The Big Finish

The Christmas Parade crossed the finish line this week! If you arrived late to the Parade, I started this Susan Roberts/Ashley Dillon canvas in May when I attended Needlepoint University at Amy's Golden Strand in Memphis. The canvas, stitch guide, and thread kit for this project was a Christmas 2011 gift from my thoughtful son and daughter-in-law. What a wonderful gift it was, too! It was so exciting to walk into Amy's classroom that Friday morning and see this canvas on stretcher bars with a huge bag full of wonderful threads just waiting for me to put in the first stitches.

Each time I stitch a canvas using one of Amy's stitch guides, I think it can't be better than all of the others of hers that I have stitched. But, each time it is and I learn something new - trying new stitches, a new technique, or stitching with a new thread.

Turkey work was definitely a new stitching technique for me. It certainly adds so much dimension and texture to the piece.

It's been a fun parade throughout the summer and into the fall! Thanks for sticking with me through the entire process and leaving such nice, encouraging comments along the way! There is another Parade in my stitching future - the 4th of July parade (also by Susan Roberts/Ashley Dillon). Love it (!) and look forward to stitching it but I think I will take a little break from another parade for the moment.

So, what to stitch next if it isn't the 4th of July Parade? The Melissa Shirley Whimsy canvas? The Melissa Shirley Helowise canvas? How about the Give Thanks canvas from & more Designs? That's the one, I think, and it is certainly season-appropriate as Thanksgiving approaches.

I started this canvas Friday evening and completed the first two steps of the first green stripe this evening (Saturday).  This is just the type of project I wanted to work on after coming off a lengthy piece like the Christmas Parade. It requires some careful counting but there aren't a lot of thread changes. And, a stripe is such a nice, compact way to measure your progress on a canvas - especially when all the green stripes are the same pattern and the cream stripes (which are also all the same) are a variation on the pattern that has already been established. A perfect project!

I had some quality time to give to Miss Mehitabel this week as well. Her face and neck are now lovely shades of green. Her hat is a work in progress at the moment. It needs a brim and a pointy tip to it. I hope I can do justice to those big red lips and even bigger teeth!

I made another trip to Pier One this week. We haven't even made it to Halloween and I have already started thinking about how to decorate the mantle for Thanksgiving. I just remember thinking how empty the house looked after I took down the Halloween decorations last year (sort of like how you feel in January when the Christmas decorations are put away). I picked up some beautiful mercury glass pumpkins and a gourd from QVC that are lighted with a battery powered light (that's on a timer!) to use as a focus on the mantle. They just glow so beautifully at night when the lights come on. I couldn't wait another few weeks to try them out so I loaded the batteries right after they arrived just to see what they looked like. I love them - an excellent purchase!

Anyway, didn't mean to get sidetracked on the lighted gourd and pumpkins, but I was looking around Pier One for some garland or silk flowers to use with the pumpkins. I found what I needed and also found one more Halloween decoration - a glittery purple broom.

I'm showing you this because it's a hint for another project that will be finding it's way to my door in the next couple of weeks. Can you guess what it is?

Hope you have a great week ahead!