Happy dance at The Wedding

As you may remember, I had this super secret project that I have been working on for two years. It was Lavender & Lace's The Wedding which I have tweaked a bit to fit my parents' 50th anniversary. I have finished in time too, except for the beading. This summer I took a deep breath, washed and ironed the piece, and then I spent two days beading, but it was worth it. Last week it finally came back from the framer's and went to live with my parents. I am very satisfied with the result, although I do not want to stitch anything white for a while. :) I changed the letters to numbers, and modified the hair colour of the young couple, plus I thought the veil wasn't enough so I added a blackwork in Kreinik's gold blending filament. In retrospect, I wish I would have placed the numbers a bit closer to each other, but it still turned out fine. Here is the end product, with some details for the veil.

Tree of Stitches 2.0

I have finally managed to hand over the last of the xmas presents last week! :) One of my best friends was very busy and then she had a holiday. She never knew what I stitched for her! She fell in love with my first version of Tree of Stitches by Abi Gurden when she saw me stitching it, and I immediately decided to stitch it a second time for her. This time I added more warm colours because I know her to like those, and experimented with the hand dyed threads on the double layer stitches. I stitched the bottom layers completely before going on to the top layer, to add colour variation to the individual stitches. I also added more beads instead of some x stitches. I made her owl brown and left the bunny because I wasn't sure she liked it. I'm very satisfied with the way it turned out. And yes, I am getting ready to stitch it again, this time for my parents. ;)

Photos after the jump.

Look back at Xmas

These two boxes are gifts I have made for stitchy friends because I knew they would appreciate them. Now that they have their presents, I can show you all! The chart for the fall leaves is a downloadable freebie from the DMC site, the other one with the blackwork, or in this case, bluework, is a chart from an old World of Cross Stitching magazine. Sorry for the bad quality, these are cell phone pictures.

Minor project reveal

This is the scan I have made of the two bookmarks I stitched for my beloved sister and her lovely hubby. Their birthdays are just a week apart. I stitched it during the summer and kept quiet about it, and wanted to post as soon as they get it, it just took longer for their mail to arrive than I thought. Anyway, I just remembered to post the picture. The charts are from a 2009 Cross Stitch Crazy magazine.

Game time!

Okay, I am still working more hours than I'm comfortable with, but at the same time I am happy with the direction my life is taking, and to celebrate that I decided to host a little game. I call it "guess the HAED" and it pretty much describes what you must do. Last month Kelly from GA decided to RAK me on my birthday, which was awfully nice of her and caught me by surprise. It made me look through my HAED stash and regardless of the WIPocalypse madness I have going on, I just had to start working on one of them! It also inspired this bit of fun. 

So here's the rules: 

1, Kelly, I love you, but sadly, you are disqualified. :) 

2, You may go through the HAED website, but please don't look at my wish list for clues!

3, If you believe you identified the project, leave a comment with the name of the design you think it is. One guess per player please!

4, If one person gets it right, he/she gets a small prize. 

4.1, If more people get it right, I will pick one of them for the prize.

4.2, If no one gets it right, everyone takes part in the sweepstake.

5, You have until midnight of July 17th to guess.

6, I will publish the results here on my blog.

7, Kelly will be compensated for not being able to take part. ;)

So start guessing and good luck!

Edited to add: okay, I take back rule two, you can look at my WL if you wish. But really, leaving a comment with any HAED design that has blue in the top left corner will get you in the draw, so as I said in my comment, consider this a giveaway! :)

I have also removed word verification, as I have to approve every comment anyway, so no point. 

RAKed by a non-stitcher

You may remember that I paused on the Christmas SAL I'm in because I ran out of floss and the shop that carried The Gentle Art gave in to recession and closed. Thankfully, another online friend of mine that I met on a gardening website volunteered to buy me some floss. I asked her for three skeins of the Raspberry Parfait shade and promised to cover the bill. Imagine my surprise when the envelope contained a whole bunch of other colours and a gift note! When I contacted her, all she said was "well, I had a good month and you had a crappy one with the divorce and everything, so just lean back and carry on stitching."  Isn't she amazing? Who said there is no good in this world?

By the way, did I say non-stitcher? It may not be true for long, as it seems I infested her with the stitching virus! I give it a few months and she will join our ranks!

Another giveaway!

Robin is celebrating her blogoversary by organizing a giveaway! Click HERE to check it out and enter the draw before Thanksgiving!

I finally finished part 7 and 8 of  my Christmas sampler and scanned it. I'm not sure if it will fit in the scanner next time! I didn't print part 9 yet, I might need to buy a new ink cartridge before. Which worries me, as it's rather expensive. There is the option of having the cartridge refilled, but I heard some cases when it was done so badly it spilled out of the cartridge and ruined the printer. Anyone knows anything certain about this topic? I have no idea, just rumours but no facts.

I got another great package from Granma Jane, again two issues of the Stoney Creek Cross Stitch magazine and a hand made Christmas tree ornament as a bonus! Plus I got some nice postcards from an exchange in one of my favourite Yahoo groups. And I even treated myself to a Heritage kit by John Clayton that I wanted to stitch since the first time I saw it. And since I've been browsing those kits I decided to make a collage wish list just for fun!

Happy dancing

Here it is! A special gift for a special couple. The Coyle family - that is, my sister and her husband - will celebrate their first anniversary soon and this beauty will be my present to them. They have already seen it but I want to have it framed for them.

My hubby loves morning glories and really liked this design as well so I might gonna have to stitch it again soon! :) Until then I'm just happy dancing. :)