Ugh

Just wanted to post to let everyone know we're safe and sound, and so is the house.  I really was literally afraid for the house and for our lives at the height of the storm.  We have no power, and won't have for some time to come from the look of it.  Trees down close to the house, branch on car which has a dented roof and no back window now.  Cold in house, of course.  Girl child is in the same boat -- no power, but she has places to go where she can power up her cell phone and stay warm during the day at least.  Boy child unaffected, has power, classes on as of Tuesday.

Will post again when I am able.  Thanks to everyone for the good wishes.  I pray all my friends are safe after Sandy.  And I pray for no more Sandys in future.

ETA: I won't be answering comments due to the situation.  But thanks so much for all your comments and good wishes!!

Go away, Sandy

So here I am, waiting for Sandy to do its thing, hoping for the best.  To all my fellow Sandy sufferers, I hope we all come through safely and with minimal damage or flooding or loss of power -- or internet.  Good thoughts for us all.

As you all know, I'm in the midst of stitching a large model for Vickie of Needlework Press.  So no stitching to show for a while to come.  In the meantime, I thought I'd show you my various sampler walls around the house.  Most aren't very impressive, but everyone seemed to enjoy my new sampler wall in the sewing room, so here goes.

I'm starting out with an area you've seen before, my A&E walls.  If you haven't guessed, I'm trying to hang my samplers in groupings.  So the ones in the sewing room are the ones with houses and grassy fields, along with animals, especially but not exclusively cows.  Then of course, there are my A&Es.  Which you've seen, but you might like another look?

Please ignore the basket of mail and other messiness you are seeing under the samplers.  :D

So the two samplers on the left wall are Ann Sandles by With thy Needle and Thread on top and Guarding Eden by Examplars from the Heart.

Then the big wall is as follows:  Top left is Ann Smith by the Scarlet Letter, bottom left is Frances Eden by Handwork.  Then the top row from the left is Charlotte Clayton by the Northwest Sampler Guild, the Jenny Bean Creation Sampler by Shakespeare's Peddler, and Sarah Esh by Carriage House Samplings.  Second row from left is Paradise Lost by Plum Street Samplers and Know Ye (I think -- I'm having a senior moment.) by La D Da.  Bottom row from left is Margaret Pence by Goode Huswife, Fruit of the Spirit by Plum Street Samplers, and Hallow Eden by Plum Street Samplers.  If I got any of those wrong, my apologies.  I think I'm right though.

Now the other wall, same wall as the samplers on the left wall there, but farther over and past a window.

Just two more.  (There are more to be framed, but this is it for now.)  The one on the left is Ann Wheatley by Needlework Press, and the one on the right is Jane Atkinson by Scarlet Letter.

Next week maybe I'll show you my red sampler wall.  :D

This is the first Halloween, and also the first hurricane, where my kids aren't home.  It's a strange thing. I've had to check up on both kids constantly to make sure they're safe and getting ready for the storm, and also enjoying any Halloween activities.

I sent the boy child a Halloween care package.

This is the non-candy part of it.  (Not the vuvuzela though.  That he brought with him from home, a vital part of one's college equipment.)

The boy child is happy that classes have been cancelled for the day.  We'll see about tomorrow.

The girl child made me nervous by going to NYC for the weekend to celebrate Halloween with friends.  She worked very hard on her costume.  Here's a work in progress pic she sent me.

Can anyone guess who she dressed as?  Here she is all dressed up.

And from the back.

(That's one of her friends dressed as Pacman in the background.)

So do you know who she is yet?   Only Zelda fans will know.  She is Navi from Zelda of course!  (Last year, she was Link.)  So cute!  And yes, she got a hair cut a week or so ago -- she did it for Locks of Love (is that what it's called?  I think so.  Another senior moment.)

The girl child happily slept in this morning -- her work is closed for the day, which is a good thing.  But of course she made me very nervous by making her way home from NYC late in the afternoon on Sunday and then doing her hurricane supply shopping that evening.  Argh!  Always the last minute with that girl!

Mia is a bit nervous now with the winds and all.  She's been my companion day and night these days without the boy child around.  We are finally finding a mutually comfortable sleeping arrangement at night so that my legs don't get squished.  lol!  And during the day, she helps me out.  Here she is helping with the changing of the sheets.

After our vacation and with the boy child being gone, Mia worries much more when we leave the house.  She is usually waiting for us at the door when we come home, which is a bit unusual for before the boy child left for college.  (She's meowing in this picture.)

(Please ignore how messy the room is behind Mia.  lol!)

So that's it for this week.  I hope and pray that everyone in the path of Sandy stays safe and sound and that there is minimal damage.  Here's hoping the forecasters are wrong!

Thanks for stopping by and saying hi.  Have a great week!

How exciting!

First off, no new stitching to show.  And I'm afraid there won't be any for quite a while.  I am now stitching a huge model for Vickie at Needlework Press.  It will be taking up all my time, probably till the end of the year.

BUT!  Remember that framing I said I'd brought home the other day?  Here it is!

Sorry about the quality of the pictures, first off.  The lighting wasn't perfect.  Anyway, this is Mary Roe, by the Scarlett House.  Here's a closeup of the frame.

Next up, here is Ann Rayner by Threads Through Time.

(Ugh, the lighting is terrible.)

And the frame.

And finally, here's Sarah Elizabeth Brooke by the Scarlett House.

And the frame.

And here they are, hanging on the start of my sampler wall in my new sewing room!

Don't they look great?  The top row, from left to right is as follows:  Rebecca Robinson by the Scarlet Letter, Jane Tindall by Needlework Press, and Ann Rayner by Threads Through Time.  The bottom row from left to right is the Richmond Sampler (Anne Maria Clarke) by the Essamplaire, Isabella Johnstone by Needlework Press, Mary Roe by the Scarlett House, and Sarah Elizabeth Brooke by the Scarlett House.  (The wall looks yellower than in real life.....)

And yes, this means that we moved things into the new sewing room!  Which, by the way, will always be thought of as the girl child's room.  Here is the proof of that -- the door to the room.

Still as she left it.  And here is the rest of the room!  I did make a couple of changes after the first couple of pictures.  You might notice the differences as you go through the room.

(My dear father type rented a dolly and manhandled those file cabinets full of my stash from one side of the house to the other.  Amazing!)  (Note Mia in the window.)

Where the rocking chair is now is where the daybed/sofa bed/futon sofa bed will go.  That is yet to be purchased.  Oh, and that huge trunk is the girl child's from her camp days.  I'm planning on storing my linens in it.

Then I decided my spool cabinet had to go on this table here in the alcove, at least for now.

So that I could put a certain something where I had put the spool cabinet before.

Yup!  My featherweight, which is basically my sewing machine.  (The sticker on the drawer of the desk is from the girl child, of course.)

I like my little groupings.  (I have way too many possessions.)

The magnets from the British goods store in Maine look great on the side of my file cabinet.

Don't you love all these frames?

There's my coronation jug.  And the bowl is a commemoration of Queen Elizabeth II's diamond jubilee this year.

More Anglophile stuff, a couple of which are actually the girl child's from a friend.  The license plate was my mother's from her car.

Sorry to overwhelm you with pictures.  I can't wait to get whatever we decide on for seating/sleeping and put it under the samplers on the wall!

While all the hanging was going on, we finally hung these long neglected samplers elsewhere in the house.  We hadn't hung them because one of them had fallen previously due to its weight, and I'd been scared to hang either one since.  But we took the risk and tried again.

My Dutch Beauty by Permin.  It's hanging for now in the hallway where there isn't very good light.

And my Advent Sampler by Mary Beale.  We've hung it over the computer in the computer room for now.  It's nice to have it back on the wall.  And the damage to the frame from its fall a few years ago isn't at all as bad as I'd thought it was.

I'm not sure what I will be posting about in the next weeks with my model stitching going on.  We shall see, I guess.  Hope I haven't bored you with my new sewing room.

Thanks as always for stopping by and saying hi.  I hope everyone has a great week.  Mia says hi too.

Vacation at last! And TUSAL as well. Looooooong

People were wondering why I was wordless last week.  :D  Well, part of the reason was that I wasn't home and didn't want to say I wasn't home.  lol!  We did go up to Boston to visit the boy child for Parents Weekend -- and it was wonderful to see him and clean his apartment for him.  lol!  The cleaning was my idea, not his.

But after that, we went up to this.

That's the view out the window of the cottage we rented up in Boothbay Harbor, Maine.  Right on the ocean.  Love it!

It was our first vacation in 3 years (I'd been saying two, but I was wrong.).  And it was our first empty nest vacation too.  Very odd feeling!

We had lots of fun.  Visited some of our usual haunts.  Like Boothbay.

Which of course included our favorite ice cream joint.

We did a bit of outlet shopping at Freeport.  Which, of course, is dominated by LL Bean.

Ate at the restaurant of one of the Beans.  Yummy Lobster Rolls.  Mmmmmmm.

And found a British Goods store, Bridgham & Cook Ltd.  And went a bit crazy.

Loved it!

This is inside the store.  They even had shelves full of scarves which were the colors of the different colleges of Oxford and Cambridge.  So cool!

These are my purchases.  Couldn't resist.

(Sorry for the sideways pic.)  And we also had to get some of this to try.  Been curious about it ever since I saw some commentators trying it at the Australian Open.  (Yes, it's Australian, not British.)

We also went to Wiscasset.   Finally tried the lobster rolls at the famous Red's Eats.

(That's the father type with his man bag.)

This is the bridge between Boothbay and Wiscasset, which always gets backed up due to the human traffic waiting in lines for Red's Eats.  In the summer, there can be quite a backup -- both human and car.  Which is why we've never tried Red's Eats before this time.  The line was always too long.

We went antiquing in Wiscasset.  Fun things to see.  These pics are from Waterstreet Antiques.  Lots of neat stuff.

The tag said the fabric on the right is from the 19th century.

(A collection of planes.)

I found the most items at the Showcase Antiques Gallery.  Love this display.

My purchases -- the father type found the little coronation jug for me.  I was thrilled!

The jug, darner and little Japanese car are all very small.  And look at the lip of the jug.

Love it!

We also did some of this, of course.

This is at Ocean Point.  So pretty!

Wouldn't you love to live in that house?  Or this one?

Right there on the edge of the rocks with those views!

(Have man bag -- and iPad -- will travel.)

Oh, and we also lazed around the cottage.  Which was quite cozy.

Love this stove.

Ignore all the luggage.  This is when we first arrived.

The cottage actually had quite a few stitched pieces around too, some embroidered, some cross stitch, some in needle point.  This one took me back -- I still have one exactly like it that I think my mom stitched.

Before I forget, here is my TUSAL for the month.

Mia was sooooooooooooo happy to see us when we got home.  This is the longest we've left her since she was a kitten.  She'd probably given up on us.  lol!   She just kept purring and meowing and meowing and rubbing, and being very excited and happy.  Now she's sacked out on the Bridgham & Cook bag.

Sorry no stitchy pics this week.  I was working on my Susan Singleton SAL, which we don't show till December.

Thanks as always for stopping by and saying hi.  I hope everyone has a great week!