Grow Your Blog Party!

                                                                            

It's time for a blog party!  Since I'm hoping to get a lot of new visitors today, I should post a little about myself.  My name is Kat, I'm 26 years old, and I love to cross stitch.  My mother taught me how to stitch as soon as I was old enough to hold a needle, but I fell out of it for a while.  As an adult, I started to have some anxiety issues and picked up some stitching as a way to relieve stress.  I fell in love with it again and have been going strong ever since.  I started this blog mainly to show off my WIPs and to connect with other stitchers.  When I'm not stitching I like to read and watch movies so you may see mention of those things from time to time.

Currently, I live with my wonderful boyfriend in Sheffield,  Ontario.  We just moved here from the other side of the country (and Canada is a large country).

 This is the other member of our family.  Nisha is a 5-year-old Solomon Island Eclectus.  She likes to sit and talk to me while I'm stitching (she says things like "Peekaboo" and "Hello baby"), but if I don't pay enough attention to her she will sneak over to steal a bobbin of my floss and fly away with it.




To welcome any new readers I may get, I'd like to offer a surprize giveaway on this post.  The prize will be cross-stitch related.  Absolutely anyone can enter.  Just mention in a comment on this post that you would like to participate.  On February 1st I'll randomly select one of the commenters to receive the prize.  Please make sure that your email address is attached to your comments, otherwise I won't be able to contact you about it.

I hope you enjoyed learning a little bit about me and I look forward to meeting many new people and finding some exciting new blogs to follow this weekend.  Thanks for stopping by!

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.

Blog Party

I'm going to be participating in a Grow Your Blog party on January 19th.  This wonderful idea comes from Vicki over at 2 Bags Full.  On January 19th she will be posting a list of blogs that are joining in (and there are a lot).  Participants visit as many as they can and follow the ones they are interested in.  It sounds like a lot of fun and a great way to find new blogs to read and follow.  If you're interested in participating, just click the image above and it will take you right to the sign up page where you just have to leave a comment.  See you at the party!

Cool Cross-Stitch

I saw this here and just had to share it with everyone.

It's an amazing cross-stitch wall installation.  You can see more pictures here.  Be sure to watch the video of the artists creating this amazing piece.  It's simply breathtaking.  I almost want to find a screen and create a miniature version for myself.

January TUSAL!

I noticed a lot of other ladies participating in the TUSAL (that's Totally Useless Stitch Along) so I decided I might as well join in too.  I already save my ORTs so it will just be a matter of posting a picture once a month.  And it encourages me to stitch a lot so that I have lots of pretty colours to show off.  If you don't know about TUSAL and would like to learn more check out out this post at DaffyCat's blog.

 

This is my ORT jar from last year.  I emptied it on January first.  I only started saving in October so this is just three months worth of thread.

 

And here's my TUSAL for January.  I think I did pretty well considering this is only from January 1st until today.  Hopefully I will have a lot more in there by the time February rolls around.

 

My Progress Jan 4 - Jan 11, 2013

Hi all.  Just thought I'd post some pictures and let you know what I've been up to the past week.  I was off work (just started back today) so I got loads of stitching done!  I'd also like to say hi to my first followers and say thank you for checking out my blog.

First up:

Here's a close up of my progress on Nursery Rhyme Sampler.  I did the wall Humpty Dumpty is sitting on, the waterspout, and most of Miss Muffet.

 

And here's a picture of the whole thing so far.  I'm really proud of this piece and can't wait to see it finished.

 

I also started and made some great progess on the Super Mario bookmark.  A couple more days of stitching and this one will be finished.  I'm excited for my first finish of 2013.

 

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.