Favorite Finishes of 2008

Happy New Year. As usual, I am looking forward to the new year. We have alot of exciting things coming. The kids will all be another year older (so will I, but we don't have to talk about that, do we?) and Z will be old enough to start kindergarten in the fall. He wants to go on the school bus like his brother. There is a wedding in the family coming that we are all going to be involved in. As I was thinking about what I was looking forward to, I started thinking about the projects that I had finished in 2008. Here are my favorite finishes of the year:

These two are special to me because I stitched them on hand dyed fabric that I dyed. I started a small business earlier this year, Summer Breeze Hand Dyed Fabrics earlier this year. Business has been slow, but my LNS is carrying my fabrics on consignment, so I was really excited about it. This first piece is called "Chocolate Shoppe" and is by Little House Needleworks. I LOVE chocolate so when I saw this pattern I had to have and I had to do it right away. The fabric is called Milk Chocolate and is worked with DMC floss.

This is also by LHN and is called "Schoolgirl Lessons" The fabric is called Caribbean Sea and it worked with a DMC floss. Unfortunately, I can't remember which color I used, but I remember it being one of the higher numbers. When I finished this I found that it really matched the colors in the den, so I hangs right next to my stitching chair.

This is Daniel's quilt. I realize that this picture has been posted here before, but it really was one of my favorite projects of the year. It was made for our new nephew, Daniel, who was born in November. My SIL really loved it and was so pleased that I put all of the work into it.

This is the best finish of the year. This is "Noah's Sub" by Stoney Creek. I made it for my God-daughter. Her mom was doing the baby's room in a Noah's Ark theme and her dad is a huge Beatles fan. What do you make for a child like this? Noah in a Yellow Submarine, of course. I started it in January 2007, about three weeks after my God-daughter was born. I had to stop at one point in early March because Z, who thought he was trying to be mommy's helper, cut a large hole right in the center of the fabric. Yikes! But a woman on the 123 Message Board read my post about how my project had been ruined and told me that she had started this project, would never finished and would like to send me the one she had started. Not only was hers on much nicer fabric than I had used, but she was much farther along that I had been. Still, it took me 16 months to finish it. I did do some small projects at the same time because this one was so big that there were days when I just could not look at it. I think I did my biggest happy dance of joy when I finished this one. Right now it's hanging in my God-daughter's room and her mom, who has been my best friend since we were 13, was so grateful for the gift.

There you have it. My favorite finishes of the year. Hopefully, I'll have many more to show you in the coming year. Happy New Year and happy stitching!

I Really Do Stitch

I finally got to take pictures of the two projects that I've been working on. This Santa is a Sue Hillis design called "Yo Ho Ho Ho". I love his candy cane hook and peppermint peg leg. I was hoping to have him finished by Christmas, and I was doing really well on him, but life, or rather Christmas, got in the way I suppose. There really is not alot left to do on him. Santa is supposed to be carrying a tree on his back, so I have to finish that, and do the back stitching and then he will be done. At least I will have a head start on my Christmas stitching for next year.

I love this project and I've made a decision to work on it more in 2009 than I did in 2008. MJ bought me a personalized sampler from Nouveou Encore Designs for my birthday (which was in January) and I started it in the spring. To be fair, I didn't really do alot of work on it at first because I was working on "Noah's Sub" for my God-daughter, which took me 16 months to complete, so by the time I finished that I was really looking to work on small things. My sampler is 20 pages long, which is why this project took a back seat. After finishing Noah, this seemed daunting. But, it's been my project of choice lately and I'm really making some progress in it. Once I finish the border on the one side I will be done with the first row.

If you want to see what the sampler will look like you can go to http://www.nouveauencore.com. Look under Personalized Samplers Page 2 and you will find my complete design under Pam C.

Someone Sent Me A Frog

I sat down last night to work on my personalized sampler. The kids were up in their rooms and MJ was working on loading programs onto the new computer so I had some quite time all to myself. I was happy that I was almost done with the page I was on because it was the last page on the top row of the sampler. All of a sudden I notice that I off by one thread and that the border was not lining up. I spend almost an hour picking out what I had so carefully (or so I thought) stitched. Luckily, I was able to pinpoint where my mistake was and I was able to fix what I had done wrong.

Now that I have the new computer I will be able to take pictures of my WIPs so that people can see that I really do get some stitching done. It was hard to sit down and stitch in the days right before and during Christmas, but now that the holiday is over I can get some done. It feels good to have a needle in my hand, except when I have to frog out hours of work because of one thread. Argh!

I hope that everyone had a great Christmas. Ours was very busy, but really enjoyable. I had Christmas Eve here, which included my MIL, FIL, BIL, and future SIL. M and Z had a ball opening their presents from their grandparents. My FIL loves airplanes and has lots of models hanging in their basement so my kids have picked out which ones they like the best. FIL got each of the boys their own models of their favorite planes for them to play with. I snapped this picture after they opened them up:

After the kids opened their gifts I headed into the kitchen to get dinner ready. My family and MJ's family are of Italian descent so for Christmas Eve dinner it's fish, fish, and more fish. I had more pots and pans going on the stove at one time that I ever though possible! MJ wanted to have a picture of me cooking:

That is my MIL in the background. She wanted to help me cook, but I thought that would make for too many cooks in front of the stove, so she kept me company and handed me things that I needed from the table. We had a really nice night and I had alot of food. But then again, I guess that is one of the points of the holidays, isn't it? To be able to eat lots of good food.

I have to say that my favorite gift this season was the gift certificate that my BIL and future SIL gave me to Lazy Daisy, my local needlework shop. I ask for stitching stuff every year and nobody ever gets me stuff, so when I opened the envelope I was dancing for joy in my chair. I can't wait to head into the shop to spend it! There is always something that I want to buy there.

Merry Christmas

It's two days before Christmas and my kids are just busting! They are so excited about the holiday and the family coming to visit tomorrow and, of course, the presents. I remember what it was like when I was their age. Waiting for Santa to come and peeking into the living room on Christmas morning to see if he had come to bring us presents. It was magical.

I hope that everyone has a happy and Merry Christmas. I have company coming tomorrow and then we're heading to my uncle's for Christmas day and I'm looking forward to all of it!

Merry Christmas!

Is everyone ready for Christmas? I have one more present to buy and then I'm done. Today both of the boys have parties at school. Z's party is having s cookie exchange so I had to bring a dozen cookies in to school when I dropped him off. For M's party, called a "Multi-Cultural Feast", the teachers were looking for volunteers to make make things that you make at the holidays so that the whole class can have a taste. What does M want? Home made ice cream! I'm a sucker for that face when he looks as me with those eyes and says, "Please, mom!! Please???" How could I say no? So, M's fourth grade class will have a dessert of chocolate chip ice cream during their feast.

The people who I sent ornaments to got them and they were thrilled with them. That really made me happy to know that they went to homes that appreciate them. Last night I was at the monthly Sit and Stitch that is held that my LNS. It was a small group, but we had alot of fun. Everyone brought something sweet to eat (except for Sally - she brought the wine!) and a good time was had by all. I even won a prize! I won a Stitcher's Journal and a small pad of stickers that you can put on the back of frames stitched pieces that tell important things about the piece, like who made it, who it was for, and what the occasion was. I was excited. I think next year we may try to arrange an ornament exchange. I've never taken part of one, but after making my ornaments this year I think it's something that I would like to try.

I have no pictures to share as our computer crashed - for the third time. We finally decided that we were throwing good money after bad tying to get it up and running properly so we decided to buy a new one. It's money that we didn't really want to spend right now, but the frustration with getting the old one working was just not worth the hassle. So the new one is supposed to arrive here on Christmas Eve. Hopefully this will put an end to our computer dramas.

Christmas Decorations

We finally got our computer back from the tech who was fixing it and I was able to move pictures that were on my camera to the computer. I am so happy that we have everything back and working again. I feel like I've rejoined the 21st century!

Last weekend we put up our Christmas tree. Z and M love to help their dad with this job.

After all of the branches were put on, along with the light, garland, and ornaments this was our end result:

M and Z were showing each other some brotherly love while putting up the tree and, of course, I just had to capture the moment:

This year I really got into making ornaments. I subscribe to a British magazine called "Cross Stitch Gold" and in the last issue that I received there were these little ornament designs that I thought were great. The magazine had them all done in red, but I wanted to use other colors. These were the first set that I made:

I made a second set of them in the same colors to send out at gifts for people and I got the ones that needed to be mailed sent out yesterday. I was glad that I was able to finish them and get them out so that they will get to their destinations before Christmas.

This is my ornament tree. It's small, which is good because at the moment I don't have alot of ornaments to hang on it. It's just for my handmade ones. I think that my goal in the future will be to make one or two new ones each year. If I stick to that I think eventually I may have to get a bigger tree, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

I love when the house is all decorated and it looks like Christmas. The kids are excited and it just feels like a special time.

I Should Know By Now

I'm working on some ornaments that I want to send to people. I've already made some to hang on my tree and now I'm working on a second set to give away. The other day Z asked me to help him snap his jeans, so being the good mom that I am, I go over to help him and then go back to my stitching. Suddenly, I noticed a chocolate smudge on the ornament that I'm working on. There was chocolate all over my thumb. Where had that come from? I hadn't been eating anything at the time. Then I remembered! Z had been eating chocolate chip cookies. He must have dropped a chip on his clothes and not realized it. Now it was all over my thumb and my fabric. I washed the fabric as best as I could, but I can still see the mark of chocolate. So, I think that I will be giving away the one that is already done and hanging on my tree, and keeping the one with the smudge for myself.

This is not the first time that my little Z has has a run in with my stitching. A little more that two years ago, when Z was a few weeks away from turning three, I had left my scissors on the snack table next to my chair, along with "Noah's Sub", which I had just started to stitch for my God-daughter. The next thing that I knew, Z had the scissors in his hand and there was a decent sized hole in the middle of the fabric. When I told my mother-in-law what he had done she said to me, "And he's still breathing?" Luckily MJ was home when I discovered the hole and he shielded Z from me. Now that the piece is finished and hanging in my God-daughter's room I can laugh about it, but at the time I shed more than a few tears.

Hopefully this weekend I will be able to post some pictures of the tree decorating and the ornaments that I've stitched. Our computer tech called last night to tell me that computer was ready for MJ to pick up, so I'm hoping that this time it will really be okay. Most of my Christmas shopping is now done, which the exception of MJ's parents, so I'm looking forward to the holidays coming.

It's Beginning To Look Alot Like Christmas

Ugh! Our computer died - AGAIN!! So MJ took it back to the computer tech again to have him look at it. We think that he got the diagnosis right this time, and he's only charging us for the parts, but it will be Wednesday or Thursday before we can get it back. Luckily, my in-laws gave us their computer (which used to be our before we got a new one and gave them our old one) so that at least we could get online to check e-mails and do our banking. When technology works, it's really great, but when it fails, oh, boy, what a pain!

Our house is beginning to look alot like Christmas. M and Z helped their dad put up our tree on Saturday afternoon. When MJ and I were first married we would always get a real tree, but after a few years MJ convinced me that an artificial tree would be easier, and neater. I have to admit that he is right, but I really miss the smell of a real one. So clean and Christmassy. Our boys, however, really love to help their dad put the tree together. When I was a child we had an artificial tree, too, and I have some really great memories of helping my dad put the tree up with my sisters. Well, now my kids will have the same type of memories that I'm hoping they can tell their kids about.

I have also been getting alot of stitching done. I have a tiny fiber optic tree that sits in the corner of our den and last year I decided to make that tree the place where all of my stitched ornaments will call home. I haven't made any new ornaments in a few years. I was always busy making other things and I never really found a design that I felt that I wanted to make. A few weeks ago I got a new issue of "Cross Stitch Gold", which is a British cross stitch magazine, and there were a few designs for ornaments that I just loved. They were monochrome, small, and simple designs that could be stitched up quickly. It only took me a week to stitch up three of them and I spent yesterday afternoon sewing them together. I thought it was great to add something new to my ornament tree.

I have pictures of the tree trimming and the new stitched things, but I can't get them onto my blog until I get our computer back. Hopefully by the end of the week I'll be able to show off my work.