Slow Sunday Stitching where much is contemplated and nothing is finished...

Hello there... sorry I missed posting last week but I just didn't have anything blog worthy to talk about...not that I'm sure what I have this week is blog worthy but it does have pictures... and that's helpful, isn't it?

Things have been busy busy busy here...lots of appointments and places to go ...and it has been SWELTERINGLY HOT... all those petunias and marigolds I've planted have demanded nightly watering...still hot but hoping for rain the next couple of days... for which I will be very grateful since I volunteered to water my neighbor's plants too as he's on vacation...

Since I got my patriotic display up I haven't added anything to it... I had plans to add to it but they haven't totally materialized. I did finish stitching this little piece...

This is a freebie from Marly at Samplers and Santas called Gold Star...you can find it here.  She has lots of cute little pieces that are free. I started this for StitchMaynia... after I finished I noticed I'm off at the bottom... I think I might take out that last row of navy blue stitches and then all the letters will be spaced  2 stitches from the design.

And continuing on the patriotic theme I did finish stitching this half of Farmyard Parade by With Thy Needle and Thread...

I used a piece of 32 ct linen I painted ...it is more yellow orange than is showing up here. I made the chickens darker and as I was stitching I realized that the chickens have eyes but the people don't...huh??? I added a bit of stitch to give her an eye... Brenda calls her Ora but I call her Lena since her counterpart is called Ole... and here's what I got done on Ole...

Ole has big pants and I'm not sure I have enough floss to stitch them... ordered some more and should be here next week. My plan is to display them on this frame I got at Hobby Lobby...

And I'll  Priscilla-fy it a bit with some frou-frou...but first I have to stitch them...

And then I got sidetracked ... lots of people are stitching Christmas in July for a jump on the holiday, but Halloween comes before Christmas and I want more seasonal pieces so I started this...

Isn't she a hoot???  This is Tricks & Treats from With Thy Needle & Thread. I found it here at The Silver Needle.  The fabric is brighter than is showing in this pic... 32 ct I painted... it was charted in DMC but I substituted some  Weeks for the head and the dress... now somewhere I thought I read that the dress needed 2 skeins and I couldn't make up my mind whether I wanted Weeks Oscar or Weeks Guacamole...and instead of ordering an additional skein of either one I decided to use one ply of each giving the dress a homespun look...at least that's what I'm calling it...and when I searched to find where I thought I read this BIG dress would need 2 skeins I can't find it... so I think I made that part up. Oh well, another "lady" with LARGE clothing... I seem quite attracted to these creatures and while it could be a reflection on my size I am going to ignore that fact... la la la la la la ... I can't hear you....

Then yesterday I got a wild hair to play with the new Rit Dyes I had bought...  I had a bottle of Neon Green and a bottle of Teal... and here's the trouble I got into with them.

First I decided to play with the Teal... I did notice that is has more gray in it than I thought but other than that it really seems to be pretty close to Aquamarine... I started this piece painting splotches on it but I wasn't impressed with myself, so I smushed it into the mason jar the dye was in and let it set...I like the mottled look.

This is going to be Welcome Autumn by Drawn Thread ...you can check it out here.

Now the chart calls for silks and I'm not going there so I pulled my own floss choices...

A combo of Crescent Colors and Weeks and Gentle Arts... I'm using GA Sarsaparilla for the letters ... and assortment of colors for the leaves...black crows and a Toasted Barley squirrel. There is a basket on the M that was charted in a color close to the linen color I'm substituting Weeks Kentucky Bluegrass as it is a darker shade of my linen.  Can't wait to get started on this one...

And since I was making a mess and thinking of Fall things I painted some linen for my Lizzie Kate Halloween ABCs...

This uses the Neon Green and Tangerine and Lemon Yellow... it is more intense in real life...and these are the flosses for this piece...

All the threads came with the pattern as a kit and it is still available here on 123 Stitch. Now this isn't the first piece I painted for this chart... I started out having these colors and added some purple ...and some purple splotches and that's where things got out of hand... I just didn't like it at all...the purple was too intense... so I started over and I'm happy I did. But what to do with the piece I didn't care for...well, I ended up smushing it into a mason jar with lot of tangerine dye and this is what I got...

This piece is very IN YOUR FACE in real life. I think it will make a great background for a piece stitched all in black or maybe a deep mottle purple...I'll probably end up cutting it  into smaller chunks and it won't go to waste.

So with a couple of Fall and Halloween pieces kitted up I turned my attention to Christmas...I LOVE this chart by Silver Creek Samplers... My Christmas List... which you can find here.

I love how it rhymes and how it ends with the real reason for Christmas...so I had purchased some "Natural" color 32 ct linen and it was nice but it was blah... so I started by painting some Wine Rit Dye here and there and then I did the smush it into a mason jar "technique"...

And now it is a nice mottled rosy brown which I think will go very well with the DMC flosses...

It calls for B5200 for the white but I may go with something a bit creamier... otherwise I like all the colors in this piece.

Sooooooo I have loaded myself up with projects and we won't speak of the charts I ordered last week. A nice reader sent me a pic of a new ornament by Hands On Designs and said she thought this looked like my decor...and she is spot on right...thanks for enabling me Lana!!!

 and I added this to the cart...

I LOVE that they include a tier tray and a cake stand!!! And there were some other With Thy Needle & Thread charts and some from Blackbird Designs that needed to come live with me too. I'd hang my head in shame but that would just give me a neck ache and I'd have to break out my shawl heating pad...so I won't do that...LOL

No dinner to prepare tonight...going out with my SIL and niece and her significant other and my sons and DIL to celebrate the memory of my brother James who passed away earlier this year. Every year in July he would take us all out for dinner to celebrate his stem cell transplant. At the hospital they start counting the days when you receive your transplant and continue to count them as long as you live. They consider it your  new birth date and it was ... my brother lived almost 7 1/2 years with his transplant, time which he would not have gotten without it. His death wasn't the result of his leukemia but rather from other health issues. I'm so grateful we got those extra years but it will be hard tonight... we all miss him so much. 

So my parting thoughts are stay cool and hug your loved ones... I'll link up with Kathy's Quilts and I hope everyone gets some quality stitching time in this week...

happy stitching-

carol fun