Sunday, January 27, 2008

Meet the Family :)

I promised a few blog entries back to post some family pictures taken during the Christmas Holiday. I must apologize as I'm just now getting around to it now. It was a great holiday - all my family came together to share with each other.

This is a picture of the ladies in the family, minus my Stepmother (she had to work this day...) - left to right - my sister, Michelle; Mom, and Me (in the pink raincoat!)

Here's a picture of the men in our life's.... (left to right - my Stepfather, Steven; My Dad; my BIL, Chris; and my Sweetie - Bruce)
Now on to stitching accomplishments for the weekend! You know those projects that you just have a hard time completing....either you lose interest or get intimidated - whatever the reason I think we all have one in our UFO pile somewhere. Well I've had one on my back for many years, I'm talking about 4-5 years. It was a project that I started when I was really green to working on big projects, let alone working on linen. I just fell in love with the design - Butternut Road's Earth Dancer.

A couple of years ago, I dusted it off and put it in my floor stand determined to finish it! We'll I just couldn't get past one piece of the design that was intimidating me so much.....that da$m Dream Catcher! I had started and ripped it out I know at least 5 times. Well this weekend I finally accomplished the impossible, in my mind at least, I did the catcher - and it turned out good I must say. I did have rip it out one more time and start over. The beading is going to be a piece of cake compared to that catcher! Here's a picture of the catcher and detail......I'm back in love with the piece and can't wait to finish it.


You can see the beading started in the center of her chest - it's a traditional Native American design which the picture doesn't not do justice to the beauty of the colors. My only delima now is working with that suede cording. It's a flat cording that you can see going around the outside of the dream catcher. There's also a lot of it as fringe around her dress. My problem is how do you fix it to the back. Running it under stitches is turning out to be very tedious - it's hard to pull through and when you do, it's pulling the stitches on the front of the piece. I've thought out about splitting end a couple of inches and feeding each end under 2 horizontal rows of stitches - but I'm not sure if that will work. Still have to try it. If any of you ladies have worked with this stuff, I'd love to hear your advice :)
Thanks for looking - Happy Stitching
Malinda

Monday, January 21, 2008

Happy Dancing :)

Not much new to report other than a few happy dances. We were suppose to get some snow this weekend but as it turned out we only got a trace. DH and I were really wanting some accumulation - oh well! It did turn bitterly cold yesterday and today and the weather folks are talking about more bad weather for tomorrow. Freezing rain - yuck!!!!


I started Just Nan's Spring in the Square on New Year's Day and finished it on the 7th of January. I really like how it came out. Now I want to do the other four seasons :)















I started this crocheting project right after I finished the JN piece and finished it up in about a weeks time. I wanted something as a center piece on my dinning table and this design was just big enought to look right. I still have to wash and press the piece, which I should have done this weekend, but got too lazy :)

I really wanted to do a long oval table runner - but ran into problems when I started.....I tend to get a little ambitious sometimes. So I backed off from doing a table runner for now.

Happy Stitching,
Malinda

Thursday, January 10, 2008

All About Me Pictures

This is really neat! I found this little game on the Sampler Post's Blog. Here's how it works -
Answer the questions and type your answer into Google images search. Post a photo from the FIRST results page. (this can be tough!!)

Here we go!

Age you will be on your next Birthday?

Place You would like to visit?
One of your favorite Places?
Your favorite object? I couldn't think of anything for this one - I guess don't have a favorite object........

Your favorite food? I love lots of different food but I'd have to say my weakness is....

Your favorite animal?
Your favorite color?
Name of a past pet?
Where I live?

The last name of my 1st grade teacher? I blocked all that stuff out of my head ;)
What's my middle name?

A bad habit of yours?
My favorite flower?

My favorite holiday?


Have fun finding pictures to your own answers. If you play along, please leave a link in my comments so I can see :)


Malinda

Thursday, January 3, 2008

Happy New Year !!!

I know it's been a while since my last post......I was feeling pretty bah-humbug at the time! Since then it's been way too busy. I had lots of time off at work - but it just didn't feel like enough time for me. From having to pick up relatives at the airport to visiting my multiple family members I was on the go every day I was off. We had 2 rainy days in there somewhere and was able to spend time stitching and vegging on the couch. I've been busy with stitchy stuff too. I wanted to show off my last 2 finishes for 2007......

ABC Freebie

For my Grand Finale!! It's not really finished - I still need to put the backing fabric on the piece, but I was so excited about it I had to post a picture.....


I'm really impressed with how this piece turned out! After reading the finishing instructions for about a day and a half - I finally got what they were instructing me to do. This piece was pretty quick to stitch - I worked on it on and off for about 4 months. Specialty stitches are one my favorite things to do so I really had fun stitching this piece. It by Hillside Samplings.

I would like to wish all my stitching and blogging buddies a Happy New Year! In the next day or two I'm going to try to post Christmas pictures of my family....stay tuned.

Until next time - Happy Stitching!

Malinda