IHSW for April

Today will not be the big-picture post I was thinking it would be, because I forgot it is IHSW report day!

Here is Lovers before:



I only had a very little time again, since I always have work on the weekends, so I decided that this time around, I would not stitch on both faces, but focus on one. (Although, the other did get a little bit.)

This is the result:



Yay!  One alien-face gone!  One alien-face to go!

PS - HAEDs are on sale again.  Give me strength!!!

S is for Snowmen

Something I actually don't have a lot of in my stash!  Amazing!

One kit:



Only one WIP, which is the Snowbaby in letter P's post, so I won't put the picture here.

A few ornaments:



And two bigger finishes:

'Snowcat' - Kats by Kelly:



And Barbara Ana's 'Warm Heart'


There are probably some more little snowmen lurking amongst Christmas stash.  Maybe I should have another treasure hunt!

Lots of pics in tomorrow's post, and I think it's all stash!

R is for Rose

Know what my favorite, favorite, most favorite of all flowers are?  Daffodils!   But that wouldn't work for today!

Nostlagy has rose tattoos:



I haven't reached them yet, though.  I don't think I have the pattern pages with the roses on them, either.  She's my HAED BB SAL project, and you get one page of the pattern every few months.  I'll be showing an updated WIP pic in May, so I'm not going to put one here.

I have a Dark Rose from Witch-Stitch-n-Bits:



I don't know if WitchyKitt has this one yet or not.

And a dark girl with a rose - this is Lost, also from WitchyKitt:



I have Stone Roses kitted and ready to go:



I started Rose of Sharon, but she's on hold while I try to be artistic with the blue ruffles - I'm changing a lot of things on her. It's a long process for me.



And there's a HAED you have seen before, Butterfly Rose Cross:




When I started thinking of letter R, I really couldn't remember a lot of Roses; I'm surprised to find them scattered all through my stitching.

There are roses on my second-oldest WIP of a carousel pony:



And roses on the little Daily Bread sampler that was my oldest WIP until I finally got around to finishing it - last year?  Year before?



Roses on my lovely Ruby Glass picture:



Lo, How a Rose that was a CJC start (a really sad one!)



Roses on a wedding sampler:



And there's roses on some things I've already shown, like Lost in You, and the blackwork Tudor Rose Garden, and Angel of Grace has tiny roses all around the bottom of her skirt.  Big roses are in the corners of The Lord's Prayer, and small ones in the corners of the Anniversary gift.  There are even more, little ones scattered all over, in finishes and stash and WIPs.  This whole post was like a treasure hunt!

Daffodils are still totally my favorites, though.

Q is for Quilts

I'm staying in the box for sure this time!  Heck, I think I even put the top on and taped it shut.  Q is for Quilts - how unimaginative!!! LOL!!!

I started to go with one of the suggestions - Linda said HAED 'Quick Stitches' aka QS, but I would have drowned you guys in pictures - I have a ridiculous number of those.  And none started except the ones for the SALs.  And there was a suggestion of 'Queen' and hmm... I think I have all or almost all of Mirabilia's different Queen patterns, but none started.  I do have Winter Queen kitted up, but I digress.

Anyway. I thought, hey, quilts!  I have those books!  The lady that I talked about in letter N post gave me these after she finished stitching every single one of them!!!   There are 12 patterns in each book, and each pattern is fairly large and complicated.  That lady was a stitching wizard!





I only started the first one from the Bible quilts - it's the one in the lower left 'Garden of Eden'.  I haven't even reached the quilt - this was started early in my stitching career and I got intimidated, I guess.  I really should get the pattern out and see if it looks any easier now.



And this was yet another of those CJC starts - Amish Quilted Wallhanging.  I'm not doing a wallhanging with it, though.  Maybe a cushion.  The colors are really bright and pretty, much better than the magazine pic - but I only did about 100 stitches of the very large 934 border.  I didn't even reach the fun part!



It's from an issue of Just Cross Stitch, I think.



Now... what shall R be?  Hmm...

P is for Pink

Pink is not my favorite color.  I liked it when I was little, but green is my favorite.  Always and forever.  Blue is a close second.

I still like pink on occasion, though - the brighter, the better!  Here's a few projects with some pink in them.  They are all WIPs.  I don't think I've finished anything major with pink.  I did stitch Mulberry House on pink fabric, but I'm not going to count that one!

Bunniez!



I only want to do three in a row, and this was the start of the pink one.  It was a CJC start, and it's a shame I didn't keep going with it.  This would be such a quick finish!  It was a free chart, I think from Hazel's Farm.



Emy - she is also from Hazel's Farm.  It was more the Siamese than the pink that made me want to stitch her.  She was also a CJC start.  That challenge was horrible for my WIP pile, especially since I didn't learn my lesson the first year and did it again last year.  Lol!



She says 'by Circe' because that's the model stitcher.



Bunny Baby



My EMS project, same designer as the Rooster Baby.

Snow Baby Girl, also by EMS.  The boy has blue clothes.



And some stash!  Pretty Pink Kimono by Witch-Stitch-n-Bits.  I don't know if you can buy this one at WitchyKitt or not.



And of course Gluttony by HAED!  One of Marta Dahlig's Seven Deadly Sins.



I really have no idea what tomorrow's topic will be!

O is for Ocean

And I thought I didn't have too many things for this one, but I was wrong!

I stitched this one, called Dolphin Play:



And I own the bigger version, too, unstarted (yet).  It's called Dolphin's Domain.



These are my other two dolphin projects - Moonlit Play:



And this book, of which I have the biggest dolphin picture kitted up:



And I want to do one or two more.  Orcas!  I like orcas!  That one dolphin picture was a bit difficult to kit, because it called for a weird fabric I had never heard of.  I finally found it from a now out-of-business mail order company.  I'm glad I hunted, though, because I've never seen another soft green-blue that matches.  I'll pull it out and show it someday.

I stitched the SK version of HAED's 'Mermaid of the Deep' - only I stitched her on 18ct instead of 25ct so she is much bigger than a bookmark!



I also have this pretty kit started:



And here's a stitched lighthouse:



One in progress, sort of:



I've only stitched the little tan whale; I use it for my blog pic!

More Nautical things!  I love boats, too!  I haven't started any of these yet.  The big ones are Witchykitt desgins.  I've also got a lot of HAED mermaids because of the Hannah Lynn's a certain someone wants!


And lastly, an unframed finish - my Nautical Sampler.  The flags are equal to the alphabet and the numbers 0-9.

N is for Native American

I robbed the internet for pics this evening - I am so very late getting home!

I learned to cross-stitch in High School Home Ec class my Senior year. (I only really had three years, Junior and Sophomore got squished together).  In the Junior/Soph year, I learned to latch hook and I was passionate about it for a full fifteen minutes, or however long two small projects and one big one that's still only 1/3 done equals to.  It was better than Freshman year, when they taught us to string beads in 'pretty patterns'.  Yeesh.

Anyway, I had fun with cross stitching for a little while, but the teacher never told us anything about resources and I only found a few kits at a local discount store.  I didn't even know you could buy fabric, floss and patterns all on their own.  I thought kits was it.

Fast forward a couple years to my first job, at a small business where one of the men was more than welcome to bring his wife, who had a few separation anxiety issues, and she would sit in the lobby all day and she was cross-stitching.  Constantly.  I was mesmerized, because she was doing things like huge Paula Vaughan's, Dimensions Gold Collections, and those old really big, really intricate patterns that Cross Stitch and Country Crafts used to do in their heyday.  She was a one-at-a-time stitcher, but it was all she did, eight hours a day, sometimes, so she would have those big projects done in no time.

Needless to say, she's the one who got me started stitching again, and explained DMC codes and all that fun stuff and where to buy it.

She was also part Cherokee, like my family, and she gave me several of the patterns left over from kits, more than just Native American, but wolves and random other things.  I loved that lady!  I wish I had kept in touch.  I'll be showing some more of the other stuff in later posts.

Anyway - these are some of the NA ones she gave me, except the Brave and Maiden.  I got their pattern from a different lady.

Gold Collection 'Gift of the Eagle Feather'  I kitted it up and it's ready to start.



These I don't remember their names, I will have to get them out and see!


This is a kit I bought myself - this girl looks eerily like my mother when she was young.  This one is called Spirit of the Cougar,


and I am further than this but I don't have a recent picture.  I think I am down to her shoulder with the border.

And this is the Brave and Maiden kit that I hunted and searched and was obsessive over and a lady finally sent me her used pattern.  And I still have never seen the actual kit anywhere.  Of course, I haven't looked like I used to!  She has a face and some blanket, he only has a bit of hair so I'm not hunting for his picture!




And that is that.  I thought I had one more, but a google search shows me nothing and I'm too tired to go digging for the pattern!