A Gentleman's Samplings

Let me start by wishing all you a very joyous New Year. Secondly I would like to thank you for all your kind comments, thoughts, words of encouragement, and prayers during the last several months as I fight colon cancer. I have reached the halfway point of the chemotherapy treatments (6 treatments down - 6 to go).  So far I have been handling them fairly well.  Mainly nauseousness but it last for only a couple of days after the treatment. As I have mentioned before the biggest part of the battle is mental but I have a great support group of family and friends that I can talk to to help me keep a positive attitude. I have not really got much stitching done over the last couple of months.  I did manage to finish 1798 Quaker Sampler by The Goode Huswife. Stitched on 40-ct Mystery Linen using the recommended NPI A couple of years ago a fellow member of my local guild stitched a project as a part of Advent.  She marked off her chart into 24 sections an...

Sorry for the long delay between posts.  Seems that life (and health) always gets in the way of good intentions. I would like to thank everyone for their kind words of encouragement, thoughts and prayers over the past couple of months.  I am truly blessed to have so many supportive firends and family. The results of the the bronchoscopy that I had in August were inconclusive. So I meet with a cardio and thoracic surgeon who removed some lyumph nodes from my chest region. Those results came back as negative for cancer. So with those results back we could get started with the chemotherapy for stage 3 colon cancer.  I had my first chemotherapy treatment on 2 October and so far so good.  I have only experienced a little bit of nausea and some lightheadiness.  But that was only the first treatment - so 1 down and 11 to go.  I have a treatment every two weeks so I should be completed with treatments in about 6 months. ...

A very Happy New Year to all of my friendly followers and fellow stitchers. It is hard to believe that another year has come to an end.  This past year seemed to go by way to fast. And at looking at the date of my last post it seems that once again I have not kept to my goal of at least updating my blog once a month.  I would really like to be like some of my fellow bloggers who post at least once a week. I think a gola this year will be to at least post once a month and gradually build into it.  It would be great if I could at least post a couple of snapshots of current WIPS without having to think of something to say. I had a total of twelve finishes in 2011 which I am really proud of since a few of them were fairly large samplers. The complete list can be found at the bootom of my blog under Completed 2011. I did manage to get two projects completed before the end of the year - B.B 1699 by The Essamplaire and Side By Side Band Samplers by The Scarlet Letter . ...

First Up -- Something Old  After finishing Mary Allen 1818, I deciced that I needed to get back to work on my Celtic Wallace and Robertson Sampler by Darleen O' Steen .  I have finished part one (Wallace) and working towards getting the second part (Robertson) finished by the end of the year.  I am waiting until all of the stitiching is complete before filling in all of the metallic thread areas. Celtic Walace and Robertson Sampler Stitched on 40-ct Lakeside Mystery Fabric using NPI Silks I am really liking this sampler because it is a challenge with all of the queen stitches. As most of my stitching friends know, queen stitches are (or were) one of my least favorite stitches.  But now that I have the hang of working them they are not too bad. Now if I could only get the hang of doing detached buttonhole I will be able to get back to some samplers that I really want to start and complete.  Something New -- In my last post I ...

Hello to all my fellow stitchers, followers, and friends -- I cannot believe that it has been over a month since my last post. Seems that time has gotten away from me once again. My goal for April was to start and finish Frances Eden, Unfortunately, I was not able to reach that goal mainly due to business travel and enjoying the great weather that we have been having in North Texas. I have been spending a lot of my spare time working on out flower and herb gardens. I was hoping to get some raised vegetables beds in place this year but looks like that will have to wait until the fall. I was able to get a lot done though on Frances Eden 1809 from Handwork Samplers. 1809 Frances Eden by Handwork Worked on 40-ct Examplar Lakeside Linen using HDF silks I really like the colors in this one but do not like having to do the same motif twice in the same colors. I did get a little bit bored so to shake things up a little bit I picked back up Elizabeth Sheffield from Scarlet L...