Finished...

That is what Ms. Anna Thies is! I put the last few stitches in this evening, so she can now go in the "done!" column. I have to say that I really enjoyed stitching this piece. I did it on 28 count so it was easy on the eyes (might have been 32 but same difference) but more than that I like the Berlin-work style of the motifs, especially the rose wreath. It was a quick stitch, all cross stitch except for some Algerian eyelets partway down each side. Maybe I'll actually get her framed, if I can figure out where would be a good place on the wall for her to live. I was still in a stitching mode after I finished Anna, so I pulled out This is the Day and put a few stitches in that as well. Here's where I am with that one:
I have a couple of other samplers kitted up but I'm going to try to be disciplined and get a little more done on this before I start another (yeah, right!) I also want to finish the stitching on Robert's Stocking, although I don't have any illusions about getting it finished and put together for this Christmas.

I hope everyone had a good holiday. I spent Thanksgiving with my guy's family, then I went to my parents' on Friday and we went to my sister's house for spaghetti (yummm!) on Friday evening. I drove back today; I left early to beat the worst of the traffic and also because I wanted to stop at the Fiesta ware outlet in a little group of outlet shops in Flatwoods, WV, which is about an hour north of Charleston. I got there around 10:45am and the sign on the door said they didn't open until noon. That was rather vexing. I was more interested in getting home than I was in shopping for Fiesta, however, so I just got back in the car and kept on truckin'. The Fiesta factory is not too far from where I live, so I think a road trip may be in my future :-)

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Happy stitching!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Wishing all of you a happy and blessed Thanksgiving, and safe journeys if you are traveling!

Looks Kind of Like a Cat

I managed to get in a good bit of stitching this afternoon whilst the Steelers were disecting the Raiders (I'm a Steeler fan, but I liked the Raiders when I first started watching football; I'm glad the Steelers won but I wouldn't have minded if the Raiders had done a little better than they did). The cat was kind of like the wreath on a much smaller scale -- fiddly with a few stitches here of this color and a few stitches over there of another color. But I got him done and now just need to finish the rug he's on. After that it's a few more Algerian eyelets and then a corner motif to match (kind of ) the one on the other side and Anna T can go in the "finished" column!

I was out of town for part of the weekend but when I got home yesterday, this was waiting for me on the back deck:

My guy and I stopped for lunch on the way to the airport yesterday and my cell phone rang as we were leaving. I didn't recognize the number and the call went to voice mail while I was deciding whether to answer it. Turned out it was a local florist, leaving a message that they had tried to make a delivery at my house but since no one was home, they had left the delivery on a chair on the deck. I told my guy what the message was and he just grinned and said, "Busted!" Today was my birthday and he sent this for an early birthday present (although I think it was a little earlier than he'd anticipated!) He's a sweet guy....definitely a keeper!

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I hope everyone has a safe and happy and blessed Thanksgiving -- safe journeys if you're traveling! Happy stitching!

Anna Progress

Another motif bites the dust and I've got in most of the remaining eyelet stitches -- hooray! The blob below the birdie will eventually be a kitten with a ball of yarn. The end is truly in sight on this one; it would be wonderful if I could get it finished before the end of the year. I'm planning to travel over Thanksgiving, so I think Anna will definitely be going along!

We had some friends over for dinner last night and made vegan pizza. It turned out pretty well; I found some vegetarian "meat" and some vegan "mozzarella cheese" and loaded the pizzas up with tomatoes, mushrooms and some yellow peppers and they turned out to be pretty darn good!

I hope everyone has a great week. Happy stitching!

November SBQ

This is the November Stitching Bloggers Question from Lee:

Tell us about a time that you were especially thankful for your ability to do needlework. Try not to answer in generalities, but rather try to answer with a specific time, event, or happening that made you very thankful that you could stitch. For instance, maybe your needlework got you through a difficult time. Maybe your needlework made a happy time even happier. Or perhaps your talent and skill created a wonderful situation. You get the idea.

I moved to Pittsburgh in 1997 for my job. I'd lived in northern Kentucky for 11 years and was pretty well settled there, but there was an opportunity for advancement with my company and I took it. I left a familiar place where I was comfortable and had friends to move somewhere totally unfamiliar where I knew maybe 3 people and them not very well. I was also moving from a customer-contact position to a back-office job so there was quite a bit of culture shock with that, and add into the mix the fact that at the time I wasn't expecting to stay in Pittsburgh more than 2 or 3 months because the plan was for the office to move to the Washington, D.C., area. It was exciting but it was also a bit scary and very unsettling.

Thank goodness for my stitching! At the time, I was working on Eileen Bennett's "Bands of Many Colors" sampler (in those days, I was a one-project-at-a-time stitcher). I think it had been published in Just Cross Stitch Magazine, maybe in multiple parts. It was so comforting to have that to come home to every evening, a constant in a world that was a-whirl. I finished
the piece shortly before I learned that the planned move to D.C. was off and eventually had it framed. I entered it in the Canfield (Ohio) fair a few years ago and it took a blue ribbon. It now hangs over the piano on my sampler wall.

Anna T Has a Name!

And a date! I finished putting in the name a couple of nights ago and got the left side bird motif almost done this evening. She's coming right along, I have to say.

Did everybody get their clocks changed last night? Well, assuming, of course, that you live somewhere that does the daylight savings time thing. The extra hour of sleep was nice last night but it sure got dark early this afternoon :-(

Wishing everyone a good week and happy stitching!

Nova Scotia!

A word of warning: This post is full of vacation pics. I'm just saying.

We had a wonderful time in Nova Scotia! It's stunningly beautiful, clean and full of friendly people. Even the weather cooperated...more or less. Our flight to Halifax was delayed due to fog in Halifax and at one point the captain came out of the cockpit and I heard him talking to the flight attendant and saying something that sounded like "Well, we've got plenty of gas". I was afraid we'd have to circle for a couple of hours (bad) or divert to another airport (worse), but he had a go at the approach and made it in...hooray!

The weather was foggy and drizzly but the temps were fairly mild. The day after our arrival, we headed out in the rental car along the south shore toward Peggy's Cove. It was foggy, but even this was an improvement from when we started out:

Peggy's Cove is a quaint little fishing village built right on the coast and it's a big tourist attraction. We were there during the week and off-season, so it wasn't crowded at all. The lighthouse is the big attraction.

You can't go in the lighthouse, but it's still neat to look at. There's also lots of rough surf and signs warning of the dangers of going too close. They didn't have to tell me twice; this picture is not as close as it looks.

We had lunch that day at a little pub called The Knot. My guy decided he wanted mussels, so he got a large order. Two pounds worth. Before:

And after:

I tried a couple and discovered that mussels are not my thing. I was happy to leave them to him.

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Another pretty little town along the coast, Mahone Bay:

We stayed in Dartmouth, across the harbour from Halifax, and rode the ferry over. This gal is in the ferry terminal on the Dartmouth side. Her name is Elizabeth and she was a gift to Halifax from Norfolk, VA, their sister city. The blue and white in her hair represent the sea, her stole is the Halifax tartan, and her tail flipper is, of course, the maple leaf. I thought she was neat.

I took my stitching with me and had the sense to a) not take sharp scissors and b) not take scissors that I would be heartbroken if I lost. Which was a good thing because the security folks at Halifax airport took the nail scissors that I've carried all over the U.S. along with a pair of fold-up scissors that ditto and that I can't imagine would be any kind of a threat to anybody, except maybe to break a nail trying to get the darn things unfolded. Neither was of any significant value, however, and the stitching scissors I had were blunt so those made it through. I stitched on one of Prairie Schooler's samplers on the plane but didn't take a pic.

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Snow is in the forecast for the weekend (nooooo!) so staying in and stitching sounds like a good thing!