Silks

I really love the Dinky Dyes silks. So when Jo announced a contest on Facebook, I entered and was fortunate to win 25 skeins in very beautiful colours. They arrived last week and it was lovely fondling them and feeling the silkiness of them. Now to decide just what to stitch with them. :) I did have a few skeins already and stitched Love with a Capital L with them back in 2006.

Brrr..it is cold

Winter has finally arrived, and with a vengeance. It has been brutally cold the past few days, with temps in the -30s before the wind factor, but now it has started to improve; is actually just -25 now at almost 10 p.m. and a Chinook is expected on Saturday. Of course we are not housebound; as a TV commercial is fond of saying these days no self-respecting Canadian says let's wait for better weather. LOL

On the stitching front ASFMM is coming along nicely and I should have good progress to show in my next WIPocalypse update.

And on another front, I upgraded my phone to an iPhone 4S. The Blackberry was just so not user friendly. I am now trying to put some music on it by uploading a CD of my own but it is not going well. For some reason it wants to name all the songs as track 1, track 2, etc., instead of their actual titles. But I will presevere and figure it out eventually - I hope.

January WIPocalypse update

So far I have finished three motifs and most of the fourth. I think I am supposed to put my intials in the centre of that fouirth one, but am not sure yet if I will or will do something else. My Mother's intials go into a motif in the centre, quite a ways down and to the right.
The chart is called A Sampler for my Mother and is being stitched on 32ct antique white Belfast linen with DMC threads. The designer is AuryTM.

Winter? Not so much

What a weird winter this has been. The weather girl last night called it the "year of the Chinook". Last year we had so much snow we could not find places to put it; this year almost none. Outdoor Christmas stuff, that goes into the ground early before it is frozen, and has to wait until spring to come out again, came out today. I am concerned about the plants; they need the snow cover to keep them from drying out but there is none and we keep getting the drying Chinook winds. A bonus though - since moving to Calgary in 2006 I have had "Chinook headaches" - so far this winter I have not had any. That was one of the things on my list of pros and cons about living here - Chinooks were on the con list, along with quite a few other items. "Experts" said it would be one of the coldest winters on record - so much for that. Temp today is 10C (50F).

I will be posting my WIPocalypse picture later this evening or tomorrow morning. I am almost finished the fourth motif.

A really old UFO

I bought this as a kit from Shillcraft about 20 years ago or so. It sat in the box unopened for three moves until I finally decided to start it in 2006, while we were staying with our daughter during renovations of our new home. I think I have not done anything on it for at least three years, possibly longer. I might try to work on it this year. IIRC it is called Yin and Yang.

Knitting

Although cross-stitching is my passion, I also do a little knitting. Our Creative Fingers group knits/crochets items for the Children's Hospital and Drop-in Centre - afghans, sweaters, hats, mitts, scarves, etc. I just do scarves as I have forgotten how to do all the fancy stitches that I once did; just the basic knit for me nowadays. :) And of course I do not have just one in progress; I do not for my stitching projects so why be any different with the knitting? These are two that are partially complete. For some reason, although I take the pictures straight on, the camera wants to turn them sideways once they are uploaded.

But only sometimes.

And of course, I also have yarn "stash", so these will be future scarves. :)

Tuesday I always play cribbage at the community hall. We play six games and I did not win any $$ on the games - actually got skunked twice and had to pay .25 each time - but did win $11.50 in the 50/50 draw.

After about 4 hours or so I am half finished the first motif on my sampler. I should finish it tonight while watching the hockey games - Oilers first and then Canada plays Russia in the World Juniors semi-final.

The weather has been really good so far and we have yet another strong Chinook arch to the west. Temp of plus 7C is very unseasonal for this time of year.

The other two

These are the other two WIPs that I hope to stitch for the WIPocalypse.

Rocky Mountain Christmas, a Marty Bell design. I started this in July 1998 and finally finished page 5 in November. I would like to finally finish this in 2012.

World Peace Angel, an MLI design. Another that I started in 2007. I hope to make some progress on her this year but doubt she will be finished. She was not touched at all in 2011.

Happy 2012 Everyone

We rang in the New Year at the community dinner/dance. Lots of hugs all around with the sobering thought that (hopefully not) some of these nice people will not be with us this time next year. One of the pitfalls of living in a community of mostly seniors, many who are much older than I am, and I celebrated my 70th this past October.



These are the projects on which I will be stitching for the WIPocalypse.



This is The Majestic, a Silver Lining design. I started it in 2007 and hope to finish it this year.

There will be no updated pictures in January for this, as I will be starting a new project today and will probably work on it throughout January, before going back to The Majestic. I tried uploading two others as well, but for some reason I can only do the one, so will try in a separate post.