A Work in Progress

This blog has been quiet, but I've actually been stitching quite a bit this year.  Here's my progress on Starstruck, a charted needlepoint design by Kathy Rees of Needle Delights, done in the blue/green colorway.  The duClay EGA chapter in Jacksonville, Florida is hosting a stitch-along for any Kathy Rees design, and I'm delighted to stitch with them.   I took a class, Afternoon Leisure Basket, with Sherri Jones at Salty Yarns in Ocean City, Maryland last weekend.  I'm headed back down to OC tomorrow for my guild's spring retreat.  I spent a large portion of this afternoon deciding on projects to take and organizing my stitching bag. There are six projects, all WIPs, in my bag.  My goal is to make a lot of progress on Ellen Chester's Milady's Workebox, and do some work on Ann Smith (The Scarlett Letter).  Over the years, I've learned to take projects that are at the stage of filling in solid areas of stitching or that require minimal coun...

I finally have a finish!  Here is Susan Rambo in all her wrinkled glory.  I stitched it on a vintage 36 count fabric that is close in color to the amber/toasted almond Wichelt fabric called for in the SANQ chart.  The fibers are Needlepoint Inc silks.  I love the colors and this is my all-time favorite sampler. 

I'm chugging along on Susan Rambo and still enjoying the colors and variety of motifs.  There will be a complete squirrel on the right by the end of today and I'm hoping to add a few more border flowers by the end of the week. Quick life update:  We celebrated our 40th (!) wedding anniversary a week and a half ago.  All three of our children and one DIL-to-be were with us for the weekend.  Their visit prompted a flurry of cleaning and straightening and soring items for them to take to their homes, but things settled down pretty quickly after they left.  My quilting projects are gifts and I don't want to show them until they have been given.  I'm currently listening to The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah and would recommend it to those who like historical fiction.  Thanks to all those who encouraged me to keep blogging.  For now, I'll try to keep up with a WIP post every two weeks or so and see how things go from there.

I'm dipping my toe back into blogland with this picture of my progress on Susan Rambo on 36 count with NPI silks.   My fabric is much darker, and I love the way the colors pop. Rest assured that although I have been silent for a few months, all has been well.  I've been having an internal debate about whether to continue with my blog especially since so many people have migrated to social media.  For now, I'm going to try to keep up with WIP Wednesdays and will see how it goes from there.

      According to the thermometer, it's 1 degree here today.  The wind chill factor makes it feel like -15.  I need to go out this morning to my quilt guild meeting, but then I'm going to spend the afternoon in front of the fire thinking warm thoughts and stitching.  Remembering this beach on the island of Hawaii should help. Today's Friday finish will keep those warm thoughts going as well.  It's one of three shell canvases I  purchased on our trip to Sanibel after Christmas in 2011.  The plan was to do one for each of the kids and give them as presents the following Christmas.  Yes, well...I now have two of them done.        Stay warm, everyone!

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 months have been especially busy.  I posted about our brief trip in the middle of October to see our daughter in western Massachusetts right after the retreat in Ocean City.  Two weeks after the trip to the Berkshires, my husband and I went to Hawaii for twelve days.  We spent three and a half days on Oahu where the highlights were seeing Pearl Harbor, Shangrila (Doris Duke's house) and spending an evening with our daughter's college roommate and her family.  The rest of the trip was spent on the big island, Hawaii, which was fascinating.  We learned that it has eleven microclimates and were surprised to see cacti as well as pastures full of cows.  There was active lava flow when we were there, but it was at least 100 miles away from us.  We both enjoyed seeing Volcano National Park as well as touring a coffee plantation.  It felt as if we had barely recovered from the long flights when we took off again for Baton Rouge to see our y...