"May the Fourth Be With You!"

Google Image

Hello again!  It is the 4th May... and today it would have been Audrey Hepburn's 85th Birthday.  She is one of my favourite all-time actresses, so when I saw that Google was mentioning her birthday day I decided to also mention it!

In our little humble home, the 4th May is a very special day as well.  Today would have been the 100th birthday of Hubby's late father.  Can you imagine what changes he would have experienced if he was still alive today?  Today is also the anniversary of Hubby's parent's wedding... and it is our Wedding Anniversary on Tuesday... so with three such special events all so close together we thought we might just go out to lunch today!

Oh, and of course it is also Star Wars day - "May the fourth be with you"!!!

So this is a very quick post to show you where I am at with "Jingles" and "Spring Bouquet."

Spring Bouquet - MS Blog Lovers SAL #5

Margaret Sherry - Spring Bouquet as at 2/5/2014

After a week of stitching this is where I am currently at with "Spring Bouquet".  I am absolutely loving this design.  The purple and pink hues are so pretty.  And I am sure you have noticed, if you know the design, that I am stitching all around the white at this stage!!!

This one is now off the q-snaps for the weekend and "Jingles" is back on them and feeling the love of my needle!

Lizzie Kate's Jingles - SAL with Rita, Annette, Nia

Lizzie Kate - Jingles as at 3/5/2014

I started stitching "Ho Ho Ho Holiday" yesterday afternoon and I am about half way through already! What a quick stitch this one is looking like being!   Will be doing a wee bit more on this tonight and I will finish the design before going back to Spring Bouquet.

So that's it for a very quick update on this week's stitching.  Hopefully there will be some more pretty colours to show next week!

Til next time, happy stitching and "may the fourth be with you"!

Hugs, Stitching Noni xx

Lizzie Kate "Jingles" SAL April Update

Goals are dreams with deadlines

~Diana Scharf Hunt ~

Lizzie Kate "Jingles Flip-It"

Lizzie Kate "Jingles" SAL update - stitching with Rita, Annette and Nia.

The last time you saw my Lizzie Kate "Jingles" I had only just started the first design in the series - Deck the Halls.  Well I am happy to say that I have now finished that one! Yippee!! It only took me just over a week to stitch, which hopefully is a good sign for the other ones to come!!!

Now all I have to do is get this back on the Q-snaps and start stitching the next one before the May update!!

Til next time, happy stitching and jingling!!
Stitching Noni xx

TUSAL - April 2014

Try not. Do or do not. There is no try

~Yoda ~ The Empire Strikes Back

Goodness, here we are again.... another TUSAL post and ORT report.  And did you notice - I am on time this month!!!  Amazing what a week off work has done for my time management!!!  But I will have to warn you that normal service will be resumed shortly... back at work today... and from now on I will be working 5 days a week for the foreseeable future so my spare time will be severely curtailed!!  Oh well... as they say "the only constant is change"!!

April 2014 TUSAL

So as you saw from my last post yesterday, I have been doing a little bit of stitching during April.  All those lovely long weekends make for more stitching time!!

This month we have threads from my Halloween April Ornie, Jingles April stitching and also the start of the MS SAL #5 sitting on top of the jar.  I decided to stick with the Owl theme of April and take the photo with my little Owl that sits on the bookcase in the Craft Room.

That's it for this short ORT report.  If you would like to sign up and join in the fun this year, then pop on over to Daffycat's blog and leave a comment saying that you're in and start collecting your ORT's!  And if you don't want to join in with the ORT collecting, you will still find links to some great blogs that you can read to while away the hours!!

The next 2014 ORT report will be ready for publication on or around 28th May 2014.

New Moons - 2014
28th May
27th June
26th July
25th August
23rd September
23rd October
22nd November
21st December

Til next time happy stitching!

"Bee" happy and keep stitching!

Hugs, Stitching Noni xx

Stitching Update....

A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books

~Walt Whitman ~

Hi there!  How about a bit of a stitching update?  It surely must be past time that I showed you what I have been stitching over the last couple of weeks.

Now when I last posted I had just started my Lizzie Kate "Jingles" SAL - but more on that in my next post....

This month I have also been stitching on my April design for the Halloween Ornie SAL 2014 blog.  The April theme was Owls and I chose to stitch a rather cute Diane Arthurs design.  Surprisingly this month I have actually managed to get my Owl stitched and posted before the end of the month!!

Say hello to "Owliver and Punky"!

"Owliver & Punky" - designed by Diane Arthurs
Stitched April 2014

This design was published in the Just Cross Stitch Halloween 2013 Special Edition magazine.  I stitched this lovely design on plastic canvas which I will back with some felt at some stage before turning it into a hanging ornament.

Next month's theme is "Monsters" - but I am yet to find a design that I like.... so let the hunt begin!

Hallowe'en Ornie SAL
2014 Themes
May -Monsters
June -any freebie chart
July -Pumpkins
August -Ghosts
September -Black cats
October - Trick or Treaters
November -Bugs, insects or spiders
December -Free choice

**********************

So that was Halloween.... now onto the MS Lovers Blog SAL's.

Remember I said at the beginning of the year that I had signed up for three MS SAL's this year.... well finally four months into the year I have managed to start stitching my first one!

SAL #5 - Spring Bouquet
started 26/4/14

The fabric that I am using to stitch "Spring Bouquet" is a 14ct white Aida with pink spots that Heather sent me for the MS Christmas Exchange.  Now that I have started stitching on this lovely design I think it is going to be hard to stop... except that I will very soon be hitting the white on kitty.... not looking forward to that!!

Before I leave you, let me show you the secret stitching that I mentioned last month in my TUSAL report. For those of you that follow Nia's blog you will know that little Lourenço was born on 7 March 2014.  I decided to stitch a little piece of Australia to send to Nia and her little man.  But as always happens with me, time went by and I didn't get it sent off before he was born. But maybe I should say I planned it that way so that I could add his birth date to the final stitching.

I stitched part of a birth sampler design from Carrol Nielsen.  I love Carrol's designs especially her Koala's.

This was my first flat fold finish....  The fabric that I used was another one from Stitches and Spice.

I also sent some little Aussie friends for Lourenço - just a little piece of Australia for a little Portuguese baby!

My next couple of posts will be my TUSAL post and an update on "Jingles".  See you then!

Til then, happy stitching
Stitching Noni xx

I'm a Jingle-ing!!

In ancient times cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this

~ Terry Pratchett ~

Sometime ago Rita from Il Mio Mondo a Colori asked if anyone wanted to join in on a SAL that she was organising to do with Annette and Nia.  The design that the girls had chosen to stitch together was Lizzie Kate's "Jingles Flip-It" series.

Lizzie Kate "Jingles Flip-It"

Rita thought that it would be a great idea to see if anyone else might be interested to join in and stitch this cute design as well... and so far there are 11 stitcher's who have joined in the fun.

Now originally I said that I wouldn't take part as I didn't think I would get the time to stitch it especially with the other SAL's that I have already signed up to stitch this year.... but this design just kept on kicking at me and eventually I gave in and bought it!!!

Rita and Annette have been very good and have posted regular updates over the last couple of months and they are well into their stitching.  Hopefully I will catch up.. but probably not!!  If I can get close to a finish by the end of the year I will be very happy!

Back to my Jingles... on Friday the last of my back ordered Weeks Overdyed threads arrived from Stitches and Spice and the time was finally right to start stitching!  Yesterday saw me spending an hour or so preparing to start on the first design.  Needle and thread and fabric finally met while I was watching a couple of episodes of "House of Cards" last night - yes, I can now say that I have started to "Jingle"!

And this is how far I had managed to get last night by the time I had stopped stitching for the evening:

LK "Jingles" - "Deck the Halls"
as at 12 April 2014

Not a lot achieved so far.... but a start is a start!!

I have taken a long shot of the fabric so that hopefully you can see how nice it looks.  Unfortunately the photo doesn't quite show the shine that it has and the colour is not quite the same as in real life.  The name of the fabric is "Sugar Cane Crunch" and it is a very pretty opalescent 32ct hand-dyed Belfast fabric that I got from Stitches and Spice.

Hopefully by the time of the official update at the end of the month I will have a lot more stitching to show you!

Til next time, happy stitching and Jingle-ing!!!