Weeeeeeeeeeee!

 Lots of new adventures this past week in the form of: BICYCLING.

The husband recently got one to use on the hiking trails in the woods down the road from the house and then he talked me into getting one too. (With CONDITIONS. Like: bike paths only, no woods, no roads, etc. I'm a diva like that. :))

Mind you, I haven't been on a bike in OVER TWENTY YEARS so this past week was *quite* the hoot. You don't TOTALLY forget how to ride one. You basically remember enough not to fall off it - while looking/feeling like a complete moron for awhile until it fully comes back. There was bunch of pushing around with one foot like a scooter until my brain kinda connected with the fact that you have to, you know, PEDAL. Hahaha! We've gone out a few times and it gets easier, as far as handling, each time. (Because physically? Exhausting. And I've been REALLY good about getting in my exercise 5-6 days a week this year so that doesn't seem fair. *pout* I feel like I should be in better shape?) This week has been nothing but rain but hopefully the weekend will allow for a couple more 'sessions'. :)

In other news, Shepherd's Bush was really great about sending me some more chenille trim to finish my pillow. While waiting, I stitched her face again, this time with random Crescent Color floss in a Xmas theme. I think it will make for a cute ornament finish. (Carrot nose has been ordered.)

 It fully hit me that I have a STAGGERING amount of smalls to deal with now (to me) when I went to store that pillow until holiday time so I buckled down this week to at least get my Halloween designs finished.

Turns out if you do one each day it's not super overwhelming. I would cut/pin them while waiting for my kiln to heat before working, do the sewing after I was finished work, and then stuff/close up at night while watching tv.

 It feels good to get these 'done done' now so I can use them this fall. I have four times as many Xmas ones to finish though so....................hold me. The end is no where in sight. lol

It's the Halloween apocalypse.

Lots and lots...

and lots and lots

(and lots)

of Halloween stuff is now posted.

I still have to tweak a few items here and there but that's pretty much all of it. *falls over dead*

It's been a VERY busy couple of days trying to get all that up. :)

ORANGE you glad it's almost the weekend? (Small giveaway at the end.)

 It's been an orange kind of week, thanks to my finishing my BC Uber Jack and the newest sock club yarn from Cookie A. I know orange isn't for everyone but I think it's kind of dreamy when it's peachy/Creamsicle in tone. Or an autumny pumpkiny kind of orange. Ok, basically any orange except for traffic cone orange is cool with me. (What can I say? I like color.)

Thank you, Cookie, for your adventurous spirit and eye for color. I *love* this yarn!

Jack is none too shabby in the orange department either though. Did you catch how close I am to the edge of the linen in the first pic? Heheheh. I was determined to use this piece of scrap linen for some reason (me = stubborn idiot) and it was close. REAL close! I figured I could just leave out the vine if I needed a little more room at the end there. I'll definitely have to measure for a frame verrrrrrrrrrry carefully though if I go the framing route. :)

I don't see myself using this pattern again (I only redo smalls) so if someone wants it, leave me a comment and I'll pass it along to you for free. I'll pick someone randomly in a couple days if there is more than one of you who do. 

Note: please make sure your email is EASILY found though, either from your profile or by typing it out in your comment. Hunting for contact info on the internets makes me a grumpy bear and you can't make me do it. Nope. I'm a princess/brat that way. :)

Stitchy Finish #1 & #2 for 2011

Well, they are 2011 finishes if you squint a little and don't think about it too hard. 50% of each was actually done in December so I didn't have to put myself out TOO much to get them done THIS month.

Still, a finish is a finish is a finish. :)

(Terrible picture...........yikes!!)

This little guy is from the 2010 JCS ornament issue. I don't think I had the DMC red, blue, *OR* yellow that it called for (WTF is up with THAT??????) so I subbed in others that were similar. (Not my finest moment. I pride myself on having ALL DMC colors. *ALL* of them, so I don't know WHAT happened with these 3!) He had some multi-colored starbursts? snowflakes? around him in the original but that was too 'fireworky' for me. I had some silvery thread stuff hanging out in my work bag so I did them up with that instead.

Also finished up my Lizzie Kate Snowman '10 pattern that I got last month. (You KNOW I love a pattern if I actually started and finished it within a short period of time of it being released!!) I would really like to frame this one. A quick Google search doesn't turn up the one they used for the display but I'm sure I can come up with something for it...........eventually. 

I had a bit of a fail with this piece because, *ahem*, I forgot I had purchased the embellishment pack for it until I was packing up the threads to be put away. Whoops. I rather like the buttons I subbed in though so I just kept them on there. (And I was spot on with my bead choice - they're exactly the same. Not too shabby considering I just grabbed something that looked similar from the odds and ends of leftover beads I have hanging around in plastic bags in my coffee table.) I bought a bag of teeny tiny colored buttons off of Etsy not long ago, thinking they would be great for stitchy projects and, lo and behold, they ARE great. :)

I have no further UFO's at the moment so I think I'll get back to my Blackbird stocking project for a while. Five months of stocking patterns left to go. I CAN DO IT!!!!!!!

Here are some finishes I did between October-December but never got around to blogging:

Halloween anyone? 

Bottom design is Bent Creek.......top one I don't remember - sorry! I think I wanted to do a cube and a pillow with these? They are on my sewing table waiting for some attention.

Lizzie Kate scissor fob kit (left) and another JCS 2010 ornament. The LK is too big for my liking for an actual fob so an ornament finish would probably be better for that. Like the others, these are on my sewing table waiting for some attention. I'll get to it sooner or later. :)

Have a nice weekend all!!

Per usual...

I'm behind on finishing things for the holiday. I spent last January/February finishing up Xmas ornaments so I suppose it's par for the course that I will probably spend most of November finishing up Halloweenie goodies. lol

I got these two done this week, with two more to finish up..........at some point. They are both charts from Bent Creek, whom I love dearly.

Cathey saved my butt on this one because I ran out of the green color with only ONE leaf to go (!!!) and, when I ordered some more, it came in a COMPLETELY different color. (Ah, the joys and wonder of using hand-dyed threads!) But she had some that matched a little better and generously sent it off to me, so THANKS AGAIN for that!  Otherwise I would have had to rip out all of the 'old' green and redo it in the new one.

I've never done a 'cube' finish before, so that was interesting. The bigger pumpkin was done first and it's not quite as good as it could be. You can tell from the back that the fabric that goes around the side was a little too wide, so there is some overlapping. I can live it with it though - it *is* just the back after all. The second cube came out much neater all around! Definitely going to have to pick up some more styrofoam from Michaels to do more finishes like this.

I got the fabric from a 50% off sale at Joann's last month. (Which was a treat, let me tell ya! The closet Joann's to me is about 45 minutes away so I don't get to go very often. *sniff*) I just love this orange/green fabric together. They both have sparkly bits/thread and I'm ALLLLLLLL ABOUT THE SPARKLES!

I still have TWO pumpkin stitches kitted up in my 'work' bag and had grand thoughts of doing the Blackbird Halloween stockings but I really should make a stab at some Xmas stuff at this point, huh? I hate the thoughts of 'unkitting' them though because it's such a pain putting everything back where it belongs. I might just leave them in there and finish them now anyway. Like I said, I'm NEVER in 'tune' with the seasons. I'll probably be doing Xmas stuff up until spring. lol

Have a great weekend, y'all!!! 

I'll be back next, I think, with a snap of my blanket progress. :)

Bit of This and That

Firstly, don't forget to enter my giveaway if you haven't already done so! :)
It's open to all and you don't have to do anything other than provide me with a means to contact you if you win.

 ***And on that subject, a few people have forgotten to leave emails and/or don't have their blogger id's 'connected' to anything. :(
I am still putting those names 'in the hat', so to speak, just in case 1) you contact me in the meantime to update me with your info or 2) divine intervention strikes and I can somehow magically figure out who you are. lol But if I can't contact you, obviously, then you can't win. I could, perhaps, put a shout out to Jane T. Smith here on the blog but then anybody could claim to be that person and I would be none the wiser, so that seems hardly fair either. Lesson learned: next giveaway I think I'll just ask that EVERYBODY email me if they want to enter. Problem solved, right? :)

Well, there was a firstly, so I feel I must put a 'Secondly' here but I don't know that I have anything so important left to say for there to be a 'secondly'. Hmmm..

Does anybody else read/stalk the Needled knitting blog? It's absolutely divine. She posts such beautiful pictures of Edinburgh from her many hikes around the area and every time she does, I immediately want to sell my house, pack up my stuff and move there AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.
I mean, LOOK AT THIS:

(Her photo, not mine. Please click the link to her blog to see more like it)

It's like a fairylandmagicplaceofmagicalthings and I *have* to go there some day.
*swoon*
All bets off as to whether or not I come BACK though if I do. lol

Oh, I did finish my mittens AND my Blackbird designs July stockings (a month late..........ssshhh.........nothing to see here.....move on..move on...) but I'm still working on photos for those. It's rained the last three days in a row so picture taking has been rather random and dreary. (Though I think the mitten snaps I got this afternoon might work. Might. Will have to work on those later.)

And LASTLY, just to follow the whole 'ly' theme, is there any end to the different ways I can churn out Halloween beads? Apparently not. Here is another new I did this week:

 Frog in a Pot. Witch's Brew. Whole Heap of Trouble. It's Starting to GET WARM IN HERE. Poor froggie. I boiled him up for greater good of beady-ness. Heh.