This months ornament SAL weekend was far more successful than last months. While I didn’t get time to do the finishing on my little ornie I did finish the stitching (less the french knot for his eye) and get over halfway on a little secret stitching project as well. All in all not too bad considering the weekend was broken up with a friends 30th Birthday celebrations a late night at work friday and a day in at work saturday.

It is of course one of the Chrismyth series of ornaments from Dragon Dreams (the Griffin) Stitched 2×2 on 32 count , natural linen I think. The kreinik for the beak etc is meant to be 002V butI only had 002 on hand so I used it instead.

Now it is full steam ahead on Sues RR 🙂

It was the last day I feel like I stopped to take a breath ….
It was infact the last time I was able to stitch so far this week, but boy did I get soem stitching done. Wednesday night after work I managed to get in around 600 stitches on Lost taking him to just over the halfway point of the first page 😀
I keep telling myself I need to alternate between this and Fire but this little guy has me firmly in his grasp adn I can’t wait to actually see some more of him develop.

I love packages and when they are presented so beautifully adn have gorgeous little extras in them they are all the more special. The postman left me the most gorgeous bundle of stuff thismorning from Laura at Passione Ricamo. On the advice of Miss Fudgey and Sue I delved into the world of her lovely linens and I have not been disappointed. The service was amazing, so helpful and friendly adn then when I got my package there were extras! So now I am the proud owner of a metre off white PR linen and FQs of blue and black (and a lovely piece of red that fudgey sent me to get me hooked) and 13 skeins of Venus cotton floss i wasn’t expecting at all. There was also the gorgeous little Fairy freebie and a conversion for the venus threads to DMC. I will be buying from Laura again for sure there were even little ribbons tied around everything. Squee!

To finish up here is a picture of the small amount of Japanese Garden I have added since last time. It’s not much but I have put it aside again so I can work on Lost for QS Wed. The centre realy won’t look like much until I get all the Rhodes stitches in which make up a large portion of the border and Tori Gate.

This weekend was an odd one… It is the first year in a very long time that we have not been in China Town to celebrate Chinese new year. Last year of course was an exception as we were actually tavelling through Taipei on the way back from Canada. The general thing is to usually go in watch the Lion and Dragon dances I try and catch some of the traditional Chinese dances etc and if lucky get to see the Tibetan rituals which are always funky. The night generally ends with great food and lots of laughter… so not going this year seems strange.

I miss it.. I knew I would but not enough to get me out of the house this weekend 🙂

Instead I actually got some stitching done , who would have thought!
It was the CC on 3 stitch along on the Character Creations bulletin Board so I restarted The Hermit by Lisa Hunt. I was unhappy with it on the 40ct after seeing Nics start on 28ct so decided to scrap what I had and go back to over 1. I only managed somewhere between 500 and 600 stitches all told but it is a start. I plan to keep working on this each month for the SAL so hopefully he will progress somewhat over the coming months.

What kept me from paying as much attention to Hermit as I had intended is Violet Sometimes. I picked her up for the Valentines day SAL on the HAED BB which ran from the 14th through to monday the 19th. I worked on her on and off from the 15th to the 18th and managed 2000+ sitches. I am almost halfway through page 1 the large blocks of colour so far are making her quite a fast stitch 😀

Now it is just a bit on Japanese garden and starting on Sues RR and I think I will have finished all my goals for February.

Oh and here’s wishing everyone a Happy Year of the Boar!

While it wasn’t officially a QS Wednesday over on the BB with the valentines SAL in full swing I decided to give my little lost dragon some attention anyway. This week I finally added the last stitch of the multitude single stitches that made up the edge of the butterfly! *boogie* So now it is full steam ahead on the little guys snout. He’ll be back next wednesday for sure. This weekend is CC on 3 finally I will get around to restarting Hermit. I love the Lisa Hunt tarot cards so I am hoping Kerry has plans to chart more. Not that I will ever have time to stich them.. but a girl can dream can’t she? 😉

It would appear that I have been renamed….
what can I say I am easily amused and this made me smile and giggle jsut a little :p

Some stitching updates as promised.
Firstly my long overdue picture of Nics RR I kept forgetting to upload the picture to somewhere I could get to it to post but have finally rectified the situation, only to find that the picture is somewhat blurry sorry 🙁

Nics theme for the Round Robin is Dragons, the sections are dragon shaped etc etc. I was originally going to do just a section of a dragon, eye nostril wing section etc but got it into my head to stitch the little guy from Meredith Dilmans “Forbidden Doorway”. The charting on this is a bit darker (more black) than I expected and for a long time whilst stitching it I wasn’t very happy. All in all though I think it turned out ok. The sections were a little bit of a challenge to work with … especially with the newer HAED chart format where the chart elements are not as easily defined from each other as they once were. Hopefully Nic will like it. I think this will be loads of fun to watch as the Round Robin progresses there are so many cool charts and sections to choose from for the theme. Now I just have to get it sent off to Sharon (it is far later than it should be) first I have to get Nics notebook and instructions from her. We both forgot that she just gave me the piece of fabby and nothing else back when the RR first got going. So Nic.. expect a visit soon 🙂

My next bit of show and tell is cirques. This has turned into my doctors / hospital waiting room piece. It is great for those long stretches of time waiting in uninteresting rooms for stuff to happen. Also very easy to transport having only the one thread to carry. This meets my February goal with there being two more of the middling size circles completed since January as well as some filler circles adn a bit more outlining. I am really happy with how it is turning out so far not to mention how quickly it is stitching up with only small amounts of time given to it each month. Just a refresher it is stitched 1 thread over 2 on 40ct Atlantic storm linen with Plum waterlillies from Caron. Appologies for yet another bad pic I snapped this one quickly before work this morning and hadn’t realised how wrinkly the linen looked.

For those of you that don’t know… I love squirrels!
So this week I have chosen a picture of a gorgeous little guy I stalked whilst in Canada. I had some other clearer photos of stalking squirrels from Notre Dame but I don’t have the CD handy at the moment so this guy is it. I just think they are adorable and so cute. The only thing that could rival a squirrel is a hedgehog I miss having hedgehogs under the bushes, I always loved looking for them when I was a kid in New Zealand.

Okay lets get this blog back on track.
This weekend was the SAL challenge over at the HAED BB so out came Return of Spring. Every time I look at this image I love it all the more so I was looking forward to getting some serious stitching time in on her. Unfortunately that was not to be though and I only managed a few hours between Friday and monday night. So there isn’t much to see about an extra 400 stitches on from where I left her after the Jan SAL. I may try and see if I can squeeze a bit more time in on this piece before the next SAL but i don’t think it is likely. I am always appalled out how messy my stitches look when stitching with the light DMC coloursI guess stitching this piece I best get used to it though 🙂
In other news I finally got my christmas present from Mr B this week (he ordered me a bunch of stuff from Stitching bits and bobs.. hence the delay). I had forgotten some of

what I ordered so it was a bit of a surprise opening up the package and seeing what I got 🙂 There is the attic collection feom judy odell with finishing instructions. I am planning on doing this in different colours, probably something dark but we shall see. I am looking forward to the fiddly finishing I need to improve my finishing skills seeing as I seem to be developing a need to stitch smalls and turn them into cute little doo dads.
There was also 6 skeins of plum silk from caron.. yep i said 6! who can’t do math? hehe
This was for cirques.. which I have since figured out i will only need about 2 maybe 3 at the mst skeins to complete. I really shoudl have taken into account that carons are 12 strands and I was stitching on 40ct over 2 not 28 :p Oh well it means I haev a nice stash of silk and it is a lovely colour. The other bits are Rosemarkie from long Dog and some glisten gloss that I decided to try for sparklies in HAEDs thanks to the reccomendation of miss Fudgey oh and a few Vicki Clayton silks and ribbons which arrived weeks ago but were part of the giftie as well and included the last few colours I was missing for Japanese garden.

I also just wanted to say thanks to everyone for all the lovely comments being posted. I have been a bit overwhelmed lately with life and work bits so I haven’t been able to comment or email as much as I would like but I do read everything that gets posted adn keep up with as many blogs as I can… Nancy get a blog! hehe

More piccies next post including the Round Robin and some progress on Cirques