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