September 26, 2010

Mary Beale, Her Sampler

She's done!



And what a joy it was to stitch this sampler!



One of those you enjoy working on so much, you almost hate to be done with it!



I had to change the wording along the bottom....my whole name didn't work with the way it was charted, (her sampler, finished in ****), so what you see is my version ;-)

I will miss working on it, but it's headed to the framers soon, so we can enjoy looking at it on the wall :)



Mary Beale, her very ownself, recommended not filling in around the verse, so that's how I left it :)



"Mary Beale, Her Sampler"
Designed by Mary Beale
from the Pocketbook Needlework series, 1998 edition
available from Mary's online shop (click on link to go there)
Stitched on 40 count Park City Blend by R&R
over 2 with one strand DMC thread


Thank you all for visiting my blog and always saying such nice things. The stitching and blogging community is so wonderful...I'm very grateful to be a part of it.
Have a wonderful week ahead and stitch much!
xox

September 23, 2010

some finishes and some winners too

Apologies in advance for these horrible pictures. I've been fighting a cold bug for weeks and it finally hit pretty hard the past few days, so everything I try to do just turns out cruddy!

I recently sent a few things to Tobie for finishing, she makes awesome pillows and other things. Got two of them back today...

Here's Jingles & Jack (design by Becky's Boos)...



and the Daisy Sampler (design by Little House Needleworks)....



Also, I recently stitched up this little freebie from Shepherd's Bush, called Halloween Grins...



Stitched once for my hubby, as he picked it out when he was with me at the LNS last fall. The Frankenstein one is his. Then stitched again for my daughters, the grinning kitty. They are in some tuckable hanging banners that Tobie made for me a few years back. Can't remember what they were originally for, but these fit perfectly. My original plan was to make these into little hanging ornaments, but I feel too shaky to even attempt that, so here they go. I may need to spruce up the banners a little...when I feel better...maybe some cute buttons in the corners.

Thanks to everyone who entered my giveaway. The random generator thing was done and the winners are Tracey for Lot A, and Deborah for Lot B. Congratulations ladies, I will be emailing you soon for your mailing info...or if you see this first, please go ahead and email me with it :)

Back to my Mary sampler...which I've managed to work on in-between my Nyquil shots, lol! She's almost done :)

Happy Fall Y'all! Yippee!!

September 18, 2010

welcome fall!

Just couldn't stand it any longer! Seeing all of the fall finishes on the blogs has put me in the mood! So I took a little break from my Mary sampler to stitch this up for a friend!



Design by Lizzie Kate - Autumn Things #125
stitched on 28 ct. Country French Latte linen with WDW
(I left off the square border and put the acorn button in a different spot than shown on the cover of the chart).
premade acorn banner from
Stitch-A-Gift



Hope she likes it! Now, one more fall stitch to complete and then back to the Mary Beale sampler, which is almost done!

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

September 16, 2010

stash giveaway

Hello again! How are you this week? So far things are just peachy here at Cone Headquarters. Mr. Muttley had a checkup on Tuesday and all is going well. So far. One more week to go, then another recheck and hopefully the stitches can come out and the eye will be ok. The vet did say if she thinks it needs another week under the patch, she'll sew it back up. Oh boy!
Astro is still not happy about the cone, and steers a w i d e path around it, even though I think in his heart, he'd like to play. Muttley says he's tired of feeling like a reject!



Meanwhile, I'm clearing out my stash and wanted to share some goodies with my faithful readers in the process. There will be two winners, one for "lot A" as seen here:




The contents will include:
Little House Needleworks Acorns & Pines, with the fabric
Lizzie Kate Snippet - Wanted! with fabric and buttons
Heart in Hand Grand Old Flag
& Lizzie Kate Fall Crazy #131

And another winner for "lot B" as pictured below:



which will include:

Whitman's Tin Sewing Set chart and Whitman's tin
BrightNeedle Can You Spy? with fabric and Anchor threads called for
Threads of Gold Heart to Heart (Christmas ornament)
Homespun Elegance Tiny Stuff Noel Noah Pin/Ornament with fabric and embellishment.

If you'd like a chance to win, please let me know in the comments below this post. I will draw two names next Thursday, Sept. 23. Be sure to let me know which group you'd like, should you win!

September 08, 2010

samplers & pugs & rain, oh my!

Hello my dear and faithful readers! I've thought about you often and wanted to write. Really, I did! But I couldn't think of anything to say and since I'm just working on one project right now, wanted to be further along before posting pictures of it. But time sure is flying, and here we are, in September already, so here's where I am on the Mary Beale sampler (that I still don't know the name of!)

marybeale1

It's kind of big and hard to get a good picture of, so the photo above isn't the best.
But look at this little butterfly, I love it...

IMG_4480

and the verse, that I also love. It's just outlined by the green border right now, the chart says to fill in the whole verse area with the same color...but I'm thinking I won't. What do you think?

marybeale2

As there is so much solid stitching around the rest of the sampler...

marybeale3

more grass will fill this area below this blank space (which will have a little couple sitting at a table under some grapevines...



anyway, that's as far as I've gotten on it so far. Almost there!



Some of you that are my Facebook friends will already know about my pug problem, but for those that aren't, here's the problem....Muttley...Munny Pie...Mutt Lee...



It all started when his eyes started looking funny. Cloudy, etc. One eye worse than the other. We took him in to our vet, she did a dye test, which showed a corneal scratch on one eye, and corneal swelling on the other, both due to "injuries" of some sort. All we could figure is, because he's so WILD, he ran into something and scratched it. He loves to bury his face in the carpet or in blankets. So anyway, she prescribes drops, antibiotics and said to come back in a week. TWO DAYS later, the one eye with the scratch turns into the ulcer you see above. How lucky for us it was the holiday weekend, so no going back to the vet until Tuesday, and trust me when I say, it got uglier before Tues. Let me tell you, I pretty much went off the deep end, picturing this little (well, not so little, but you know what I mean), two year old pug, going blind! We've had a bunny rabbit lose an eye, even with excellent specialized medical care, so I knew what it looked like.

But, we made it to Tuesday, took him back in first thing in the morning and now we have this...




The vet made a "patch" over the ulcer, using his extra eye-lid flap, or whatever it's called. It should help speed the healing. It looks seriously gross. He's soooo happy {snort}. It has to stay this way for two weeks, and considering he's WILD, the Cone of Shame must be worn for that amount of time as well, until the stitches come out.
You may notice, the cone is already dented...



He's since figured out that this "Cone of Shame" can be used to his advantage...

*Mom holds his bone for him, so he can get his daily chew on (he chews a LOT on a regular basis, it's his therapy).
*He can terrorize Astro relentlessly (because Astro is terrified of the cone coming at him)
*He can lick food, water and whatever else might get into the cone at his leisure.
*Everyone feels sorry for him when he moans for one solid minute while laying on the couch, so he gets extra treats, rubbin' and kisses.
*If he plants his face straight down on the floor, the cone spreads out and he can pick up miscellaneous crap off said floor.
*He can clear a path really quickly because the humans and other living creatures in the house have figured out that the cone HURTS like h*ll when rammed into their legs, so they get out of the way, and fast!

I'm sure there are other advantages to the cone, but he's only on the first 24 hours, so give him time. Meanwhile, his parents continue to pray really hard that the #1 advantage to all this will be that his eye heals up and when it's opened back up, that ulcer will be much better.

And rain? Yes, lots of it, which normally I love. Except when there's a MONSOON and you're trying to walk doggies with cones on their heads and they are freaking out cause they've never heard all that NOISE before, all around their heads, while they need to peepee reaaaaaaally badly. They hate even getting their feet wet anyway, geesh! (You doggie owners out there know exactly what I'm talking about....don't ya?) I've never been so completely drenched in all of my life, but at least he went potty finally :-)

:::::sigh:::::
Life is good, even when it's nuts! I'm so happy it's the beginning of fall. So happy in fact, that I'm going to have a Fall giveaway very soon, so stay tuned for that. It will be for my loyal blog followers and regular commenting friends only :)

Stay safe! Stay dry! Be happy!

PS. For those that haven't seen the movie UP (such a great movie)...here's a clip about the Cone of Shame: