IHSW - November 2014

IHSW is hosted by Joyce over at Random Ramblings. This stitch along is all about staying home and stitching as much as possible!! :) You can join in any month!!

Coming in a little late with this post:) I did get a little stitching done last weekend, but not nearly as much as I would have liked. Isn't that always the case? At least for me it is, never enough stitching time:)

I decided to work on Prairie Schooler's 'Harvest Time' from book # 93. Last time I posted about this I also posted about the 'Home For Christmas' chart as well. I was wanting to work on both at the same time, however after the cold snap that came through I thought I would stick with an Autumn chart in hopes that the Autumn weather would come back. And it worked!! Well, closer to Autumn weather anyway. Instead of highs in the mid 20's we are getting highs in the mid 40's now. And the weather man is saying that Saturday may get up to 60!! So I'm just going to keep on stitching Autumn charts and see how long we can keep this going!! :0)

Here is the super tiny amount of progress I got done on this...

 

I'm stitching this over one on 28 ct? 32 ct? Not sure, it looks like 28 ct to me, but I found a slip of paper for the Christmas one that said the fabric was 32 ct. And I know I bought the fabric for both at the same time. I'll keep plugging away at it until the next chart catches my eye:) 

IHSW - Sept 2014

To find out more about IHSW, visit Joyce at Random Ramblings

 

I had a wonderful weekend for stitching. I only left to do a little shopping on Sunday and had most of the housework done as well, so other than to catch up on some sleep, I was able to relax and get a bit of stitching done:)

 

About a month and a half ago I posted this project as a new start...

 

 

This is for a LoveQuilt project and I had meant to start it right away, but I didn't!! 

 

So this is what I worked on this weekend. Friday evening and Saturday I was working right along, but I just couldn't get into in on Sunday. There are a lot of color changes in there!! I am 'rewarding' myself with one strand of the blue curtain stitching for every three or so color changes I do on the dog. It's the only way I could keep myself going:) I am going to have to put a lot of effort to get this one done in time, but I still have a couple months so I think I'll be okay:) 

 

IHSW: Late, Late, Late!!!

After I did some fun sewing for the Friday Night Sew In on Friday night and Saturday morning, the whole weekend got away from me!! Granted that was because we were to start school on Monday and I had a few last min things to get ready for it. Once I got everything ready for school I did have some time for stitching, but not blogging. Trying to get back into the school schedule always takes a little time and adjustment, so this week has, so far, been all about that. But I think we are now getting used to the new schedule and I now finally have some time to blog again:)


I really, really want to get 'America' from Little House Needleworks DONE!! So that is what I worked on for this International Hermit and Stitch Weekend, and I am so very close to having it done:) As in close enough that I'm going to have to argue with myself to NOT work on it while I get a few other projects worked on that have deadlines. :) Funny how when I have all the time in the world to work on a project it stays unfinished, but as soon as I am busy with other things that project is the only thing I want to work with!!

Okay, here is where I am with this now...

 

All I have left are the windows, the poor bird's legs, and a few stars that go along the bottom. I know this piece is patriotic, but as I was stitching the green leaves and the red stripes and dots, I couldn't stop thinking of Christmas!!! ACK, not quite ready for that yet!!

 

Okay off to see what some of you where up to this past weekend:)

End of Week Plans

The last few weeks before school starts have gone by so fast!!! I am usually looking forward to summer coming to an end and getting to my favorite season of Autumn. This year, though, I'm trying to savor every last min of our summer break:)

We had actually planned to start back to school this week, on Monday. However a quick text from some friends saying that they were planning a trip to a pool on Monday quickly changed our plans. Yesterday we also helped out at a local soup kitchen which was nice. It was my first time and I was amazed at how organized they were. We are now going to try and fit one more trip to a pool we've never been to before we get started on school next Monday:)

I also have an exciting crafty weekend coming up!!! Friday is....

I haven't participated in this in several months and I'm really excited to get back to work on some quilting:)

Then, over the weekend is the...

I've not participated in this for a while either, so I should be nice and busy this weekend with lots of fun crafty project:) That is the perfect kind of weekend!!!

What do you have planned for your weekend? Hope you are able to fit in something that makes you smile:)
 

IHSW - March 2014

If you just read my last post - FNSI - you will know that our whole family came down with a cold last week, and that it just will not go away for my dd and I. Thankfully my hubby was able to get it beat within 24 hours or so, which is good since he still needed to go to work. But for dd and I, the cough is still lingering, so this has given me lots of time to sit on my corner of the couch and stitch away.

This month for my IHSW project, I am working on a Spring block for an exchange that needs to be sent out the 1st of April. This is a freebie from Sylvia Kuhnert from www.syku66.blogspot.com. (I'm thinking this is all in German:).  I was just about able to finish it up. All that's left to do is the boarder and fill in the word 'SPRING'.

Actually, I have tried filling in the word a few times already, but can't find a color I like for it. This is one of those projects where I decided the colors just weren't right for how I wanted it to look. No problem, I'll just switch a few of those out and we'll be done. But it hasn't been that easy. The original had a red heart and a mustard yellow sun, but I wanted this a bit more bright, so I changed things. The words should be a dark brown with the boarder being the darker green. I was going to change the words and boarder to a lilac purple, but the words didn't show up very well. So now I'm thinking about doing the boarder purple and the words being white. I'll give that a try next:) 

Now off to get caught up on the housework and make sure dd is getting her schoolwork done:)

1st IHSW of the Year!!!

I made sure to plant my hinny down and take advantage of the 1st International Hermit and Stitch Weekend of the year!!! Hosted by Joysze of Random Ramblings, this is a real fun stitch-a-long to give us an excuse (as if we need one:), to take a weekend and stitch to our heart's content. Since my hubby had today off work, I decided that I would count today as part of the weekend as well. :0)

Of course, I would have been stitching away this weekend anyway because I am still needing to get the blocks for LoveQuilts done that I've been working on for what seems like forever!!! I did make some real progress on one of them this weekend and am almost done with it now. Hoping to have it and the second one done by Friday.

 

This is re-arranged from Candamar Designs' 'Police Officer'. The second block I am doing will also be re-arranged from that same design, but will just use the words from the design and will look completely different:) 

 

Okay, almost midnight, so I really need to get off here and go to bed!! I was up super late last night because I couldn't put a book down. Thankfully I was able to sleep in this morning, but we will need to be out and about tomorrow morning, so no sleeping in tomorrow!!! Have a good night!!

Whoop - Whoop Friday?!?!

Another Friday come and gone. Can you believe we are already half way through the first month of the year? I had wanted to join in on Whoop-Whoop Fridays this year, and so far just haven't made it. I really had meant to post this yesterday, but ended up going to bed a bit early and didn't get to it.

I decided to go ahead and post it anyway and call it Whoop-Whoop Friday Umm Saturday!!! Works for me:)

So for this week I did FINIALLY get something completed!!! Whoop-Whoop!!!

 

This is the baby blanket I was making for the friend of my hubby. You can see in the bottom picture that I used the star stitch and then two row of half double and another star stitch. The baby's room is painted purple, and they sent us a picture of the blanket in the room, the purples matched perfectly!!! I was guessing since I've not seen the room myself:) They really liked it and that makes it all worth doing (plus I really like crocheting:).

 

Well, back to stitching for me as I need to get those LoveQuilt blocks done very soon. This weekend is International Hermit and Stitch Weekend, so those LoveQuilt blocks are what I am working on:)

A New Year with New Sals and Challenges!!!

I hope everyone had a fun and safe entrance into the New Year!! We are home-bodies so we all stayed home, watched a couple movies and ate snack foods to ring in the New Year. Then we promptly went to bed!!

I had meant to get a blog post out last week of the Sals (stitch-a-longs), Qals (quilt-a-longs) and challenges that I plan to participate in this year, but I was too 'busy' resting and relaxing to get it done:) So here it is now....

Like I said in a post last week, I've been looking around for sewing/crafting/stitching/quilting/crocheting etc, challenges and Sals to participate in this year. This is my favorite part of the year, going through my stash of patterns and fabric, yarn and material. Seeing what I have and what I still really want to work on. I LOVE planning, I'm not so good at following though on my plans, but it is fun to plan anyhow:)

So far, here are the events I'm going to try and keep up with this year...

 

1. 2014 NewFO Challenge - hosted by Barbara of Cat Patches. This is a new one for me, as well as a new-ish medium. The challenge is to start a new quilted project each month and post about it the last day of the month.

2. WIPocalypse - Measi over at Measi's Musings is once again hosting WIPocalypse. This challenge started out as a tounge-in-cheek way to help us get all our stitching done before the Apocalyse happens!!! Well, of course we have all survived, but we still have stitching to do:) So this challenge continues to help us along towards more stitchy finishes!! On the full moon we are to blog our progress on whatever we happen to be stitching and link back to Measi's blog:)

  3. IHSW (International Hermit and Stitch Weekend) - This is hosted by Joysze at Random Ramblings. This challenge is a wonderful excuse to skip the housework and busy running around for one weekend a month and just sit on your duff and stitch:) Okay, in the real world, that doesn't really happen - and my hubby isn't quite sold on the skipping housework:), so for most of us it is just a way to show off whatever work we may have gotten done over the 3rd weekend of the month.

  4. Whoop Whoop Fridays hosted by Sarah Craig over at Confessions of a Fabric Addict. Sarah has a link up every Friday so you can show off what you've been working on for the week. She is mostly into quilting, but says that any kind of crafting can be shown off!!

5. YOTA - hosted by Pull the Other Thread, is another tongue-in-cheek way to make fun of all the acronyms floating about cyberspace:) It stands for 'Year-of-the-Acronym. Her stitch-a-long is geared for those 'UFOs' (officially stands for 'unfinished project', but usually refers to your oldest projects that have never been finished). On the first Saturday of the month you are to pull out an old project that you still want to get done at some point, and just work on it. Then post about and link up!! I did this one last year and while I still didn't get very far on my project, it was a whole lot more than what I would have gotten done on it!!

6. Smalls Sal can be found at Stitching Lotus. This sal is about working on smaller projects, biscornus, ornaments, bookmarks, etc. Last year this sal was all about ornaments, and I'll probably stick with that this year too as I will need to get some done for Christmas (ACK!! Thinking about Christmas already!!!).

7. Christmas Through the Year hosted by Anthea at Hibiscus Stitches. This year I had to make do at Christmas by homemaking almost all the gifts that we gave. While this was a bit stressful - it wasn't until the last min that I realized that this would be necessary this year - it did take me back a bit to my childhood Christmases. You see, my dad worked construction and winter was never good for business, so while we always had amazing Christmases, our main gifts were usually hand made. My dad was good at coming up with woodworking projects for us:) After this year I would like to continue to give handmade gifts, I just wish I hadn't been so rushed this year and could have put some real thought and time into the gifts I made. And that is what I plan to do for the coming year. Take some time out each month to work on Christmas gifts so that I am not so rushed by Dec!!! And that is what this Sal is all about, work on an item for Christmas, it can be a gift or decoration, for someone else or for yourself, and post/link up on the 25th of each month.

AND - just one more I promise!!!

8. Something Old, Something New - hosted by me!!! For a few years I participated in the January Crazy Challenge. The goal of this challenge was to start a new cross stitch project everyday for the first 15 days of January and blog about them. Then you were suppose to work on the projects all year long to see how many you could get done. I did that for 2 years and I still have around 20 of those projects unfinished - and I didn't do it last year, so you can see that I didn't do very well with it!! :) It was a lot of fun to have 15 new starts, but by day 10 or so I would start to feel overwhelmed (also the cost of getting materials for all 15 projects was a little much). I do LOVE starting new projects though, so not to feel left out I've decided to make up a challenge that is a bit more do-able for me, maybe it is for you too? My challenge is to post on the first of every month an OLD project that you want to work on - maybe one you started during a previous January Crazy Challenge?!?!?, and post a NEW project you want to work on. This way you still get to start lots of projects through out the year, but they will be more spread out AND you are working on some older projects that you have lying around (here and there and everywhere!!). I will get a button and link up posted along with my OLD/NEW projects later today. Join along if you are able and we'll have lots of fun cheering each other along!!!

Okay, that was a LONG list, and I'm sure I won't be able to keep up with all of them every month, but like I said.. I LOVE TO PLAN!! :) Oh, and if anyone knows of a crochet challenge or CAL (crochet-a-long?) that is going on, please let me know about it!!!

Hope you have some fun sals and challenges planned for your year too!!!

 

IHSW

I went through all my WIPs on Saturday and figured out what I wanted to stitch on for the IHSW weekend:) Since I didn't get much stitching done on Saturday, I figured I could count what I did on Monday. I just shifted my 'weekend' a bit!!

This will become all 3 parts in the 'Summer/Autumn/Winter' Loose Feathers charts from Blackbird Designs. I am doing this on 40 ct Legacy over 2 and I love working on this small count fabric. You can see that I finished this vine all except one flower which will be a lighter red color, which I don't have right now, so I couldn't stitch it yet. Hmm, I think that means I need to take a bit of my birthday money and go shopping!! :)

It was fun to take a break from blog hop projects and other projects that NEED to get done and stitch on something just for me. I have one more blog hop to participate in this month (these have been so much fun!!!), and I haven't even decided what I want to do for it!! That is on the plan for today. Summer break has finally started, and I am hoping to be able to finish up a ton of projects this summer:)

Lots of sewing and stitching this weekend!!!

This weekend welcomes not one, but two different SALs!!! The first is for tonight (or today if you cheat a bit and get a head start:).

 

 

http://handmadebyheidi.blogspot.com/

Heidi over at www.handmadebyheidi.blogspot.com hosts this SAL. You just sew on any project on the 3rd Friday of the month and post about it the next day. My progress post for this will be tomorrow.

And the next is for the whole weekend.

 

This one is hosted by Joyce over at Random Ramblings. This is a fun one where we stitch as much as is humanly possible for the whole weekend and post our progress on Monday:) It's been so long since I've stitched just for me that I'm not sure what I want to work on this weekend!! I need to go through my pile of WIPs and see what calls out to me:)

 

Anyone is welcome to join in on either (or both) of these, so click on a button to visit the blogs and then get started sewing and/or stitching!!!

 

Monday will be our last day of school here, it should have been today but we took off yesterday for my birthday, so we will need to finish up on Monday. Then the summer break begins!!! Looking forward to focusing on stitching and sewing and even housework as that has really gotten away from me!! Dd has lots of things planned as well, so I guess we will be doing lots of running around too:)

The IHSW that wasn't

 

 

Wow, this weekend really got away from me. I knew it would be busy and that I would have to try really hard to fit some stitching in, but it ended up that I wound up only stitching for a half hour for the whole weekend!! Shame on me!! :) It was a fun weekend for dd though!! She worked the nursery during MOPS on Friday morning, we picked up her friend in the afternoon and went to Leather Craft class until evening. Then the friend spent the night, stayed up until nearly 7:00 am (hubby stayed in the camper and was VERY thankful to have somewhere to hide!!). Then her friend went home and we went to a cousin's birthday party. On Sunday we went to church, I cooked with hubby and once that was done I pretty much vegged out!! The house is a mess that is slowly being put back together:)

 

Since I don't have any weekend stitching to share with you, I thought I would share all the new starts I had from last week!!!

 

 

This is 'Key to My Heart' from Cherrywood Designs and can be found in March 2013 issue of Cross-Stitch & Needlework Mag. I didn't have the pink fabric so I am using some out of my stash, something in 32ct. I'm thinking I might take out the brown lettering and do it in a deeper brown as it seems to be blending in too much. This one will be for an exchange.

 

This one is Blackbird Design's Loose Feathers Summer/Autumn/Winter. I will stitch them all together as shown in the picture, except I won't be stitching the alphabet. I am stitching this on 40ct Legacy over 2 with 2 threads. This is probably my favorite project I am working on right now:0)

 

This one is a freebie that I have stitched a couple times already, but I love how it turns out so nice and cheerfull!! This is 'Lovebird' from Midsummer Night Designs. I am using the random 32ct fabric on this one too, and this one will also be for an exchange.

 

Here is the very beginning of my next LoveQuilts block. This is 'Forgotten Treasure' from the Stoney Creek book 'Antique Tractor Collection'.  This little boy really likes tractors and all things farm related. The pic is a little hard to see, but it is a old grey and black tractor with a farm scene behind it.

 

 

This one isn't a new start, but I am hoping to get it done by next week's Monthly Ornie deadline. This is Prairie Schooler's Spring Ornie. This is the last in the series for me to get done. I'm really excited to have all four of them done and ready to use!!!

 

 

 

Well, you can see that I've had some time to stitch, even if it wasn't over the weekend. I actually have one more that I'm getting ready to start. It is a bigger project for my dd and has horses on it. And I am also working on a round robin project, but haven't gotten much of anything done on it yet, so I'll post on that later.

 

We have another busy week ahead of us, though I think next weekend will be much quieter than this last one was. :) 

 

Feb 2013 IHSW

 

Even after running around half the weekend, taking dd to her various activities, I still managed to get quite a bit of stitching done this weekend. I had wanted to have this block done and sent off to LoveQuilts by now, but it is getting very close and shouldn't take much longer to finish up. It isn't due until the beginning of April, but also have one due the beginning of May and another the beginning of June, neither or which I have started yet:) So lots of stitching that needs done as well as a few things I've got going just for me!!

 

 

This was on Friday.

 

And this is today. Note that the fabric is white, not blue like it looks above:) Blue would have been really pretty with this. All I have left to do now is the rest of the water and the outlining. I should have it done by the end of the week:)

IHSW reminder

  Just a reminder that this coming weekend is the International Hermit and Stitch Weekend - or IHSW for short!!! For full info on this, click the button above. Basically it is just a fun reason to spend a bit more time stitching this weekend than you might other wise do. Take pics of your before and after progress and post them on your blog either Sunday or Monday.   Hope to see your progress!!