Ever since I got my order from Thread Pickerz, I have been dying to start Twisted Band Sampler from Northern Expressions.  I wanted to stitch this on 40 ct  but had a hard time find  40 ct black linen.  fter several days of futile search, I settled on 32 ct lugana.  I  tried with one thread and l liked the coverage and so I decided to continue.  I am stitching the specialty stitches version and am loving how this is turning out.  Nicole's instructions are awesome.  She has included several pages of diagrams for the specialty stitches.

After several days of not stitching, yesterday, I unearthed a WIP of several years.

I started PEACE by A Stitcher's Hands years ago when the chart was released,but, as I got new stash, I relegated this to the WIP pile.  Every once in a while, I will pull it out, only to put it away again.  For a change, yesterday, I decided to load it on my millennium frame and stitch on this.  This is a really big one, 578 x 941.  I have a LONG way to go.


1x1  on  ct linen with HDF fibers.

After seeing Nicola's post, I ordered the spool caddy from Richard.   Richard was very helpful and  I got my caddy in record time.  It is exactly as I imagined.  

I sent pictures of two samplers I stitches to Claudia Bagiua Ciceri and she made this scissors fob for me. On one side, it has Do Bears - photo attached - and on the other side, it has the picture of Papa.  I could not get a good photo of the other side :(

Claudia has a face book page Claudia's Treats for Stitchers where you can see photos of some of the fobs she has made.

I could not get a good photo of the other side.

Coat of Arms - My Version

I started this, may be three years ago..  another one of my neglected WIP.  When I was digging through my stash, I purposely left this out.  And, I gave in to my guilt and picked it up last week after I finished Do Bears.  This still not done, I need to fill i the bare spaces but for now I am taking a break from this.

One more WIP bites the dust.  I put in the last stitch on Do Bears from Long Dog earlier today.  It ONLY took me seven years from start to finish!!  After finishing this, I went and looked at my purchase history and noticed that I bought the thread back in 2007.  That is when I would have started this.  But set it aside afer a few motifs and moved on to others.  I would pull it out once in a while but did't feel the urge to add more stitches to it.  Earlier this year, I pulled it out  again but this time I wanted to stitch it and finished the bottom half.  Instead of stashing it away,I left it out in plain sight. I picked up another sampler and finished that.  When it was time to move on, I wanted to start yet another one but picked  up DB and kept stitching and was happy to put the last stitch today.

I have a finish.....

If I stitch one more row, I will be repeating most of the motifs and so I decided not to add another row.  I may add a border around the sampler later but for now I am done with this.  Considering that I started this years ago,  it is a miracle I went back to it and finished it.

1x1 on 28 ct even weave with HDF variegated red -OMG 1145/49/53.

Since Sabine Taterra is working on Papa's companion piece I wanted to work on my Papa.  it has been languishing in the WIP pile for a few years.  And yes, I have quite a few WIP's.

I changed the lay out from vertical to horizontal.  The original was stitched in blue  4 blocks across and 10 blocks down.   A friend of mine had stitched this in the horizontal layout.  I liked it a lot and so I decided to do mine the same way.  Since I was not too keen on blue, I chose to do mine in red. Shocking, isn't it ?

1x1 o 28 ct evenweave with variegated red 1145/49/53 from HDF. I decided to work the frame for each block with HDF Garnet.

This is not the true color of the fabric.  I am not able to capture the color on my photo.  Have I mentioned that I am a lousy photographer  :)

Since I hunted down the floss, I decided to finish the bottom half of Do Bears by Long Dog.  Time to move on to something else.

1 x 1 28 ct even weave with Gloriana Luminescence Poinsettia.