JCS Halloween Collection cover

Just CrossStitch magazine is putting out a special Halloween collection with 50+ designs. Do you see that Britty Kitty under the Halloween tree on the cover? You know what that means … I have to have it so my other Britty Kitty ornaments have more whimsical friends to keep them company.

You can pre-order the JCS Halloween Collection now to be the first on your block to receive it in September 2011.

The cover of A Stitcher's Journey by Blackbird Designs

The designs on the cover are lovely, but aren’t the ones I wanted to stitch. I haven’t been able to find out much about what other designs are included in the book. I was wavering on purchasing the book for that reason, until I found the Needlecraft Corner website. Needlecraft Corner has put together linen and floss packages for nine of the designs in A Stitcher’s Journey and listed them along with a photo of each project on their website.

It’s great that Needlecraft Corner is offering these packages, because it is so hard to find all the different colors of R&R Reproductions hand-dyed linens. The site doesn’t say what size each piece of linen is, but I suspect they are the exact sizes needed for the different projects.

The designs that Needlecraft Corner listed are:

• Experience Leland’s Needlebook
• Tulip House
• Tulip House Stitching Companion
• Tulip Pincushion
• Thistle House Sewing Box
• Birds and Berries Needlebook
• Birds and Berries Pinbox
• Prairie House Sewing Case
• Heart in Bloom Sewing Tray

As soon as I got home I settled on the sofa, pulled out the panel and quickly added the last few beads. Then I took a photo of it and texted it to my friend Val to let her know that I finished the panel.

After sending the photo I started looking over all the panels and suddenly noticed that something was different about the one I just finished.

Upon closer inspection, I realized what was wrong. Big mistake, some serious frogging in my future. Funny, nobody noticed the mistake when I held it up at the meeting. LOL.

Did you spot the big mistake?

I guess I was just too anxious to get finished. It’s so close, only details on 4 more panels and then I can start that assembly.

My current carton of eggs came from Costco and cost me less than $2 for a carton of 24 eggs. Better yet, my particular box wasn’t on the recall list (although the brand turned up in the second wave of the recall). I could have paid more for Lucerne eggs from Safeway and ended up with eggs from the same farm in the midwest.

Have you checked your eggs yet? Read my article about the egg recall to find out if your eggs have been recalled.

Good Eggs

Progress on the panels for the garden ball project

Question: Will Amy finish all of the panels for the Garden Ball project before the finishing class on Thursday night at the EGA Meeting?

Answer: It’s doubtful. But I do have one panel completely stitched and beaded, so I will be able to start working on the finishing.

This weekend I worked on the letters I want to substitute for the word “GARDEN” that is on the pattern. In the pattern the designer said that she encourages stitchers to be creative and make changes to the fabric and threads called for. Then she went on to say that the only rule is that the letters must spell GARDEN. Well, that just brought out the rebel in me and made me want to change them. I’m going to stitch my name in place of the first three letters, and then fill out the other three spots with the year and a couple of extra flowers.

Check out Liz’s blog to see what the garden ball will look like when it is finished. Her post includes great tips for finishing the project too.

At least it’s not like they said they fixed anything. They had the car all week (it was towed in last Saturday and today is Friday) and the repair guys were unable to duplicate the problem and there was no engine code for the problem. They drove it every day this week and it didn’t stall for them once. So they told me to come take it off their hands and bring it back if it starts happening again.

I couldn’t believe how fast it started acting up for me. I picked the car up at closing time, so I couldn’t bring it back right away. I did call and leave a message and told them that the car stalled out within 10 minutes and that I’d be back on Monday.

I’m experimenting with posting from my phone. I took the picture of the stitched square with the phone on my camera and I’m anxious to see how it will look on my blog.

Pagoda pincushion

The March project for my EGA group was a pagoda pincushion. Each stitcher personalized the pattern that appeared in The Gift of Stitching (on page 40 of the July 2009 issue) with different color fabrics and flosses. I stitched mine on 28-count antique white monaco with pink and blue DMC. The center of the pagoda base was blank in the pattern, so many stitchers, myself included, filled it with motifs such as monograms and flowers.

The pagoda is the most complex piece I’ve ever made (in terms of turning a stitched piece into a 3D object). It was good practice for another project the EGA group is doing, A Patchwork Garden Ball by Twisted Oak Designs. We got the garden ball kits in February, with the idea we should stitch three motifs each month to be ready to learn how to finish it in August. So far I’ve got one motif done. I’m a little behind on that one.

Boxes in my office

I met my goal of being out of my old house by the end of February and we are settling into the new house nicely. Even my cats have acclimated to the new place, although they did have to spend a few days living in the bathroom before getting to check out their new home. I waited to let them out until all the move-in hubbub and commotion at the new place—repairs & painting, installation and delivery of a new stove because the existing stove cost more to repair than buying a cheap new stove, and the cable installation (it took two visits by the cable guys)—was over because I was afraid that they would get spooked by all the activity and dart out the door that repair people always seem to leave hanging open. The little fluffy one adapted quickly, but we haven’t seen too much of the big one. He’s back to living under the sofa and only coming out when it’s very quiet in the house.

Boxes in the kitchen

Now I have a lot of unpacking and organizing to do. I have well over 100 boxes to deal with.

The new house has a smaller kitchen with significantly less cupboard and counter space for all my cooking gadgets, so I’m busy thinking up creative storage ideas. At first I had the dishes stacked so high in the cupboard that I couldn’t lift them up to get a plate from the bottom layer. So, on Sunday, I went to The Container Store and found some double cabinet shelves to put in the cupboards that make one shelf into three shelves. I’m very pleased with the shelf racks, but still a bit overzealous with how much I crammed into the space and will have to move some of the dishes elsewhere.

Kitchen boxes in the dining room

It’s boxes, boxes everywhere as you can see from these photos. With all these boxes, it is probably hard to believe that I did get rid of some stuff before moving, but I did make a few trips to Goodwill and also threw out some useless stuff.

Boxes in the library

We were hoping to confine the boxes in the garage to one side only so we could park a car inside, but as you can see in the photo, we ended up about one box over the center line. I am sure that when I get to the garage boxes (stop snickering) I will find much to discard.

Boxes fill the garage