Jump Starting This Thing!

  My poor neglected blog!  It seems that I have forsaken it for things that are faster and require less thought.  Like Facebook and Instagram.  So much quicker to put something out there and easier for others to respond to as well.  Goes back to the old instant gratification I guess.
  So here we are on the first of February!  Casting an eye over this long neglected territory and trying to get back into the groove of posting here.  I have been stitching madly even though there has been no evidence of it here.  I will not try to 'catch up' with all that has passed since I last visited but I can show you some of what I have been up to recently.
  Part of the reason I haven't posted in so long is that the fall stitching was long and tedious and showing you the same thing week after week just didn't seem very exciting!  All that I worked on was designated for gifts so none of the pieces were framed either so they seemed incomplete.  But incomplete or not, I will show them to you here.
   This is Agnes Horsbaugh, stitched for my friend Karen for her birthday. Not a great picture but the best one I could get for some reason.  Not ironed yet, of course, and the colors of the linen and threads are washed out but it was a fun stitch and she really liked it.

  Then came Jane Tindall.   I had the entire lettering section finished earlier in the year and since it went so quickly, I foolishly thought the rest would too.  Wrong!!  Stitched on this exclusively in a total panic until it was finished and barely had it done by my friend's birthday.  Literally finished it the night before I had to give it to her!  That grass was the bane of my existence for longer than I care to say.

40 ct Lakeside meadow rue
w/ DMC threads

  Then I moved on to the piece I had to have ready for our weekly stitch group's  Christmas exchange.
I didn't have it finished in time, which really irked me, but there was just nothing I could do.  I had it all stitched except for the initials and I got that finished pretty quickly after the exchange.  But I did have to give it to her and then take it back!

kit although I did change the linen
to a lovely Glenshee I had in my stash

It is Amy Mitten's Around the World Series: Scotland.  A fun, fun stitch and the recipient is quite pleased with it.
  That wrapped up my gift stitching for the year so I decided to work on a few of my own things.  I started an Advent sampler, which I don't have a picture of yet, just to have a new start.  I worked on it for a few days and then moved on to this one.

called for linen and threads

So close to being finished and I really thought I could wrap it up by the end of the year.  But that was not to be.  In the middle of all that frantic stitching and trying to meet deadlines, we had this.

Our first grandchild and the sweetest little girl you ever did see!  All schedules and deadlines flew out the window (the main reason that Scottish sampler wasn't finished on time!).  And All Creatures Great and Small became my first finish of the new year.

  Now I am now working on a Christmas piece that will probably be my Christmas exchange gift in December. Blackbird's Merry Christmas Ella Vaughn.

I am a bit further along with this than this picture shows now.  I took this one a couple of days ago.  I should have it finished by the end of the weekend if all goes well.  (I have something pinched in my neck right now that if causing pain in my shoulder.)  Then, I plan to kit up about 6 new SALs that I have obligated  myself to for this year.  Yes, I can truly say I am losing my mind but what a way to go!!
  So that catches me up, even though I said I wasn't going to do that.  Hope you didn't find it too long and boring.  I am going to try to keep this little patch of cyberspace more up to date in the future.  Maybe a weekly WIP post on Wednesdays could get it going!

Hope to see you again soon,   Laura