starts and finishes...

Okay only one start (so far) and one finish to report!

First the start! Yesterday Barbi and I got back to stitching our girls by Carriage House Samplings, and it is Elizabeth's turn... here is my progress from last night..

not bad considering I got a late start, and didn't start stitching till 9pm... hopefully next Sunday I'll be able to stitch more.

And now to the finish... since my last post I've been pushing Sweet Pea by Mirabilia, and here she is in all her blinged out glory...

I manged to finish her on Saturday, those beads took what seemed forever! It doesn't look like there is much on there, but trust me there are quite few beads considering the design size - actually 3 different beads! But it was fun, and I really enjoyed stitching her. I just may have to do this one for myself later on, as this is a sweet 16 birthday present for my niece...

She is stitched on 28ct Spoonful of Sugar jazlyn - by Sugar Maple Fabrics,(who I wish were still in business I loved her fabrics... good thing I still have lots in my fabric drawer to choose from!) using the reccomended DMC threads.

What to work on next.... hmmm not to sure, but it will be a new start. I have a couple of other gifts that need to get done, so I'll more than likely be working on those.

dancing with Molly...

I have some catching up to do... I haven't had time to post lately, life has kept me pretty busy, but I did manage to get some stitching in!!! As you can see from the title of my post, I've finished Molly, a little behind Barbi, but she is done!

However, before we get to her, let's do some catch up progress pictures of her!

The weekend of Feb 19-20-21 was a long weekend here, and I manged to get a fair bit of stitching in... it was so nice to be able to actually get so much done!

Here is my progress from that weekend...

During the short week that followed, I put Molly away for a few days, and worked on Mirabilia's Sweet Pea, as my neice's birthday is fast approaching! Here is her progress...

Last Sunday (the 26th) I manged to get another good amount of stitching time in... here is Molly's progress after that session...

I kept Molly in my q-snaps, since I was so close to finishing her, and I almost still manged to do it in February, but I was too tired last night and had only the border left, so I finished her up tonight. Here she is in all her glory, hot off the needle!

Next up for the Sunday SAL with Barbi, is Elizabeth, number 2 of 4 girls in the series by Carriage House Samplings. Barbi, if its okay with you let's start next weekend - the 13th, so I can get my act together and get my supplies ready!

I forgot...

Seems I've forgotten to share something with you all... I could have sworn I did, but I was looking back on my past blog posts I saw that I completely forgot to share with you a lovely gift I recieved for Christmas! I'm so embarassed... I know I sent a thank you and posted a picture on facebook, but completely forgot to share here.

I'm hoping its better late than never... so here it is! I recieved a wonderful package from Evi - and all of it handmade!

It included two beautifully crocheted granny squares, that are now hanging by my computer so I can see them all the time, a crocheted pin cushion, which is getting put to good use by my stitching seat, two very cute and very little crocheted snowman/snowballs who are also sitting here by my computer watching me as I type this, and last but not least, one of her very sought after "big head" bears. This is Napsugar (or Sunbeam though I prefer Sunshine in English)

She has lived up to her name as well, as since she has arrived she has brought much needed sunshine to me, and put a literally permanent smile on my face! And to top it off, I'm not sure if it was a coinscidence or not, but my stitching mojo returned at the same time! So another great big thank you to Evi, I love all of it and couldn't believe it then and still can't believe that I was lucky enough to recieve such wonderful goodies.

I sent Evi her Christmas gift as well, but as I'm sure I've mentioned many times before I am the Queen of Procrastination, so needless to say my gift was late (as usual), but it has arrived safe and sound and I can finally show part of it. Only part of it as it totally slipped my mind to take a picture of everything together.

Part of her gift was two stitched ornaments, one was the Happy New Year one, shown previously, and the second one was the mystery ornament which was my last finish of 2010. Here is a picture of that since you've only seen the back of it so far!

It is the "Seaside Whale Ornament" freebie ornament by Casey Buonaugurio. You can find it here: click . I thought it was not only cute but appropriate, as she just spent her first Christmas in New Zealand.

On to other stitching... yesterday was our Sunday SAL with Barbi, and I worked on Molly some more.

I had more spots filled in on the cat, but ended up frogging it and redoing them, as the second colour called for - the 3787 was way to close to the 844 that the cat was stitched in, so I switched it out and blended a couple of colours together -830 and 869. I think it looks a bit closer to the cover model now.

Last week I also worked on Nora Corbett/Mirabilia's Sweet Pea...

She is coming along nicely, her skirt is almost finished and despite all the various colour changes, she works up quickly. My other niece, has choosen her Mirabilia as well - Sabrina, though I may try and talk her out of that one, as there is now way I would be able to stitch that in time for her birthday in April!!!! I'll try and talk her into her second choice which is Nora Corbett/Mirabilia's Pansy. That is much more "doable" in the time frame I have than Sabrina.

That's it for now... I do have two photo hunts to share, but I'll do those in a separate post later. I'm not sure what I'm going to work on now, but I'll find something to stitch!