of Duckport - Unfortunately pretty much the same as Garfield, only got stitched on one evening this week, so again not enough to justify a picture.

Maybe if I'd stitched on the same one both times I'd have seen some headway, but since I didn't I'll wait to post a picture next week after hopefully having made some progress.

In addition to work being pretty hectic (hence not much free time at lunch) home life has been a challenge as well. A week ago Wednesday Jazmine (my youngest dog) got into something that really didn't agree with her stomach. Jazmine has always been on the nervous side, and it doesn't take a lot to upset her stomach anyway, but this one was, well to put it as delicately as possible, quite messy. So, my daughter and I were constantly taking her in and out of the house (even during the night about every hour or so) and even then having to do clean up. Finally on Sat. we went in to see the vet, as she wasn't getting any better. Jazmine ended up staying at the vets Sat. and Sun. and coming home Monday night. Sasha, who at that time was fine, stayed too, as where one goes the other needs to be as well or they really aren't happy. Jaz came home and was on a special diet and meds, eating only small amounts every 4 hours. She's much better now, off the meds, and starting to transition back to her regular kibble. However, yesterday Sasha (my oldest dog) started not feeling well. I had thought that she wouldn't get it, as it had been a while since Jaz had started with it, but no such luck. Maybe she didn't catch it from Jazmine, but the symptoms are the same, only not quite so bad. So... Sasha is now on meds. However, she doesn't need to be on a special diet, just only get small amounts at a time during the day so that her tummy doesn't have to work so hard. Hopefully by Monday they will both be back to normal, in the mean time it has been an interesting week.

My DD has been gone the last two days up to the university she graduated from. I think she is enjoying running around campus again. Her best friend Jess graduated today, so Amber went up yesterday and they and a couple other friends all did a Spa day to celebrate Jess's graduation. They had a manicure, pedicure, etc...a real girls day out. Then this morning Jess graduated. I was so happy that Amber was able to be home from Colorado to see it, I know it meant a lot to both of them.

So, while my DD has been gone, I've been taking care of animal detail all by myself. Thankfully the gecko's, other than a little water and turning the heat lamp on occationally, don't need much. Isis, her cat, is fitting in better as well. She's gotten brave enough to actually come downstairs a time or two. As soon as she notices me and knows that I've seen her she is back up the stairs, but at least she is getting a little more comfortable with the house and my various pets. My three cats make a point of going up to visit her so she doesn't get lonely, something I really think she'd be quite happy to live without, LOL. She even let me get two photo's of her. So, I'd like to introduce Isis, the newest furbaby running around the house.
She does look kind of spooky in this one as her eyes are reflecting so much, but she is a sweetheart, and as you can see a tiny little thing.



Hope everyone else had a productive week, with luck this coming week will be better for me as well.