Another Joy Finish

Here's a small winter sampler ornament from the 2009 Just Cross Stitch Christmas Ornament issue that I converted into a JOY project just by stitching the letters J, O, and Y in a different color. 

This is stitched on 28 ct. mystery linen with DMC Blanc, GAST Country Redwood and Juniper, and CC Cocoa Bean.

Mr. Wonderful will be home in about a week. Tiger Lily and I have a busy week ahead getting ready for the homecoming. And I'm hard at work on this year's Christmas Open House project. You may have noticed that I added a few navigation tabs right under the header picture. All my labels are listed in the right sidebar, but I chose a few of the ones I'm asked the most questions about and put them at the top to make them more visible. If you haven't checked them out, I invite you to brew a cup of tea, relax, and browse around. I put a lot of effort into my tutorials in the hope that I'll be able to share something useful, expand the craft, and keep as many designers in business as possible!

Things That Have Come to My House

Lots of deliveries at the Wonderful household recently. In addition to the sweet babies from my mom that I showed in my last post...

Flowers from Mr. Wonderful to mark the halfway point.

Thanksgiving cookies from my mom and dad.

The new DMC colors.

Very happy with all these new colors, especially the greys/browns, and the purples below. In my opinion, the DMC range has been in need of more of these shades for a long time.

I picked up this pretty box at a pre-Thanksgiving Jo Ann Fabrics sale.

And also found this sparkly little guy. He's too big for a needle minder, but just right for a chart magnet.

Here's my latest Joy finish. This is from the 2015 Just Cross Stitch Christmas Ornament issue, stitched on 28 ct. Straw Gingham linen from Weeks. I used CC Cherry Cobbler for the red, added some GAST Brandy to add some warmth to the lantern, and stitched the bottom in the snowflake/beard color instead of the color suggested.

This is a better representation of the fabric color... sort of gingerbread-y.

Bonus Tiger Lily, in her cozy winter basket!

Happy Thanksgiving!

More babies from my mom! Cute overload!

I'll be spending Thanksgiving with our next door neighbors, and Mr. Wonderful will be with his buddies at their undisclosed location. We can't be together this year, but we're not alone.

Tiger Lily and I wish all of y'all a wonderful Thanksgiving!

A Joyful Finish!

Here's my first JOY finish! This is Joy Squared, from the December 2016 issue of Just Cross Stitch magazine. I stitched it with GAST Buckeye Scarlet on 28 ct. Snow linen from Fabric Flair (available at 123 Stitch). Instead of stitching individual blocks, I stitched the design as a single piece, and I added lots of JABCO buttons.

For reasons known only to itself, the camera isn't reading the colors on this very well. The blue of the fabric is washed out, and the red is showing too dark. But that's the best I can do for today! On to more JOY projects...

Breakfast with Tiger Lily

We're about 2 1/2 weeks into Mr. Wonderful's 6-week absence, and Tiger Lily and I are plodding along. We've settled into our new, unsupervised routine; I've accomplished some things around the house, and I've started my JOY projects. I should have a finish to show in a few days. 

One of the things we've been doing occasionally is sharing breakfast in bed. Now, I'm not a breakfast person, and I'm definitely not a breakfast in bed person. I'm the type that gets up when I wake up. I hate wallowing around in bed after I've awakened. And "breakfast" for me is a mini vanilla bean scone and a piping hot cup of strong Irish breakfast tea. I usually get that down while reading the news at the computer.

Anyway, Tiger Lily is--believe it or not--deeply devoted to vanilla bean scones. I'm not even kidding. She will be sound asleep, but when she gets a whiff of a warm scone, she will trot in to wherever I am, expecting to share. Since we're alone and our days are our own, we occasionally sit on the bed and have a scone together before we start our day.

Waiting patiently for her little crumbs.

Nom, nom, nom...

All gone! I have to show her there's nothing left before she will go off for her morning nap.

Have a good day, y'all!

Playing with Jax is finished!

Here it is! My accidental purple conversion of Playing with Jax, and the original design below.

My changes:

Flower Pumpkin (right back pumpkin):
3740--changed to-->3041
3813-->3013
309-->437

large flower:
977-->Autumn Bouquet
350-->977
vine:
3011-->3012
3810-->437

stem: 869
backstitch: 3011

Borders:
top border: 3042

bottom border (replaced leaves with acorns):
acorn caps: 869 & 437
acorns (left to right): 3012, 3776, Autumn Bouquet, 356, 3042

For the changes on the rest of the pumpkins, click on the Playing with Jax label.

November Memo Board & Stash Update

Mr. Wonderful has been gone about a week (five weeks to go!) and let's just say that last week was not great. How-ev-er! Robin in Virginia put on her superhero cape and swooped in to provide much-appreciated cheer! Just look at these goodies! 

A precious, precious little felted wool fox ornament.

Beautiful JOY notecards, to go with my stitching theme during Mr. Wonderful's absence.

A patriotic needle minder (how perfect?) and a stitch starter. 

This little box absolutely made my day. Thank you so much, Robin. And by the way, whenever anyone sends anything to me wrapped in tissue paper, this is what happens to it. Tiger Lily loves tissue paper with all her little heart and she thinks the tissue paper in every package is for her. And so it is. (My mom includes tissue paper in my boxes whether anything needs wrapping or not, so Tiger Lily will have some.)

Here's my November memo board. See this post for info on this easy project.

And here is some gorgeous new Fabric Flair fabric from 123 Stitch. This is 28 ct. Fairy Mist. Beautiful, soft lavender, blue, pink, green, and yellow with a subtle silver sparkle. I bought a small piece just to see how it would look in person, but now I know I need moar.

And 28 ct. blue snowflakes on silver. So frosty and wintry.

I am "thisclose" to finishing Playing with Jax. I only have the bottom border left to stitch, but I took a little break from it to consider how I wanted to stitch it. Hope to have that finished in the next day or two. I need to get going on my JOY projects. In the meantime, here's a little peek at the one I'll be starting next:

Playing with Jax Update: Lace Pumpkin

Remember in my last post, when I said the black seemed too harsh, and that I was sort of unintentionally ending up with a purple conversion of Playing with Jax? Well, that Lace Pumpkin stitched in black and grey in the original got a makeover. It's now purple.

My changes:

Lace Pumpkin (right front pumpkin):
310--changed to-->3740
844-->3042
644-->3866
3865-->3866
926-->437

This is the fun of playing with color. Sometimes when you start changing things, you end up going in directions you never even thought of when you started. It turns an enjoyable but predictable stitch into a mini voyage of discovery, and that's one of the main things that keeps me from falling into stitching "slumps." I love experimenting with color and I love the surprises that come with those experiments. Yep, I was surprised by this purple pumpkin!

Speaking of surprises, the day before Mr. Wonderful left I got a goody box from my mom that contained these little cuties (yes, there's candy in that trick-or-treat bag!).

Aren't they adorable? They are so cute I just started laughing when I unwrapped them. They're about 5" high and she makes them from kits she gets from Mary Maxim. They arrived just in time for my Halloween scary movie marathon!

Well, Tiger Lily and I have been on our own for a few days now, and so far, so good. We had a major storm last night (no damage, thankfully) and it has turned cold. Here's what you do when your nose is cold but you have a fluffy tail you can use as a scarf:

I'm down to the last pumpkin on Playing with Jax, and then I'll have to make some decisions on the border--whether to stitch it as-is or fiddle with it. I'm still on track to have a finish soon, and then I can get going on my Joy projects. I'm looking forward to those!

Playing with Jax Update: Quilt and Sampler Pumpkins

First of all, thank you so much for your kind comments on my last post about Mr. Wonderful being gone for six weeks. I really appreciate them. I told him that since he will be gone, we'll probably have a freak November snowstorm and I'll come down with my quadrennial cold. Fingers crossed everything goes smoothly, because if you are or have ever been a military wife, you know what happens when the guys leave!

Anyway, I'm speeding along on Playing with Jax, trying to finish up by the end of the month so I can plunge into my Joy projects. Three pumpkins down, two to go! 

My changes:

Quilt Pumpkin (left front pumpkin):
310--changed to--> 3011
844-->3012
3022-->3032
927-->3042
926-->3740
stem-->869
*****
Sampler Pumpkin (left back pumpkin):
3813-->738
letters-->Autumn Bouquet (stitched using the mismatched method; see this post)
stem-->869

My thinking behind the changes I'm making is not so much a color conversion as a color adjustment. I wanted the overall look of all the pumpkins to be closer to the silk used in the leaves on Forest Pumpkin, so I'm making changes as I go, as opposed to plotting out in advance an entirely new color scheme, as I would with a conversion. Forest Pumpkin has a "soft" look to it, and when I started stitching the Quilt Pumpkin, the black in it seemed too harsh so I switched it to dark green. In the original chart, the black is nicely balanced with the black features on the center pumpkin. I also used the silk in the letters on the Sampler Pumpkin, to tie them together a bit. 

I'm happy with how this is going so far. Although I didn't really intend it, it looks like it's turning out to be a "purple conversion" of Playing with Jax. I hope to have it finished by the beginning of November. Stay tuned!

Joy, y'all.

Here's the latest news: Tiger Lily and I will be unsupervised for six weeks. Six. Weeks.

Now, many of you know, Mr. Wonderful is active duty military. This is not an unusual occurrence, nor is it an unusually long time to be separated. This is routine training and is nothing like a deployment (those are dreadful). But it is the longest we've been separated in quite a while, and the timing is... not so great. So, I was less than happy about this news. 

But, duty calls--both his and mine. His is to go, mine is to hold the fort. And if you've been here a while, you'll know that Tiger Lily and I hold the fort in a rather spectacular fashion (an example: Stitchapalooza). There is always lots of stitching, baking, crafting, finishing... all sorts of stuff. Though we try to make the most of it, I was feeling pretty gloomy about this one, so I decided my theme would be "joy." Lots of "joy" stitching. Yes.

I already had a "joy" project on my to-do list, and an on-going "joy" ornament set I'd started,  and one night I sat down with my 20-year collection of Just Cross Stitch Christmas Ornament magazines and added a few more "joy" ornaments to the pile. I've now got a to-do list of about 10 stitching projects, plus finishing projects, plus framing projects, not to mention big household projects I plan to tackle. Oh, and my Christmas Open House project, but that's a secret. 

I'm beginning to wonder if I'll be able to get everything done!

Mr. Wonderful leaves at the end of October and won't be back until early December, so come see what Tiger Lily and I get up to. 

Homemade Thread Winder

I don't have much use for thread winders. I don't--or didn't--even own one. I keep my DMC on bobbins and I keep all my other (cotton) threads in baggies. I hardly ever stitch with silk, but I had to buy a skein for Playing with Jax. I've found that while cotton skeins behave themselves very nicely, skeins of silk, when freed from their pretty little twist, end up a mess.  I needed a thread winder. So I made one. Couldn't be easier.

Cookie cutter, paper, mat board, and Multi Medium Matte. (If you don't know what this is, you can read about the joys of MMM here in this post.) 

Trace around the cookie cutter on both the paper and a piece of mat board. Cut them out and glue them together using the Multi Medium Matte.

When that has dried completely (I let it sit overnight), seal it with another coat of MMM.

Allow it to dry completely. Here you can see the finished, sealed texture.

And here's the finished thread winder. 

Use your favorite cookie cutter and your prettiest paper. The possibilities are endless! How about a gingerbread man thread winder and a skein of holiday thread? Pretty cute little stocking stuffer for your favorite stitching buddy.