The Treehouse

A little update...

I seem to have been AWOL for a while :o In my spare time, I've either had my nose in a book or been stitching away like mad just lately. 

I've worked on my Tail Feathers quilt - I can see the end in sight now and am glad I didn't leave all of the log cabin blocks until the end! Not much has happened with the Bluebird quilt at all, in fact - I've decided that I'm going to concentrate on finishing Tail Feathers before I launch into anymore Bluebird blocks.

Matthew's quilt is finally all quilted. I was finding it such a chore of a job and really wished I hadn't started stippling it. However, it's all done now and does look nice...just need to sew on the binding. He keeps asking me if it's finished yet and finally I can say...almost!

 

Dear Jane has taken a bit of a back seat lately. I'm itching to sew some more of these little blocks though, I love them. I did make a triangle a couple of weeks ago but that's all the progress I've made this year :o I quite enjoy making the triangles :) I treated myself to the Dear Jane cd and have played with it a little - printing out foundation patterns. Gosh, it makes things much easier! This is TR2.

 

The latest Snowbound block was posted at the end of last week. I'm itching to get started on this - it's a skiing snowman, lol! Also, I spotted a lovely new BOM on the blog of Erin Russek - I just cannot resist hand sewing you see :) It's on my list of things to get around to.

I've done quite a bit of crosstich that last couple of weeks. I finished another Blackbird Designs stocking - I love these. This one though, I wasn't so keen on really when I started it but now it's done...I really like it! 

 

Here's the first one that I finished - it's called Winter Carnation. Once the first 3 are stitched, I'm going to have a little stocking finishing session.

 
I have started the next one which has a birthday cake on it and then stopped stitching it while I contemplated whose initials and date of birth should go on the stocking...these are serious matters after all and one must ensure not to stitch too many of one person's initials and not enough of another person's initials otherwise war may break out! While I was mulling this little dilemma over I did some surfing...big mistake! I stopped by at Annette's lovely blog and while I was perusing all her lovely stitches I spotted a link...to a SAL...with birds and hearts. Of course, I clicked upon the link and it took me here to Sylvia's blog. I visited a few times. I looked in my tiny stash of crosstitching fabric. I visited again. I looked again at my fabric and low and behold I had a piece of 28 count evenweave in cream that would do the job nicely.

 

This is how far I've got. I had thought to finish the boxes this weekend but I didn't get that far...that was Stephanie Plum's fault! Or maybe it was the Library's fault for calling up to let me know that they had a couple of Stephanie Plum books ready for me to read :cough:

I did finish off my FaLaLa a few weeks ago though :D I did a little frogging on the ladies. I had stitched them plumper than they should have been and I didn't think that was fair at all so I whipped out those extra stitches and finished them off. It's quite a big ornament but I really like it. I would have preferred braid to the pom poms really but couldn't find it in the correct shade. The pom poms are quite fun though.

 

I've taken a photo of this twice now and both times it's come out blurred but you get the general idea :)

As I mentioned, I spent a lot of quality time with Stephanie Plum this weekend. I've seen people say these books are not so good but honestly, I laughed until I cried! A very good bit of light hearted humour along with a good bit of detectiving and a few hunky chaps thrown in for good measure. Just perfect for in between some serious reads. I've read the first 5 and will be going on to read more as soon as the library can provide! Last weekend I spent some time with the new Jasper Fforde...it took a bit of getting through to be honest but I was determined to get there. There are more books to come in this series and I'm thinking that a lot of time was spent setting up the new 'world' in the book so I will definitely give the next ones a go. I also read a book by LL Bartlett yesterday - she writes the Booktown mysteries under a different name. It wasn't bad at all...a little bit 'Medium' like but with a hero as opposed to a heroine. I do have the next one in my pile to read and look forward to seeing how Jeff gets on with his new found abilities. I have rather a fine stack of books to read at the moment....I spotted the new book by Elizabeth Kostova while I was in the library the other day...that may be next to get devoured!

I've promised myself NOT to spot anymore SALs or BOMs or the like, I must surf with my eyes closed. Particularly as I'm feeling the need to make a bag...it's been a while since I did the last one, lol!

 
 

Snowbound

We still have one car that we just cannot get off the drive! My super, little green snowmobile is managing the trip up to the main road and back now. It was commandeered yesterday and the day before for work transport as John thought that 2 days off for snow was more than over the top! I was quite happy being Snowbound with the chicks, the dvds and the sewing though! Yesterday we took the bus to the library in search of new things to read - that was no cheap journey, thank goodness we don't need to use the bus often, the price is atrocious :o

 

This is the view in one direction from my back door. That's the golf course in the far distance...no shouts of 'four' happening at the moment, lol!

I finished off the first Snowbound block last night. Thoroughly enjoyed the applique...did make a slight boo boo on the cupcake and wasn't prepared to do huge amounts of unpicking so that pink rikrak is doing cover up duty. A shame because I'd done a jolly nice job of the scalloped bit of the cake...never mind, still looks pretty and now it's unique, lol!

 Colours are a bit rubbish as I had to take the pic using flash.

My Jinny Beyer book arrived yesterday - poor snowman struggled down the hill with it, it weighs a tonne! Lots of lovely reading there for me. On a quick flip through there are enough gorgeous blocks in there to keep me sewing for the next 600 years!!!
 

Clearly...

I have no willpower at all!

  

but what is a girl to do when her friend tells her that she absolutely MUST make the Snowbound quilt eh? Obviously she must go and dig around in her stash to find suitable fabrics with which to make it of course, lol!

I think it's divine retribution of a sort to be honest. I snuck that P.S onto the end of my yesterday's post just especially for Carole...and she spotted it...and paid a visit to Amazon! 

Anyway, here is snowbound block no. 1 all ready and waiting to be stitched down. Better go and update my WIP list I think.

Yesterday I started making some more of the log cabin blocks for the Tail Feathers quilt. I love the look of them but they're tedious to sew I find. 

Off to get stitching and find a way to manage on much less sleep, lol!