April Cottage Finish

This one went too fast! I struggled through March being sick for most of the time I was stitching. It's amazing what you can accomplish when you aren't coughing all the time.
I had a lot of fun with this one. I changed the border and did a one over egg in place of the pink flowers. I used Weeks Dye Works Celebration, one strand for the eggs.

I also changed the roof and used Weeks Dye Works Cocoa for the browns throughout. I flipped the clouds because I felt like they look like they were upside down. The shadow on the house is DMC 210, and the window frames I changed from brown to DMC 208. The darkest purple is Weeks Dye Works Purple Majesty. I'm really looking forward to getting May Cottage which I'm not changing anything! Probably...lol.

My husband took this shot this morning as he was heading for work. We've had dark and rainy days and this was so pretty as the sun was shining through the trees as it came up.

Liebster Blog Award

I am so excited; I received the Liebster blog award from Danielle at Peace, Love and Stitch. I also just reached 20 followers which is awesome!

Liebster is a german word meaning favourite, dearest or beloved. The Liebster is awarded by bloggers to other new bloggers who have fewer than 200 followers, to help spread the word about their blogs and to help them gain wider recognition.

The Liebster award comes with four conditions that each recipient must satisfy when accepting.

1. Choose 5 up-and-coming blogs with less than 200 followers to award the Liebster to.


2. Show your thanks to the blogger who gave you the award by linking back to them.


3. Post the award on your blog. List the bloggers you are giving the award to with links to their sites. Leave comments on their blog so they know about the award.


4. Share 5 random facts about yourself that people don't know about you.


My award recipients are as follows:



1. Lara’s Loose Threads I love this blog, she is a great stitcher and is a Tudor history buff.



2. Gracewood Stitches Gracewood is a designer of cross stitch patterns that I just love and her photos of the animals and beauty around her home always inspire me.



3. Raven’s Stitching Nest Fun blog, love her stitch work.



4. Tickled Pink in Stitches Great stitching blog and love her photographs of her adventures with friends and family.



5. The Musing Badger Fantastic stitcher, love her work and her choice of designs.


My five random facts about myself:

1. I’m a collect-a-holic that collects way too many things. My collections include, wax seals, cobalt blue glass, antique needlebooks, children’s horse books, Victorinox swiss army knives and a few others things.

2. I’m an equine artist who draws and paints horses. As soon as I could hold a pencil I was drawing horses and I haven’t stopped since.

3. I’ll be 40 at the end of this year and I’m still a big kid. I have two giant tubs of Lego sets and add to my Lego collection every so often. There is something completely fun about breaking open a new box and putting a set together.

4. I met my husband Steve on the internet about 13 years ago. He is from Australia and we chatted for ten years before he came to visit for vacation and we fell in love. We’ll be married two years in September.

5. I’m in a wheelchair, have been since around 4th grade. I have a condition that’s named after me and so far medical experts haven’t found anyone else with it. I had my foot amputated in 2003 and almost died from my condition in 2008. I’ve outlived the Dr’s predictions for me for 25 years. I’m expecting I’ll live to be 200..hehe.





I actually got some work done too last night and I really like how the purples are blending. I can’t wait to get this one finished just so I can start May. I saw the floss list and gathered up my thread and just love the colors. I swore I’d only stitch these Cottages in the month they are in but they are too addictive..lol.

April Cottage Start and Floss Toss

Here is the original floss toss colors, which are nice but I didn't care for the browns. The striped roof was okay but I didn't care for it, as well as the dark purple for the shadow of the roofline. I decided to add more purples...

Ok here is the floss toss I'm going with. For the roof I'm using Weeks Cocoa which I had left over from the January Cottage. I am keeping the Amethyst and adding DMC 210 for the shadow of the house. I've added 208 for around the windows instead of the darker brown 420. For the "April" and possibly the flowers I'm using Weeks either Purple Majesty or Ultraviolet, haven't decided on that yet. I think it's a better blend of the purples. 

Here is a detail of the roof that I started yesterday. I did a row of cross stitch and a row of satin stitches at an angle. So now the roof is still "striped" but it's more subtle as I'm using one color and now it sort of looks like basket weave.

Here is my progress on Ink Circles Art Nouvea Love Letters as well. While waiting for the fabric for April to come I managed to get more done on this one. There was a bit of an issue with the Gentle Arts Peacock called for in the pattern as the ones available to me at my LNS were half very dark blue and half the actual peacock color it called for. Tracy Horner (the designer) on Facebook answered my question about it and  graciously suggested using Weeks Blue Topaz as a replacement as the dye lots for the Gentle Arts had changed quite a bit.

Yay March Finish!

March Cottage Finish!

Detail of the border and sheep.

Love the WDW Envy..yummy green.

Vincent one of our cats, basking in some early Spring sunshine.

A frequent visitor to our birdfeeder, a Eurasian Collared Dove. They've been cooing non stop now that the weather is warming up.

Yay! I am so happy to finally finish March Cottage. I spent most of February sick with an awful cold and cough which is now all gone. I tried stitching while sick and of course made mistakes I had to frog. I pushed through and finished the last bit this morning while watching The X-Files on Netflix instant. (Huge X-Files fan..hehe).

I recieved the April Cottage chart and specialty threads from ABCStitch but they must have run out of fabric as they noted in the package that it was to follow. This SAL must be pretty popular I don't doubt they've gone through a LOT of Lambswool linen.

I thought I'd share some pictures of things other than cross stitch..lol. The lovely Flame Point Snowshoe Siamese glowing in the sunshine is Vincent. He's my husbands best bud, although he likes me too. He is the most mellow cat I've ever met, nothing but the vacuum phases him. He hasn't got a mean bone in his body and he and our other cat Sage keep us entertained daily with their wrestling and running through the house.

We keep a few birdfeeders in our yard and get quite a few birds coming in for a bite to eat. With the snow we had earlier in February and now with the warmer Spring coming these Eurasian doves are pairing up and cooing all day long. They hang out on my neighbors' roof and come down for feeding. Our warm Spring days went away though and it's now a week of rain here in Southern Oregon. If only my fabric would get here it'll be perfect weather to huddle down and stitch!