HOUSES

Happy November !  I fully intended to get a post out for Happy Halloween but that did not happen.  Before Halloween 2010 becomes a distant memory - I wanted to show you my Salem House from Liberty Hill.  I was SOOOO excited to get this about a week before Halloween so I could display and enjoy it.  I have it sitting on my antique sewing table.  It is one of my favorite LH pieces so far.  My number one fave is my personalized primitive Angel work box - I should show that one some time.  The top comes off this house and stores your goodies - I'm sure it would also store a small project if you wanted to use it as a work box of sorts.  The tiny house scissor adornment is just darling and the church thread minder is so pretty.  The pumpkin thread winder is from another LH set but it looked good there with the Salem House items.  All sides of the house are painted - It is a great piece.

The next "house" is an updated shot of my Autumn House.  I am still loving working on this although coming up with the stitches for different areas is a challenge.  I think I already said but I am using a mix of fibers - wool/wool blends/silk/cotton and even silk chenille in this piece. 

This is a closer shot of the right side of the canvas - this house and surrounding fields are finished except for the two fields to the left of the house - they are repeats of fields already stitched so I guess the challenge was not there to come up with something different for them.

Here is a close up of the left side of the canvas.  I was so excited to get in my one lone sheepy.  He is stitched with Thread Gatherer silk chenille - boy was that a bear to work with. It was shredding like crazy but produced a fuzzy looking sheep. That odd thing by the house is a windmill and the field behind it was a pain to plow and plant. I used a Valdani perle and that was my first experience with it - it is a nice fiber but that diagonal romanian almost put me "under the dirt"  Doesn't look too bad in the photo but it was a bit messy trying to compensate.  The apple trees look a bit funky but hey - it's folky right?? I'm still stuck on what to do with those wheat sheaths or hay stacks. My plan is to finish planting the fields and complete the hedgerow all the while I am pondering those stacks and how to stitch them.  I need a few more threads but am so thrilled I have pulled 90% of the threads used so far from stash.

This odd looking thing is my Boneyards shawlette - for my knitting friends - it is a Steven West design and available for free on Ravelry.  He used a Rowanspun Tweed in a DK weight and I knew I had Rowan tweed in my stash - I was just surprised I had BLUE -  the photo is washed out - too much light on the subject I guess because it is a pretty blue - navy and should be great with jeans - it is a rustic tweed yarn from my vast stash - something from the Rowan vault. 

This yummy creature is the beginning of a ruffled scarf.  Pattern by Fiesta and the yarn is Fiesta Boomerang which was also in my stash!  Do we see a trend here LOL. This pattern uses the dreaded short row shaping but actually it is going pretty well.

I'm going to wish I had one of these new knits ready to wear this weekend.  We are expecting our first temps in the upper 30's - we'll see if they hit or miss the mark with that.  I'm SO READY! I'm sick to death of wearing summer clothes in NOVEMBER for heaven sake.  I am still wearing sandals too.  I'm ready for hand knit socks and cozy scarves.  Winter in Florida is short but sweet for any knitter.

I have an exciting event this weekend - I have arranged for our sampler guild to attend a class down in Mt Dora.  It is a class on ornament finishing so we'll come home with 1 or 2 finished ornaments.  I am finishing challenged for sure so this will be fun to do a simple finishing technique and maybe it will give me and some of the other members a boost in confidence or motivation to continue and do some simple finishing of our own.  We have a big group of about 8 going and will meet a couple of our central florida members for class and lunch at the wonderful Garden Gate tearoom.  You may remember seeing the Mt Dora report from a class 3 of us took there this summer.  We're packing up 2 car loads of friends - we'll brave our first cold snap of the season with Starbucks in hand. 

One other thing I'd like to mention - when you have time - pop over to my DF Kris' new blog

http://krayolakris-acolorfullife.blogspot.com/ - She is a great knitter and stitcher and I have been encouraging her for months to make her entry into blogland.  She is a lurker and reader of lots of blogs - so please stop by and become a follower and welcome her to blogland. 

So friends - I'll be back real soon with some photos of that excursion and until then - thanks for stopping by my blog and I love hearing your comments.