Pumpkins for Cathey!

 A little shout out today!

Next stop...Myrtle Beach!

After my visit to The Stitch and Frame Shop, we hitched up the Flying Cloud and drove from Ebenezer Park to a campground in North Myrtle Beach, aptly named Myrtle Beach Travel Park.  We had vacationed in nearby condominiums before and had always wondered about this campground right on the beach.  So we decided to check it out.  It was nice enough...plenty of amenities, but the campsites closest to the beach really packed us in like sardines. You get to know your neighbors' habits pretty quickly.  And there was no shade...which any fool could've deduced ahead of time, but not this fool.

 Next year I'll opt for a shady spot back from the beach with a little more breathing room.  On the other hand, the beach was only THIS many steps away.  We enjoyed breath-taking sunrises and sunsets all week long.

(I know I said we were tightly parked, so you may think I'm exaggerating when you look at this photo, but those are across the path and were tent-sites.)  

And just as stitchers who meet up and talk about their favorite road trips to shops, fellow campers love to come introduce themselves and talk about their favorite campgrounds.  A camper in Rock Hill told Dave and me about another nice municipal park in High Point NC, so rather than head straight home from Myrtle Beach, we took a brief detour to High Point and spent a night in a beautiful park called Oak Hollow Campground on High Point Lake.  It was just what we needed after a week at the beach.  I welcomed the cool air and green trees.

Took my stitching chair down to the lake's edge and enjoyed its beauty while I stitched.

And the next morning it got a little too chilly for outdoor stitching, so I sat inside and stitched at the kitchen table.

That afternoon we hit the road for home.  Coming home is always a mixed bag...I'm sad to see our trip end, but glad to be back, too.  Anyways, we have some great vacation memories and I even have a little bit of stitching to show for it - in my next post!

Stitch and Frame Shop in Rock Hill

I woke up on the second day of our vacation with just one thing on my mind. Well...two things. Breakfast and visiting The Stitch and Frame Shop.

Just a quick word about breakfast - We ate in a really small restaurant in Rock Hill called The Yolk. We found it through Yelp. It's strictly a breakfast and lunch place, but by its name you can guess its specialty is breakfast (I'd post a link but something's wrong with their website).  I had the best egg white omelet I've ever eaten in my life, (healthy, right?) full of savory fresh herbs, accompanied by creamy and delicious cheese grits (totally unhealthy) (but fabulous).

Dave and I absolutely love Yelp.  We've found some amazing restaurants with just a tap of the finger.

Anyways, then I rolled myself out of that chair and into the car to go around the block to this lovely little shop!

In terms of square footage, it's not a very big shop.  Significant space is devoted to a framing counter, but you may have guessed that from its name.

So beautiful.  What a masterpiece.

And the framed models around the shop really showcased their framing skills.  The walls were covered with gorgeous examples of needlework.  Every single square inch!

So much to look at....some of these would take me a lifetime.

Something for everyone.  Whatever your stitching inclination is, there is a stitched model you'll want to look at more closely.

For you Mill Hill kit enthusiasts:

Look at this very well organized fabric room.  Every color and count under the sun. And more beautiful shop models.

And the thread room. It was a fairly extensive collection. You can definitely find almost everything you'd need. I don't mean to sound blase...Maybe I'm a little spoiled by the amazing selection at Beehive Needlearts in Pittsburgh.



The shop clerks were nice - pleasant enough with their greeting while busy helping a shopper who was new to using beads.  But I really didn't need any help.  I was on a mission for JBW's Reindeer alphabet and it was easy to find.  But when I actually held it in my hand, I discovered that I liked last year's Christmas Tree alphabet more.

The colors are actually much prettier than in this photo.  

Dave came back to pick me up (he had visited a local hobby shop with a big outdoor race track), and we headed back to the park, hitched up the trailer and hit the road for the beach!  Where I've stitched a little...

Recently Dave decided that I needed a break from my obsessive Weeks Dye Works skein-measuring, so he hitched up the trailer and decided we would take a vacation. And by the way, I'll talk more about that in a post later on. So our first stop was in a beautiful West Virginia state park/resort called Stonewall Resort.  The campsites were beautiful.

We spent a wonderful evening having dinner in their spectacular lodge and then paddling around the lake in a canoe.  And then after a quick breakfast, we hit the road for the next leg of our trip - Rock Hill, South Carolina.

Most of my stash shopping friends know that Rock Hill is home to a nice stitching shop, called The Stitch and Frame Shop - it was made kind of famous by one of the Net's most prolific stitchers, BeckyBee.  So you know that I've been panting to go there each time we pass the Rock Hill exit on our way to UGA or Myrtle Beach. And since I married the most patient and wonderful man on earth, we planed a campsite just minutes away from the Shop and then he negotiated the camper through horrendous rush hour traffic in Charlotte NC just to get me there.

That Dave....he's a keeper.

So we camped in a neat little York Township municipal park right on Lake Wylie, called Ebenezer Park.
We had a terrific site with a lovely view of the lake, and nothing could beat sitting on a bench at the edge of the water and watching the sunset.

Well...except the prospect of stash shopping the next morning.  And I'll tell you about that in my next post.

A little nit-picky

Some of you may think this is silly, but here goes:

For a couple of years, I've been doing a seasonal kit exchange with three other stitching girl friends.  It's a lot of fun.  A few times every year we each pick a small, generally ornament sized design.  It's almost always a freebie.  Then we stitch it for ourselves, (like stitching a model) and then we create three kits using those same materials and send them off to each other in the mail.  It's cool to have three different small kits arrive in my mailbox at regular intervals.  And when I need a quick finish, I have a box of them just waiting for me to start - threads, fabric and even sometimes finishing supplies all at my fingertips!

So here's the nit-picky part.  Often we'll take a freebie that uses DMC and make some conversions to overdyeds or silks or whatever to make it more fun for our friends.

When I start stitching my kit, I buy all brand new skeins, because I like to measure my thread use and keep count of the yardage I'm using.  That way I'm sure that I pack enough thread in the kits I send my friends. (It's embarrassing to send a kit with not enough thread!)

My last two kits have used Weeks Dye Works threads and after measuring, I've found that those 5-yard skeins?  Well, they usually don't contain 5 yards.  I used 8 different colors of WDW threads and the skeins are always short.  Sometimes by maybe 6 inches.  No biggie.  But sometimes by 12-18 inches.  Yes.  18 inches.  One-half yard.

Unlike GAST, which comes separated into five 1-yard pieces, WDW is just one continuous length of thread, so unless you were measuring, you'd never notice.  But now I've noticed.

So now you know, too.  And if you're trying to estimate how many skeins of WDW thread you'll need for that gorgeous monochromatic sampler you're planning to stitch....well, you had better add a skein or two.  Because my recent experience has made me think that you won't be getting 5 yards from those brand new skeins you just brought home.

The last time we met here on this old blog, I mentioned that we had a new college graduate in the family.  Those four years flew by, as I knew they would.  We dropped this girl off for cross country camp at the College of Wooster in 2009...

And this is who we got back in 2013.

Except we don't really ever "get them back", do we?  I mean, that's our goal - right?  To give them a firm foundation so they can push off, take their own leap in the air and create new foundations for themselves.  Our Colleen seems poised on that edge, as she waits for her next adventure in life.  I know the leap will come soon.  We couldn't be more proud of her.

So...Another week of summer has come and gone, but it feels more like fall around here than summer.  My Favorite Weatherman tells me that we had some record cold temperatures here in July, with one night hitting a low of 43 degrees. Brrr!  Throw on that extra blanket!  It's been nice to have the A/C off for a couple weeks though.  I need fresh air.

I have a couple new bits of stitching to show you.  The first is from Plum Street Samplers' newest, Betsy's Stockings.  It was super fun to stitch.  And if you buy a fat-eighth, you can fit all three stockings onto it.

On 36 ct. Meadow Rue, with WDW threads

And we made an unexpected trip to Cleveland last weekend, so that always means a stop in Crafty Ewe, where I found this JBW chart.  It's not newly published, but it was new to me and it seemed like Fall was in the air anyway, so I couldn't resist this quick stitch.

On a scrap of light green linen, with WDW threads and Victorian Sampler hand dyed chenille.

Till next time...

Hey, this dusty ol' thing looks familiar!

Well now, wait.  Let's grab a dustcloth and wipe it off.  Is it what I think it is?

Why yes!  It's my blog!

I can't say why, but after almost 10 years of (reasonably) regular writing and general clowning around here, 5 months ago I just couldn't put two sentences together for this blog.  And to tell the truth, I'm struggling right now.

An awful lot has happened since March.  I'll give you the rundown in a list (even after my daughter has complained about the way lists are over-used and are dumbing down the writing profession)

1. I've added yet another bookkeeping job to my bundle of part-time jobs.  I'm working for a local charitable foundation.  It's in their office, two days a week but it's a very intense two days - working with fund accounting is pretty freakin' hard and for the first couple months I was going crazy.  It's better now.
2. Almost in the next minute after I accepted that job, I was asked to add more hours to the auto body shop job, so I went from a measly 4 hours a week to 16.  It's less bookkeeping and more clerical, but it means I had to know more about the day-to-day work of the shop and sheesh... it's really complicated!  I'm still finding my way on that one.
3. So I'm still working from my home office for my husband Dave and for the HOA, but not nearly as much.  
4. And when you're not working from home and working on a computer in someone else's office, for some strange reason they actually expect you to be working on their stuff and not doing your own thing and blogging.  And you can't make them go away and leave you alone by threatening to withhold sex unless they quit bugging you to do your work.  (Poor Dave - I'm a terrible employee.  I'm a good wife.  Terrible employee.)
5. We added a new college graduate to the family and we're super proud of her.  Then she moved back home ...sort of...If your definition of moving home is dropping the cat off with your parents and taking a bunch stuff to a house your boyfriend shares with crazy whitewater raft guides and spending the summer there.  But whatever.
6. And I get terribly distracted by that darn cat.  When he curls up in my lap, it's like I'm hypnotized.  I literally can't move.

And there are other things, too, but they won't fit nicely into a list.  So we'll talk about those things another time.

But how about some stitching to show you?  Because even though I haven't been writing, I have been stitching.  And stash shopping.  And enjoying my stitching friends near and far.

I think we left off here, while I was working on this as a gift for my younger sister, who lost her husband to cancer earlier this year.  I worked like a maniac to have it ready for her visit when she came for graduation in May.  I think she liked it, although I'm not sure.  Nevertheless, I liked it.  It was a pleasure to stitch.

Designed by The Sunflower Seed, on PTP fabric with Valdani silks

This was a finish from last year - finally framed this year.  

LHN Simple Joys

My sweet friend Julie sent me this adorable chart along with its GAST threads, fabric and a button for my birthday this year.  It was a perfect project to chase away the grey winter and a very dreary April this year.  I even had the perfect pompom rickrack in my stash of finishing supplies already.  

Spectacular Spring, by The Sunflower Seed

And this was another quick little kit, sent by my friend Judy to welcome the summer holidays.  It's a great design, but Judy's fabric choice really made it perfect.  It's a PTP fabric called Heroic.

And I still have my Moira Blackburn anniversary sampler in the works, among other things.  Because you all know how it is....the stitching bag is always full of SOMETHING.

Uh.  A bit of housekeeping now that we've lost Google Reader:
Follow my blog with Bloglovin

Or use Feedly.  That's what I use.

And now I'll finish this up and get outta here. I have more to say, so hopefully I'll be back before another five months pass by.

Till then...

Something pops out

Sometimes a bit of stitching on a blog will just POP out at me and I have to share it with you.

Go over to Tommye's blog and see how she stitched the grass in her latest project.  Wonderful!

Can't show you much today...

...Because I've been working on a gift, so I don't want to give too much of it away. I don't think its recipient reads my blog, but we can never know...

I can show you a little bit without giving the whole thing away, so here are a couple snippets.  I'm using Valdani silks and a Silkweaver overdyed linen.  At least I think it's Silkweaver...if not, it's Lakeside.  And it's a Sunflower Seed design.

Dave and I are getting ready for a trip to Georgia soon.  After the weather we're enduring this week, the thought of traveling south almost 600 miles is really appealing.  I'd love to see some flowers!

But before we go, I have to finish gathering our papers for our tax return.  Yuck.  They're so complicated this year, and where the heck are all those little bits of mail I dutifully filed away?  So now I'm off to hunt...

Nine Inches

Hey - Get your minds out of the gutter!!  And get that dreamy expression off your face...

Sigh.  I haven't seen the sun in over a week now and we've had steady light snow for days.  Dave measured for the weather service this morning and believe it or not, we have nine inches of snow on the ground and more to come.  I sure miss the mild weather of 2012!

So anyway, what's a girl to do to keep her sanity in this world of grey, white and black?  Stitch something springy, of course!  I long for tulips, so this little BBD design was the perfect project for the weekend.

Loved it!  It's a design from A Stitcher's Journey (obviously), stitched on 28ct Antique Ivory Cashel linen, with the recommended GAST threads.  Now I'm waiting for some trim to arrive in the mail.  It'll be my first order from the Victorian Motto Sampler Shop, so how exciting is that??

Enjoy your week everyone!

Built the house!

I spent last weekend building the house on my anniversary sampler.

I thought this would go quickly, but houses are SO full of stitches!  For real, right?  I didn't have terribly far to go, because here's where I left off the before the weekend:

And yet I was pushing to finish it after almost two days of solid stitch time!  Luckily, I was in a room full of stitching buddies over the weekend and they kept me on task, so I was able to finish it Saturday afternoon.  (And when I say keep me on task, I mean that I was too embarrassed to give up and work on another project.  There would have been witnesses to my defeat, and I can't have that.)

So why did that house feel like it took so long to stitch?  Well, I decided to calculate time and stitches, starting with a total of 2, 276 stitches in that house.  Now, if I'm JUST creating cross stitches, I average about 5 complete cross stitches per minute.  (Yes, I timed myself) So if I had unending lengths of thread and stitched solidly with no breaks, that number of stitches would take me 7 hours and 40 minutes.

But of course, we must include pauses for tucking threads, starting threads, cutting threads, threading needles, unwinding floss, untangling floss, counting and recounting.  So to be on the safe side, let's add another 2 hours for all the stitching related activity that isn't actual putting thread onto fabric.  And even that 's probably a low estimate, because we all know that a tangled skein of DMC can take up a serious chunk of time...

And there you have it.  Conservatively, almost 10 hours of stitching went into a medium sized house.  Now, if you are like me, you must add in the time spent of getting up for snacks, walking around the room and admiring your buddies' work, catching up on everyone's families and jobs, grazing at the snack table AGAIN, texting, looking up useless trivia online,  gossiping about shops and bloggers, bathroom breaks, having more snacks on your way back from the bathroom, stretching your legs for a nice long, cold walk...and then you need another snack.  So - time sure flies!

And now that I think about it, it's downright amazing that I finished that house!  There.  Now I feel much better.

Oh...the cuteness!

Finished!  She was a really cute baby, right?  I loved those pink OshKosh overalls.

Valentine Mash Up

Ryan told me to tell you that he's glad you had a great Valentine's Day, even if it meant cracking a few jokes at his expense.  Our Ryan is nothing if not a good sport.

Each year I stitch a small Valentine for my daughter, (who is probably too old for this sort of thing now, but I don't care because I like doing it!) This year, the emphasis was on small.  And when I say Valentine, I actually mean post-Valentine, because even after stitching for 30 years, you would think that I would realize that small doesn't always mean fast.  So it's still not finished, but I may have to give it to her before I'm able to take another photo, and well...you'll get the idea from this picture.

I put this together by mashing up a few designs, starting with L'Atelier Perdu, where I found the phrase and the lettering for this little piece.  Natalie has some really adorable designs over there, and this one had been on my mind for a while.  But I didn't want to stitch the little girl on the left from the original design.  I wanted something more heart-y, so I switched her out and added a bit of a freebie heart tree from a Hungarian blog, called Sub Rosa.  And finally, I took out the original flower on the right of the design and added a thistle from a Blackbird Designs chart, the Thistle House Sewing Box.

You can see that I still have some stitching to do, like finishing the top border and I need some kind of something towards the bottom to balance the lettering...(Clear as mud, huh?)

Anyways, Colleen will probably like it, but she'll probably like the cash I tuck into the back of it more.  Oh..thanks everyone for your good thoughts for her as she interviews for jobs.  She hasn't heard anything one way or the other yet.

My friends in Ohio and West Virginia might be interested in reading the outdoor magazine she just published for her Senior Independent Study.  It's the kind of writing she really wants to pursue, and now that the magazine is hot off the press, she's hoping it'll be a nice addition to her resume.

It's a tough job market out there, but I'm sure something good will happen for her.  Still...I wouldn't be normal if I wasn't worrying.

Happy Valentine's Day!

I don't have any progress on my projects to show you, but that's no reason not to wish you a Happy Valentine's Day.  And even without any actual stitching, I still have a few gifts for you.

Have a wonderful Valentine's Day!

Moira and Me

I love this sampler.  Love, love, love it.

Moira Blackburn's Scottish Love Sampler

The colors are so much fun!  I love the bright hues.  They're way different than the palette I usually stitch with.  I didn't realize it when I took this picture, but look at my table runner in the background.  It's something I bought recently and it's bright, so obviously my tastes are changing. For like, the millionth time.

Border close up

So, just to remind you, this is a sampler for our anniversary and just under the alphabet it will say: "And I will love thee still".  I'll stitch that in its proper place if I still like Dave by the end of this sampler.  Or I could rechart it to say: "I haven't killed you yet", which would also mean that I still like him.  But if he's really on my nerves, I may stitch: "Sleep with one eye open".

(Dave knows I'm just kidding.  He's the best.  Really.  The guy's a prince )

This is a busy time of year for me, as it is for anyone in the bookkeeping or accounting field.  But I'm pretty fortunate because 9 months out of the year my schedule is super flexible.  I'd be a total wimp if I couldn't deal with three months of inflexible work.

But still, my mind wanders as I work. Like, I think about wanting Moira Blackburn to give me her cell phone number so I could text her every day when things pop into my head.  I would ask her to design samplers for all of my whims and needs.

(But then I'd probably end up on Judge Judy as the defendant in a stalking case.)

My mind wanders to samplers I want to stitch and bloggers I want to read and friends I want to stitch with.  I think of road trips I want to take and shops I want to visit.  I think of storage options for my beautiful stash and ways to organize and reorganize it.

And then I have to scream at myself, "GET BACK TO WORK!"

Hey...that would make a good sampler saying.  I could stitch it and put it by the computer monitor......Oh Good God.  It's hopeless.

I hope you all are having a more self-disciplined day than I am.

TWO finishes!

I was so pleased to add these two seasonal projects to my DONE list! I wish you could see the sparkly blending filament I used for the wrapped presents in this Brittercup design.  This little cutie was in an older JCS ornament issue.  As usual though, it's far from ornament sized. It's about 5 x 5, and that may be a good size if you're decorating a gigantic tree, but not my little pencil tree.  So he's going into a frame.

Can you kind of see the sparkliness here?

And....tah-dah! I finally finished PS Winter Wind!  All that snow stitching at the bottom almost did me in.  I kept whispering to myself, "How many more rows are left to stitch?"  But that's the nature of Prairie Schooler designs, isn't it?  Great designs that look simple and quick but take much longer than you originally thought!

 

 

I mentioned earlier that I had converted many of the threads from DMC to overdyeds. I think it was worthwhile in some ways and kind of a waste in others.  But if you're interested and thinking of using overdyeds for your own Winter Wind, here's my list:

White:  WDW Whitewash*
422 Cream:  WDW Straw*
640 Gray:  Same
898 Dark Brown:  WDW Chestnut
927 Light Blue:  CC Petite Maison*
3023 Light Gray:  Same
3362 Green:  WDW Blue Spruce
3371 Brown Black:  GAST Dark Chocolate
3768 Blue:  Same
3777 Red:  WDW Lancaster Red
3830 Pink:  WDW Bluecoat Red*
3862 Brown:  GAST Walnut

*If I ever stitch this again, I'd skip the overdyeds for these colors.  Either the thread was used in such tiny amounts that using an overdyed just wasn't worth it, or because the color just didn't work.  Like where I used WDW Whitewash.  It appears yellowish in places.  And yellow snow was really bumming me out... for obvious reasons.  So after I put in a couple lengths of thread, I switched to good old reliable and uncomplicated DMC White.

And now I've put away winter and Christmas and I'm back to stitching my Moira Blackburn sampler.  Here's where I left off in November, and I'm not much further along as of last night.

 

In other news, one thing has led to another and my daughter has an interview this week with a magazine she really wants to write for.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed for her, and if some of you could keep your fingers crossed too, I'd sure appreciate it. 

Last Friday's stitching with friends was cancelled because the weather wouldn't cooperate.  If this keeps up, I'm buying a dog sled.  I'll wrangle my neighbors' stupid collies into harnesses and yell MUSH.  Because I love those ladies just that much!

Normal, I like you.

Hey friends! It seems like we were just ringing in the New Year, and that makes if feel like time has flown by.  Except I keep thinking that this January has been one hell of a long month.   Between the holidays and some family illness in Philly, life was topsy-turvy.  But now things are settling into normal routines again and you know...I really like normal.

Normal means that I get time to stitch. A couple weeks ago I almost put all of my Christmas/Winter themed UFO's away.  After the decorations were down, boxed and closeted, I looked at the couple of Christmas-y projects in my basket and I felt....MEH.  But I kept out the two that were closest to completion and I persevered and I may have a couple finishes to show you by the end of this week! 

I'm very close to finishing this PS Winter sampler.  (I made even more progress last night.  Yay Football!) Once this is finished, I'll have stitched Winter Wind and Autumn Leaves.  Won't it be nice to start Spring?  It may be exactly what the doctor ordered!

That's on 32ct. Lambswool linen with a combination of DMC, GAST and WDW threads.  I'll share my thread conversion with you when it's totally done. 

So, this week brings a couple chances to stitch with friends and I'm looking forward to that more than I can tell you!   I've learned that I like to stitch while people are talking, so when I'm stitching alone I usually listen to a podcast or an audiobook.  Except I've been stitching alone so much lately that I'm starting to talk back to the iPad.  Really.  This has to stop.

Back up the truck

One of these days soon, the Needlework Hoarders truck is going to pull into my driveway and gloved workers and a camera crew will spill out and walk up my path.  Then I'm going to be that person who peers out her front door, clearly perplexed at why anyone would want to remove any lovely stitching items from her house.

Things are getting bad, people.  Really bad.  And it's got me thinking.

On TV Hoarders, they're always postulating that the hoarder in question has had some issue with loss or some other deep seated emotional problem that won't let them stop buying or bringing home stuff.  But I know that's not my case.  So there must be something else.  What makes me buy designs, threads and fabric when I know that my current stash will last WAAAAAAAY beyond my lifetime?  And my current stash is all stuff that I genuinely like, because I weed out my supplies and donate the unloved stuff every single month, like clockwork. 

OK, so what makes buying more stash so darn irresistible? 

I've given this a lot of thought and when I was having dinner with a couple stitching buddies of mine, I aired an idea out. 

My friends tried to tell me that stash is just a "collection" and that sifting through our stashes and fondling the wonderful threads and fabrics is enough to make us keep adding to our collections.  And I kind of get that, but I don't think I can get the collecting mentality to work for me if the rationality of it feels faulty.  In my opinion, needlework designs and supplies are meant to be used, not collected.  So my brain has to make some kind of psychic leap to explain why I keep adding to my stash.  

Here we go...

I buy cross stitch stash because in my head, I believe that I've already stitched it. It's so sensible.  I don't have to fret about when I'll actually ever stitch something because in my head, it's already completed.  It's a wonderful type of self-deceiving rationalization. 

Should I round out my collection of BBD monthly mini stockings?  Why, certainly!  Because - voila!  My mind thinks that just by purchasing them, I've actually finished them.  No need to feel guilty about this, because they're already mentally done. (I've actually stitched two of them.  Two of....38?  Yeah, that sounds right)

I can't think of any other explanation.  Because in other parts of my life, I am so NOT a hoarder.  There's nothing I love better than clearing crap out of my house.

Well.  Except nice china dishware.  It seems to multiply magically.  And cookware.  But let's stop right there, ok? 

And now it's almost the end of the year.  I may not be back to my blog for a couple days, so I'll wish you all A Happy New Year.  May 2013 be filled with happiness and health and lots of time for stitching and if you want to buy some new stash this year, you have my blessing.  Because guess what?  In my head, you've already stitched it!

Excuses, Excuses

For not writing or stitching.  And all of them are lame. 

Too busy.
Too tired.
Days that are too boring to write about.
Not enough stitching to warrant a post.
Bothersome poor vision during these long nights.
Dishpan hands.
People plopping their hineys in my stitching chair and not getting out of it.
And so on and so on and so on.

Anyway.  I've given some thought to leaving this blog behind altogether, but jeez...after writing here for all of these years, it seemed so wrong to just walk away.

So I guess I won't.  I'm moving on towards 2013 and letting go of my guilt about hardly posting in 2012. 

 Thanks Ryan.  You're the man.

Favorite New Santa design in 2012

Well, it looks like I missed a few days of my 30 Days of Santa.  Running here, there and everywhere will do that to a stitcher. 

There were so many sweet Santa designs published in 2012, but this is my favorite.

Letters for Santa, by With Thy Needle and Thread

I love everything about it.  If you know me, you know all of my reasons!  As soon as it became available, my credit card started glowing.  Kinda like Sting.  No, not that Sting.  Bilbo Baggins sword, Sting, that glows  blue in the presence of Orcs.  (I'm a little excited about Peter Jackson's new movie.  Can you tell?)