“This Is the Day” Finish

 Here is what I have been working on while grounded. This piece is straight off the Q-snap frame and has yet to be pressed, but I am super excited to share it with you. This photo did crop a bit of the image at the top. It’s This Is the Day by Plum Street Samplers. It has been my sole Sunday stitch for the past two years, and amazing but true . . . it was started on April 22, 2022, and I finished it yesterday April 21, 2024, just one day short of two years. When I recorded this finish in my cross stitch journal, I was amazed at the dates!

This brick house took a long time to stitch, but I love it.

It was stitched on 16 count White Chocolate Aida. If you are familiar with the pattern, you will notice a few changes that I made. I left out the goat in the top left corner over the flowers. It just didn’t make sense to me, so I stitched two bees instead. (It’s beyond me why the designer had a ram in the sky.) I also left out the stack of animals and long legged bird on the right side of the house and replaced them instead with flowers. I did use all the floss listed on the chart.

One of the first things I am going to do when I am no longer grounded is take this to be framed. I cannot wait to see this on my wall!!! :-)

No Retreat for Me

 

I should be on my way to Maine right now to attend a cross stitching retreat in Augusta. My bag had been packed, my cross stitch pieces packed, and Emma’s bag had been packed for a stay at her home away  from home. (I’m blessed to have friends whom Emma loves and who welcome her when I go away.) My plan was to leave this morning and take my time heading up the coast. I was going to stop at Portland Head Light to do some photography. Unfortunately, a foot issue will keep me from attending. As you know if you follow my blog, because of a foot issue, I recently had to cancel attending a guild quilting retreat on the Cape. Things had been healing well, and I was really looking forward to this retreat, but it was not to be. Yesterday there was a problem which means no retreat for me. Yes, I will be off my foot again for at least a week until an infection clears and things heal once again. :-(

I’m super grateful that it happened while I was home and not while I was away. So, it means time again to just sit and stitch and read. I had preordered and received yesterday Doris Kearns Goodwin’s new book An Unfinished Love Story - A Personal History of the 1960s, which I know will be a fascinating read. 

I’m also grateful that I had a visit with my cousin Kristin and her girls (the Ladies Lunch group) on Tuesday. It was a perfect day for outdoor dining and our destination was Tony’s along Wollaston Beach. Tony’s is the place if you love lobster rolls which I do, but the other day I was in the mood for a whole belly fried clam plate . . . Yum! Yum! Yum! 

The cross stitch piece above by designer Priscilla Blain of Stitching with the Housewives was completed last year, but I wasn’t crazy about how I had finished it. When I saw this display piece on the Paisleys and Polka Dots website, I knew it would be perfect for this piece. Paisleys and Polka Dots sells kits that you paint and then assemble. I glued a magnet to the wood  piece and a washer on the back of the cross stitch, so that I will be able to use it to display other pieces.

Lastly, here’s a look at the table mat that I had made for the retreat. The small green wool square is where I could park my needle and next to it is a place for my scissors. The little Campbell Kids lunch box was a thrifting find, and it contains my other stitching accessories. 

Well, that’s it. I have a jigsaw puzzle on the sunporch, and if it isn’t too cool, I may work on it for a while. Sit, stitch, read, puzzle . . . decisions . .  decisions . . . decisions. :-)

The Eclipse, an Amaryllis, and Breaking Resolutions

 Did you view the eclipse? It was indeed pretty cool!!! My friend Marilyn had given me two pairs of the special glasses, so I invited my friend Edith to join me in my special viewing area. Okay, we viewed it from the middle of my backyard. We had 93.4 eclipse coverage in our area, so it didn’t get dark or even dusk like, but it did get progressively cooler. 

I usually pick up a couple of amaryllis bulbs during the holiday season. The red one bloomed beautifully around Christmas, but this bulb was still in the box and, frankly, forgotten on a shelf in the cellar. I’m glad I came across it while searching for something else. :-) 

It’s April. How have you done keeping your New Year’s resolutions? Craft wise the results for me have been mixed. I haven’t accomplished as much as I had hoped to by this time. On the plus side, I have been quilting strictly from stash, but Saturday afternoon found me at The Quilted Crow in Bolton where I purchased a pattern and a few pieces of wool for a new wool applique project. Had I finished all the other wool projects waiting in the queue? Well, no, but I just couldn’t help myself. :-) This will be a spring themed piece, and I am looking forward to starting it.

Have a lovely week.

Happy Spring!

 Hello! It has been a minute. . . make that more than a month since my last post. I had been grounded for a few weeks with a foot issue, so there wasn’t much to write about. It was three weeks of sitting and stitching and sitting and reading . . . you get the picture. Things have improved, and on Friday I had a lovely trip to the grocery store. (I must say Stop and Shop home delivery has been great, but it was good to push a shopping cart again. :-),

It did give me time to stitch “Easter Tree “ by designer Shannon Christine. Though the piece is not that large it took quite a while to stitch due to all the color changes. If you know the pattern, you will realize that I left a few things out at the bottom. I also made great progress on a large piece which should be finished some time this week. I can’t wait to see it framed and hanging on the wall.

As for reading, I finished two novels both by William Martin. If you enjoy historical fiction, he is definitely an author to check out. As the title suggests, the first  deals with the California Gold Rush. Both are Peter Fallon novels. I finished the second in the wee hours of Saturday night. I was so close to the end that I could not put City of Dreams down. It begins with protagonist Peter Fallon receiving a text message asking if he is interested in saving America and a search is soon on for a mahogany box filled with twenty bonds from1780. This is the third William Martin book that I have read in the past two months, so I may choose to read something lighter next, but then I think I will go back and reread some of his other novels. Yes, he is that good! I can only hope that he is working on another Peter Fallon novel.

So, what have you been reading???

I received two beautiful flower arrangements for Easter; one from my godchild and her family and the other from her sister and her family who joined me for Easter dinner along with a friend. Bonus: My young cousin Des who is a Lego fanatic gave me a very lengthy, detailed explanation of the video game Brawlers. Am I ready to play? Did I understand it all? Not a clue, but it sure was fun listening to his enthusiastic, detailed explanation!

Last thing, did you know that this is the 50th anniversary of the tv series Little House on the Prairie based on the books by Laura Ingles Wilder? Nope, I don’t feel old . . . well maybe just a bit. :-) The television series is currently being broadcast in forty-six countries worldwide.

That’s it. Have a wonderful week. Wear protective lenses to view tomorrow’s eclipse, and don’t worry if you miss this one as there will be another total eclipse viewable in the USA on Aug. 23, 2044!!!