A Work in Progress

Looking at my last post, I realized I had every intention of posting twice a week for Wednesday WIPs and Friday Finishes/  Then winter hibernation and a post-holiday haze set in, and my blog went silent.  I don't even have the excuse of being busy as my husband and I have been hanging around the house.  I've cleaned out a closet or two and read a lot.  We made a weekend trip to Charleston to watch our son run a marathon and I went to a weekend stitching retreat, but other than that it seems we have barely left our house.  That seems to be changing as I went out for coffee and breakfast with two different friends last week and I'm headed to lunch with another friend today.  My husband and I have subscriptions to local theaters and we attended two performances last week.  Perhaps these are signs that spring is on the way.  I'm not taking any chances that means my posts will be more frequent so I'll give you both  a Wednesday WIP ...

The last few hours of 2014 were spent in reverse stitching on two projects.     I made an error when stitching the border of the March house in the Blackbird Designs Anniversaries of the Heart* series.  I decided I couldn't fudge it so I had to rip out part of the house and start again.   Then I got out this ornament to stitch while we watched television last night.  I had started it earlier in the year using Impressions for the white.  The Impressions wasn't covering well and looked more like cream.  So that came out and I put in a few new stitches with DMC perle cotton.  I'm going to like this much better!  This will be a travel project.  All of that reverse stitching led to a very full ort jar.  These threads will go out for the birds today.   2015 will be welcomed with a new project.  I'm going to be starting Susan Rambo* which was published in Fine Lines many, many years ago.  It has si...

I've  been inspired  by Syd's  posts to give the promised re-cap of the October retreat in Ocean City, Maryland.  My friend and I started out early Thursday morning and stopped in Berlin, Maryland for lunch.  We had heard great things about the town and it didn't disappoint.  There are a  number of  antique malls and we explored a few of them as well as an upscale gift store.  Then it was on to Ocean City to check into the Lankford Hotel.   We normally head right to Salty Yarns for a shopping trip, but this time, we saved that for the next day.  I settled on three projects for retreat and put some stitches in all of them.  Most of my time was spent on adding another part to Blackbird Designs Anniversaries of the Heart.  During the weekend, I completed the third section despite having to do some frogging because I was off by one thread in the border.  Fudging it would have been too noticeable so I...

Spring break has gotten off to a fine start.  After I left school yesterday, I headed for the nail salon for a mani/pedi.  The salon is far less busy on a Friday afternoon than during the weekends and I realized that I was also far more relaxed since I wasn't thinking about the dozens of things I needed to be accomplishing in only two days off work.  Then it was time to head into Philadelphia where we were being treated to a meal at one of the hotels.  Our acquaintance brought along his 13 year old son whom we had never met.  He was such a delight that I found myself wishing he and my daughter were closer in age.  The meal was fabulous--I had venison, of all things.  Definitely outside my usual restaurant fare of seafood, and it was terrific. Having done my Weight Watchers weigh-in yesterday afternoon, I was free to sleep in this morning.  I'm usually up around 5:00 so it was wonderful to be able to sleep until 7:00.  This morning (a...