Summer Exchange Projects

We just finished a summer exchange and I think all the projects were great!

A small animation from my son...

Best Chocolate Cake Recipe

From my sister and it truly is the best cake and frosting recipe:

Best Chocolate Cake

2 cups flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
2 tsps baking soda
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa
2 cups sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
1 cup hot coffee
1 cup milk
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract

Sift together dry ingredients in a mixing bowl. Add oil, coffee and milk; mix at medium speed for 2 minutes. (Batter will be thin). Pour into two greased and floured 9 inch x 1.5 inch cake pans. OR two 8 inch cake pans and six muffin cups. Bake at 325 degrees for 25 - 30 minutes. Cool cakes 15 minutes before removing from pans. This also makes about 32 cupcakes.

Favorite Icing

1 cup milk
5 Tbs flour
1/2 cup butter softened
1/2 cup shortening
1 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract

Combine the milk and flour in a saucepan. Cook until thick stirring constantly. Cover and refrigerate. In a mixing bowl, beat butter, shortening, sugar and vanilla until creamy. Add chilled milk/flour mixture and beat for 10 minutes. Frost cooled cakes. About 12 serving.

Dancing Through Japan

I've been gone way too long but it's been a hectic month. Our 16 year old daughter(in red) is in Japan this month and the empty nest has hit home (for me anyway). She's having a great time, has Japanese class 3 hours a day and the rest of the time is taken up with tours and exploring. Japan is a very safe country and she and her new friends have made the most of getting out and seeing things and exploring on their own. She's in Tokyo for 3 weeks and then on to Kyoto at the end of this week for another week. The above photo is of her at Harajuku dressed as "Sweet Lolita".
Above is her and her friend who bought identical costumes and when they were shoppping, one of their companions got lost so at dinner they had to dress up and apologize in Japanese.

I also want to say Happy Birthday to my son Nick, above. It's been great having him home this summer to help with the quietness of the house. We love you and are so proud of you.

No other news here for now, but things will be getting busy soon with some great new designs that I'm having photographed right now.

Jane Austen challenge

The theme for April's ornament challenge was Jane Austen.

Lorraine took a Prairie Schooler design and made changes to the verse and a few other things. I designed a lady and used a quote from "Emma". Sorry to be late posting, yikes almost July!

Floral Urn

It's always exciting for me to finally get something framed. This is Floral Urn from Sunflower Samplings. I stitched it in 2004 and finally was inspired to frame it. Below is a close up before framing. It is stitched on Prairie Grain fabric.

A well traveled sampler

Here's a sneak peak of the top of a new sampler I'm stitching. It's so big it won't completely fit in the scanner and should be about 16x16 on 40 ct when complete. I started it last month in Georgia, took it with me to Philadelphia and New Jersey, then back home to Tucson, up to Phoenix, down to Mexico and just got back from California. If I'm still stitching it at the end of the month, it might end up in San Francisco, we'll just have to see how fast I am. I'm about 3/4 of the way done with it now. We were in California for our nephew's wedding. Below is my daughter all dressed for the wedding:
And my son acting goofy during the dancing:
Here's the bride and groom, she's wearing the traditional Vietnamese wedding dress which she changed into after the ceremony:
And then changed back to her white gown once more:

Congratulations Nate and Tana, it was a wonderful wedding.

New Releases

I've just released 3 new designs, Maggie's Sampler, Forget Me Not and Liberty. I'm looking forward to see the other new releases from market also!

Girls Only

My friend and I had a great time over Memorial Day in Mexico with our daughters. It was fun to have a girls only trip despite the stove not working and the refrigerator not cooling. Thank goodness for cafes and the microwave and ice chest. The weather was perfect with a sea breeze at all times and we did a lot of shopping and eating and I did a lot of stitching, Julie painted, Maggie studied Japanese vocabulary and Nancy taught us to play bridge. I hope everyone else had a great Memorial Day weekend too.

Cape May threadwinders

Cape May is a beautiful Victorian seaside town so I decided to make Victorian seaside thread winder boxes for my friends as you can see above. Here's a nice online magazine about Cape May...

Cape May online magazine

Same time, next year...

After such a great time last year in Fredricksburg, we decided to meet again, this time in Cape May. Above is the house where we stayed and that's me in the photo below on the windswept beach wearing two sweatshirts. As you can see from the tulips, spring had sprung and the weather was beautiful except for two days of cold and wind so we were all buying sweatshirts like mad. I found the first sweatshirt didn't do the job so bought another.

Below are the finished projects... and here is a photo of our exchange gifts:
I also wanted to say we had a great time in Philly meeting up with a couple other stitchers, reuniting four of our neighborhood round robins, eating Philly cheesesteaks and overall having a great time.

Spring has Sprung!

My daughter had her Japanese Speech Contest Saturday and came in 2nd place, yea Maggie! She's the one in the black dress above. The girl next to her took 3rd and the guy was "most humorous". They are all in the same class and their teacher is standing next to them. It was held on the anniversary of my dad's death so we knew she'd do well.
Here's a photo of Dad in Wisconsin maybe 10 years before he died. We miss you Dad.

But life goes on and spring has sprung in north-central AZ. My family has a cabin near Payson and my sister took these photos there this weekend. Here's a peony about to bloom.
And a pretty cactus flower
Some beautiful tulips in the yard.

And the apple tree was in bloom. Happy Spring everyone!

June2007 Just Cross Stitch

This is the cover of the June Just Cross Stitch
This is the piece I designed.

I just received the latest issue of Just Cross Stitch featuring a design that I did. It's thrilling to see something you created in an honest to goodness magazine and I think Elizabeth Pugh did a wonderful job with the article she wrote. Thank you to everyone who has written with good wishes and questions.

March Challenge

It's taken me forever to post these two pieces mainly because somehow a red spot appeared in two places on my fabric so I restitched to cover one but the other remains. So I tried to tea dye that area, didn't work and eventually ended up just washing the whole piece, didn't help. So here it is with the red spot, maybe a little more faded than it was. I can never seem to get a scan that isn't crooked either, sorry!
Our challenge this month was to stitch something related to the Nativity story in the Bible. The above is my piece, spot and all and this one is Lorraine's:

She stitched the Maureen Appleton piece from the JCS ornament issue 1999, changed the linen color among other things but I really like how she added the vintage metal sequins all around the piece.

A quick spring trip

We finally had some time to get to Mexico after spring break was over. The weather was beautiful, the food was great, the crowds were gone and we explored more than usual. Isn't this a great curio shop?
We drove around in circles for 45 mins trying to find the dirt road to the restaurant at the top of this hill.
Yea! We finally found it and the view was spectacular though we were a little amused once we were up so high to see that the town that seemed to have so many streets when we were driving in circles, was actually not very big. We ate out on the patio...
and watched the sun set...

Out at the house the pelicans were everywhere...
Along with lots of seagulls...
We sat and viewed the stars on the patio each night...
... and explored on the rocks and tidepools below each day.

I wonder what stories this old boat could tell?

Whew, finally done!

I've had this sitting around for maybe 9 months to stitch and finally pulled it out at the last minute and finished it yesterday. I feel like a weight has been lifted, I never do well stitching for a deadline!

The top piece is a finishing companion for tools and will have an angled pocket going across the left side and hopefully the starfish will be peeking out of the pocket. The bottom piece is a companion pocket. I re-did these to reflect stitching by the sea rather than stitching in a garden. I had to leave the bees in though as the beautiful silk finishing fabric has bees on it.

Thank you Barb!

Barb, who is a friend of a friend called me and let me know the origins of the two samplers I found at the antique mall. The top is from The Abecedarian and is called A Colonial Garden and the bottom is from The Sampler Collection published by the publishers of Just Cross Stitch and Sampler and Antique Needlework Quarterly. One is from 1986 and the other from 1989.

Thank you so much for the info and sorry to take so long posting. I've been gone most of the week.

Antique Mall find

I had some time to spare before taking my mother to the doctor yesterday and my daughter and I went to an antique mall. Right before leaving, I looked down at a basket underneath a table and folded inside a ziplock bag found these two samplers from the 1990's. Anyone have any idea who is the designer for either piece?

Fair Kind True a la Lorraine

I met Lorraine for lunch today and was able to bring this home to scan. She did a fabulous job and used R&R Amethyst with Gentle Arts Pink Azalea, over one, love it!

Italian Freebie Site

For some reason, the site below would not post with the previous post but it's good so I'll add it here:
http://digilander.libero.it/assitpuntocroce/schemigratis.htm

A few freebie sites

I haven't had time to update in a while and still don't but wanted to post something so thought I'd post a few sites with some nice freebies. Hope you enjoy!

Freebies

Sajou SAL
(be sure and check out the "free" section to the left in the above link)

French House SAL

French Freebies