It's FINALLY Done!

My daughter Sherrie got married 1 year ago this coming June.  When she got engaged I promised to stitch her a wedding sampler.  Well, she chose 1st Corinthians 13 from My Big Toe.  I finally finished it earlier this week.  I hadn't realized that it would take me a year and a half to stitch it.  I stitched it over one on 25 count ivory lugana with the suggested Weeks Dye Works threads.  I had to be extra careful not make any mistakes because ripping them out caused a shadow of the wrong stitch to show up on the fabric.  So I marked up my chart like crazy and counted the border stitches several times to make sure everything lined up perfectly.  I also had to chart their names and the date and then figure out how it worked in the border.  I even hid a little capitol A in the center medallion.  I am so pleased with how it turned out. 

Completed Wedding Sampler for Sherrie & Eric

Secret A

Perfectly Centered Personalization ;-)

I'm really quite proud of how this all came together.  I had my doubts that I could add the personalization so that it was centered in the border but it turned out just as I planned. 

I'm So Over This!

 I am so over winter.  These photos were taken today out my front and back doors.  It's the middle of May, not January.  I am so sick of snow.  I want my sunshine and my heat.  I want flowers and birds and bunnies.  I'm a hot weather kind of gal.  On Monday I was wearing shorts; today I'm out trying to save my trees from losing limbs due to the wet, heavy snow.  All I got for my efforts was big clumps of snow plopping down on my head.  I have been babying a rose bush in the back yard for almost three years now.  Last year it actually had buds before a tremendous hail storm stripped it of both its buds and leaves.  I had a stick bush for most of the summer.  Yesterday it actually had two blooms on it before all this heavy snow was dumped on it.  I know we need the moisture but rain works too.  Oh well, I think I'll go stitch something.

Who Knew?

Now I've lived here in Colorado for almost three years.  I've heard it said that it has a high desert climate.  I never believed it because I was used to the desert in Arizona.  The Sonoran Desert to be exact.  Now there's a desert!  But much to my surprise, I discovered something today.  We have cacti in Colorado! 

It was such a beautiful day (compared to last week when we had a snowstorm in April - I don't think I'll ever get used to that!) that Dave and I decided to take a hike.  Now I'm not a mountain climber.  I like my hikes on flat, stable ground.  Our favorite place to hike here in the Denver area is at a park called Platt River Park in Littleton.  They have a trail that both hikers and bikers can use together but they also have a trail that's strictly for hikers.  It winds through the wetlands and it's like a peaceful oasis in the middle of town.  It travels by the river and you can often see birds and beavers in their natural habitat.  We saw a beautiful little mallard duck just a swimming along and lots of butterflies.   Even the dandelions are pretty here.  I like to think of them as wildflowers but Dave just calls them weeds.  Today I noticed something I had not seen before.  In one area of the park were these lovely little patches of cacti.  They may be prickly pear cactus but don't quote me on that.  It was like having a little piece of Phoenix here.  Here's a couple more photos of our wonderful day.

Dandelions Along the Trail

Dandelions and Butterfly

How Tastes Change

I mentioned in my last post that I had found a new-to-me designer whose patterns I just fell in love with.  That got me to thinking how my tastes have changed over the years.  For a while in the 90's, I stitched every Just Nan that came out.  Then there was my Drawn Thread phase.  I went through Bent Creek and Lizzie Kate as soon as they came out.  But eventually all their designs began to look alike.  If I had stitched one Just Nan, I had stitched them all.  Of course, she has changed what she is doing but they don't appeal to me at all.  A little too fiddly for my tastes.  I'm really not picking on Just Nan, just using her as an example.  But what appeals to me now would never have found a home in my stash before.  I guess my tastes have changed.  Of course, that means I have a bunch of stash that I will never stitch.  I guess I need to find someone to give it a good home. 

But all this means is that I've found designers that are new to me whose patterns I love.  With Etsy and Facebook, a person can find it much easier to market their own patterns than it used to be.  Before you had to find a distributor and they would then sell to the shops.  Now you can search on Etsy for cross stitch and find all kinds of designers.  And most of the patterns can be paid for and downloaded with no waiting.  One of these has become a new favorite of mine.  The Frosted Pumpkin has some of the cutest designs I've seen in a long time.  I love their use of color and I especially like the way they design their little people.  I'm not usually a fan of using people in my samplers.  I have never liked the way the stick-figure people look.  It's a little too primitive for me.  But I love these little guys.  They make me feel good when I look at them.  I'm finishing up their tribute to the National Parks and I have two more waiting in the wings.  They were both SAL's from the past few years and I plan on working them into my rotation.  I just can't decide which to do first.
I'm leaning towards the Woodland sampler but I reserve the right to change my mind.

Passport to Adventure SAL 2015

Woodland Sampler

My Current WIP

I have recently found a new-to-me designer, The Frosted Pumpkin.  I fell in love with this design last year when it was offered as a SAL.  Now as usual I kind of took my time doing it.  I know most people like to keep up with the stitching but I've found if you give me a deadline, I tend to resent it and subsequently won't stitch it.  I tend to want to my own thing.  I will say this is almost finished so I'm not too far off the finish line on this one.  Obviously this sampler celebrates the centennial of the National Park system.  I have one more park to stitch.  For those of you interested, the parks depicted in the sampler are Yellowstone, Volcano National Park in Hawaii, Denali National Park in Alaska, Arcadia National Park in Maine, The Great Smoky Mountains and Joshua Tree National Park in California.  I just have Joshua Tree and the bottom border to finish.   I have purchased a couple more of their designs.  I just need to decide which one I want to start next. 

Oh My Gosh!

I knew it had been a while since I've made any blog post but I hadn't realized it had been since August of last year.  I had such good intentions for this year.  I planned to start blogging again at the beginning of the new year and here it is April already.  I have no excuse, just had other things that I got caught up in doing.  Well, I'm back now and hope to keep up more frequently thank once a year! 

One thing that is new with me if that I retired after working for a lot of my adult life.  I really couldn't take standing on my feet as a cashier at Michael's any more so I left them right before we went to Phoenix for Sherrie's wedding.  I still teach their jewelry classes but that's only a few times a month.  I am thinking of starting either an Etsy or an Artfire shop to sell some of my jewelry in.  I need to do some research first though. 

Another thing that has been on my mind has been switching from Blogger to Bloglovin'.  I've been happy with blogger but am not sure they are still supporting their blogs.  I need something easy to set up and use.  Oh well, one more thing to research.

I wanted to share a few pictures of Sherrie's wedding last June.  Hard to believe it's been almost 9 months since she got married. 

Sherrie & Eric 6/11/2016

The Whole Watson Family

Typical Brother and Sister