Hello stitchy friends.  It’s been a couple of weeks since I last posted and thought I would share what I have been up to.  The awesome designers out there keep coming up with awesome new patterns, so I have so many projects floating around in my head.  But let me show you what I have been working on:

You get just a peek as I am not finished her yet.  She is Joan Elliott’s Lavender and I am stitching her on Karen’s Round Robin. I am currently doing the backstitching (hate it) and then on to the beautiful beads that will really complete it.  I will post a full pic when I finish-hopefully in the next couple of days.

Last night I finally started Passione Ricamo’s Mystery Stitch A Long.  The first block was released on Friday, but I didn’t get my email until late Sunday.  So I sat down last night and measured and counted on my fabric for just the right placement for the start.  Here is what I stitched:

I know it’s not a lot, but I wanted to get it started.  I always start all of my stitchings in the center.  With the SAL, the first block is in the upper left of the fabric.  So it drove me crazy trying to decide if I wanted 3″ all the way around for framing or 4″.  Or did I want to start in the center and count stitches over to the left side…NO!  So I measured 4″  from the top, and counted stitches from the top center to the left.  I hope I placed the start of my fish in the right spot.  I needed to get some stitches on here so that I can put it on my scroll frame.  My fabric is 26″ wide and I don’t  have a split dowel scroll frame big enough to put it on.  So out to the garage I went to dig out this:

My table top scroll frame.  I haven’t used this frame in 19 years! And it’s huge!  To give you an idea of how big it is, each of those white tiles are about 8″. The dowels on this frame have a piece of fabric attached that I am supposed to baste my cross stitch fabric to.  That sounds too time consuming, so I am going to tape my fabric to the rods.  I got the idea from Tracy’s blog.      I hope to get it on the frame today and work on it this weekend.  There is not much in the first block of the SAL, so it shouldn’t take me too long.  I hear it’s a mermaid 🙂

And last but not least, I went to my local needlework shop and this is what I picked up:

Yep, all kinds of fun stitchy stuff!  the Rainbow gallery threads and beads for my SAL, Just Nan’s Sirens of the Sea sampler, some threads for the Santa Village piece, a new Halloween project from Lizzie Kate that looks pretty cool.  My friend that went with me wants me to stitch up the Wine piece on the Mushroom 14ct Aida and lastly, the latest issue of Just Cross Stitch magazine.  See that tea pot in the corner?

My BSF (Best Stitchy Friend) stitched that for the magazine.  She did a great job and I’m so happy she got the cover.  You can see more of her beautiful stitchings and read more about this piece at Elegant Stitches.    That tea pot is on my to do list.  It’s a tea pot (love them) and it’s patriotic.  Oh and you can also see my mermaid scissor fob.  This is my first scissor fob and guess what?  It doesn’t fit on my scissors 😦  I guess I will have to dig up another pair of scissors.  Or better yet, LouAnn at Stitches N Things   showed me a pair of Dovo scissors and OMG they feel like they will cut like buttta!  I’ll have to save up for a pair of those.  I guess they are way better than ginghers.

Wisher, over at Pretty Little Things in a Box, has nominated me for a couple of blog awards that I haven’t gotten around to passing along.  She nominated me for the (online) next door neighbor award.  Isn’t that sweet!  You’ll have to pay her a visit and see what neat stuff she is up to.  So,  I nominate Wisher and everyone else who has visited my blog,  with  the  on-line  next door neighbor award.  Bloggy friends are so wonderful!

Well, that’s what I have been up.  Hubby bought me some stitchy stuff of  a different kind this past weekend and I will post those next time as well as an update on my cross stitch progress.  Happy stitching!