Flood Finds

Here's a couple of old, old UFOs that were unearthed by the flood in the basement. I think I bought them in the winter of 2002/03 when I was visiting Toronto, before I moved back here.  They are limited edition cross stitch designs from Lizzie Kate, Clara and Henry O'Hare:

They probably have not seen the light of day for 8 years until now!  I knew they were there but I've not been keen to finish them.  Henry was already done:

You may have noticed that I changed the colour of his fur.  The pattern calls for quite a dark, steel grey which I thought was just too cold.  Except for the fur and the backstitching, which are done with solid coloured DMC threads, all the rest of the stitching uses The Gentle Art's Sampler Threads.  I remember that I was pretty annoyed when I bought the kits, only to get them home and find the threads weren't included!  I'm sure that is part of the reason they have been buried in a hole in the wall for eight years.  I think I was holding a grudge!

But there is no reason not to finish them now, so I've made a start on Clara over the past two days:

It does not get any easier than this!  But I can use something completely stress-free these days, so they're a good pattern for now.  And you can see the hand-dyed threads are nice.

Pink and blue are not my favourite colours, so I think I may make these into pillow covers and sell them through my quilt guild at some future event.  They were meant to be stand-up ornaments, but all the charms and other doo-dads that came in the kit have not done well over time.  I don't know what possessed me to buy them in the first place, but I guess I was probably desperate for a project during my vacation!

Other UFOs have come to light as well, but I'm not sure if I'll be taking them on too right now.  Soon it'll be cool enough to start quilting again, and I am SO keen to get back to that!

Thanks to everyone who asked about my Dad.  He is being monitored right now, and they may adjust his pacemaker if necessary.  Hopefully he will take it easier from now on!

Flood Update

As you can imagine, I've been completely swamped (*rolls eyes*) by dealing with the flood in our basement the past week.  Plus, the flood happened just as I was in the trickiest part of setting up a new website for my quilt guild Rouge Valley.  I've been stretched to the limit for several days now.  The flood remediation process has been quite difficult, and punctuated by a trip to the emergency room for my dad's heart.  So it's been pretty stressful all around.

The only vaguely stitchy thing I've been doing is knitting.  The front and back are done on the Paisley Sweater, and I'm halfway up the first sleeve.  I can't say when I'll be able to organize a photo, though.

Two weeks ago I was thinking that my "sewing machine holiday" has not been the greatest success.  I have not enjoyed it.  I really enjoy handwork as a break from working on the machine, but just handwork all the time became tedious pretty quickly.  So that's good to know.

Of course, I haven't had time to be bored since the flood.  Nature always fills a void!  From now on I'll be more careful about leaving one.  ;)