Progress and the mailman delivers!

Last week we went up to the cottage for a week of R&R.  The weather co-operated wonderfully – only the slightest bit of rain the entire week.  My ‘boys’ spent most of the time playing in the boats or the water or just hanging out doing next to nothing.

 

Naturally, I stitched, when I wasn’t fending off the mosquitoes.  They were bad this year!  DS#1 and I could both be nicknamed mosquito-bait.  But when they elected to leave us alone, I got to work on 3 different projects.

 

First up, CdC came out to play:

 

I’m almost up to the right hand corner.  It’s chugging along quite well.

 

Then for some variety (and no doubt because I was wishing for some slightly cooler weather – no a/c at the cottage!), Halloween Rules had some time spent on it:

 

Still enjoying this piece tremendously.

 

And then, because I was getting bored of all those little x’s, a canvaswork piece came out to play (thanks to my portable stand as well – I can’t do canvaswork without a stand):

 

This is a Carolyn Mitchell piece called ‘Golden Reminiscence’.  I took this as a class at the CreativFestival last fall.  I’m enjoying the variety of stitches, although the colour palette isn’t totally me.  I love how fast canvaswork comes together – I did most of this stitching in only a few hours of work.  Don’t even need to look at the pattern once I’ve got the stitch down.

 

The Canadian postal strike finally ended a couple of weeks ago, but mail is still very slow moving.  Slowly our mail is catching up and this week has had a few things starting to arrive.

 

A while ago, I won a giveaway from Barbara over at mainely stitching.  I had never seen this LHN chart before and I just had to enter.  Surprisingly, I won.  The mailman finally coughed it up today.  Barbara also included a lovely packet of spices & seasonings for a blueberry pie.  Can’t wait to try them out! (gotta get more blueberries – we ate all the last ones!  :-) )

 

 

And then Heather was looking for another stitcher to join the Lizzie*Kate Life’s a Stitch Travelling Pattern Stitcherhood…..  I threw my name in the hat, fully expecting not to be chosen because I was the first person to comment.  I was really hoping it might get others to comment in the long run since folks don’t want to be first as it seems the first commenter never wins….  :-)  You could have knocked me over with a feather when I discovered that I had won!  After strapping the pattern to a slow-moving turtle (inside joke), the pattern arrived yesterday:

 

Per the agreement of the Stitcherhood, I am officially dropping everything else I was stitching to focus on this charming little piece.  I pulled fabric and fibres:

 

I’m going to use a 28-count Opalescent (somewhat predictably – I like sparkly!) that was hand-dyed by Enchanting Lair (Ametrine, if you’re curious) and the above bunch of random fibres yanked from my stash.  There’s a good bit of Vikki Clayton silks in there.  I’ll start this evening (gotta feed the natives dinner first!)….

 

I took the kids to see the last Harry Potter movie this afternoon.  It was very well done and a fitting end to an epic saga.  I’m sad that it’s over, but so glad I’ve got the books to read again and again and the movies to watch as well.  Even better, I’ll get to watch my kids plow through the books again with me.