HAPPY New Year a day late!!

Here it is January 2nd and I'm just posting a Happy New Year to all...will you forgive me???

On January 1st, it is actually tradition with my family that we load up in the car and head to Rhode Island to go for a walk on the beach and then we go to a favorite restaurant for a late lunch/early dinner. So per usual, our friend Eric met us at our house and we headed off to Grandma & Grandpa's house to pick up the kids. It is also tradition for us to go out to the movies with Grandma and Grandpa and the kids, then to dinner and back to G&G's house for snacks and ring in the New Year and then dh and I head home while the kids stay at their house (Grandma won't allow her "genetic dividends" to go out on the road after midnight on New Year's Eve!!).

We picked the kids up and headed to Rhode Island. Now mind you we had a snow storm on New Years Eve day so the roads still weren't pristine for driving. Half way to G&G's I realized I'd left my wallet and my cellphone at home (I guess 5 hours of sleep wasn't enough the night before!!). So I actually behaved while driving seeing as dh HATES driving the minivan...we got to the beach and froze our buns off while taking our walk and then we headed to the Mews Tavern and had a wonderful time.

Even with all this running around I've managed to get quite a bit done on Blackstone Fantasy Garden. Here are some pictures for you to see on it...

This one was taken on the morning of New Year's Eve while the snow in Connecticut was starting to come down hard...

This one was taken on New Year's morning before I began doing any stitching in the New Year.

This one was taken this morning before I began working on it today.

This one was just taken after working on it today (January 2nd)


Well that is it for this evening...maybe I'll get better at doing these posts on a daily basis rather than when my dh gets after me saying I haven't posted in awhile.

Blackstone Fantasy Garden

I started Blackstone Fantasy Garden by Tracy Horner of InkCircles (www.inkcircles.com) on December 26th. I received it as a Christmas gift from my dh along with two other InkCircle patterns (cirque des Circles and cirque des carreaux).

I decided when I started this pattern I was also going to blog my progress on it as well as the other two patterns and all my other WIPs that are hiding in my closests, in hopes that this will keep me on track with my stitching and life...

As I said, I started Blackstone Garden on December 26th. Along with it I'm also working on Book of InkCircles (Boink) which is a SAL from Tracy Horner. We receive a portion of the pattern every three weeks from Tracy and we have 3 pieces remaining to complete it by the end of February 2009.

The top photo is the piece we just completed for December 23rd and the second photo is the complete project so far.






I am also working on the SAL from Catia Crafts. I haven't gotten as far on that one but here is the most recent photo I have on that one...

Now back to Blackstone Fantasy Garden...

I started it on 12/26/08 and I've taken a picture each day before I've started working on it so here is the progress on it so far...

This is the progress from 12/26


This is the progress from 12/27


and now 12/28


I am doing this on 32 ct belfast linen (light mocha is the color) and I'm using the thread pack developed for it from Carrie's Threads.

This is my first real project (I've done a small before but that's it) on linen and my first time using overdyed threads.

I will try to add to this blog on a daily basis but I will definitely try to make it on a weekly basis...

Thanks for reading...