Marianne Wenn Conversions and Giveaway Winner!

Howdy from Belfonte Lane in Indiana! Luckily we did not lose our power, during the Winter Storm of the Century'! So fortunate because in our town alone there were 16,000 outages with about 1/2 that many still without power! My heart goes out to them! I did everything I could to 'button up the hatches' and make things ready just in case the power did go out! Candles and flashlights at the ready and I even made a pot of coffee the night before, and put the fresh made coffee in a thermos! LOL At least if the power went out, I could have a cup of my beloved brew!! But fortunately, it did not, but I still drank the coffee from the thermos, which was still very fresh and hot and saved me from having to make it the next morning! LOL

We did get very strong winds and a mix of precipitation, mostly in the form of freezing rain and sleet, which left us with around two inches of ice! My driveway still looks like a skating rink and they have the schools closed for the third day here in the valley! But my daughter says that the roads are much better this morning.

I did mention that I was going to have another new start on my birthday, which is the end of this month, and that new start was going to be Marianne Wenn from Needleprint! After playing around with it for a while, I wanted to convert to all NPI's and was successful, but also I wanted to calm down the color palette a bit and even more importantly I wanted the color palette to compliment each other. The picture below is on the fabric I have chosen, 36 count Flax Fields from R&R Reproductions with the Needlepoint Silks laying just under the DMC that is called for in the chart. I did change out one color entirely, I am using NPI 871, in place of dmc 842, which is considerable lighter: 

Marianne Wenn

Not the best picture, but maybe you can get the idea. This picture below shows the first set of needlepoint silks that I chose, I have since re-worked them, but wanted to share the picture, because it definitely shows the hues of the fabric so much better, although it is a bit darker, then the Flax Fields that I have, isn't quite as dark:

Here are the conversions, if you are interested:

DMC 304 ~   NPI 208

DMC 3706 ~ NPI 205

DMC 3713 ~ NPI 531

DMC 725 ~   NPI 474

DMC 744 ~   NPI 472

DMC 890 ~   NPI 646

DMC 3818 ~ NPI 353

DMC 906 ~   NPI 547

DMC 312 ~   NPI 746

DMC 3761 ~ NPI 742

DMC 433 ~   NPI 957

DMC 3863 ~ NPI 301

DMC 842 ~   NPI 871

DMC 844 ~   NPI 976

NOW, for what you have all been reading to find out, and I thank you for suffering through my meanderings, before I got to the most important announcement.....

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The winner of the Blogoversary Giveaway IS:

 Kellie 


Congratulations dear Kellie! The name of her blog is The Stitching Post, and is a wonderful place to visit. If you haven't visited her yet, be sure and do so! Kellie, can you please email me your snail mail address, so that I can mail out your box of goodies as soon as I can!


Of course, it was so hard to just pick one entry, there were over 90 of you that signed up. So I decided that if the following three blogging friends are interested in receiving a Tree of Life Samplings design, I would love to send it to you! Parsley, Terri from dixiesamplerdesigns and Diana (no blog), please email me as soon as you see this and please tell me which design is your favorite! Thank you all for participating in my 2nd Blogoversary Giveaway! It has been such fun and I always love seeing new blogs that come to visit!


I was planning on sharing a finish of Her Sampler by Carriage House Samplings...however she isn't quite done yet! Mostly because I could not resist starting Anniversaries of the Heart by Blackbird Designs this week! I was so excited about locating just the right size fabric in my stash and pulling together the designs that are released and tentatively assigning squares to my family members! So I just had to put the first stitches in the first block! I do hope to finish up Her Sampler yet this week...maybe I will have it to share on Saturday with you all!


Before I leave, I want to show you a couple of pics, one of my visitors yesterday, the Carolina Wren, the Cardinal (male) and the Tow-Hee (think that is how it is spelled!) in my makeshift birdfeeder! I have had such trouble with squirrels of late, that I have had to be more innovative in getting my bird friends their food. Also with the recent inclement weather, I have not even been able to get a foothold on my decking, from all of the ice. So the pie pan with bird feed and square of suet to the side, right outside my french doors, is as good as it gets! They have been grateful, there have been many visitors, this is just a sampling, if you click on it, it will be larger and you can maybe get a closer look:

And my sweet girl, Boo, aka Sugar Smack, of course, just wanted to get a closer look too, but they weren't having that kind of closeness and flew away:

That's all for now! I do hope and pray that everyone is safe, cozy and warm after the recent storm that hit so many, many starts, and from what I hear stretched over 2100 miles! Thank you for visiting and following my blog and taking the time to write me a comment. So appreciate those, as always!

Today I am thankful for blue skies and sunshine and melting ice...well almost!

Love, Jan

Day After Simply Saturday!

Hello my kind and dear friends! I almost feel like chirping, now don't you laugh, but the sun is finally shining and has been all day! I needed to have some sunshine, after so much gloomy cloudy skies for at least the last two weeks. After a bit, it really brings your mood down! But today, well it is worth countless words, but won't trouble you with anymore on the subject for now!

First of all wanted to remind you, if you haven't yet signed up for my Blogoversary Giveaway, to please go here and do so, before midnight February 2, 2011. Which happens to be Ground Hog Day...wonder if that rodent-type fellow will indeed see his shadow this year? Anyway, don't forget to sign up and I have added a picture of the goodies, if you would like to share on your blogs! Thank you!

I have a small finish to share with you all...this is Belle Pepper aka Addison Rose:

Little House Needleworks

Belle Pepper

32 Ct Lakeside Pearled Barley

Recommended CC and GAST, substituted 2 fibers

I am celebrating my youngest granddaughter, Addison Rose, with this sampler, and the year she was born, 2010. It will hang in my home. It is not a substitute for a birth sampler, I still want to stitch one for her and her sister, but have yet found one that I want to use. I am probably going to design one, to get it the way I want!

I will return on Wednesday the 3rd with the results of the giveaway drawing! Also I have some conversions for my birthday start, Marianne Wenn I am going to share with you all. As for stitching, I am trying really hard to finish up Her Sampler by CHS this week! After that, I really don't know, but it will either be a new start, or one of my wips, from the list on my sidebar!

Hope your week is grand! I appreciate you stopping by and taking the time to read and comment. Your thoughts are always so uplifting, and it is a wonderful feeling to read them all!

Today I am most grateful for the sunshine on this special Lord's Day! This is the Day the Lord Hath Made, Rejoice and Be Glad in it!

Love, Jan

PS I hope and pray it doesn't happen, but there is a winter storm warning in the forecast for these parts, through Wednesday! They are anticipating an accumulation of 2 inches of ice on power lines and trees, and that makes for trouble! There is a strong possibility of losing power, so if I don't get here to announce the winner on Wednesday, that will be why! Maybe this will one of the times, the forecast isn't that accurate, let's hope! I just wanted to let you know!

Two Year Blogoversary Giveaway, Edited with Picture!

Today is the day, Happy Blogoversary to Belfonte Notes!



I have not yet taken a picture to share of what will be in the Giveaway, but I assure you, it will be wonderful things! When I do, I promise to edit this post with a picture, so you can have a visual, which I know helps!

Here is a picture taken today on my office floor...sorry, it isn't a great picture, but at least you will have somewhat of a visual to see for yourself and also to display on your blog, for others to see. It includes 3 charts from Carriage House Samplings, 3 charts from Plum Street Samplers, 1/4 yard and 2-1/8 yard cuts of linen (the two in the picture of the 1/8ths are 40 ct and the 1/4 yard is 30 ct). If you win and you would prefer different counts, just say the word, and I will switch them out to counts more of your liking. Also in the picture you can see some skeins of 3 different companies: Gentle Art Sampler Threads, Weeks Dye Works and Crescent Colours. Several skeins of each too. Oh and do you see that small box in the center? It is full of sweet little stitching treasures and things to embellish your smalls with, ribbon, buttons and more buttons, rickrack and other sweet surprises! Good Luck!

All you need to do to be entered into the 2nd Blogoversary of Belfonte Notes, is:

#1, be a follower of this blog. 


#2, comment in this thread, by no later then midnight daylight savings time on February 2, 2011. In your comment, share how long you have been online and what was your first experience that you remember, within a stitching community or yahoo group, or other avenue. Also be sure and have your email available to me, either here in the comments section or in your profile. 

#3, if you have a blog, please mention this giveaway, if you do not, please don't worry about it, you will still be eligible to enter.

Also would like to take the time to mention, I am in the midst of planning a special weekend stitching retreat to be in Terre Haute, Indiana the end of June. If you are interested in receiving email news and specifics of this special retreat event, please do email me at treeoflife50@frontier.com. If you have any questions, feel free to let me know what they are.


Thanks for all of your visits to Belfonte over the last two years! I very much appreciate your comments and look forward to many more happy years of posting!

Love, Jan

New Stash Keep-Her Sampler-Addison Rose/Belle Pepper

Hello to my dear blogging friends! Yes, it has been awhile, have been contemplating a new blog post for weeks now...good grief, am I slow or what? Also have been trying my best to keep up with your blogs, love seeing what you are all doing, but I am a day or two behind now, so hope to get caught up with that this weekend.Must be this age thing...brings on confusion, indecision,laziness, interruptions, every excuse known to man, one can use when they reach that 'senior citizen' title! Anyway, I am here now and without any more excuses...first of all I want to announce that I do have a second blogoversary coming up in a scant four days, so please be sure and come back on the 25th, when I will announce the giveaway, so that you can be sure to sign up! If you not yet a follower, I would love it if you would do that now, because this giveaway is truly just for my followers! You will have time to sign up later, but for the sake of something coming up to make you forget, you might as well get it out of the way, right?

Boy, I feel this is indeed going to be one of those rambling and I hope not boring posts! Please bear with me a bit longer.

I have so enjoyed seeing everyone's works this month, so many yummy designs that have oodles of progress to drool over! Wow, I am duly impressed by everything I have seen! I did decide at year end, that I would at the very least join the Up for a Challenge challenge, by listing and working on 15 (think I have a few more) wips, that I have vowed to work on this year and hoping to finish at least some of them! For me, it would be too hard to work on them one at a time, I am a very slow stitcher and the progress to be made in a day, is minimal for me at best. So I decided to pick two from my list, and work on them for the month (hoping to finish some of them, although I know that there are some baps that are going to take more then one 'swipe'!) and the two I chose for the month of January are CHS Her Sampler:

This is what I managed to get done further on this piece. Although I hope to work more on her this weekend, and possibly get her finished! And let me tell you, I know she isn't large, not at all, not even for me, but the mistakes and subsequent frogging periods I have with this little sweet ditty has about thrown me over the edge! So when I do get her done, you will likely 'hear' my happy dance! I am stitching Her Sampler on 32 ct R&R something or other with the recommended DMC threads. Fun stitch!

....and LHN's Belle Pepper: 

I am halfway pleased with my progress on this sweety of a design, made even sweeter, by my personalization. This will be to honor my youngest granddaughter, Addison Rose. I will also put the year she was born (2010) in the area for a date. I am using 32 ct Pearled Barley (I think, one of my memory lapses of late, seems to be remembering the names of fabrics I have used. I used to be so on target with it, what is up with that?), with the recommended Crescent Colours and Gentle Art fibers, with the exception of two..I changed out the Straw Bonnet to Oatmeal GAST, so it would show up more and also changed the Mulberry GAST to Lancaster Red Weeks, since it is one of my favorite reds.

The rest of the time, I have been stash and stitch dreaming...thinking about all of the lovely projects that I really, really want to finish...some of the larger ones I have started, like Time and Season Sampler by MB, Mary Allen Sampler and Seven Days of Creation by Plum Street Samplers. Then the list that is ever-growing...might as well think about putting it in my sidebar of the blog, right...Ann Raynor, Mary Ann Hutton, Marianne Wenn (destined to be a birthday start next month), Chilvers, Hannah Lancaster (I must be out of my mind!), Villages of Hawk Run, Adam & Eve Sampler by the City Stitcher, Country House Sampler by the Sampler Company, etc. And the list goes on, these are just the BAPS on my mind! LOL

During all of that dreaming, I have been doing a bit of reorganization of stash, and started thinking of how much I have always wanted an antique drysink. There was/is room for one in my family room. I have had for some time two large Longaberger baskets in my family room full of wips, etc. The rest of my stash is all upstairs, in a couple closets and bins. Crazy, I know, but I thought if I could find a nice dry sink, that has at least a couple of drawers, and a cabinet, then I could switch out the storage downstairs! Novel idea, don't you think...well...this is what I came home with the other day:

Yep, an antique dry sink, in really great pristine condition, drawers intact and working and beautiful walnut finish in great shape! I love it!!!!! And I can't wait to fill it!!! I have put off doing that until tomorrow...Saturday is my one day, that I do spend the day stitching, stash diving-organizing and I do it guilt-free!!! My new Stash Keep is waiting....

I appreciate you getting to this point reading my ramblings...things are going great here and I hope they are in your neck of the woods as well! Thanks so much for stopping by and taking the time to leave some sweet words for me to read, mean the world to me, they do!

Until my blogoversary in four days, stay warm and have some fun with those needles and projects!!!

Love, Jan