Happy Dance - Happy New Year Mouse

Started: 1/1/2020

Finished: 1/3/2020

6 hrs. 43 minutes

Furry Tales are small mice doing human things designed by Lucie Heaton and appear monthly in the World of Cross Stitching magazine.  This one was in issue #276.  

It's stitched on 14-count white Aida as charted with the called for colors.  The yellow is Anchor and the rest are DMC.

The plan right now is to stitch one a month and send them to WOCS to be made into a quilt.  I have one for March and one for August(?) already stitched.

Next Up: Mill Hill Charmed Santa Face - St. Nicholas

 

Happy Birthday, Devin!

Today is my son-in-law's birthday.  Since Janice and Kyleigh are out of town, we will be celebrating our birthdays together on Monday this year.  We usually do celebrate them together and choose a mutually agreeable restaurant, but this year since we're celebrating on my 70th birthday, he's letting me choose.

Last year for his 40th birthday, he chose to go to Johnny Reb's, a southern style restaurant where you shell peanuts and throw the shells on the floor.  Sadly, they've closed the one near us.  They had a tradition/ceremony for those celebrating a birthday there. 

First, you have to kiss a metal pig, but you have a choice as to whether you kiss his nose or his ass.  Kissing his ass gives you good luck for a whole year so guess where Devin kissed.  

 Then you have to dance around and stomp on all the peanut shells.

I knew they did this and didn't want to participate so I celebrated my birthday a couple of days later at Famous Dave's.  There, they sing Happy Birthday and give you a free ice cream sundae. The picture in my profile shows the size of the sundae.

Happy New Year! and End of a Rotation

 HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

I hope 2020 is good to you and yours and is happy and prosperous too!

 

We had a rather quiet New Year's Eve last night.  We have a friend who typically calls at midnight to wish us a Happy New Year and catch up on what's happened the past year.  Lately he's been calling at 9:00 PST since we're all getting older and don't usually make it until midnight.  This was the highlight of our evening.

We did manage to stay up until midnight this year; the fireworks from Disneyland were loud and long so we probably would have been awakened anyway.

I spent the evening stitching and finished the rotation on Let's Learn from Our Cats from Ursula Michael.

This is being stitched on 14-count Lite Blue Aida with my choice of colors since the original chart was in primary colors and I'm not a fan.  This is after 10 hours of stitching. 

I haven't made any official plans for the coming year, but I am going to continue with my SALs and hope to finish a few WIPs too. I have chosen a few projects I want to work on in January though and hope to stitch every day.

I'm going back to my OAAT rotation this year.  Large projects will be rotated after 10 hours, smaller projects when finished.  With a couple of exceptions, I'm planning to stitch on one project per evening.

Up next: Furry Tales Happy New Year Mouse

An Ending and a Beginning

I haven't posted in over a month and at the moment I have no desire to go back and do the necessary catch-up posts.  As today is the last day of 2019, I'm going to say that what's done is done and over with (the ending).

I'd like to thank all those who have commented on and/or read my blog this past year of ups and downs.  I have made new friends and learned a lot from you.  I've enjoyed reading your blogs too, even though I may not have commented on all of them.

Tomorrow is New Years Day, the first day of 2020  (the beginning) which I hope turns out to be a much better year for stitching, blogging and life in general. 

Of course, I couldn't leave you without a couple of pictures that have made me smile.

My son-in-law works at Home Goods and part of his job is to deliver items to a customer's car. I hope this customer had a really big car!  (Devin is on the left.) 

 We stayed at Great Wolf Lodge a couple of weeks ago and had breakfast in the Loose Moose Cafe.

I hope everyone has a Happy and Prosperous New Year!!!

2019 Advent Blog Hop - Day 10

Jo at Serendipitous Stitching has created another fun Blog Hop for us.  This time it's an Advent Calendar and I'm Day 10.

I had trouble choosing which Christmas stitch I wanted to share this year, but finally decided on this one since my first choice already showed up on Katie's blog for Day 2.

It's from the 2018 Just Cross Stitch Ornament Issue and is by Leslie Teare.  It is stitched on gold dusted 14-count Aida.  I changed all the colors; it was originally done in red and white on blue fabric, but this reminds me more of Christmas.

As for my favorite Christmas movie, I don't have one.  We rarely watch movies and I don't think I've seen a Christmas movie in years.  However, I was given tickets to the Nutcracker Ballet on Saturday and really enjoyed it, so I think I'll call that my favorite for now.

Happy Dance - Wooden Heart

Started: 10/18/2019

Finished 10//31/2019

This is a Cross Stitch Style kit that I got from Hobby Lobby.  It was stitched as charted with the materials in the kit, except that I used two strands of floss instead of the three called for.  Since I had trouble with the thickness of two strands, I think three would have been even more difficult.

I'm not sure what I'll do with it yet.  It's supposed to be a pendant, but I may use it as a Christmas ornament.

For some reason, I actually enjoy stitching on wood and am looking forward to stitching some more of the Christmas wood kits from Jo-Ann's if they sell them again this year.

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I know I've been missing from Blogland for awhile now.  I haven't been stitching much and have been too busy and/or lazy to post other happenings.  I don't think the busyness will let up any time soon, but I am stitching again.  Yay!

Happy Dance - Festive Kitten

Started: 9/17/2019

Finished: 9/19/2019

This was a free chart from a World of Cross Stitching magazine, but I don't know which issue.  I believe it was part of a booklet called Festive Friends.

It's stitched on Silver Dusted 14-count Aida as charted except for the backstitching which is the partial stitch kind and was modified to use mostly whole stitches.  I also changed all the colors as it was charted for the provided Madeira threads in red and green that I no longer had.  The scarf and lettering were done with Etoile threads 816 and 699.  The square is much brighter in person.

This has already been sent to Q4OC to be made into a Christmas Ornament and used for a fundraiser for a no-kill animal sanctuary.