Blog Party, IHSW, and More

First of all, welcome to all my new readers and followers.  The Grow Your Blog party last weekend was an amazing success.  I found some awesome new blogs to read and gained some new followers.  I promise to respond to all the wonderful comments I've gotten.  Unfortunately, I woke up with the flu on Monday and am just recovering now.

This past weekend was also the first International Hermit & Stitch Weekend of 2013 (and my first one ever).  For those who don't know, IHSW occurs on the third weekend of every month.  It gives us stitchers an excuse to hole up with our needlework for the whole weekend and just stitch away.  If you want more information you can just click on the picture above and it will take you to Joysze's Random Ramblings for more information.

I didn't get a chance to hermit much this weekend.  Saturday was the first hockey game of the season so I had to watch that (Go Leafs Go!), but I did manage to get quite a bit of stitching in on Sunday.  Here's the progress I made on Literate Dragon:

 

I love working on my first HAED, but the small stitches are taking some getting used to.  As of now I have finished 1,222 stitches out of the  7,840 on this page.  As much fun as I'm having with it, I'm going to be putting it away this week to work on Nursery Rhyme Sampler.  I get to pull it out again week after next though so I can't wait to show you more progress.

 

A Finish and a New Start

 Hello all.  As you can see, I managed to get some stitching in this weekend.  This is my first finish of 2013 and I'm very pleased with how it turned out.  It's stitched on 14 count plastic canvas using three strands of thread.  I'm going to turn it into a bookmark for my boyfriend and he just loves it.  This pattern is from Dork Stitch and is available there for free.








  I got a nice surprise when I picked up the mail after work.  My sulky metallics arrived today!  I was waiting to start Literate Dragon (from Heaven and Earth Designs) because I wanted to grid first.  So I pulled out my fabby as soon as I got in the door and got to work.  I finished gridding the page and even got some stitching in.  I completed 103 stitches of the 7840 on the page.  My stitchy bug is really biting right now and I wish I could do more, but my new job is a 45 minute commute so I have to be out of bed super early.  Looking forward to getting home tomorrow so I can tackle it once more.

New Year's Projects

Here are the projects I plan on doing in 2013:

The Quilting by Told in a Garden.  This one will be a birthday present for my mom in April.  She's a quilter so it's the perfect design.

Super Mario bookmark.  This one is by Dork Stitch.  You can download the pattern for free off of their website.

Literate Dragon by Heaven and Earth Designs.  This is for their BB SAL.  I really excited to start this because it will be my first HAED.