A few finishes to celebrate

Enjoying a nice quiet Tuesday today with no errands or appointments to go to.   Time to update my blog and get some good stitching time in!  Recently got 2 more pieces back from the framers.   Both of these had been sitting around for months waiting.  I always get museum glass on my framed pieces but it sure increases the price!   That's the one thing about stitching that really adds up.   I'm very happy with how both of them came out and glad to get them off the framing pile.

Here's "Strawberry Fields Forever" by Blackbird Designs:

And finally got this big one below done - this is "Frosty Forest" by Country Cottage Needleworks. I took some liberties with the design on this piece - I modifed the blue house block to make it into a millhouse with water wheel, designed my own center block using some trees and bears from an LHN chart I had, and I charted my own border using a snippet of pine bough from a LHN chart and adding random 'snow'.  Love the frame as it has a brighter silver tone on the part of it that goes well with the white floss in the piece - I added a closeup photo of one corner.

I also recently did some finishing work for a stitching pal....thought you might enjoy seeing these cute pieces.

This is a Prairie Schooler piece made into an ornament

A cute scissor fob......

and a Christmas bird made into an easel finish

Did everybody enjoy the Downton Abbey finale?  I thought they did a great job - so happy that there were so many happy endings - Edith finally finds love, Anna & Mr. Bates have their baby,  and even Daisy on the verge of having a new beau.   I hated to see the series end but guess it was time.  A few years back I received a boxed set of seasons 1-4 for Christmas, so now I need to pick up Seasons 5 and 6 to complete the set.  I think I'll wait until the prices come down though....I saw Season 5 in a store and the price was more than the entire 1-4 seasons set!    Prices on DVDs and Blu-Rays are trending downward as more people use streaming and on-demand for viewing.  That's good for me as I've been picking up lots of cheap movies on clearance lately.

I've been working on this Quaker sampler over the last week and making some good progress.  This was a piece that was on my wish list to do for years and I finally started it last year I think.  I kind of went through  love/hate phases with this piece...for awhile I was sorry I even started it as I wasn't liking it that much but now that I'm just about halfway through I'm liking it again.   I'm stitching this with silks on 40-ct mystery linen from my stash.  Odd thing though...this linen looks like a neutral beige by day but at night it looks light green - must have some greenish tones in the dye I guess. 

"Emblem of Love" by With My Needle

I'm also making a little progress on block 3 of Fruit Bellpull.  Doesn't look like much but I'm happy every time I can hilite a little bit that's done on my chart - all the leaves take forever to do in a zillion shades of green. 

Keeping busy as usual with appointments for this and that - got new glasses and I'm getting a series of 5 injections for my knee arthritis.  So far I'm not feeling any improvement yet and this treatment is very expensive but I'm hopeful....the doctor says some people don't get any relief until a month or so after the injections are finished.   DH is heading out of town tomorrow to go see some of the NCAA basketball tournament games in Denver.  I plan on having a 4-day marathon of stitching, sewing, and movie watching!!   The weather here is beautiful and hope the rest of you are starting to get some nice spring days.