What's Behind Door #9?

Hello~ I'm sure y'all are here because of Jo's delightful Advent Calendar! I'm day number nine so I had to hurry and dig my Christmas stuff out, haha. I've only been stitching for just over three years so I don't have many choices... But I will give you my favorite so far: a little clothespin angel!

Hi there!

I stitched her from a little kit found in a thrift store and everything was fun until I tried to follow the directions for her lace. Let me tell you: Glue does not work! (!!!) So she got a red backstitch to hold her pretties on. Otherwise she was a delightfully fun stitch and I did save the cutout pattern so maybe I can design more friends to hang out on the tree. :)

As the Advent theme this year is "Stocking, Sack, or Something Else" I will give you a terribly ghetto picture from last year (our stockings aren't up yet this year!).

LOL.

We had moved to a new house (twice!) near Christmas and there was no time or energy or space to put out a Christmas tree! I couldn't have that so I quickly tied up some yarn, tacked it to the wall, and "decorated" it with Christmas cards as they came in. Our stockings were hung by the tree with care in hopes that St. Nicholas would be able to find our forwarding address (he did; thank you, Santa!)! I really liked the yarn tree idea though and I have it up again for this year's cards.

My stocking is the one on the right - my boyfriend's wonderful grandmother decorated it for me when I was in Hawaii for Christmas one year. It has handmade beads and letters and candy canes and I was so happy to receive it! The one on the left is my dear boyfriend's that I made a valiant effort to decorate while he was in Missouri. I didn't have access to the delightful items from my own stocking so I did the best I could with little beads and leftover buttons and Christmas lights. I think now that I'm older and "wiser" I will have to experiment with waste canvas, don't you think? :)

I love meeting new stitchers so thank you for visiting! I hope you enjoyed today! :D

Blog Hop #12 ~ Thank You, Cross-Stitch

When it comes to the stitching part of your life, what are you most thankful for?

I found myself hesitating on posting for this prompt. I'm thankful for so many things. But. I taught myself how to cross-stitch at a low point in my life. I needed something to occupy my mind and hands. Basically, I needed a distraction from myself.

I'm thankful that stitching has provided an outlet for my creative splurts. I'm thankful I have family and friends that are supportive, encouraging, and interested in my stitching. I'm thankful for the Internet friends who get excited with me over a finish or a new skein of floss or a thrift store find. I'm thankful I have access to the Internet for new ideas and tutorials on old ideas. I'm thankful I have the resources available to fund my hobby. I'm thankful I haven't run into very much negativity when I force myself to stitch in public. I'm thankful for the Sprite Stitch community and the creativity it inspires. I'm thankful for thrift stores and I'm thankful for people who donate to thrift stores. I'm thankful for a boyfriend who likes to see the patterns and results and sometimes says "could you do this?" I'm thankful that my boyfriend and I can enjoy our separate hobbies in the same room. I'm thankful for pattern makers (both human and digital). I'm thankful my cats haven't destroyed any stash or ate any needles. I'm doing something I love and I'm thankful no one can take that from me.

Visit all the blogs in this round of the Stitching the Night Away Stitching Blogger Blog Hop:
Find the instructions on how to participate in this round by clicking here.

November TUSAL & IHSW WIP!

I feel like I need more acronyms in the post title, lol!

I'm always so timely with these things but first up we have a delicious TUSAL. If you have no clue what TUSAL is, head on over to Daffycat's blog and join the fun!

om nom nom

I don't often buy doughnuts. They're tasty but eating just one is almost impossible! We have a doughnut-loving guest however, and I'll happily supply them as long as I don't have to eat them all, haha.

And another month of IHSW! I did poorly in my participation this year but some is better than none, right? :) This is a little kit I picked up in a thrift store (surprise, surprise!) a year or so ago. I've been wanting to stitch it for a while but was always busy and / or distracted. I had no idea how it would look completed as I have only the black & white pattern to go by. I'm terrible at imagining finished products. Maybe this is a skill that will come with time?

Gray brick with a tail!

Gray brick with a tail and ... head?

Oh.

Ohhhhhh.

:D

And there I stopped. I'm not sure how I feel about the weird yellow post color. I need to deliberate on it for a little while. I don't think I'd like a Christmas-y mailbox that a passing dog took a leaking to!

Now I'm off to oooh and ahh over everyone's much more substantial progress! Your fingers were indeed very productive.

FFVII Framed

I will try to spare you the exclamation points that are punctuating the excitement in my head, haha. Jo, I didn't cry, LOL!

But here it is, in all it's professionally framed glory. Don't mind the cardboard on the corners; I'm currently at my mother's house and I wanted to leave them on to transport it back to my house.

She did a good job though, and it really is super close to what I had in mind. It isn't exactly what I was envisioning but she doesn't live inside my brain so I can't fault her for not knowing what goes on in there. Half the time, I don't even know. I think I'll have to learn framing fo' sho because it was a splurge to have it done. And when I consider there are still at the very least, 15 more to stitch and get framed...

BUT YAY LOOK AT IT EEEEEEEEE.

Okay, okay, I'll get my TUSAL up soon, and I hope your fingers are having a fabulously productive IHSW! I'll actually have pictures for it myself but I had to get this post up before I exploded with exclamation points!!

Blog Hop #11, a Visit To the Framers, and a Finish!

Once again, I'm grateful for Blog Hops to break me of my radio silences, haha. I'll jump right into it, iffins you don't mind!

What has been your most unusual or most interesting stash acquisition to date?

I pondered my (frequent) trips to various thrift stores and the wealth that they sometimes bestow upon my stash... as far as interesting (to me), I think I would have to go with floss. On one excursion, I picked up a sandwich-sized baggie of floss. Being the hoarder stash builder that I am, I think "yay floss!" and don't even bother to go through the baggie. When I get it home and start playing with it, I discover that they aren't all new, but Star (3 for 10¢? Can I go back to those days, please?), Brillanté D'alger (French DMC?), and some older labels of DMC. I know they're not really unusual but for someone who only has new DMC and Sullivans around, they were kinda neat to look at. Maybe someday I'll get lucky and find specialty flosses at a thrift store!

Visit all the blogs in this round of the Stitching the Night Away Stitching Blogger Blog Hop:
Find the instructions on how to participate in this round by clicking here.

Next up in my excitement was... are you ready? A trip to the framers! (!!!!!) That was a fun experience, playing with all the various frame pieces and mats and how to put them all together. I had no idea there were so many options out there. Nor just how expensive framing is, omygosh! Even with various discounts, it will still be $160 and that is really a lot of money to me. I went ahead with it as I had already picked out everything but is this really a normal price for framing? I suppose it's a good thing that I finish things slowly. And it's apparent that I need to make figuring out framing a high priority, lol! Anyway, I'll pick it up in a couple of weeks as I only get down to that area on weekends. It'll be so nice to have something to display on the wall!

Lastly, I haven't been entirely neglectful of my stitching. It's Sprite Stitch's 5th birthday so they're having different challenges on the forums for the month of November. I've always shied away from participating in the challenges because I feel as creative as a potato next to the talent there but I thought I could at least give the mini challenges a try! I couldn't post WIPs of it because it was a challenge, but the first one was "something birthday" so here is what I created:

More video game stuffs here! :D

I got the idea from my friend who reminded me of this blog post on SS who in turn got it from @Shereebedee on twitter. Even though I didn't win, it was a fun little stitch and I think it would work great as a birthday card for the geeky group. :D If you can't read it, it says, "This time, the cake isn't a lie." which is a little play on "The cake is a lie." from the video game Portal. The black forest cake is resting on a be-doilied Companion Cube which I already had made a pattern for ages ago. In a flash of inspiration, I added little turrets shooting into portal holes... and thus, each other. Silly turrets. I don't hate you.

That's all I got for today, folks! I'm sure you're tired of reading anyway. :D May your fingers be productive until the next time~