My 10th annual Christmas Open House begins Monday, 18 December! Everyone's invited to come enjoy Christmas stitching, recipes, and general merry-making!
Oh, and an extra bit of Christmas hospitality!
Catch up on the past 9 years by clicking on the Open House tabs at the top of the page.
See you Monday!
For those unexpected occasions when you suddenly need a very tiny skein of floss, here is a quick show & tell for making them. This is super easy.
Loosely tie the floss around a dinner fork to hold it in place.
Wrap the floss around the fork four times, then tie the middle with black floss.
Trim the floss and slide it off the fork. You have an adorably tiny skein of floss you can use to embellish stitched pieces or in finishing.
If you like, you can tie it twice so it looks a bit more like a big skein.
That's it! Easy, easy method for making the tiniest skeins of floss.
Happy Stitching!
Wednesday's check-up went smoothly. The girls were very well behaved and we did not get in trouble for being a bit on the ample side. By Thursday morning, Butterfly had developed a fever and was feeling pretty rotten as a result of her vaccines, so she spent the day back at the vet's getting fluids and meds. She came home in the evening and was feeling much better. Marigold was rather sluggish herself but tolerated her shots better. Happy to report they seem to be pretty well back to normal today.
I've been knocked flat by a vaccine at times, as we probably all have, and I felt so sorry for her, but the vet took her in right away and got her taken care of.
Back to all things Christmas! I am busier than I like to be at this time of year, but needs must. And there is always time to snuggle kitties who are feeling poorly.
I'm still here! Even though I haven't posted in a while (longer than usual), y'all have been on my mind. I want to thank all of you who still visit and read and leave such lovely comments. Thank you for sticking with me during what has been a pretty sparse stitching year. Actually, I've been stitching like a mad woman, but all I've had time for since the move has been Open House stitching, which I can't share (yet). So you've been getting kitties and occasional stash updates and little else for months. Thank you so much for still being here.
We've had a couple of rough Christmases around here these last two years, and we decided to really lean into it this year. We started decorating and shopping at the beginning of November, so our decorations and tree have been up for several weeks. It's a good thing we did because with Mr. Wonderful's squadron things are extremely busy and getting busier. I like slow, quiet holidays, but his position requires us to be present at a lot of events, so there's been more to-ing and fro-ing than usual.
Only last night I put the final stitches into this year's Christmas Open House. I still have framing/finishing, photographing, and blogging yet to do. I'm cutting it closer than I'd like time-wise, but it's been that kind of a year. But now I'll be able to stitch at a more enjoyable pace and actually share what I'm working on.
The girls are thriving. They're going to the vet next week for their shots and I'm hoping we don't get fussed at for being over 12.5 lbs each. They don't eat too much and they're not overweight, they're just... sturdy. Sweet Tiger Lily may have hit 10 lbs for a minute in her prime, but she was mostly in the 9+ lb range, so this is a new experience for us. Fingers crossed we don't get in trouble!
So that's a bit of what's been going on around here. I've been pretty quiet, but I've been pretty busy, and I wanted to thank you for still being here and assure you we. are. not. skipping. Christmas!
Stay tuned!
A Halloween finish, fully finished, in time for Halloween! Can we believe it? No, no we cannot! When I picked up the Just Cross Stitch Halloween issue this year, this spooky little door was the first design that caught my eye. I found several more, and for the first time in years, I bought the issue. I didn't know if I would have time to stitch any Halloween, let alone do any finishing, but I managed it and I'm so happy with how it turned out!
As usual, I made a few small changes you can see below. I left off the spiders and the stoop, and changed the house number to 1931, the year the original Dracula movie was released. I stitched mine with the recommended DMC on 32 count Confederate Grey linen.
I gathered up some more supplies for my Halloween door from a couple of Etsy shops (links at the end of this post) and got a stick from my yard.
Look at this adorable wee kitten!
Finally, I took a hacksaw to this dollhouse window (from Hobby Lobby a few years ago, tucked away in my finishing stash) and made a fanlight, painted it black and backed it with yellow fabric.
And there we have it! A spooky Halloween door guarded by a sleepy little black kitten.
Hope y'all have a happy and safe Halloween! (I may have overdone it on the candy, but in my defense, we didn't get to celebrate last year.)
Supplies:
One year ago today we brought these little nuggets home from our local rescue to foster. Underweight. Sick. Fragile. We spent the first night at the emergency vet, fearing the one on the left, Marigold, wouldn't make it.
A couple of days later they were running around on the patio, getting their Halloween pictures made with their pumpkin stuffy, which was almost as big as they were. We had a long, hard road ahead, but here we are, a year later: Chunky. Healthy. Lovely.
Marigold
Happy Halloween from our black & orange girls!
I am so happy to be sneaking in some Halloween stitching, but it's slow going as we have to take frequent snuggle breaks. The girls have learned (for the most part) that the stitching is mine, but the lap is definitely theirs. So we compromise.
I am on my last Christmas Open House project and I can't tell you what a relief it is to be able to say that. This has been another hard year and getting Open House done has been tough. But it's my 10th annual, and I wanted it to be special, and I'm almost there. Close enough to stitch a little Halloween. Hopefully soon I'll have a wee finish to show you, and if nothing goes pear shaped, maybe even a finished finish! Wouldn't that be shocking for all of us?
