Back To Stitching

 Dear readers of my blog,
I know the break was a little too long but it was so much needed. When you come back home after a long trip, you need some time to readjusted to a new pace of life. It is not a simple thing I should say. Those of you who went through this once will understand me better. It is really a strange feeling: you are happy to come back home but there is a lot of sadness in your heart that you have left your family and friends...
It was a very nice visit with my family, which was so nicely extended lately. Catching up with my friends and colleagues was also in my plans but I spent most of the time with my mother and, of course, with my granddaughter Julia. The sweet little girl is happily spoiled by her parents and numerous grandparents and grand-grandparents. My DIL and I took  lots of pictures of Julia and when I came back home my husband and I spend 4 hours seeing all the pictures and short videos we had taken. 
Julia has already made some achievements, her photo won first place in a photo contest among kids of her age and she was awarded with a toy giraffe - the ugliest thing! - my DIL says :-)) .
When Julia was sleeping, DIL and I did some crafting. My DIL taught me macrame knotting and I taught her to sew and knit, and together we made quite a few  little things for Julia.

Before I left for home, I made this box for Julia, it is kind of a memory box, where her parents will keep her bracelets from the hospital, her first shirt, her fist toy, something which she likes now and later it will be interesting for both her parents and her to look through these things and remember the time when Julia was a baby.

              Olenka's Stitches Designs "Birth Record Sampler"
Julia was born in the year of Rabbit so I put a rabbit in her sampler. It took me a lot of time to find a pretty silver spoon and when I saw this spoon I thought it was just what I wanted.

 If you are interested in buying my designs, please contact me. My e-mail is in my Profile.

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When I came back home I finished Ellen Maurer-Stroh "Rose Sampler", one of my oldest UFO-s. It was stitched 1x1 on 22 ct. Hardanger. I am quite pleased with how it turned out.

It was always hard to get  true colors of this sampler , the second picture gives better presentation of the sampler:

As I did not feel like stitching these long several months, I punished myself and made me frame the finished pieces. For some of the pieces the mats and frames were already bought, for others - I used frames from my stash and slightly painted them to match the pieces better.

               "Mary Wigham Sampler", stitched 1x1 on 26 ct. Evenweave

             Bucilla "Wedding Sampler", stitched 2x2 jn 32 ct. Evenweave 

    "Windmill Landscape" for my husband, stitched 2x2 on 28 ct. Evenweave

               Mirabilia "Trick Or Treat Fairy" stitched 2x2 on 32 ct. Linen

I think I have started missing cross stitching and in the next post I will show to you something new.

This year we are having extremely high temperatures with almost no rain - drought. Everything and everybody are suffering from it. When I came home, my garden was in a poor condition and we lost a few of our pet chickens, duck and rabbits due to it - needless to say it was a hard time for me...

I have rescued most of my plants and we began to feed wild animals long before a state of emergency was declared in our parish. At first I used plastic containers from ice cream to give water and food to birds and small animal. But when we learned that the heat will last till November I made a few more attractive bird baths and feeders

I always place a few rocks inside the bowls for small birds.  In spite of the still continuous drought there appeared some flowers in my garden and I hope you enjoy them as much as I do:                                       

I'd like to thank everyone who kept coming to my blog, left comments, became followers and e-mailed me , I appreciate this.

Happy stitching to everyone and take care!