A Gentleman's Samplings

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...

I have been a big fan of Amy Mitten and her designs since I took one of her classes a few years ago. The project was one of her mystery classes " Not For Us Alone ". I still have not finished the piece but hope to this year. She had some other mystery pieces available for sale during the class and I purchased " Tour Van Holland " -- a Friesland style sampler based on her travels in the Netherlands and Germany. I finished this sampler a couple of years ago and it is one of my favorites. When Amy announced her on-line tutorial this year, I could not resist signing up for Friesland Winder's Keeper . Once the kit came in at the end of last month all other projects were tossed aside to work on this wonderful piece. I have completed all of the stitching but need to work on the back stitching around the pieces for finishing the keeper. The second part of the class will be at the end of March so I do have a little bit of time to get the back stitching completed....

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 . ...

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....

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 ...

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...