Stamp With Jen

Mary Ann Blackburn Start and a Peacock Finish!

2012-05-31T06:48:00-06:00

This week I have a teeny little start on Mary Ann Blackburn by Blackbird Designs to show you. I have the most lovely piece of 40 count R&R Sheep's Straw linen that I'm stitching it on. It's nicely aged and overdyed and to make it a bit more splotchy I spritzed it with water. OK, that was an accident but I like the way it turned out and am loving these colors on it! I'm stitching it with the called for Gentle Arts Sampler Threads by the way and even though I haven't gotten very far yet I think this one will go quickly! I initially wasn't sure about the rooster/peacock that is in the center of the sampler (on top in my photo) but in the end I'm very glad that I stitched it as charted. I did think about swapping it out for one of the peacocks in Grace Bridges or the one in the Peacock Pinkeep but decided to leave it as is and am happy I did. Of course, now I am jonesing to start Grace Bridges. Good thing I have that all kitted and ready to go as she may be next! :)

I must be on a peacock kick because I also started and finished the Blackbird Designs Peacock Pinkeep in the last week. I also did the bonus needlebook chart while I was at it. If you're not familiar with this piece, the peacock pictured in the upper right of this picture is the top and the band at the bottom wraps around to form the sides of the pinkeep. When it's all done it will look like a drum. Normally I would crop this photo but as I was taking these pictures I had the pieces laid out on the couch to get a decent snap and the kitty was looking for attention, that's her foot peeking in the very bottom of the photo so I had to leave it in. :)

I purchased this chart, the pattern and the Belle Soie when I was at Attic Needlework back in January and it's been in my bag to stitch every since. Now she's stitched and will go off in the mail to my finisher this week. I can't wait to get her back and display her!

This week I dog-sat for my second favorite dog in the world and I happened to pick up a new piece of training equipment over the holiday weekend. I was working "off contacts" with both dogs and had them each on an end. Maverick sat down as I took this but I thought it was a cute photo and thought I'd share a bit of what I do in my free time when I'm not stitching. You can see more about my adventures with Sage over at my dog blog. Enjoy!

Mary Roe Finish!

2012-05-28T16:05:00-06:00

Here's my completed Mary Roe! Yay, she was such a fun sampler to stitch and went so quickly once I finished that dreaded over one stitching. I stitched her on 36 count Meadow Rue with the called for Belle Soie silks.

I pressed Miss Mary before this picture and then laid her on the bed and she looked slightly wrinkled again. I've heard that Belle Soie can sometime run a bit so I decided to settle for this and will give her a good pressing once I've got a frame all picked out for her. Enjoy!

Sampler Guild Pincushion Exchange

2012-05-26T16:34:00-06:00

A few weeks back, over Mother's day weekend my parents came into town to visit. It just so happened that it was Mother's day on Sunday but on Saturday we had a Sampler Guild of the Rockies meeting that included a pincuchsion exchange. I honestly don't know which I was more excited to share with my Mom! In a previous post I showed you the wrapped packages that I had all ready to go. Well, one of them held the pincushion that I gave away at the exchange. It was Mary Little, her finish photo is above. I actually stitched her twice because I knew I'd want one for myself. Now I'm stitching her a third time. :)

The exchange was so much fun! We got in a circle and passed the pincushion to the person to our right each time we heard the word Pin or Pincushion during the reading of a brief history of the pincushion. It was really fun! After the reading was finished we opened our gifts. This is what I received and I am absolutely gaga for it! It is so awesome to have a pincushion stitched on a colored fabric for my small but growing collection! Thank you Tina for this treasure! I simply adore it!

When we got home I put my new treasure with the rest of my collection of smalls which I'm housing in a cute star shaped basket. Right now since I only have a few the basket is sitting up but my hope is to continue adding to it to where I have to set it down or even get another basket. :)

Here's a photo of the basket with what I have so far. My Lady's Trimkeep from Plum Street Samplers doesn't quite fit in the basket without cramming it in so I've got that sitting out in front. There are also the two pincushions from the SGR exchange, a BBD Designs pincushion that my friend Theresa stitched for me and the SGR Fundraising pincushion designed by The Scarlett House. I just love this little collection and have plans to start adding to it. I would love to start Wild Garden for this basket too!

The other gift that I showed in that previous post is a gift that I put together for my Mom. She opened it at the meeting and I really enjoyed her reaction! The little Vera Bradley bag contained some EOS lip balm, a humangear bottle with udderly smooth hand lotion, some needles, a sampler cloth and one more of the Scarlett House pincushions! It was really fun and I think she really enjoyed it! I forgot to get a picture of us at the meeting but here's a picture of her gift. Happy Stitching!

Mary Frankenstein and May TUSAL

2012-05-24T17:57:00-06:00

Meet Mary Frankenstein... OK, not really, I just ran out of white thread and decided to stitch her hair before finishing up her face. When I saw this it occurred to me that she resembled something out of the Munsters. Forget about that teeny waist or burly arms it's the forehead I'm talking about!

All kidding aside, this has been a pretty quick and very fun stitch! I actually have Mary finished but just need to find a moment to take a quick final picture and then I just need to find a frame for her.

I have dreams of a bigger sampler wall someday, with lots of pretty samplers framed and hung tightly together on a wall somewhere in my home for me to enjoy. While I do think I have a fair amount of stitching up on the walls, expanding the wall that contains And They Sinned to include more samplers or starting another wall and filling it to the brim sounds like a lot of work but something that I'd really like to accomplish! I think I have enough in my stash to do it too, just not enough time!

Speaking of time, I haven't blogged in awhile because I've been so busy with my pup, Miss Sage and doing various spring tasks around the house. Last weekend Sage and I performed at Ella's walk which is a fundraiser to benefit the Longmont Humane Society. We take a weekly obedience class there called the ACES class (Animal Continuing Education Superstars) and have been working toward this dance routine for about 6 months. It took a lot of time to teach the individual behaviors and we've been linking them together ever since. Poor Sage was a bit spooked by the speakers and the stage but held it together pretty well. If you want to watch, click on over to my dog blog at www.merlemayhem.com.

And, before I forget, here is May's TUSAL progress! You too can join the TUSAL fun, just visit Daffycat's blog here.

I love all those brightly colored threads from Mary Roe and my latest start - the BBD Peacock Pinkeep. I needed one or two little things before my next big sampler. I haven't figured out what that will be so stay tuned!

Sampler Guild Gifts

2012-05-12T10:34:00-06:00

Not too much to see here... yet! Today is our Sampler Guild of the Rockies anniversary party. It's an annual event in May but my first since this is my first year as a member. This year we are doing a pincushion exchange so the package on the left holds my pincushion ready for trade. If you've been paying attention you know what it is, pictures soon!

The other package shown is for a very special guest who is attending the meeting with me tomorrow. I can't wait to give it to her or to watch her enjoy it's contents! One of the items in here is the second wrapped item that I showed in this post. More soon!

Mary Updates

2012-05-11T16:31:00-06:00

As you can see, I've made some progress on Mary Roe. I hope to be able to get the rest of the flowery vine done soon so I will only have the bottom half left. I sure am loving stitching this sampler, I've just been too busy lately to find much time to sit and work on it!

Additionally, I finished the finishing on my Mary Little pincushions which is just in time since one of them is going to be my exchange item for our sampler guild's pincushion exchange tomorrow. It turned out cute with some ric rac around the outside. I forgot to take a picture but will do that soon!

Spring Song Finish

2012-05-03T05:45:00-06:00

Well, I finished Spring Song last weekend. Here she is in all her glory!
I love the Old Blue Paint fabric threads and am really happy that I took the time to remove and reweave to get this look! I have the box and went to get a piece of matboard yesterday so I'm all set to do the finishing.

I also made a great deal of progress on Mary Roe. I was enjoying this sampler but I needed to add some color so I did the strawberries in the vine to brighten it up a bit. This is such a fun stitch especially with all these bright colors! Once the vine was done I started on the Rice Stitch mounds at the bottom.

I enjoy rice stitch so this part went really fast and now I'm ready to move onto the shepard and sheep at the bottom left. I haven't decided if I'll work up from the bottom (although it seems as though that's what I'm doing now) or if I'd like to go up and finish the vine. We shall see I guess.

Unfortunately, I need to set Mary aside for a few days to do the finishing on my Mary Little pincushions and to do some stitching for an EGA project. I thought I had an extra week on the EGA piece but panicked a bit when I realized I need to have it done for our meeting next week! I have some pretty blue ric rac for the trim on Mary Little but also ordered some blue chenille from the Attic. Either one would need to be attached after the cushion is assembled so I'll probably do the finishing and when the chenielle arrives then I'll make a decision on the trim. I can't wait to get these finished, they are going to be so cute!!

Here's a close up of those beautiful rice stitch mounds. I just love this sampler!

Happy Stitching!!

Fun from the Mailman

2012-04-28T10:24:00-06:00

Remember in my last post, I showed you what I had received in the mail...
Well, here's what was in those pretty packages...
It's the new Liberty Hill star farm box and my finished pincushion from the fundraiser we had a few weeks back for the Sampler Guild of the Rockies designed by Tanya of The Scarlett House. Didn't it turn out great?? I love the Liberty Hill box, I think it's actually called a stitcher's companion, it comes with the ruler, the painted thread winder and a paper sleeve for needles. Since I purchased mine from Attic Needlework they included a pack of 28 ct. Boehin needles to fill it and I loaded it up with some scissors from my growing scissor collection! I just love it!!

Here's a closeup of the pincushion, didn't my finisher do an awesome job??

Now I'm sure you're wondering by now what is in the third package well that is a surprise so you'll just have to wait a bit to find out. :) Happy Stitching!

Done with Over One!

2012-04-26T21:22:25-06:00

Yay!! I finished the over one verse on Mary Roe! I love how Miss Mary has a backward "s" toward the end of the verse and I just love the way this looks now that all the lettering is done! While it may not look like I made a lot of progress, this is huge for me because now I can move on to the flower band and all the fun motifs below that. I may start by stitching the strawberries in the border next though. I am getting together to stitch with some friends this weekend and the berries in the border will be easy to do while carring on a conversation since it's the same berry all the way around the vine.

I had hoped to have a finish on Spring Song to show by now but I did basically no stitching during the first part of the week so it's not quite done. I absolutely love this piece, it keeps pulling me back to it when I sit down to work on Mary Roe. I guess that's why I usually stitch on one at a time because there's usually one piece that just speaks to me. I'm stitching this on 30 count R&R Sheep's Straw as charted and it is simply beautiful even if my camera does seem to wash it out a bit. I really want to finish this so I can start the main sampler in the booklet, Mary Ann Blackburn. I will be stitching her on 35 count though.

I came home tonight to find some special packages waiting for me. What could this be? Stay tuned to find out...

My Intro to Rug Hooking and an April TUSAL

2012-04-23T17:50:00-06:00

Wow, it was a busy, busy weekend but also very productive in many ways! One of the things I did on Saturday was to take a Rug Hooking class at a shop called the Wool Basket in Loveland. I had been up a few weeks ago to check out the shop and ended up signing up for class then! The ladies there are very nice and it was a fun lesson. Here's my progress so far:.

It doesn't seem like much to me but I was assured that I picked it up quickly and made more progress than a typical beginner (this made me feel good and I am very encouraged to keep going)! And yes, I am hooking a black cat rug, that pretty much sealed the deal for me since I love black cats!

I haven't been stitching too much since I've been so busy. I did get to work on the letters of Mary Roe a bit, and I was able to get a start on the vine. I was traveling on a plane with this piece and the little over one letters just would have been too much so I moved on to the vine since it's over two. I'm loving this little sampler! I'd like to go back and do some more on the words and then maybe put the strawberries in the vine for some color. I can't wait to get to all the fun motifs below the vine but for some reason I tend to like to get the hard stuff out of the way and then save the fun stuff for last. It's not so much that the over one words are hard, they're really not, but they're just not as fun as the colorful motifs below the vine. I absolutely love the way the little letters look and was inspired to see Tanya's model when I was at the Attic a couple weeks ago. That alone made me want to keep going with the words and get to the super fun stuff! Actually, these little letters are reminding me so much of stitching Elizabeth Sheffield's sampler!

I've also put some time into Spring Song lately and I have to say that even though it seems weird to me to be stitching with two threads I am really enjoying this piece! And, stitching with two threads instead of my normal one thread is really filling up my TUSAL jar quickly! Here's a progress pic:

And it's a new moon so it's time for my latest TUSAL pic. Anyone can get in on the TUSAL fun, it's not too late! Just go to this post on Daffycat's blog for details. I decided that the jar always kind of looks the same and that the added weight of the ORT's each month just push the whole layer down just a bit. So, after I took this picture I squished the whole thing down and oh my, it really squished tiny! Oh well, it will give me room for more ORT's even though some of you may wonder if I've removed any when I post next month.

Happy Stitching!