October - calendula

 I made a start on the next flower.

I also completed a 1000pc puzzle of wild birds.

Cobble Hill puzzle - Colorful Rainbow

 This is a puzzle I borrowed from my sisters. I loved building this because it is organized by colours. It took Dave & I 2 days (1 afternoon and the next morning) to complete.

Frederick Bottom Shelf & Puzzles

 I know it has been a while since I showed an update on Frederick. I have been stitching at least once or twice a week, but don't always feel like photographing and updating my blog. 

I am working on the bottom shelf of books. I have run out of a few colours from the kit, but I went through my DMC floss and found something close enough to substitute instead of contacting Dimensions and ordering more floss.

Dave & I have worked on a few puzzles in the past month. We like to sit outside on the patio working on the puzzles.

This one is a 1000pc called the Beach Hut by Ravensburger. We enjoyed all the bright colours and beach theme.

This one doesn't have a name, but we loved the colours and it was very quick to build. It only took us 4 hours to complete.

This is the first time I have built a shape puzzle. I love tea, so I borrowed this one from my sisters. I thought it would be easy to assemble. Well I was wrong. I started it, then Dave helped me. I think it took about 4 days off and on to complete. I am happy to say we finished it, but I don't think I will go out of my way to do another one. It was one of the hardest puzzles I have completed. There are pieces that look like edges that are not.

This puzzle also had 13 hidden object pieces.

Books Update #4

 I haven't stitched much lately, but here is a photo of my progress so far.

We have been busy working on another jigsaw puzzle. We did this puzzle in exactly 1 week.

I have taken 2 photos of the finished puzzle. Dave & I just bought a new DSLR camera Nikon Z50. I usually take photos with my iPad because it is easier to update my blog, but I do love how much clearer the images are with the new camera. Cross stitch of Frederick was taken with the new camera as well.

iPad photo (8 mega pixels)

Nikon Z50 (20 mega pixels)

Cat & whale

I worked on Frederick a lot yesterday (afternoon & evening). Close up of Frederick’s butt and leg.

Here is the whole project.

Dave & I finally completed another 2000pc puzzle. This was also a Christmas gift from our youngest son Jordyn. 

This was the hardest puzzle we have done so far. It took us 3 weeks, but we didn’t work on it every day. 

It is a beautiful puzzle to look at from a distance.  

Up close it is a pain in the neck. There was so much blue and it looks like paint brush strokes, not clear detail.  

Ravensburger - John Deere puzzle

Last week we worked on our 3rd puzzle for this year. My husband grew up on a small family farm, so he loves building puzzles with farm scenes or tractors.  His family didn’t own a John Deere tractor, but they are very popular. This is our 2nd John Deere puzzle we have in our collection. 

I did lots of stitching over the weekend. I finished the fish, worked on 2 more books and last night I started Frederick’s head.

Puzzle and more books

This week finished our second puzzle for 2022. This one I chose because of the photo. It is called The Cozy Shed. It looks like a place I’d enjoy spending time in. It didn’t take long to build because this is only a 1000 pc Ravensburger puzzle. Not sure which puzzle we will build next.

I’m continuing to work on Frederick. I did the first book on the top and bottom shelves. Now I can see how tall it will be. I will continue to work on the books on the top shelf for now. When I don’t want to count I can continue stitching the top and bottom shelves.

Puzzle & Books

Last night we finished our first puzzle of the year.  My youngest son Jordyn and daughter-in-law Sarah bought us 2 Ravensburger 2000 piece puzzles. We completed one so far. It took us about a week, but we didn’t work on it every day. There is no name of the puzzle, but it does say Zoe Sadler on the side of the box. I’m guessing it is the artist who created the design.

This was the hardest puzzle we have ever built.  We started with the border as usual, then thought we would do the wood boxes/shelves around the items. That didn’t work, so we worked on the labels/tags on each bottle and then filled in the spaces around them to connect everything together. It was weird looking at the puzzle half way through with all of the gaps in between. We usually work in sections and feel like we are accomplishing something when we get an area completed. This one was a challenge from start to finish. I thought of the Harry Potter books and movies every time I read a label because they are magical potion ingredients.

I’m still working on the first book, but I did finish the title.

Gardening and Puzzles

 I took a bit of a break from cross stitching.  It is finally summer weather here in my part of Canada.  Dave & I have been busy every day planning and planting annual flower seeds.  Some of the seeds I collected from my flowers last summer.  I love the satisfaction of growing my annuals each year from seeds.  Dave retired at the end of April, so he has more time to spend in the garden this year, we added 2 raised vegetable garden beds to our backyard.  We started planting vegetables from seeds (peas, beets, yellow beans, carrots, radishes, lettuce and herbs) and a few tomato and pepper (sweet & hot) plants from the nursery. We still need to start the corn.

Here are the 2 metal raised vegetable garden beds we bought and assembled.  The lettuce was bought at the grocery store. They were hydroponically grown, so they had lots of roots and we just transplanted them into the ground.

They had to be covered for several weeks when we still had frost every night.

I buy lots of wall garden art at the dollar stores.  We used magnets to stick the sun onto the metal.

We also tried one of the Ravensburger Escape puzzles.  This is the one we chose, called Space Observatory.

It only has 759 pcs, so we thought it wouldn't take us very long to build.  We were so wrong.  It is the first time we built a puzzle and didn't complete the border first. Some of the border pieces can fit in different places and because it is a lot of dark colours it was very hard to see any patterns.  We built most of the border and then added pieces next to them to make sure they were in the correct spot. We still had to move some around half way through. We enjoyed the assembling part of the puzzle. It was challenging enough and we enjoyed the image because it doesn't look exactly like the box cover. 

Here is a close up of the box image.  I won't show a photo of the completed puzzles in case someone is interested in assembling it themselves.

Dave & I both didn't enjoy trying to solve the puzzles to escape. We used the hints on the website. Some of the puzzles, we understood how they got their answers, but a few of them we didn't.  We both decided not to spend money on another one of the escape puzzles. 

We will continue buying new puzzle designs we like or just re-do the ones we already own. 

Cabin Fever

 I bought this 2000 pc puzzle in 2019 because it is the exact same name/photo of a cross stitch kit I had started and gave up on years ago.  You can read the post about the cross stitch kit project here.  This was a great challenge with all of the dark colours.

Buffalo 2000 pc puzzle
started Saturday, April 3, 2021
finished Sunday, April 11, 2021

1000pc puzzle

I have not been stitching the last few days. I’ve been busy making birthday cards for family and building jigsaw puzzles. Dave and I just finished this one yesterday.  It is so nice to look at a summer picture while we have snow outside.

1000 pc Puzzle

I haven’t stitched in a few days/nights, but have been designing cross stitch on my computer.  Dave & I finished this Buffalo 1000 pc jigsaw puzzle yesterday. Today I  played Animal Crossing New Horizons with my daughter-in-law Sarah. I hope to stitch tomorrow while doing laundry.

UFO's

I’m a one at a time stitcher most of the time.  I will sometimes have a huge project and a very small project going at the same time.  In the past, I have also put a project aside to work on something that has a deadline.  I have always tried to finish every project that I start, but I do have 2 that I put in the UFO pile over the years.

UFO 1 (my oldest)
Cabin Fever -  Started sometime in 2009.

I have already decided that I will never finish this project.  I bought it as a kit at Michael's.  I don't usually buy kits.  I should have used my own fabric, because I prefer 28ct evenweave and this kit has 16ct or 18ct aida.
Here is a photo from the last time I stitched on it August 2009.

Last year, I found a puzzle of the same picture/name I bought it right away.  After all these years, I will enjoy building the puzzle more than stitching it.

UFO 2
Plaid Trousers - Started December 20, 2012

The project is being stitched on 28ct light blue evenweave, and I'm using Caron's Watercolour called Twinkle.

I stopped working on this project because I disliked the chart/pattern.  It is supposed to look like handwriting, so every letter looks different.  I like things uniform and symmetrical, so it bothered me trying to stitch the pattern.  I tried to rework each letter as I was stitching, but it got confusing and wasn't centered on the fabric.  I pulled out almost every stitch I put in, so I put it aside in 2013.  

This is what it looked like in 2013 when I last worked on it.

Should I continue?  

Should I frog and start over?  

Should I rework the pattern in Pattern Maker by HobbyWare (cross stitch program I use on my PC). 

Every year I think about finishing it, but never get around to it.  Well this year, I made a decision.  I really want to finish it this year, so this week I reworked the pattern in Pattern Maker by HobbyWare. I'm only stitching the poem words not the decorations around it.  I will try to find some plaid golf pants (stickers or scrapbook paper) to decorate the mat around the cross stitch when I frame it.  

What if? 1000 piece puzzles

I have always enjoyed doing puzzles.  A few years ago while shopping with my sons at their favourite hobby store (J & J Collectibles  http://www.jjcards.com/shop/). I was looking at their huge selection of puzzles.  I was looking for something at least with 1000 pieces and came across this series.  They are made by Ravensburger, which means very good quality pieces.  What you see on the box is not what the puzzle will look like inside.  It usually has the same characters, but in different poses, could be a different background.  I love them because it is always a surprise.  I won't spoil the surprise by showing  my progress.  If you want to see it finished google images of What If Puzzles No 7.  There are 11 in the series so far.  I think I'm missing 3 or 4 of them.