Sad News

... Four months  have already passed since my dearest Mother died. Her death left a huge hole in my heart which is badly bleeding and aching. There are no proper words to fully express my grief, and I feel that time does not heal anything at all ...
My Mother, sweet, caring, understanding, was talented in so many ways. What I can do now and what I am  - I mainly owe to my Mother.  I do not remember a moment when her hands were idle. She used to watch TV and either sew or knit or crochet. Now she is in so many things around me that I can still feel the warmth of her hands.
Mother was an amazing gardener, it seemed she could make a stick bloom, and she passed her love to flowers to me. This spring my garden is doing so well that it looks like it pays tribute to the memory of my Mother.
This post I'd like to devote to my Mother and to show some of her works and her favorite flowers to my friends and readers of my blog.

I love you, Mother, and I am missing you so very much.....

Back To Stitching, Another Try

 I have not blogged for such a long time that now I do not know what to begin with. 
Well, life has been a little too tough here. My husband is now recovering from his third operation this year. It's needless to say how much I worried  him. I do not know  if it was because of these worries or of stitching on the high count fabric during my trips and of spending too much time at the computer but my eyesight worsened very much. I  reconsidered my hobbies when I had to change my prescription glasses twice within 10 days. I put my cross stitching aside and spend more time walking, gardening, listening to music and learning a new hobby. The break,  that I got, was really necessary,  it is not bad, you know,  sometimes to stop "to smell roses" and to think where you are going to. Now I think I can try to start stitching a little and see how it goes. I have a couple of my own designs ready for stitching and 2 WIPs.  It is a little scary to resume stitching these two pieces, I already do not remember where the charts and needles and floss are - of course, it is a joke, I know where everything is, I just need a little time to get everything ready. I showed pictures of one of my WIPs, "M'Lady's Chateau" before. I added just a few stitches to it :

Another WIP is a beautiful "Futurecast" By Teresa Wentzler.

I wanted to finish this work this year but I guess it can wait.

You might wonder what my new hobby is. Those, who knows me a little, must know that I have always liked beads, metallic floss. And my new hobby is closely connected with my long time favorites.
I have started making jewelry, I made some jewelry before but it was just amateur stringing. Now I am learning different techniques on a more serious level. I enjoy my new hobby enormously! It is easier on my eyes and jewelry making has so many ways to express yourself. In cross stitch I often wanted to make the design look lacy and air-y and I got often upset when I could not reach  the lacy look. In jewelry making I think I  have found what I wanted. I've tried many techniques and think wire wrapping, weaving and sculpturing will be my favorites. I like to make necklaces most of all:

  This dark blue stone is called Blue Sandstone, it is very attractive due to the great amount of Quartz grains in it. Its numerous sparkles create 3 D effect. In the second picture you can see these sparkles better.

 My husband shares my hobby with me and he is very happy that I came to it. It turned out that we both have liked rocks. Our love for rocks is a little different: my husband likes to collect the rocks, tumble and drill them and I like making jewelry with his rocks.
These two pendants are made from the stones my husband tumbled and polished for me:

 When I first started making the jewelry I thought I would never make earrings and rings, it looked absolutely not interesting for me. But when I tried to make the first pair of earrings, I hooked on them, the same was with the rings:

Some time ago I was asked to show my jewelry and I started a new blog which I called My Jewelry Box  .  Welcome to my new blog! There you can see more of my works and read about them a little. The blog does not have many posts yet, I will be working on the new blog little by little.

 If you are interested in buying my jewelry or cross stitch designs, please, e-mail me. My e-mail address is in my profile.
 My garden was doing much better this season mostly thanks to the good rains which we luckily had during the hottest months. Now most of my Azaleas got a little crazy : they are blooming! I do not know if they will be able to bloom another time in spring.
Here are some pictures from my garden, hope you enjoy them:

                   Thank you for coming! Your comments are always treasured.
Happy stitching to every one!

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!

Exciting News

I have an excuse for such a long absence from blogging. About a month ago my first granddaughter was born.  We had worried so much about DIL's condition and the baby, now when these worries vanished we can feel our hearts filling with special love to our Julia (Юлька).
I arrived in Russia on the day when DIL and the baby were released from hospital and I can already tell you that I've fulfilled the main task of grandparents - the baby is completely spoiled! with our love.                                                                  

As far as cross stitch is concerned, I should say that I could not stitch during those months of worries, I only pushed myself into doing this but without much success. I turned to other crafts and started renovations of my stitching room which better kept my mind busy.
Worrying is not the best friend of creativity, I managed to finish only one of my desings. Now the Snowman from"Let It Snow!" has got a girl friend:

Olenka's Stitches Designs "Let It Snow! -2"

I wanted to finish my "Rose Sampler" which I started almost two years ago but I coudn't. I stitched a little more than it is in the picture, a couple more hours of stitching  and it will be finished.

 I started renovations of my stitching room but did not finish the job either. I gave a second life to some old furniture which my husband wanted to get rid of. He was very kind to help me sand it, then I painted, aged and sealed it.

This chest of draws will serve as a great storage for my craft supplies.

The bookshelf's got some changes and will be used for exhibiting my "smalls", collectibles, and books on crafts.

For the computer table I refinished this box:

I also made two pincushions, one is that round one in a wood frame. It turned out rather pretty and I thought of making something simple so I could stick in pins and needles without any fear. Somehow this "simple" pincushion turned into this charming Rat Lariska (крыска Лариска), now she will be guarding my cross stitch treasures in this box.

 I was packing for my trip in a great hurry, my cross stitch program was installed in the new laptop with an error and I do not think I can use it here. I only had time to put a few kits into my suitcase. I started one of them here. This is about one month job:

The kit contained Aida 14, I replaced it for Evenweave 25ct. and I stitch the pattern one over one using full crosses.

 

My DIL is rather good at some crafts. Since my first day here we began to make some blankets and shirts for the baby. Then we switched to knitting baby booties, hats, jackets, skarves, etc. Baby's little things are so pretty and we enjoy making them for our little girl. The picture on the top of the post and this one show the booties we made. I will post some more pictures next time.

I want to thank all my readers for your patience.Thank you for coming to my blog and a special "thank you " for those who finds time to leave comments, I always appreciate this.

Take care and happy stitching to everyone.