Almost Christmas

... and I still have no clue about how many guests to expect and what to make for Christmas dinner... so I guess today's my job to surf some recipes websites and make shopping lists!
This was my view from the living room window this morning:

Only the thinnest layer of snow, but just enough to give you that special feeling of a white and serene world while walking the kids to school...

And last but not least I want to show you our Christmas tree. All unbreakable decoration since dog and kids like to jump around...


Not much to mention on the stitch front nowadays. I am working on two small pieces but cannot show you yet, I hope to finish one of them tonight.

Update on the snowbuddies

Here's a very recent (took it about an hour ago) picture of my Snowbuddies afghan (it already has grown a little bit again since then):

It is such a joy to work on, seeing it grow under my hands!
To compare, here's the picture I took last June:

Yeah!

I finished "A Quaker Sampler" by Carriage House Samplers last Friday. It is stitched in GAST 0312 Currant on 28 ct Zweigart beige vintage Cashel linen. I am very happy with the result! Now comes the second challenge: to find a fitting frame for it...

In the meantime I picked up my snowbuddies afghan again... I want to have it finished quite soon since my friend told me she is going to stitch Stoney Creeks new afghan series: the "Quilted Hearts Garden" afghan", and I want to stitch along with her... The first patterns will be in the February 2008 issue of the magazine, and the project will take over 2 years to be published. I already ordered some threads for it... So I hope to show you some real progress on the snowbuddies real soon!

Your patience is rewarded!

Today I got word from the lovely Tanya Anderson, aka The Sampler Girl that she has released the design I modelstitched for her today, and thus I can at last show you a picture of it:

I just love the way Tanya has finished it into this little cushion. The design itself was such a joy to stitch, working with some until then unknown threads to me. There are some fabulous silk threads in this design (I just love working with silks, don't you?).
I wanted to thank you all for your kind comments on my posts, they are all greatly appreciated!

stitching like crazy...

Since I'm resting quite a lot now I have a lot of time to stitch, and here's the result of that:

My Quaker Study is growing very fast. The picture doesn't show the beauty and richness of the thread (Currant from GAST) as it is quite a cloudy day here and I wasn't able to get a better picture. I hope to have it finished soon.

I also wanted to show you the beautiful blocks Chantal sent me in the Fair and Square exchange, I think they're lovely!

These are the blocks I sent to her:


Now I'm off to do some more stitching on the Quaker Study, it is just the right weather for that...

back home!

Just a quick message to let you all know I'm back home again after one night in hospital, to recover at home. It all went better than expected, I'm glad to be home again. I don't have a lot of pain but am very tired, falling asleep every now and then. So off to bed now...

Strange day...

It was a very strange day here today... I was supposed to have an ear operation today and had to be in hospital 8.15 am. So far so good, we were in time, I was installed in a room and prepared by a nurse. We waited and got to hear that I was scheduled for 10.15 am. At 10.10 am the doctor came in and told me there were complications in the surgery before mine, and there was and emergency in line behind me. And there wasn't enough time to perform my surgery in between... so I was skipped of the list and sent home. I was so disappointed, everything was arranged to go well at home and at work, and I had been so nervous yesterday, I finally calmed down this morning since I knew it would be done in a few hours... NOT! Now I have to go through all this again next week, I am scheduled again for next Wednesday. I'll believe it when I see it...
We decided, since Eric had a day off after all, to go for a walk in the woods this afternoon, and treated ourselves to hot chocolate with cream and a good piece of applepie at a little café in the woods. Although it was good, up until this moment I haven't lost the restless feeling I have since this morning when I was sent home.
So, Eric will go back to work tomorrow and see if he can move his days off to next week, and then I will start preparing myself again... Since I didn't have any plans for the next few days I think I will try and do some stitching instead!