Not Fa La La La La La La

But La D Da Da Da or Tah Da De Da De Da:

In the Garden

La D Da

40ct lambswool(I think)

DMC floss

Why yes Virginia there is a finish before Christmas. BELIEVE! This morning while watching LOTR: The Two Towers I put the last stitch into the border. It was nice to actually wrap something up before Christmas. Yeah, pun intended, because I'm a dork like that.

No other news to speak of other than I scored this nifty bowl thrifting last week. Right now it's buried under books and DVDs while we attempt one more time to move the TV armoire but even as emptied out as it is it still won't budge. We are afraid to remove the tv from the top because we will never get it back up there because it's almost as heavy as the aforementioned armoire.

The tree is leaning against the living room as I have stated that I will not put up the tree until the living room is rearranged because I've determined that every single thing wrong in my life is directly related to the poor positioning of the tv armoire. My world would be all rainbows and unicorns if only we could move that armoire.

I did mention previously that I am in the throes of perimenopausal insanity? Oh yes, the crazy is coming round full force these days. It's amazing what small thing determines the quality of my life.

Now back to working on Rachael Holmes and the hope to have her completed before the ball drops in Times Square.

Coming soon:

My 2011 WIP Challenge List

My 2011 Crazy January Challenge List

My Wednesday was Wicked

Wednesday from here on out, at least until I get bored with the idea, will be known as Wicked Wednesday. That means I can stitch on Halloween/Autumn/tombstone designs or Adam & Eve designs because I was raised Southern Baptist and well that serpent is the epitomy of wicked according to some powers that be. Work with me here because this gives me an option of switching from Autumn themed stitching to A&E and gives me an out when I'm tired of orange and falling leaves, not that I can ever see that happening but one never knows which way the cross stitch wind might be blowing.

Wednesday night after working on La D Da's In the Garden and Notforgotten Farm's Halloween Queen I had the strangest dream. You see the snake? You see my Pumpkinheaded Queen? Well in my dream they were chasing me. The dogs woke me up at 2 a.m. which is why I don't know if they ever caught me but let me tell you I woke up sweating and exhausted. See the snake below? He was chasing me in his coiled around Eve shape. Eve was no where to be found so he was kind of bouncing like a Slinky or sproingy springy kind of thing. Yes, it was as weird as it sounds. And no I did not drop any acid before bedtime. If I had I suspect his coloring might have been a bit more vivid.

The Halloween Queen a.k.a. Pumpkinheaded Queen was chasing me and trying to hit me with the branch she is holding that I haven't stitched yet. I was kind of freakin' when I woke up because it was so real. I'm not sure why these two decided to work together to torment my subconscious but they made a great team!

Here's a close up of my Halloween Queen. I love this design so much. The designer is Lori Brechlin of Notforgotten Farm.

It was a little breezy today so I pulled out some books to help hold down the Queen during her photo shoot because I wasn't in the mood to whacked with a stick or for her to blow off the table and get dirty. I have enough dog and cat hair issues to add outside dirt to the equation.

Here's my progress on La D Da's In the Garden. I'm loving this piece too. I have trouble every day deciding which of these projects to work on. So far I've been splitting my stitching time between them and it seems to be working well for the time being.

This being October 1st and all, don't forget to stop by Missy Ann's blog for the 31 Days of Halloween extravaganza.

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!