Last day of the month means last day to finish my February...

Last day of the month means last day to finish my February ornament!

If you don’t already know, I am participating in three different blog groups this year. Stitch from Stash over at Epic Stitching, One Ornament a Month over on the cross stitch forum I belong to and Finish a Chatelaine. I’m doing well on two of the three… I haven’t gotten around to my Chat yet. I have until December anyway!

Here’s month 2’s ornament. It’s called Snow in Love by Little House Needleworks. I’m really quite pleased with how it turned out. I did unfortunately get a little bit of nutella on it, but if I don’t point it out I don’t think anyone will notice!

Do you have any crafty goals this year? How are you doing on accomplishing them?



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Stash you say?

 

I never considered myself to have a lot of stash, but I join the Stitch From Stash Challenge anyway. I think because of this challenge I have become more stash orientated. 

I won this piece on ebay last month ($8.50) and it arrived earlier this month. I am always a little afraid when I buy colored things online because you aren’t really sure what you are getting, but my LNS doesn’t stock hand-dyed fabrics so I took the challenge anyway. 

This Plum Blossoms is a lovely shade of purple with some nice light and darker spots on it. I’m still trying to decide what I am going to use it for, here are some of my current ideas:

Square Damask from Ink Circles

This, but all in a solid color
(I couldn't find a useable picture to display)

This design is from A rainbow of stitches (it’s a book). I think I’m leaning towards the Ink Circles design, but I don’t know if I want to do it with a white or a pink or a purple color! Decisions decisions. Any suggestions?

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Romantic Weekend

This weekend my husband and I went on a romantic trip to Columbus. I call it romantic because it was Valentine’s weekend.

We managed to do a ton of things on our 4 day weekend, including the Franklin Conservatory (for wine & chocolate night) and the Columbus Zoo (in the snow, we had the park to ourselves basically, it was wonderful)!

Of course I had to look up cross stitch shops and lucky for me there was one! I called ahead to make sure they were in before we made the trip on Saturday (since the Nashville market was this weekend too, I wasn’t sure if they were going to be open). The picture above shows what I purchased!

The beads are for the Glendon Place project I posted about not too long ago and the threads were all on the suggested colors list for a bunch of Little House Needlework patterns I have hanging out in my stash. I needed some new needles so I picked up the Bolin ones (new to me, I’m loving them so far, they have a HUGE eye which is great).

For February’s stitch from stash challenge I added $16.20 this weekend (the needles don’t count against me since I did actually need them, and I would have had them on hand anyway).

I have two more posts in the works so I will leave off here with the question on how you are doing on the stitch from stash challenge? It’s only month 2, 10 more to go!

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Monogrammed H progress

I've steadily been making progress on the monogrammed H for my cousins' wedding. I've done a bit more since the above picture, but I forgot to take a picture. You can really start to tell that it's going to be an H. There are some extra swirls in the middle that as I get further along, I do think that I am going to include them. It looks a bit lonely in the center without them.

It's more teal in real life than the picture is showing. I guess it's just the lighting. I'm going to be on the hunt for some basic alphabet for her new last name below. I want it to be much more plain so as to draw the eye up the the initial.

I was actually reading Mary Corbet's blog (which you can find here at NeedlenThread.com) where she was talking about the origins of monograms. What we actually call a monogram today is actually called a cipher. A monogram is a collection of letters that together make a monogram, but which cannot be pulled apart. That wasn't a very good description, go check out the above link to read more about it. Mary did an excellent job of describing it and linking to some excellent free resources.

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January Stash

I found a LNS (local needlework shop for those of you not in the know) in Bridgewater, PA which is about a 45 minute drive. It's called Covered Bridge Needlearts and it is a WONDERFUL shop. Anyone in the Western PA/Eastern Ohio area should totally check it out. The lady who owns it runs it all by herself, so I would highly recommend calling ahead (you can find her contact info on her website).

Well, for those of you that didn't know this already, I joined Epic Stitching's Stitch from Stash's Challenge this challenge basically consists of not spending more than $25 in any one month on stash. There are so exclusions, like framing for example. You are also allowed one month where you do not participate. I normally don't spend much honestly, so I figured this would be a pretty easy challenge, but like I just said, I found a new LNS. The above photo shows all that I bought.

The beads are all for the Glendon Place Tiramisu that I mentioned in an earlier post and the Sullivan's floss is for that as well. I also bought a Little House Needleworks pattern (it's coffee related, I already put it away otherwise I could tell you the name of the pattern.) As well as a bunch of DMC floss that I needed and some Weeks & Crescent Colors (which is now called something else that I can't remember). The total came to $29.35 (before tax since that doesn't count towards the limit), however I had a gift card left over from Christmas that has $17.87 on it, so my actual total for the month came to $11.48! Well under budget.

If you don't spend all the money then it rolls over into the next month, so I am still good to go! $38.52 is what I'm starting off with for February. I know January isn't over, but I've got plenty of things going on right now, so unless I make it out to Bridgewater next Saturday I think I can resist online.

Speaking of online shopping, I'm bidding on a lovely piece of purple hand-dyed fabric on Ebay, if I win that will be another $8.50 (since shipping also doesn't count, I love all these exclusions!). Which would still bring me in under budget. ($19.98, $5.02 under!)

As an FYI to everyone, I post my blogs on both blogspot & Tumblr, so if you follow me in both places you'll just see the same thing twice.

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Glendon Place - Tirasmu

The picture to above is my 123stitch.com order that I placed on December 31st. They were out of stock of on color, so that should be shipping later this month. It was my final purchase before 2014 and the Stitch from Stash challenge!

 
My husband had also gotten me a gift card to CraftyKitten so I purchased some awesome hand dyed fabric and the pattern to Glendon Place’s Tiramisu (part of the desserts series). It’s mostly done in silks (Dinky Dyes as you can see above) and one or two Sullivans floss (which I will probably sub out for DMC). The final design is going to be:

Since the CaftyKitten is located in the UK, and all the fabric is dyed to order I'm not expecting it until the end of the month. I ordered those right after Christmas and the lovely Dawn was on vacation at the time.

I have also started a cute little project for a card for my husband for V-Day, I'll upload some pictures of that once I get something more interesting in. I've been trying to do it while he's not around, so it's very slow going!

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Monogrammed H

Making progress on the monogrammed H I'm making for my cousin for a wedding gift (wedding is in May, bridal shower in April I think). You can almost tell it's going to be an H now! There is a bunch of "extra" stuff in between the pillars of the H that I haven't decided if I'm going to stitch or not. I'm just doing the bones now and then will decide if it needs more or not.

Stitched 2 over 2 on 28ct Quaker linen with 3808 teal floss for anyone who was wondering. :)

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Hungarian Cross Stitch

Look at that awesome traditional Hungarian cross stitch design! Angela K over at MakeStuff-BeHappy is letting everyone have it for free. Do pop on over and let her know that you like it too! You can get and save the file as both a black and white and color pattern! Check it out here

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