New Start of Love One Another--Blackbird Designs

New start of a Blackbird Design sampler out of their For My Friend book that I got while at In Stitches back in March in Alexandria, VA. The fabric 30 count Sheep Straw and the entire sampler is in 6 skeins of Gentle Art Mulberry.

I really like the dark red for this piece and will be happy to get to the motifs. There are instructions for learning new stitches besides the cross stitch and I'm so ready to get to the part.

This is a great book by Blackbird Designs as there are other goodies tucked in for small projects as well.

Next~~~~~ one thing that came in the mail. I looked on Ebay and saw that a dealer was going out of business and selling stash so I got this for a third of the cost and brand new. It is a BAP but I was attracted to the cute litte fox in it.

This is a 19th century reproduction piece. Mansion House at Fox Hollow.

Of late, I have an attraction to anything fox!

Mansion House at Fox Hollow

designer Country Stitches--With Thy Needle and Thread

I also caved and got this pair of scissors for my stash. I've been doing quite well with not getting as much stash this year due to financial restraints but this little pair looks lovely.

Anybody interested in maybe adding a pair to their stash? Is so let me know and I might be putting a pair for a giveaway.

This pair is from The Scarlett Letter website.

I get alot of comments through the past few years how lucky I am to live in such a beautiful area.

I can only agree that as any season here, the mountains are beautful and I truly am blessed.

My Kindle is loaded up with a few more Jane Austen books. I have a great love for Pixel of Ink on FB where daily freebies are posted and most of the time to load onto the Kindle (Gracie).

Another FB Kindle site for freebies is Inspired Reads.

Just a couple of funny ones from the local area. :)

Stay in Stitches!

Jennifer

Finished The Dog Days of Summer

Today is the first day of September. Finally had a minute to finish The Dog Days of Summer. August is typically the hottest month of the year and this sampler is with a touch of late summery colors to represent those last really, hot days of Summer.

I made into a pillow keep and hung with wooden dog bone buttons from Boston stash.

The backing fabric also from my stash of many fat quarters blended perfectly.

The linen is 28 count and honestly I do not know what kind of linen it is. I had it unlabeled in my stash but thought the nubby, occasional brown, here and there, in the linen worked out well with the colors.

Fibers used are Crescent Colors. I just used solid brown ball fringe to hang.

Our weather is much cooler and drier now and I can feel a touch of Fall in the air at night.

Looking forward to September and the weather man projects clear sunny skies and 60's at night, 80's during the day for the next week!!!

Two more days and vacation begins for us. The first week with a long list of things to do before our trip to Chicago and enjoying some peace and quiet.

Working on several designs and hope to start stitching another up pretty soon. Two for October which include a Halloween finish and a Breast Cancer Awareness sampler named Always Hope. This one in particular has alot of meaning to me as I work in Women's Health.

Hope your week is going well too. ;)

Tuesday Chatter and Things that Matter

Well, tomorrow will feel like Friday for me as this is a short workweek.  Taking a very long weekend for some errands to run, and other thingies to do.

Thank you so much for the lovely compliments on the Abbie Summer Sampler! I appreciate your positive energy that always brightens my day.

Today I got more progress on another sampler that is in late Summery colors with names of Fragrant Cloves, Apricot Blush, Almost Auburn, Colonial Copper, Pea Pod and Peanut Brittle, CC and GA threads.

These are some of the colors I got last week. Just a peek at this one.

The Dog Days of Summer is almost done. One more good evening of work and then finishing. Probably will frame this one, but then again, my mind might change......just never know. : o

August is almost over and I can feel in the air on the back porch tonight, a slight bit of change. Just a tad bit cooler now at night and we are supposed to have sunny weather for the rest of the week with the nights reaching in the mid-upper 60's.

We are still looking forward to our trip soon and getting things done, finished, closed-out, and settled before we leave. One of them was to mail out the give-a-way to Patti, from United Kingdom. I have emailed personally and announced and put on her blog but haven't heard for a snail mail address yet. I don't know what to do with this situation? Draw another name? or what? I haven't had this happen before but I think if I haven't heard from the winner by Saturday, then I will redraw another name as I need to get this out before vacation plans in the next couple of weeks.

I have had several emails about selling the patterns and I am in the process of getting a website, supplies, etc so that I am able to do that.  I would add patterns available as I stitch them so you could see the finished product. I will also move over any fabric cuts or used patterns from the Nest Feathers Shoppe Blog to this website. This will all take some time and I promise to keep you up to date! I hope to start building a website soon, but the majority will probably be up and running about October after getting settled from vacation.

Thanks to all who take out time of the day to read and comment! I appreciate them very much!

Till Wednesday.....oops, I have 8 minutes to Wed. Better Scoot.

Jennifer 

Sunday colors in our yard/forest

I hope you are not tired of pictures of butterflies. They catch my attention as soon as I walk outside on the porches. They are HUGE this year and so beautiful. I wish I could capture the whole bush of butterflies at one time with about 50 flittering around, it's so pretty. Today the sun came out. Yep, the sun. We haven't seen that in 2 days now. It flooded so much last night that Body Guard said the in town between two major food businesses there is a cave now. Like the cement just fell in like an earthquake. I will have to take a trip into town later to see this. Evidently there had been some underground deterioration in the pipe system for awhile and unknowing. I would have had a heart attack if I was eating across the street and saw that!  It just made national news, so you may see this huge disaster on CNN.

But aren't we blessed, so blessed with shelter and protection?

I think I will start naming these butterflies. I did get a closeup standing by the tree here.

and more feeding on the bush.

His eye is on the sparrow, so I know He watches me........remember that song?

One of the butterfly bushes in the sun......in the SUN!  YEAH!

We have definitely had our share of rain and moisture. Seems my rosemary is coming along well in it's new home.

This is the road to the road to the road to another road to our house.

There's no place like home.

A couple of few weeks back I threw some seed bags I got at Target into the flower holders and it has rained hard alot so this may be weeds. I don't know. I just want to use them up. But it was a bag of wildflower seeds. This one above is growing fast. Is this a lily pad? a weed? I'm not really into the names of flowers and knowing whether it is a weed or flower. But one lady up here told us when we moved to the mountans that the definition of a weed is "an unwanted flower". She loved all kinds of stuff. I think she may have been ON weed.......just joking.

This is the variety of wildflower/weeds coming up from the seeds.

These came back as a perineal. Don't know the name but I like them.

This man is begging for his 2nd meal of the day. He lives for food. Please don't freak out with him on the table. We don't eat on this table......LOL

No, we don't, Thomas does. Have you ever seen a cat so babied?  Well, I think all our furbabies are.

Yes, Thomas has his food on the table with cover if it's raining. Plus the Labs, Thelma and Louise, ie. Ruby and Raven, can't get to it as easily.....and they will try.

He made a mess of it today.

Hopefully, he's off warding away the rodents like snakes and mice for the homestead. He usually does a great job and sometimes brings us one for a present! I then scream loudly.

And while I'm in our sheltered, nice, cool house, I look over next to me and on the stack of pillows, is Abigail. She's taking a nap.....thank goodness.

Yesterday all day and night through the storms she clung to me like Velcro and I was trying to get some stitching done.

This morning woke at 11:45am. Yes, you read that right 11:45am. I have not slept that late in about 10 years. So, I'm ready now for the day at 1pm.

Missed the morning completely. But so glad for the extra rest even though it was half-filled with strange dreams about Brandon's toys he had when he was about 8 years old. Weird.

Till later,

Jennifer

Starting and revising the Abigail sampler tonight

Putting needle to fabric with different variations of Crescent Color and Weeks threads on this 32 ct Bo Peep pink linen. Started this tonight after a long day of running errands and shopping. So far, I'm pleased with it. I've already changed a few minor things as I stitched and there will be another row of something between her name and the second line. This is really alot of fun!

Calling it a day though as I'm tired and ready for some shut-eye.

Jennifer