These birds ought to fly down....

Thank you sooooo much for your lovely comments! I love that piece and I will have a hard time parting with it. I want to offer it to H. :) so it won't be hanging on my wall. Hah! Elisabeth understood my problem with the borders...! Of course I suspect that a non-stitcher's eye won't spot these small problems that ME sees :)


I didn't resist uploading one more picture to show how the frame looks beautifully in artificial light...



And here are finally some pictures of the gorgeous biscornu I made from a chart Nath from France sent me for Christmas. I finished it off last week bt I had a very hard time making a good picture of it. As I wrote precedently, the colors and the style are extremely delicate and bad winter light makes it hard to present it well to your curious eyes :)

I am waiting to hear from Ela, Nath, Donna, Cheryl, Sharon and some person whose first name starts with an H ;-) that my packages to them have arrived. I so hope they'll like what I stitched and sent them!


Apart from that it's a busy week. Yesterday I had to do the blood tests for Tuesday... the surgery. H. flies in on Monday to be here to take good care of me and our furry kids :) Each time I have to have a blood sample taken, it's a small horror because not only my veins are not visible, but also my blood doesn't flow regardless of how much water I drink before and God knows I drink a lot on that day! And since I have to take blood samples twice monthly recently, I don't find it funny. I was now told to tell the nurses that it won't work the normal way and that they need to use a syringe to suck it up (sorry for the gory details!) from my arm or hand - in the latter case it hurts like smths, as you might well know. Anyway, the results will be ready to be picked tomorrow. I need to find time to have my hair cut also before Monday :)

With all that war against moths and then works in the kitchen, I am well behind the schedule with my pre-Easter cleaning! What happened in my kitchen is that one big, hanging furniture fell on the 'hooks' and started falling down very dangerously.. it could kill Toska who eats below it and create big damage anyway. Two men worked a full 7 hours this week as it proved more difficult to be fixed but they also fixed some halogen spots etc.

With all that I haven't yet had time to worry about that forthcoming surgery! :) I'll wake up fine, right? Right... :)


And here's a headstart on The Sampler Girls's new freebie. I am stitching it over one on 40ct LL - yes, I know, I am nuts.

Back from the framer...

I'm excited to show this piece framed.... I am not 100% satisfied with this framer's work, the piece looks "uneven", I mean the backstitched borders don't look straight. I am not sure if it could have looked better... I don't think these people look at it with so much detail... and maybe I am the only one who sees it :) Anyway, I love the way it looks framed and I think I chose the right one for that design.
ADDENDUM: The picture below really doesn't show it well. Click on it to see it enlarged.
Now, in the evening, in artificial light it looks splendid, the frame glitters beautifully :)
ADDENDUM2: The problem as I see it is that the framer stretched this delicate piece so that the tiny backstitches moved to the left, right, became distorted. But maybe it couldn't have been done better, I don't know.

Litterary little #4 called My Everything (W.H. Auden) by The Sampler Girl

GOOD MOOOOO-RRRR-NIIIIIIIIIIING!

For all sampler lovers

I just came accross this blog yesterday, it is fairly new and I love the concept. Spread the word if you can! See here: http://galleryofsamplers.blogspot.com/

Weather, weather...

It's just been very windy here, but no real disasters happened, no fatalities. Today the world looked beautiful from my windows - the sky was very dark grey while a strong sun was bathing building roofs... amazing sight. I took this picture thru the net in the window that is meant to protect Toska from falling out. While it is practically invisible from the inside, it looks like prison barrels on this picture, sorry for that :)

Finishing time...

I spent the major part of my Saturday washing my big furniture inside, putting more loads in the washing machine, packing more dry clothes in bag... I really didn't need these ^&%$%^#%$# moths right now! So far my apartment looks like a hurricane went thru it, but I hope I'll have the situation under control within a week. And in two weeks H. is coming and I have my surgery and then there's Easter, quite a busy schedule :)

We were supposed to be badly hit by the Emma hurricane but it slowed down over Germany and we just got strong wind but nothing too serious - this time.

In the afternoon and evening I spent xxxxxxxxx+++++ hours doing the finishing over the rest of the pieces. xxxxxxxxxxx++++++++++ hours more tomorrow and I should be done with that! I had some 'creative' ideas I am impatient to show you all :) I can't say what I used as materials... but I can reveal I *also* used beads, thermofliseline, cording and ribbons LOL!

There's one piece I am not happy about... hope that person likes it. There's something about it.... Oh well.

I've been sweating on two pieces today because I tried to put into reality some idea I had... they both look very nice :)

The only piece I might need more time to send would be Cheryl's... I might need Monday evening to put the final touch on it.

Hope you're all spending a lovely week-end!

I'll leave you with a very bad picture of what will become a biscornu after I add buttons on it. It is done on 40 ct and very very tiny - the ladies at my LNS couldn't believe I'd stitched that (yes, of course I had to show it off! - nah, seriously, I went with the stitched piece to choose the right buttons). This is a Tournicoton design I received from Nath. I'll have to do more than my very best to show it well once it's sewed because the colors are difficult to show well and and it's very, very delicate in style. I just LOVE it, Nath!

It'd be nice to be rich

...says me... sometimes... OFTEN when I see handcraft work done by talended people. If I had 120 usd to spend on anything, here's what I'd order. Hmmm..... That'd be 480 usd - for my 2 pets and the 2 others who aren't with us anymore... What a wonderful way to remember them...
See HERE.

Friday's nothing to say...

I've done the finishing on Nath's exchange piece yesterday, and to me it turned very cute :)
Thank you to all the new persons who visited my blog recently, it's such a pleasure to meet new talented people and find older acquantainces (waiving to Judy! - Judy, do you have a blog/web album now?)
Not much more to say today... I'll spend the week-end doing the finishing on the last PS exchange pieces so I can post them ASAP... and battle more with moths... I found a whole colony last week in the furniture where I hang my warmer clothes and have my pullovers (the moths found some very yummy). I decided to wash all the content of that furniture, my washing machine thinks I'm nuts, but about 8 loads more and I'm done with that. Then I just need to iron a lot :)

I just have to share this..

John Cleese (from the Monty Python) was hired to play in a TV commercial for a bank loan. Controversial for some, absolutely loved by most! The TV campaign has just started here. Watch till the very end :)

Thursday blogging...

See what I found this week in my LNS! I so love tins, boxes etc... especially vintage. I always admire altoids on others' blogs and always wanted one. I was so surprised to discover these two metal tins! They contained 4 spools of sewing threads each, but of course they will be used to store something else.




Whether you understand French or not, do see this blog... wonderful work and superb pictures of Kiev (Ukraine) almost daily. I didn't know this city could be shown in such an interesting way... If you're curious of what life looks like there and love quilting, you'll be spoiled.


Earlier this week, I receives this cute chart from Ela, my Polish stitching buddy in France... Ela has a heart of gold and she surprises me so often by her kindness!!

Other than that, I am working on the finishing on Nath's exchange piece.... :) Nath's package still hasn't arrived and now I really start to worry... but not much yet!

Pictures from Sweden

I tought I'd share a few pictures H. sent me today. He drove to (or rather had his car driven to) Sweden on Monday for a major car repair. One of his friends owns a car towing place so that was a big help. Why Sweden? Because the repair place is just 3 hours away, in Karlstad and the repair will cost soooooo much less than in Norway. Lots and lots of Norwegians do that.

It all started at 3am so they could deliver the car at 7am...

I was pretty amazed by the standard of the local backpacker's hostel... A normal hotel room if you ask me, just that the bathroom ++ was shared and H. had to hire the bed clothes. When he found out he has to stay overnight I helped him find a place to stay - I could go online while he was stranded in a big mall drinking coffee after coffee waiting for the car which eventually wasn't ready the same day. Karlstad is no big place and the hotel prices horrendous - Scandinavian horrendous. Youth hostels aren't cheap either comparing to the rest of Europe but still, about half the price. And honestly, when I saw what he got, I started to wonder why we haven't tried such places before in Norway. But maybe they're not all the same standard as this one below. They have single rooms, double rooms, 6 persons rooms etc.

Old caserns around the place with the hostel... now transformed and used as regular appartments. Though I'm sure the big square place in front of it must have been used by the military for the usual training purposes etc. judging by the way it looks.

More former caserns...

The building with the hostel.


To read more about Karlstad, click HERE.

I can't say for who it is and I can't say what is is, though many of you will immediately recognize it and some will even see it in one of my yahoo groups ;)

I'll uncover it some time next week when it reaches one nice person!

And nah, it's not one of the exchange pieces. The design is too small, just 36x36.

Quiet evening...

I'm stitching on some Shhhhh!!... projects so I can't blog about them for some days and/or weeks, but they look very promising! This w/e I plan to do the finishing on my privat exchange PS pieces and then stitch my PS group fob exchange for Milly. If you know Milly you know what the theme will be, LOL!

Mary Kathryn received the belated birthday giftie I sent her, mail is soooo slow these weeks... And 10 days later, still no sign of the package from Nath. You'd think it should be able to hop across just two borders in two days, yes it should!

Major update!

I am sorry I didn't write things clearly in my previous blog post - the kidney problem is just a small one, the main issue (the surgery in March) is located somewhere else :(. Thanks so much for your support, Donna! :)

I finally found my camera, it had fallen on the floor under an open drawer, in which kittie loves to lay. As all cats she likes to rest where she just shouldn't! LOL

So I got up too late today to catch good daylight for the pictures and if I took time to iron my stitching the light would be totally gone, so I made pictures as good as they could be at that hour. My windows are from the east which means that by 11 am the sun has already moved and pictures show lousy. I know lots of people want to have their bedroom on the east but I definitely would prefer them to the west. In the summer I have direct sun and a real sauna in the room from 5 am, aaargh!

My PS exchange from Nath' hasn;t arrived yet, 8 days after it was sent. I often wonder why I get French mail sooooo awfully late most times! It's like with Skype, all voice connections are great except for France, but that might have an easy explanation like where the servers are located and how the connections go through. I just recalled this morning that the last package from Nath' took a whole two weeks to arrive, so I might just as well work on my patience and virtually ask President Sarkozy to work a bit on that too! LOL

How is everyone doing with their PS exchange? :) I am done with all 5 pieces except for the finishing. However, I didn't like the way one looked so this week-end, I am stitching another one. I will be able to send all before the end of the month. The size of all is not big except for maybe one, so I plan to do a nice finishing, but as I wrote earlier they will all be different :)

On St. Valentine's Day, I started stitching this beautiful design by Tanya Marie Anderson and finished it yesterday. It is the Litterary little #4 called My Everything (W.H. Auden). You can see and buy it here. I fell in love with it the moment I saw it. Can there be a more romantic chart? I planned to finish it similarly to the way it is shown on the leafler, but eventually I will have it framed in an adequate shade of dark pink or red frame. Will see to it on Monday, one framer I like is just near the clinic I need to visit.

I chose to stitch it with one thread over one on 32 ct hand-dyed linen (possibly LL, I misplaced the label). My eyes didn't thank me for that but I just love the way it looks, what do you think? I'll show it again once framed.




Now I'll move to some older finishes. First, some I stitched during Christmas. Don't have the inspiration to do the finishing, but they'll become little pillows like the one I sent to Ela back then. This is from the Red Letter Ornaments by Blue ribbon Designs. I just love this leaflet and would like to have the Green... as well. The colors are not as muted in real as they show on this picture.


Garden Pleasures by LHN; I have already applied thermoflieseline on both the stitched piece and the backing fabric (shown in the upper part of the picture) but still need to sew it all into a pillow. I think I chose the right fabric though :)
Stitched on Lakeside Linens, in real the fabric is more green, very light celadon.

And now a big favorite of mine, Haste Ye Back by Sheepish Designs. This one is very dear to me... I so wanted to stitch it and Mary Kathryn sent it to me for my birthday last year, she saw it in my wishlist. I need one skein more for the bottom and I already ordered it. I also hope to make a much, much better picture of it because this one below just doesn't do it justice! :)

A current WIP - Wedding Topiary by Knotted Tree Needleart. Stitched with silks (one color) on LL.

Another piece by The Sampler Girl, Dash Away All. Tana offered it as a kit (DMC floss, linen, chart, the backing fabric - superbly matched, and even the tiny white star you can see on the picture and a beading needle. Tanya has an etsy shop here and regularly offers special kits and other items such as book bags, blankets etc.
I'll finish here today with a picture of Toska sleeping on my fax machine. No, I don't know why she sometimes choses the most uncomfortable spots. I just can't understand why she loves the fax - it's not on, so it's not warm, I'd say it has hard surface and all - but for several weeks she loved to go and sleep on it.

Yeahh... One more. I am sorting papers etc. and thought I'd put those I don't want to throw but which still need to go into different folders and boxes - into one big box. Of course, Toska *has to* sleep in it, chew on it, scratch it, sharpen her nails on it. I took this picture last week. By now, the box is just a big piece of garbage paper.... sigh... I need to find a different one... or sort the papers out ASAP. But how can anyone be angry at those eyes... :)

There's more stitching to show but it has chosen to hide somewhere :)