What I've Been Up To This Past Few Weeks

This will be coming home with me when it's released to the shops. I love it!! It's a new design from Carriagehouse Samplings called Blackhorse Inn. It's got HORSES!!! HORSES!! Yay!!

I have been stitching. Small things, mainly pincushions and pinkeeps. I had a few designs that I started as *in-betweens*, you know the projects that help you keep your sanity between the big projects, the projects that you stitch hours on and only complete a small piece of the pattern. In my Wip basket, it seems that all I have left are big projects. So, I finished stitching a variety of pincushions, most notably, Mary Garry’s, Pins & Needles, Blackbird Designs, Bluebird’s Pinkeep and the Needles pincushion from the Autumn Song Loose Feather’s pattern. I have to put them together, which I believe I am going to do this weekend, in between re-painting woodwork in my sunroom. The Mary Garry piece will be made into a mattress style pincushion. The others will be your run-of-the-mill pillow type cushions. I did finish Their Song last week. I want to get it framed but right now, I can’t justify the money. So unfortunately, it’s gotta wait. Stay tuned for pictures.

Have you ever been in a position where none of the Wips that are in your basket are calling you anymore? That’s where I am at right now. No whimpers, whines, screams or begging coming from the basket. So what to do? Do I pull something out and force myself to work on it or start something new? I told myself that I wasn’t going to start another new project until I finished some of my Wips. I worked a little on Where My Heart Blooms but there’s not enough completed to give you any reason to ohh-and-ahh over and it's not making my heart sing. So my choices were:

A) Not stitch (Heaven forbid!) or,

B) Start something new.

Guess what I chose?

Yeah, you know me too well. I chose to start a new project.

For awhile now, I’ve wanted to stitch Nellie’s Garden Revisited as a memorial sampler to my Mom who passed away 12 years ago but other designs always seemed to win out over poor Nell. I am glad that I finally chose this sampler to stitch.

My Mom was a lady who put her family before herself in all matters. I wanted to find a sampler that was simple and sweet. Mom wasn’t into frou-frou or fancy things (although she had fabulous taste). I chose Nellie’s Flower Garden Revisited because her name was Nellie and the sampler has a sweetness about it. No frills but simply tasteful. I started it last night on 32ct. Lakeside Linens, Vintage Pearled Barley, with the available GAST that I had on hand. I have to pick up a few more skeins to complete the palette. And I will be personalizing it with her name and birth/death dates along with some simple tribute yet to be decided.

Anyway, I hope to have photos up on the blog tomorrow. I just wanted to say hey to all of you, thank you for coming by to visit and also to tell you thanks for asking about Joey. He’s fine and pretty antsy now, he wants Spring as badly as I do!