Crawling Out of Hibernation

I thought it was about time to wake up from my long winter's nap, 

crawl out of my den, and say "hi."

Hi all!

How have ya been?

I spent hours, literally, catching up on blog reading last night. I'll try not let that happen again! 

It took way longer than I would have imagined.

All of you are accomplishing lots of lovely handwork. Good for you!

Wish I could say I've really been napping, but instead I have been teaching my 

youngest bear cubs school.

We don't take snowy, super cold, winter days off.

We take nice, sunny, warm days off.

They are so rare during the school year we just gotta enjoy them!

I am wondering though if we will even get to take one of those this year.

  By the time it happens we will be long finished.  ha ha 

I realize that is has been so long since I have posted anything stitchy that I never showed you my very first finished ornaments. I decided to whip up several of these for Sunday school teachers and friends and try out a couple of different finishes on them.

What do you think? Which is your favorite?

This design is one I found waaaay back in a magazine from stitching life #1 that I tweaked a bit.

 Leisure Arts, February 1989 - yikes!

Then I got brave and made this into an ornament too, thanks to Tricia. 

LNH's Good Tidings with the striped fabric for backing

She talked me through it when we met in November. It had been sitting in the drawer for a year and a half waiting for completion. 

I was able to frame Mary's Sampler II but not until after Christmas as I needed to special order a frame and it didn't come until the 26th. 

In case you noticed, I did leave off a couple

 of the motifs as it was getting a bit busy for me.

Put this together and made a very novice attempt at twisted cording.

Another fun Sampler Girl pattern
"Wonderful Life"
32 ct. Natural Belfast Linen
DMC threads
I ran out of time on Saturday to sew it up, but it will only take a bit as the blue is already cut to make into a small pillow.

I also finished this one I started in October

LNH's Needleworker

30ct Creek Bed Brown

threads per chart

I guess that catches up everything on the stitching end.

Then there has been knitting.

Knitting and knitting and knitting.

Originally I was going to make an afghan out of the yarn on the left for my married daughter and her husband for Christmas and the yarn on the right for one for us.

Well, after getting theirs close to half-way done, my girl gently tells me she would rather have one out of the Pearls colorway. I let out an inaudible gasp and weakly smiled, "Ok, but I can't get it done by Christmas."

She totally understood and we are totally fine to have the Natural Stripes one.

Here it is finished.

 I can knit but do not really consider myself a "knitter" in the true sense of the word. This simple pattern is just K5 P3 and switch that every other row with a basic knit boarder. I made one using this pattern 9 years ago and just add 20 extra inches to make it nice and long.

The pictures are a bit awkward as it is so long and kept slipping off the couch.

This is luscious - so soft and warm. The biggest challenge in working it is that the yarn is so nubby when I lost a stitch a couple of times it was hard to find. No fun undoing a row of 102 stitches. 

So much worse than frogging!

I started this one 3 weeks ago.

Here is my progress in the last 10 days. It's kind of hard to show while on the circular needles.

I have set an aggressive plan to knit 8 rows a day so that the newlyweds can still use it this winter.

Being an Olympic junkie has made that easy to do.  : )

Sadly, I have been noticing my right wrist is aching knitting over 800 stitches a day.

So I may have to back off a bit. No worries. Winter isn't going away any time soon.

BNH still wants one for us in this yarn.

While it would simple to keep in the groove with the same pattern, I am missing linen and thread. I've got several projects ready to go but need to be disciplined and finish up the afghan first.

...even though I hear that Valentine small calling me...

Well, time to crawl back into the den as it is snowing again.

Have a blessed rest of the week and enjoy spending time with those you love on Friday.

Furry cold hugs,

Mama Bear

aka Victoria