A visit to an antique store

I had to go out and do some shopping today. The fridge was basically empty and there were lots of other necessities that were needed. So since I was going out I decided to stop at an antique store that one of my stitching friends mentioned last weekend. She told me they had lots of buttons and other stuff so I just had to go and check it out. I used to be a regular at that place, but I never saw anything that I could use for my stitching there. But today I found some great treasures.

I found two old pattern books. They are not even dated so I have no clue how old they are. But there are some beautiful patterns in them, and even if they didn’t have any patterns that I thought were pretty, I would have gotten them anyway. I just love love LOVE old pattern books and am somewhat of a collector, especially of the old Icelandic ones.

These buttons were also screaming my name. I am going back to search in the thousands of buttons that are there when I have more time and energy. These were just some cute ones I found quickly.

Lace. There were drawers full of them. It was a bit of a mess to go through so again, I am going back when I have more time and energy to go through everything. I am sure there are more treasures there that just really need a new home.

I love going to places like this one. There were 3 old sewing machines that I really really wanted and I would have gotten them all if I had a bigger place and a room to display them in. There was so much furniture there that I wanted. Oh, and old HUGE tin cookie boxes and just name it. The place is beautiful and full of all kinds of great stuff. I am going to be a regular there I think.

Oh, and I got a cute new hat! I just have to share a picture of yours truly wearing it. It is purple and sparkly! Oh so me!

Tonight I plan on taking it easy and watching a movie. I also have a new project to start for a birthday in my family that is coming up. I finally found the perfect thread to go with the fabric I had already picked out. Thanks to my mom for having a great eye for color and patterns! I had been looking through all my stash and had picked out some threads that I thought would work but wasn’t sure about anything. My mom comes over and finds something that I didn’t even consider and bamm! It is the perfect color! LOL! Gotta love her 🙂 Have a great weekend everyone!

I am famous! Or almost…

Many of you know that I love photography almost as much as I love stitching. So it was a great honor when Emma Williams, Managing Editor of Schmap Guides contacted me about a photo on my flickr account asking if it was OK to use it for their sixth edition of their Schmap London Guide. And it just got published and my photo is one of the featured ones!

Hi Linda,

I am delighted to let you know that your submitted photo
has been selected for inclusion in the newly released sixth
edition of our Schmap London Guide.

Yay! I got featured! And if you click on my picture (in the upper right corner) it takes you to the original on my flickr page.

I took this picture while I was in London in November with my work. It was a lazy Sunday walk in Regents Park and the shot was a simple one, but turned out quite pretty 🙂 I am so happy!

New project and more sickness.

Yup. I am sick again. I woke up at 6am on Wednesday morning with a horrible tummy ache and started leaking from both ends soon after that, yeah, yummie, I know. I have had a sore tummy and a fever since then and today is basically my first day feeling a bit human again. I still have slight fever but my stomach is feeling a whole lot better. So I am crossing my fingers and stitches (off course!) that it is over now! My girls have thankfully stayed clear of all this sickness that has been haunting the house so far, and I really hope that they don’t catch any of it. I sent them to my parents house on Wednesday since I was too sick to even take care of myself. My mom offered to take them so I was very thankful to just be able to be sick in peace. It was just what I needed. I can’t wait to go to work on Monday. I am not made for staying at home like this, I go a little crazy! I have been more or less sick for about 3 weeks now so enough is enough!

I wanted to share my newly started project with you. I started it a week ago (Friday night) and did a little on it then, a little yesterday and a little today. Here is how it looks:

Pattern: Home Of A Needleworker (Too!) by Diane Williams (Little House Needleworks)
Fabric: Lakeside Linens 36ct Reindeer (limited edition)
Threads: CCC as recommended
Stitched with one thread over two

I am loving it! I have missed stitching on LHN designs! And I must say that this fabric is just amazing! I love the color and the feel of it. It is so soft and nice to work with. The threads just pop on it and the color is so soft on the eyes. The picture does not do it justice but it was the best I could do without taking the piece outside and it is wet and I didn’t want to take the chance of ruining my piece. The color is actually a bit more orange/brown-ish, not as gray as it looks in the picture. I will get a better picture with truer colors once it is done. I can’t put it down and am going to continue watching Grey’s Anatomy and stitch some more. My girls are coming home today since I am feeling better and I can’t wait to have them home. I am thinking we will order a pizza for them (I still don’t feel like eating anything) and have a nice quiet night at home tonight.

Thank you all for visiting and for the wonderful comments on both Flea Market Souvenir and the finishes from my Finishing Weekend!

Finishing Camp – Results!

Friday night was thankfully just a slow low key night. I wasn’t feeling well because of the antibiotics and I also still had a slight fever. It was just me, Rósa and Guðbjörg that night and we just sat and stitched and talked. It was very nice. Oh, Lára and Sveina turned up late that night but didn’t stay long.

On Saturday I had a lot of guests coming. Me, Rósa, Guðbjörg, Sissú, Lára, Munda, Magnea, Anna Rósa, Aisté, Una, Erla Björk (and maybe I am forgetting someone) were all here at some point of the day and there were seven of us here for dinner. I was feeling lots better than the day before so I did get a lot of finishing done. I did finishing for myself and helped those that needed helping. It was great having all these ladies here sharing the joy of stitching and finishing, all helping each other out and learning from one another.

I am going to share with you pictures of the finishing I did for myself, for Brenda (who sent me the pieces a while ago) and a birthday present that I did for my friend Tracy.

Finishing for myself out of pieces that were stitched by me:

I stitched this tree in 2007.
Design by Lynda Baldauf – Scandinavian Stitches.
Stitched on 32ct Silkweaver Solo. Added red jingle bells instead of stitching the hearts that were in the design.

A bourse for my friend Tracy. I stitched this piece in 2008.
Little House Needleworks – Faith
28ct Gingham Natural/Cream Linen
Crescent Color threads

Needleroll kit from Shepherd’s Bush

Rose Mosaic Needleroll by M-designs
Stitched with recommended threads and embelishments
Fabric is 32ct antique white linen

These are all for me except the bourse, it is for my good friend Tracy who saw the bourse I did for Brenda and fell in love with it and wanted one. So, it is her birthday next weekend so off course she is getting one!

_________________________________________________________________________________________

Finishing I did for Brenda out of the stitched pieces she sent me:

I loved how this bookmark turned out. I thought it needed a little something to it once I had stitched it together, so I added some beads to the bottom of it. I hope Brenda will like it, I know she loves to read almost as much as she loves stitching 🙂

Cottage Garden Pinkeep
Design by Country Cottage Needleworks

Phew. So that’s it!
I hope everyone learned a lot this weekend and that people are now not afraid of trying new things and just go for it! I am thinking about having one of these weekends again in a couple of months. So if you want to come, you better start saving up! 🙂
I hope you all had a great weekend. I am off to bed!

Also, it is my dad’s 54th birthday today! Happy Birthday daddy! Love you!

Flea Market Souvenir FINISHED and a Bourse – Picture Heavy post!

I have been home since yesterday. I am slowly getting a little better.
I decided to do some finishing for my friend Brenda, and decided, after going through my finishing supplies, to make this bourse out of a sunflower piece that she sent me. I had never done a bourse before and am quite pleased with how it turned out. It is a little small though, if I were to do it again I would make it bigger. But I think it is cute anyway.

Sunflower bourse for Brenda
Sunflower piece stitched by her – finishing done by me

I also finished the stitching on my Flea Market Souvenir by Blackbird Designs. I love it! All I have to do now is assemble it with some speciality stitches (I am also thinking about maybe adding some beads… I will see) and it will be done. I love this piece, it has been so much fun to stitch and the colors of the threads and the linen are just amazing. Here are some shots. I will take more after I have stitched it together.

Flea Market Souvenir by Blackbird Designs
Fabric: 30ct LaCrosse Blend and 30ct Kansas City Blend (two different dye lots) by R.&R. Reproductions
Threads: WDW and GAST and recommended

So now I am going to go and try to figure out what stitches to use to assemble it and do some experiments with it. I will post more photos once it is completely done!

****EDITED WITH PICTURES****

Well I did it, I finished it! I just tried not to think much about what I was doing and just go for it and do whatever stitches came to mind. Here are a bunch of pictures:

I am THRILLED with it! YAY!

Blog stats

As I write this, the visits to my blog have reached this number:

I have 3,691 comments. Commenter number 4000 will get a prize from me.
I will let you know again when it gets closer to the number. I am thinking of updating the number of comments about once a week or so so that you can be updated. So you will not miss it, I promise 🙂

This week has been a week of visiting doctors. Sumarrós went to the doctor on Monday and yesterday because she got glitter in her eye that hurt and had to be removed. I went today because my the UTI that I had been fighting came back and I finally got some antibiotics so I should be feeling better very soon *crossing fingers and stitches*. On top of that I have been fighting a cold and working like crazy. So when I get home I just crash. I have NO energy. But since I got the meds I should be all better before next weekend. Finishing camp at my house, wooohooo!

Thank you all for visiting and commenting. Thanks so much for the sweet comments on the Noel ornament. I sure am happy about it and can’t stop looking at it. Now I am going to crawl to bed and get some rest. Take care everyone!

Thank you

Another ornament finish.

One of the few stitching goals I set myself for this year was to stitch and finish one ornament a month. January passed before I knew it so now I have made two ornaments in February. The Prairie Schooler Santa in the previous post was my January ornament (even though it was stitched and finished in February) and late last night I finished up this little beauty. I am super happy with how it turned out.

Pattern: Freebie found here
Fabric: 36ct Edinborough Linen – Cream
Thread: DMC 115
Stitched with one thread over two
Beads: Mill Hill #00557 and 40557

There is not much else going on. I had been fighting a UTI earlier this week and today a cold has been trying its best to set in my body. I am not about to let that happen. I have no time to be sick at the moment! So I am doing my very best to keep it at bay.

I did a little more stitching on my Flea Market Souvenir Sampler and will post a picture of it later this week. It is too dark right now to be snapping some photos. And I want to show you the true beautiful colors of the piece. I am on the last part of it now. I can’t wait to assemble it! I think it is going to be a lot of fun!

Another thing. Next weekend I will have my big finishing camp weekend as I mentioned here. So if any of you ladies are going to fly over, you are welcome! Seriously! The more the merrier!

Busy, ornament finish and other things.

Yes, yes. I am still here. Still alive for the most part. This would be the reason for me being a little quiet lately.

Yes, this is my desk at work. We are working very hard to balance everything that belongs to the year 2008 and we are getting there. But this means a little longer hours, a little work on the weekends etc. Nothing that is killing me, just a little more busy than usually. Fun thing that has been happening at work. These geese (there are three pictures of them) have been visiting us almost every day for about two weeks now. I love them! They are so cute and I just think it is fun that they come almost every day. Well off course they do since people feed them when they are there. So one day I ran down stairs and outside since I had my camera with me and snapped some shots of them.

So, the stitching part of this post! I have been working on this ornament lately. It has taken much longer than it was supposed to since I have been so busy. But I finished the stitching and the finishing tonight and I love how it turned out.

TGOSM Issue 34 November 2008
Designer: Prairie Schooler
Fabric: 28ct Lugana
Threads: DMC
Beads: Mill Hill
Jingles from my stash

I have also worked a little more on Flea Market Souvenir and some other projects, but nothing work showing yet. The busy time at work will be over soon so then I will have more time to stitch and finish things. I have already started to think about a good time for my finishing weekend that I mentioned some posts ago. I think it will be fun!

Well, must get the kids in bed. I am going to stitch a little tonight. Not sure what though.

Finishing for a friend.

My friend Brenda claims to be finishing challenged (her words, not mine! LOL!) so when I offered her to mail me some pieces and do the finishing for her on them, she jumped at the offer and this week I got an envelope from her with these beautiful pieces stitched by her and two books that she had and wanted to give me (Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden and Fool me Once by Fern Michaels).

Now I am trying to decide what to finish them into. This is what I have in mind at the moment.

The blue tall flower piece – bookmark
Sunflower piece – a pillow
Cottage Garden Piece – a pinkeep
The green/purple piece on top – no clue! LOL! It would look great as a biscornu, but it is a little too big for one and I don’t have the same backing fabric (that could be fixed easily though). But I think it is a tad to big for a biscornu though.

Any ideas? Please share 🙂

I haven’t done much stitching during the week. I have done a little on Flea Market Souvenir and will probably do more stitching on it today and tonight. So I might have an updated picture later in the week.