Nothing new and exciting at chez Diane in the last week or so but I've been doing a lot of puttering and re-discovering things I thought were long gone.  I've been putting together quite a donation box for charity.  I have been having my share of small appliance break downs in the last couple of months and have been noticing strange noises from some of the bigger ones too.  Maybe it's because I'm home more now and when I'm by myself I like the quiet so I don't have any TV or radio going or anything.  So maybe I'm just noticing the "white noise" more than I have before.


I have been stitching a bit.  I put some stitches in my "Sew Fine" piece from Shinysun's Cross Stitch and my Christmas stocking -- not enough progress though to post new pictures.  I decided I needed to find my laying tool because I'm getting ready to start a canvass design from Laura Perrin.  In my quest to locate at least one of the several laying tools I have, I found a canvass piece that I started back in 1996 as part of a group project my EGA chapter was doing. I had half the outlining done so I decided to sit down yesterday and do the rest and started one of the small blocks.  It is a Harriet Segal piece called "Phoenix".  

Phoenix - This is what I have so far

This is what the finished piece will look like

Amazing but true I did "finish" something too!  This is a biscornu I started in November.  It is done in red metallic floss  - remind me not to work with that stuff again!  Actually, I read a tip on working with metallic floss that if you run it through a thread conditioner (I used Thread Heaven) before you start stitching with it, it will go much more smoothly.  I did that and it did work much better.    I got all the stitching done in January but I just hadn't put it together.  Here it is all stuffed and sewn up but I still haven't found the right bauble to place in the center to pull it into form. If you have any suggestions, let me know.  Ok, so it's only 99.9% done...

Side #1

Side #2

Have a good week and getting some stitching time in!