Haunting Love

I recently joined the "Pumpkin Seed Stitchers" group on Facebook for those who like to stitch Halloween designs.  Teresa Smith of T. A. Smith's designs created a piece for the group called "Haunting Love".  The design is monochrome, but I decided to do it in color.  It's just the sweetest piece.  A little bird flew in and landed unexpectedly on the upper right branch, but otherwise this is stitched from Teresa's chart.  Don't you love the little ghosties and the tiny mouse couple?

It's done in DMC (310,4140, 4045, 3746,4124,451,3045,317, and 4000) on a piece of Miek's hand-dyed fabric.  Love those color variations.  4000 is one of the newest colors and it made a great tree trunk.  I finished it up as a pin keep this afternoon.

Couple of pieces of good news to report:
First, the lost LHN "Needles and Threads" square for WOCS finally arrived!  It took one month to get from DC to Florida.  Those squares usually take 3 days to make that trip.  I could have walked to Florida in that time I think.  Hope the square had a nice world tour.  I'm so glad it didn't get lost forever!

Second, my partner and I won our summer tote bag in Jazzercise by attending the required number of classes during the summer.  The promo below shows the bag.  Our instructor was nice enough to give us some extra time to get all of our classes in.  I always think I don't care about these promotions and it's not why I go to class, but these incentives don't hurt!

And my dentist has once again reminded me that the war zone I call my mouth needs its quarterly attention soon.  Andy Warhol may be most famous for Marilyn Monroe and Campbell's Soup, but these toothbrushes make for great pop art!

Random Threads and Bookmark

Unfortunately,  the last square I stitched for WOCS, the Needles and Thread piece by LHN, is lost in the USPS ether.  Mailed on July 21 and still hasn't arrived in FL.  I've sent a ton of squares from my house to the same address with no problem.   Guess my number finally came up.  I've had the problem with international mail before, but not inside the U.S.   Anyway, you know the old expression about getting right back on the horse after your fall, so I stitched a replacement square for the "Sew Be It" quilt.  This design is " Random Threads" by Erica Michaels.  I wanted something with few colors, minimal back stitch and just the right size.  I think I found it and I'm just hoping this one finds its way to its new home.

I had a long skinny piece of fabric from my Miek hand-dyed collection that I decided was perfect for a bookmark.  Not sure what to put on that bright yellow, but then I remembered Erynne's "Summer Owls" design.  I selected three of the four owls and just made a column of them.  You gotta love owls in bathing suits, especially the middle one in the polka dot bikini.

The design is a freebie on Erynne's Stitcheree blog and you can download the full pattern here.

My friend Hetti surprised me with some lovely gifts.  The top two photos below show a little mirror pouch she made.  You are viewing the back side of the mirror itself on the left.  Hetti designed a cross stitch pattern for the pouch that kind of mimics the delft tile pattern on the mirror.  Love the little butterfly button too.  Isn't this clever and gorgeous?

She also included some beautiful multi-color threads and the three with the white tags in the photo are hand-dyed by Miek.  The card shown with the floss is one of Hetti's creations.  She makes fabulous cards!

On the bottom right you can see the post card, Dutch-themed wrapping paper, Hetti and Miek's calling cards and a cute little purse-sized memo pad with Delft tile designs on the cover.  The paper inside is graph paper, so handy for a little charting on the go!

Thanks, so much Hetti!  I feel spoiled again!