Yep, There's a Whole Lotta Stitching Going On!

So after many, many days of cold and rain, remember this is North West Florida, not the North East, the temperature started getting back into a somewhat bearable range and the sun came out. I took that as an opportunity to take my current WIP out to the porch for some sun, some natural vitamin D absorption, and just to basically prove to the neighbors that I was not in fact a vampire who couldn't leave her house for fear of turning to ash, although I'm pretty sure the three sons have been wishing for a house to fall on me, it's been one of those months, if you know what I mean.

I scored the wooden bowl as part of a set at a local thrift shop that is standing room only almost every single day. It's really crazy. I figured they must be selling crack to old folks but turns out they have an interesting inventory and occaisionally I find something kind of off the beaten path. These bowls have a colorful rooster painted in them and there's a bigger bowl too. I'll take a picture in the next day or two because I got the large bowl and four small ones for $2. Can't beat that! They work really well for holding bobbins of floss for projects that don't use more than say ten colors.


Does every sampler stitcher let out a deep sigh when they reach the section of border where you hope and pray the stitches meet up properly? I was so happy when I got to the final stitch of vine border and everything all came together just like it was supposed to.

Do you see that? A border that's properly stitched. We will not speak of Rachael Holmes as I have a problem in one of the bands and am trying to decide if I can live with the miscount or do I frog. I'm figuring Miss Rachael was probably too busy too do too much frogging so I'm thinking she would give me her blessing to leave the mistake in and know that absolutely no one would notice it, just me and my obsession that everyone in the world notices every single thing I do wrong. But this border, perfection if I do say so myself, and I do! It's so rare I can say that.

Laura Parker

Rose Tree Samplers

32ct Clay linen(from the stash)

DMC-2x2
Here is Laura all finished and sweet. While I like Adam & Eve samplers and have a pile of them to stitch eventually for a wall of sin of the likes no one has ever seen I must admit that my motivation to track down this chart and stitch this sampler, is the fact that it's the Laura Parker Sampler. I'm on a mission to stitch samplers with our family, my family, my ancestors names on them and imagine my excitement(not too hard to imagine since I'm an uber dork) when I saw the Laura Parker Sampler by Rose Tree Samplers. It was a very quick stitch and was my alternate Olympic Challenge SAL project. It's really more an NCIS sampler since I worked on it when I wasn't watching the Olympics and when I would watch NCIS.

Here's a close up of Adam & Eve.

I like that Eve appears to be feeding the serpent. Wasn't she supposed to feed Adam?

My friend Pam gifted me with my most favorite cooking pot. That's potato soup you see simmering there:

I call this Seven Year Itch Potato Soup. Why that odd name? Well when I was a kid, my dad would you know get an itch and leave for a few months, until my mom or my Papaw found him and brought him back home. I have quite a few tales about that time in my family's life but I won't bore you all with that. Can you say therapy? But whenever my dad would leave making sure my little brother had supper became my responsibility and one of the very first recipes I learned to cook, out of desperation more than anything was potato soup. We loved the potato soup on Shoney's soup and salad bar so every day I would come home from school and try to figure out the recipe. My mom didn't care what was for supper, just that she didn't have to deal with it so we ate whatever came out of the pot. Over the years my attempts got better and while my soup would never win any awards it's still pretty tasty.

The other day I realized I never ever make potato soup and it's really sad because I love it and could honestly eat it all the time. I never made it for my kids, not once, and back to the therapy thing, I do believe that I never make it because it's so connected to very low times in my life back when I was just a kid forced to be an adult because of two parents who had their own problems.

Lunch and you know what else I discovered? There's no way to photograph potato soup and make it look like anything other than a bowl of ick....but it really did taste good!

We Have a Winner!

Hi y'all! Apologies for disappearing like that it wasn't my intention.

I did the random number generator at Random.org and couldn't figure out how to post it here so please trust me when I say the winner was commenter #21 M. T. Pockets.

M.T. please email me at gulfskye at aol dot com and so I can get your address and send you your 40ct Swamp fabric and my gently used chart.

Thanks everyone for playing along.

I've been stitching a bit here and there and have posted on the Olympics SAL blog here:

2010 Winter Olympic Stitching Challenge

It's not too late to stitch along with us. Come join in the fun!

Amish Mistake Giveaway

Finally got a chance to get what I think is a better picture of my darling Ichabod but I did think about Anna's comment about how we don't want to be "that" person, the one searching for mistakes in needlework. At the time I posted I thought it would be fun because my mistake is pretty in your face but after taking a gazillion pictures and even close-ups of the mistake itself, it's not as obvious as I thought. So if you want a chance to win my gently used Primitive Needle Ichabod Seabury chart-I wrote on the last page, whoops, and a piece of Picture This Plus 40ct Swamp linen to stitch your Ichabod on, all you have to do is leave a comment to this post. If you leave one somewhere else on the blog I might not see it. I don't want anyone screaming shenanigans. I will use the random number generator to pick a winner, of course I must figure out how to do that. Ichabod Seabury

The Primitive Needle

40ct Swamp Linen-PTP

Belle Soie Silks

My current WIP can be seen below:

Rachael Holmes 1842

Heartstring Samplery

32ct linen aged by me

A potpourri of threads from the stash that matched Beth's thread's as closely as possible.

I'm stitching Rachael 1x2 on the 32ct and I'm loving the effect. The band to the bottom left is supposed to be eyelets, I messed up and made Smyrna crosses and decided I was not going to frog them since they looked just fine to me. As odd as it may sound I didn't have any of the WDWs in the stash or they were kitted with other projects so I pulled out my DMC color card and started matching over-dyed threads to the DMC equivalent. This is a fun, funky wonderful sampler to stitch. I don't want to put it down. For more of Beth Twist's designs check out her blog and there's a link to her etsy shop on her sidebar.

And finally, if you have not listened to the Glee Season 1 Volume 1 soundtrack, check it out. It's great. I have listened to it over and over and over. We've watched Glee from the very beginning, the 14 year old couldn't be bothered and he loves the CD. Now he wishes the show was still on. I mean seriously, it's way more entertaining than the current programing. Just sayin'.