A Little bit of Everything

Well, it was 4 weeks ago today that I had my knee replacement.  I am so glad this month is over!!!!! ( Every time I think a thought like that , I think of my dear Mom who said it is wrong to wish your life away!!) Sorry Mom, I am GLAD this month is over.  I do PT twice a week at my Dr.'s facility and then on the other 5 days, I do it at home.  It always hurts but I am making good progress and that is what counts. Enough of that!  I have relegated "Liberty Lane" to a WIP and started on "Betsy" that is an older Sheepish Designs chart.  There are still lots of things I can't do and I think I needed my stitching project to have lots of different things going on.  I got a bit bored with the houses in "Liberty Lane".  I do love the design and I'm sure I will go back to it.  In the meantime , I am having lots of fun stitching "Betsy". Plus it is a good patriotic design and I will easily have it done before the 4th of July. I'm also sharing a few garden pictures with you.  Even walking down in my garden makes me feel better. The DH is doing a great job weeding etc.  These are actually things I like to do.  Both of my children were sweet enough to think of me on Mother's Day and I'll show you my wonderful gifts from them.

 The start of " Betsy"

 I have changed a few colors.  I am using more barn red and coral, not so much the pink shades.  Plus I am using my favorite Needlepoint Silks Inc. for the blue colors. More details as I go.

 I love the way it looks but I was just getting too bored with houses and I still have3 more to go!

 My DD, Laurie of Woolpets fame, made this wonderful Steller Jay to add to my bird collection.  I am trying to come up with an idea for sharing all my birds in one area.  I think that will really show them off.

 My son and his family sent me these beautiful tulips!  They were just beautiful and he knows how much I love flowers.

 I love this picture of a chive blossom just beginning to open.

 A dear friend gave me this Itoh Peony 3 years ago.  It was just a baby.  This year, it is filled with beautiful blooms.  This vaiety is called "Morning Lilac."

The ruler shows the bloom to be 8 inches wide.

Thanks so much for joining me and I hope you all have a wonderful week-end!

In Honor of Miss Elizabeth Mary Garbutt

First, I can't thank you all enough for your well wishes.  It means a great deal to me.  Progress on the knee is slow but steady.  I have good news.  Yesterday I finished my copy of the antique sampler.  It was an honor to stitch this sampler once stitched by a little 10 year old girl in England. If you read my blog , you know that I did change colors. Her colors would have not looked at all good in my home and I am a color picky person!!( Sorry Elizabeth) I will explain the only other change we made. 

 Here are the two side by side. 

 On the right side, Elizabeth ran several motifs into each other.  I can't help but wonder why she did this.

 On the left side all was well.

 Here is another close up of the right side.  We ( if you remember, the DH charted this sampler for me on some long cold winter nights 2 years ago) had to decided whether or not to make this an exact copy, to this point we had tried to remain true to her design, mistakes and all.  We decided to separate them just a bit.

 While doing research we found the names of all the children whose initials appear here.  Only one child was born after she stitched this sampler in 1887.

 All Done!!!

 I read somewhere that to age a new house grow vines.  I love old houses so vines were planted.  Here is the Wisteria over the garage.

 Dew on a Hosta leaf.

 This will bloom more than once if you cut it back.  It is called Euphorbia Polychroma.

I hope spring has finally come to everyone!! Have a wonderful week-end! Thanks so much for joining me!

Return to the World!

Well, I decided that it was about time I return to the world!! This has not been the most fun two weeks of my life, but things are progressing along pretty well.  I missed all of you out in blogland and thank you for all the well wishes.  I was in the hospital for 4 days and then the biggest problem was medicine making me feel very sick.  Rather ironic that the meds you need to help you get well, make you sick!!! Oh well, I think that phase is pretty well over.  I have been back to stitching and have done lots of reading.  A book I just loved was called "Whistling Past the Graveyard."  If you like stories about a spunky little girl, this would be a book you would enjoy. I am working on Liberty lane.  I love the color change and I am thinking of putting an alphabet in place of the word Liberty Lane.  I will have to see when I get that far.  I'm not sure how it would fit but I like the idea of it looking more like a sampler.

 I get to wear this lovely leg gear 24/7 for a month or so!

 Here we have a wrinkled Liberty Lane! I am using more primary colors, more like American flag colors.

We have had an unusual warm spell.  I have really enjoyed being able to sit out on the deck.

The Golden Rain Crab Apple is in full bloom!

Thanks again for all the well wishes and support.  I'm so happy to be back in the world!!!!!

A Cross Stitch Update

Thanks to all of you who commented on my last post.  The DH thanks all of you for the kind Happy Birthday wishes.
 I wanted to show you my progress on the antique sampler and show my next (the hospital) project.  We have so many decisions to make -the DH is my color helper- on the colors on the antique sampler that I am not taking it to the hospital.  I wanted something easy and direct.  I will finish the antique sampler as soon as I get home.

 Very close to being finished!

 I think her saying was just charming.

I love this!  We are all so careful.  This was how a ten year old did stitching.

She carried her threads all over the place.

I really like this design.  On the chart, the red and blue look a bit too pastel for me.

So I'm using a deep red and blue, more the traditional red, white and blue.

While I'm in the hospital getting that new knee, I hope to get lots done on this project.

Thanks for joining me today!  Have a great Easter week-end!

What Happens on a 70 degree, Sunny Sunday in the Pacific NW

This was a picture perfect day and it happened on a week-end!  Lucky for all the workers in the area.  Usually this kind of day is on a Monday. We had a wonderful day.  This was the DH's birthday which made it even better.  Our day started with a good Palm Sunday Service at our Church.  From there, we decided to go down to Tacoma and walk on the waterfront path. We had a nice lunch at a little cafe right on the water.  You could see the famous Tacoma Narrows Bridge from the restaurant.  I think it will be best if I just let the pictures talk for me.

 The Narrows Bridge

 Beautiful Mt. Rainier watching over Tacoma.

 Folks were riding ferries!

 Playing on the beach

 Diving

Renting the diving suits( No we did not do this!)

  Looking at beautiful flowers

 Playing on the water in all kinds of boats!

Enjoying the weeds that were everywhere!

 Watching commerce, even on a day like this business goes on.

 Coming home with a Skinny Mocha to enjoy on the deck!  Happy Birthday to my sweet DH!

Just a bit of cross stitch,  the last row shows all the family initials.  Only one child was born after Elizabeth stitched her sampler.  These initials helped us to identify the family.

I hope your week-end was lovely and you have a great week-ahead!!

Cross Stitch and Flowers

I am hoping that by now most of you are experiencing a lovely Spring.  We have our usual supply of rain but have had several lovely days.  I took some Spring flower pictures yesterday. There is so much green everywhere you look.  I think of Autumn as my favorite season but Spring is certainly beautiful here in the NW.
I'm still busy working on the antique sampler.  Yesterday I found a history/genealogy group in the region of England that Elizabeth is from.  I emailed them about the sampler and hope to hear from them.  According to a dear British friend, Yorkshire is a lovely region of England.  Her small village is called Ingleby Greenhow.  I have a band to do tonight and then all the family initials.  I think I am finally finished with the alphabets.  I can't wait to get to the motifs at the bottom.
I do have a bit of personal information to share with you.  A week from Friday I am going to have knee replacement surgery.  The time seems right as I am in good condition and sooner or later this would be necessary.  My walking is limited to about 30 minutes a day and with our beautiful summer coming, I want to be able to do much more than that.  I am looking at the recovery time as lots of time to read and stitch-two of my favorite things!!  Of course with lots of PT worked in!!I hope to keep all my blogging and answering blogs up to date.

 I would say it is about half done.

 Some of the letters are done in a way that I have not stitched before,  maybe unique to this 10 year old.

We planted several different kinds of daffodil bulbs to flower at different times.  We have had a daffodil blooming in the yard since January!

 I love the color of this Japanese Maple.

Do you remember my orange whiskers that I planted in the Fall?  They survived the winter and are putting on quite the show.

Thanks for joining me today!

The Antique Sampler

First, I want to thank all of you for the very nice things you said about Caleb and Hannah.  I do miss them terribly and wish we were much closer.  They lived near here until Caleb was almost 4.  That was great.  We will have to keep up with Hannah by the internet!  Thank goodness it is so much easier than it used to be.
In the evening I did work on the old sampler copy.  As I have said in comments back to some of you, Elizabeth was a 10 year old girl.  No wonder we have very different color tastes.  I am sticking to the design to the letter.  At least as much as we were able to copy her design, errors and all.  I have done lots of frogging.  The Heirloom Gold I was using for the border was very green.  I did not like it and found a much golder version.  So I frogged the entire top border and some of the side borders.  I know that makes me very anal!!!! Plus some of the letters I had already stitched had to be changed.  I am much happier with it now.  I did have to go to the two shops in Northern Alabama to get a dye lot that matched the one I had been using. I have decided that designing charts is a lot more work than it looks like!!!!! Plus, when using the dyed floss, get enough to finish the job!!! DYE LOTS CAN BE VERY DIFFERENT!!!!!

 So sorry for the wrinkles.  I iron after it is all finished. That was a lot of border to frog!!

All of the gold letters you see were frogged and stitched in the pretty Heirloom Gold.  I will be very careful when buying that color.  I love it but not when it is so green.

That's about it for my stitching.  Thanks for joining me. I hope you are all having the beautiful spring that has come to us in the Pacific NW!

I'm Back!

We got home last night from our trip to Alabama.  We spent 3 days in Southern Alabama visiting my 92 year old step mother. My sister and BIL came up from their home in Florida.  We all had a good visit.  It was disturbing to see her memory getting worse, but many of us seem to be having the same issue with family members.  So far she is able to keep an apartment in a Sr. living  facility.  That is thanks to a wonderful lady who takes care of her 2 or 3 days a week.  This lady is very special because she not only cares for her but in many ways loves her too.  With both my sister and me so far away she is a true blessing.
The next 6 days were spent in Northern Alabama with our grandchildren. This post is mostly about them.  I will show some other sights in future posts. Caleb had Spring Break.  We just loved seeing the children.  We had not seen little Hannah since she was about 6 weeks old.  I already miss them so much.  As it is, most all of our trip money goes to Alabama.  I'm glad we live in such a pretty place that lots of travel is not as necessary.

 Eight year old Caleb. He is a real sweety, funny too!!!!

 Messing with Grandpa!

He is a wonderful big brother!

 Isn't that the face of a Gerber baby???

 She has a great personality, very easy going and friendly.

 

Another fun time with Grandpa.

Thanks for joining me.  More on the antique sampler tomorrow!