A Gentleman's Samplings

Once again I have been away from my blog for way too long.  I get caught up in a lot of other things rather than posting pics of starts and finishes. These last couple of months have gone by way too fast. I have received a couple of messages from some followers making sure I was okay and looking forward to an update. I do have a few finishes and will spread these out over the next couple of weeks. First up is one that had been in the WIP pile for a long time -- Not For Us Alone from Amy Mitten.  Amy taught this piece at the Tudor Rose Sampler Guild back in the early 2000's (I cannot remember the date/year that I took the class). A friend of mine took the class with me and she had finished hers a long time ago. She recently moved and hung the sampler in her dining room.  So needless to say every time I go over to her house it was taunting me to get mine finished.  So here is my completed Not For Us Alone. Amy Mitten Designs Kit -Worked on 36-ct ...

Hello to all my fellow stitchers/bloggers and thank you for stopping by! I cannot believe that it has been over 2 months since my last post. Where does the time go? I have been away from the blogging world due to some unforeseen health issues. I have posted a brief summary and update at the end of this blog if you are interested. As stated in my last post, I lost a little bit of my mojo in the stitching realm. I could not focus on any of my projects. I decided to focus on the Mexican Schoolgirl Practice Sampler c1830 by Samplers Remembered . This one had some bright colors and different motifs which at least made me feel like I was making some progress. Worked on 40-ct Porcelain Lakeside Linen using DMC and the recommended Waterlilies. After this was completed I decided to start Sarah Elizabeth Brooke’s 1842 by The Scarlet House . This was a very fun stitch and kept me occupied during my recovery from surgery. I stitched the grassy area at the bottom of the sampler us...

It seems that I have not been able to focus on a single project lately. There always seems to be something a little bit more intereseting to stitch than the current project I am wanting to finish. Apologies in advance for the quality of the photos - for some reason the pictures look more gold/yellow than they are in real life... In the past month I have worked on Scarlet Letter's Coraggio .  I have had this chart in my stash for a few years and thought about it when it was mentioned by someone on a board a vist every once in a while. I am working this on 40-count Lakesde Linen Pecan Butter using a combination of Au Ver a Soie (AVAS) and Hand-Dyed Fibers (HDF) silks. Coraggio by The Scarlet Letter 40-count Lakeside Linen Pecan Butter with AVAS and HDF I started work on the mermaid but I need to re-think the recommended process of outlining and then filling in with the stitches.  Doing it this way tends to lose some of the definitio...

It always amazes me how fast time goes by these days.  I did not realize that it had been so long since my last blog post. So I must thank you for hanging in there with me. I have been working on some Christmas ornaments over the last couple of weeks for exchanges. I will post pictures of these after they have been given to their new homes. When going through some of my older stitched Items I found a few ornaments that have been stitched but not finished. So I guess I will spend some time over the next couple of weeks on finishing -- which is not as much fun as the stitching itself. B.B. 1699 from The Essamplaire Worked on 40-ct Lakeside Navy Bean using AVAS Silk I have made a little bit of progress on B.B 1699 from The Essamplaire.  This is a great little piece.  B.B. made very good use of the piece of linen.  And there are only 10 colors used.  It is going a little slow because there are a lot of places where the stitches are off set by one linen thread....

Once again I must thank all of you for your kind words and comments on my blog. I have meet some wonderful people in this venture who share the same passion for needlework. I was really surprised when I went to compose my blog post today and noticed that I have 199 followers. I will put something together for a little drawing so please stay posted. We finally have some decent weather in Texas (no +100F days since we had a cool front that moved into the area last night). Our high temperature for the day was only 81F and expected to get down into the low 60s overnight.  I could get use to this but we are expected to get back into the lower 90's by the end of the week.  But it is still try (no measureable rain received or expected) leaving us still in a severe drought situation. So we are still praying for rain. My goal was to finish Sampler's Rembered Mary Allen 1818 by Labor Day and I put the last stitches in on Saturday, September 3. ...

It is still really hot here in North Texas. Luckily August is nearly over with and hopefully September will bring us some cooler temperatures along with some much needed rain.  We have only had around a half inch of rain in the past three months. So hot and dry leaving everything really brown. And all this heat really drains your energy level. But -- I did manage to get the pre-stitching completed on the Patrick's Woods "A Spot in the Mountains" class piece.  The finishing class is in mid-September so I wanted to make sure that I got this completed early. A Spot in the Mountains by Patrick's Woods Worked on 30-ct linen with NPI silks The band on the left with the Florentine stitch will be finished into a tri-fold pocket.  The accessories (on the right hand side) will include a needle case, a canoe shaped pin cushion, and a scissor protector. These were a lot of fun to stitch and looking forward to finishing them. In my previous post I said th...