Can you believe it? It’s already been a year since Missy Ann of Deep Inside Missy had her inaugural (& amazing!) 13 Days of Halloween giveaway? Time is just moving way too fast these days. Either that, or I’m getting old and it just seems that way.

Unbelievably, this year’s giveaway is actually going to be even bigger and better! Missy Ann has teamed up with Annette over at Annette’s Acre for a full 31 Days of Halloween giveaway extravaganza this year. Annette will be hosting the ODD days of the month (1, 3, 5, etc.), and Missy Ann will be hosting the EVEN days of the month (2, 4, 6, etc.). You can find all of the details on how to enter, rules, etc. on either of their blogs using these links:

Missy Ann
Annette

Today is October 1, so you know what to do, right? Head over to Annette’s place to enter today’s giveaway.

Speaking of Annette, I’ll actually have the pleasure of spending some time with her next weekend. I can’t wait! I’ll be heading over to the Phoenix area with Terri for the weekend to take a class (warning: if you use tabbed browsing, their code resizes your browser window – very annoying) at The Attic. This will be my first time visiting the shop, so I’m very excited. Not only will I get to see Annette as part of the class, but I’ll also get to see Karen who is also taking the class. So, it should be a wonderful weekend of not only learning a new finishing technique, but getting to spend time with great stitchy friends, too.

Until next time …

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Yes, the time has come for me to admit that I have hopelessly fallen off my no-stash diet challenge. Thank goodness I’m doing better on my actual weight loss diet than I did on this challenge. I did manage to get 11 projects finished, so I made it almost halfway.

My latest finish was the first shoe for the Hagatha’s Slipper class that I took recently from Margaret Bendig. I finished this part up on Friday night, so now I just need to do it again in reverse for the opposite side.

What caused me to stray from my challenge? Well, once all of the Halloween designs started coming out recently, I knew I was doomed. I *love* Halloween stitching! Here are my latest purchases that I picked up at my LNS yesterday when I was there for our monthly Saturday Stitch.

Click to enlarge

I’m going to leave my 25 Projects page (also linked at the top of my blog) in place. After I make a few purchases from the St. Charles fall market for TNNA coming up in a couple of weeks, I plan to get back on my challenge and make NO MORE purchases until I finish the remaining 14 projects to reach my goal of 25.

Speaking of the St. Charles market, have you seen one of the new designs coming out from Paulette at Plum Street Samplers? I’m not usually much on the whole Adam & Eve samplers deal, but this one is a MUST have for me! It’s called “Garden of Eerie” and cracks me up every time I look at it. What an incredibly fun design!! (Hey Darla, did you spot there’s a vulture on it?! )

Paulette has three other designs coming out at market as well. You can see them on the Kelmscott website since they are the distributor for her designs.

Oh yeah, as long as I’m confessing, I should probably ‘fess up to not sticking with my new rotation plan either. I am actually in the process of reworking it though, so I’m not saying yet that I’m completely abandoning it. I’m playing around with a concept that Terri mentioned to me. Rather than selecting particular designs to incorporate into the rotation, each slot would be a particular theme instead. Here is what I’ve come up with so far:

10 hours on current projects (started within the past 6 months)
10 hours on older projects (started more than 6 months ago)
10 hours on seasonal projects (Christmas, Halloween, Easter, etc.)
10 hours on samplers
10 hours on canvas projects
10 hours on “anything goes” project(s) of my choice

I’ll just have to decide if I want to go forward with it. I made it through three slots of the previous rotation I had set up and found myself hating it the whole time. I think it’s the rebellious child in me. I just want to stitch on what I want when I want without some stinkin’ rotation telling me what to do.

I have a couple of floss toss pics to share with you all as well. I think since this entry is already getting pretty long, I’ll save those for another day.

Until next time …

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Today was the monthly stitching gathering at my LNS. As always, we had a great time!

This month things were a bit different than normal. We generally just have an open stitching class and everyone works on whatever they want. This month we were divided up into two separate groups because some were taking a class called Hagatha’s Slipper designed by Margaret Bendig. The other group followed the usual format and stitched on whatever projects they liked.

As for me, I did a combination of the two. I started out with the class group until Margaret had gone over the basic instructions for the class, and then I moved back over to the main group so I could spend time with Dana, Terri, and Darla. Here’s a pic of the class model along with the progress I made today:

While I was at the shop, I also picked up some fibers for a chart I’ve had in my stash for a couple of years, but have never gotten around to stitching. It’s Voodoo Bob (a.k.a. Voodoo Boy from Haberdashery Designs). After seeing Missy Ann finish her Voodoo Boy, it has me hankering again to want to stitching. Since I’m not a fan of Kreinik, I’ve opted to go with Accentuate for mine. The fabric I’m going to use is some 32-count Black Ask Lugana by Sassy’s Fabrics from my stash.

There were also a couple of fantastic finishes that people showed off today. The first is Mermaid of the Pearls by Mirabilia stitched by Lisa who works part-time at the shop. The other finish was actually a framing finish as well. Olga brought in her beautiful version of Margaret’s Plum Blossom Kimono. She opted to go with a red & green colorway and had it framed using double silk custom-cut mats. It’s gorgeous!

Well, I guess that’s it for now. I’ll post pics of my start on My Lady’s Quaker soon. Yes, I started yet another project. I’m hopeless!

Until next time …

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Wow, I can’t believe the new moon has come & gone and I forgot to post my TUSAL (Totally Useless SAL) update for the month! Thankfully, I saw Valerie’s update on her blog which served as a reminder to me.

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You’ll likely notice a lot of metallic ribbon and braid near the top this month. That was from the Multiplicity class that I took. It was a fun piece to work on, but I was glad when it was finished so I could have a break from all those metallics and get back to some floss.

We’re also down to last call for my blogiversary/1000th post giveaway. As of the time I’m writing this, there is about 25 minutes remaining to enter. I’m going to try my absolute best to get the winner announced tomorrow as promised. However, my DSL modem/router died very late Sunday night and I was wouldn’t internet access at home until last night when I replaced it. Losing two days of internet access at home resulted in me getting way behind in adding the names of the entrants to my list. As you can tell by the number of comments I’ve received, it’s a bit of a daunting task. Anyway, if I don’t get completely caught up tonight, then I’ll finish up tomorrow night and announce the winner on Friday.

Until next time …. when I announce the big winner ….

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Ta-dah! Yep, the Multiplicity piece from the class I took last weekend in La Jolla is finished after only six days. This piece was so much fun to stitch! Now I just have to try and decide if I’m going to attempt to finish it into the actual frame weight or let my local finisher do it instead.

Design: Multiplicity
Designer: Margaret Bendig
Fabric: 18-count white mono canvas
Fibers: Kreinik braids & Rainbow Gallery Fyre Werks ribbon
Click image to enlarge

I really love this color palette! It works really well with the color of my living furniture which is kind of a sage green microfiber. I really wish I could capture these colors better so you could appreciate them more fully. Photographing metallics is a real PITA! Here is a list of the colors I used along with a coordinating reference point in the piece:

Kreinik braid #4002 (Spiced Chai) – Smyrna border
Kreinik braid #4003 (Ginseng Gold) – background of the wicker/basket looking stitch
Kreinik braid #4004 (Earl Grey) – fill-in stitching on the sides
Kreinik braid #4005 (Sugar Cube) – top of the large overlapping stitches on the side
Fyre Werks FT33 (Moonglow) – light color woven stitches in the center
Fyre Werks FT50 (Old Gold) – dark color woven stitches in the center

As I mentioned, this piece was a very fun stitch. I enjoyed it so much that I’m actually considering stitching it again. I think it would be very cool to do it on black canvas using orange & black fibers for a Halloween look. What do you guys think?

Anyway, now that this piece is finished (project #10 on my 25 finishes challenge), I think I’ll be going back to Mary Wigham this weekend.

Until next time …

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