Thank yous, comments and Stitching

Thank you to Daffycat for mentioning my move and my blog. And a big thank you to everyone that followed her link and signed up as a follower!  As I'm not used to having comments, so please don't send hate mail if I don't respond right away.

To avoid said hate mail, thank you for all the kind comments on Egyptian Garden. As I mentioned, I am so close to having this done, but I keep finding anything else to do other than stitching. You KNOW it's bad when I'm vacuuming the refrigerate coils, cleaning the cat boxes and mopping the floors instead of stitching!  It's rather irritating as I've done other Chatelaines and BAPs and really haven't had this much trouble, I can usually stitch my way through the 3/4-done slump fairly quickly. Annmarie, I'm only pretending to work with a plan! I love creating lists and plans and sometimes I even look at them! Once Egyptian Garden is done it's going to be a stitching free-for-all for a while! Mouse, work is bad to say the least! Of the 12 people in my division 10 of them are looking for new jobs, the other two can retire any time they want!

Stitches 'n Things newsletter had a link to A Dark Alphabet at A Note of Friendship. It's a freebie "Halloween-ish" alphabet series dedicate to Lisa Roswell and her love of all things Halloween. The first one is "A is for Apple" and features the serpent and apple tree. I'll be collecting this one and may actually start it at some point during this lifetime.

Stitching did happen this week and despite the wonderful weather forecast for this weekend, I'm hoping to do a bit this weekend (the yard clean up will wait another weekend).

On Egyptian Garden, I added the cat (done over one and a real pain), the brown border over the columns, started the ibis/papyrus section and connected the left and bottom columns with a start on the far-away palm tree border. I'm hoping to finish the ibis section this weekend. I did a quick count from the material list and there are almost 3,100 beads on this! I'm so glad I did the Delicas as I went as there are 2,716 of those alone!

Egyptian Garden by Chatelaine
Stitched on 32-count Sand Belfast

Holiday Joys Sampler didn't receive as much attention as I'd hoped on the train but, there is now a second story to the house.

Holiday Joys Sampler by Homespun Elegance
Stitched on 27 count linen with DMC floss

I pulled Grandfather's Sleigh by Shakespeare's Peddler out of the WIP bin and finished "sleigh" and started the sleigh. I may work on this today and see if I can get a finish. I found this one in a clearance basket at In Stitches a while back (marked down to $2.00!) and thought I'd have a quick finish with it. Was going to take it with me at Christmas until I realized that except for the sleigh, this is all over-1 on 40 count! The photo is really dark, the fabric is cream over-dyed with a slightly darker cream. 

Grandfather's Sleigh by Shakespeare's Peddler
Stitched on an unknown 40 count hand-dyed with unknown varigated cotton floss

More stash in the mail this week. I've already put away the piece of Summer Sky jobelan (my newest favorite blue "neutral") for the seasonal birds freebies from Waxing Moon Designs and the piece of WDW Cocoa for Little House Needleworks' 2011 Christmas ornaments (at least the first 6). The one I did get a picture of is the R&R Reproductions Kona for Blackbird Designs' Pumpkin Farm as well as the pattern and fibers.

Yes, I was totally off on my guess last week, so there should be one more package delivered with the fabric for Blackbird Designs Wild Lilies and Gathering Basket and Sarah Elliott.

I'm thinking of ordering Witches Hollow from Primitive Needle. After Lisa mentioned that Cape Cod Boys and Cape Cod Girls was from an old sea chanty, I looked it up and was hoping that a Cape Cod Cats was in the works (Cape Cod cats they have no tails they were all blown off in a northeast gale - depending on the version of the chanty you find).  With Lisa's untimely passing I thought that I might take a stab at doing it. The wording is no problem, as I can use the letters from the other two but I  really wasn't sure about the cats. As I'll want my final to match Lisa's in style I looked through her patterns and there are *lots* of cats in Witches Hollow. This'll be one of those "when I win the lottery" things.

*oh yeah, can you tell I figured out the "links" feature?*