Scarborough Needlearts Guild Stash Sale

Joanne, Judy, our driver, MaryK and I ventured to the Scarborough Needlearts Guild's stash sale this morning. It was surprisingly easy to get to St Mark's Church; 401 to Kingston Rd (Hwy2), right on Lawrence and right at the third light. It only took about 30 minutes from when we departed.

There was a massive amount of items: kits, patterns, threads, beads, accessories, partially completed kits, etc. etc. I filled a bag with items that I thought I would use and made a donation of $25 to the guild.

I didn't buy this but was intrigued by the simple pattern stitched onto gingham; almost sashiko-esque. It was actually a day planner cover. The label had nothing to do with the day planner - not sure why it was in there.

Here is what I came away with:

14ct and 16ct Aida cloth and a tube of 28ct black Monaco. Aida is great when stitching things with all-over coverage. When I did my pumpkin pincushion (which I'll highlight in my next post), I didn't have enough white Aida to do the project.

Thread snips (I tested them for sharpness), some corsage pins (inspired by Bev's decorative pins), and two spools of variegated Sulky Petites thread.

A large piece of red linen. Will have to test to see what count it is.

A Stacy Nash sampler pattern. Too big for a triangular scissor case and not oriented in the way I prefer but the sampler pattern is nice.

Some 30ct linen, 2 skeins of GAST Weathered Barn, and a skein of GAST School House Red thread.

Rosewood Manor Medallions. I don't have anything in mind for this but I could use the motifs for several different projects.

This little knotwork pattern could be enlarged for a punch needle project. Not sure I'd do it as knotwork; all those French knotssssss.....

Partially finished Papillon Creations project. The top was done but there are other motifs and the threads were included.

There were a couple of projects in each of these magazines that intrigued me.

And I'm most excited about acquiring this definitive Schwalm embroidery book from a class Barbara Kershaw did in 2009. 

I remember one of my knitting friends working on it all those years ago. I had no idea at the time what Schwalm even was. Then several years ago I started my own little whitework project and I still have two squares to fill in. I'm positive I'll find at least two designs to complete my project. I may even add another row or column to it. 

I am very pleased with my new acquisitions. 

I had planned to stitch all afternoon but the weather today was spectacular and the forecast for the next few days not so. 

I made myself go outside and clean up the garden beds somewhat, filling one yard waste bag. I pulled some dandelions and cut down some stalks I had left in the late fall. The echinacea seed heads had been picked clean by the birds. I have a lot of rogue oregano that had to be pulled out and my taller Joe Pye weed stalks needed to be removed. 

Arrangements have been made for my tooth extraction and implant which will take place next week. I decided to not be stoic and only go with a local anaesthetic and instead have opted for conscious sedation. I won't be knocked out; just 'floating' and won't remember the procedure afterwards. A very kind friend will be chauffeuring me to and from the appointment.

Three Bears

I met my long-time friend, Paulette, for lunch today. We met over 25 years ago while playing in the same community concert band. She played the flute, and I the oboe. We have kept in touch via Facebook all this time and get together for a gabfest once or twice a year.

Since she's known me through many of my ups and downs, I consider her a special friend - one who really merited one of my amazing little knitted bears. This is my second-newest one and as yet he has no name.

But he's dang cute, and little like Paulette. She gets the honour of naming him, too, as I hadn't already assigned one to him.

My crafty friend and travel buddy, Poppy, asked me to make one for her, a girl,  with a sweater in her favourite colour - watermelon. She even gave me some watermelon-coloured yarn as, believe it or not, I didn't have any already in my stash. She gets to name her, too.

I delivered it today so she could take her to Vancouver this weekend.

She seems to have settled in as indicated by Poppy's latest text.

With Poppy away for a week next week, I thought Sparky could use some company so Everett went to live with him, too.

Everett, too, has settled in nicely in East Oshawa. In fact, he looks pretty cool just hanging out. Hopefully Sparky won't get too lonely with Poppy away next week. I'm pretty sure Everett will be good company for him.

I know these three bears will live happily ever after. 

Stitch North Spring 2026

Poppy, Barb, and I arrived at the Marriott Courtyard Hotel in Brampton last Thursday night at 6, registered, and unloaded the car. Then we headed to Pos Bueno Mexican Restaurant downtown for supper. Seeing as it was my birthday, the management gave me celebratory churros for dessert. Yum!

Friday morning, Barb and Poppy were close to the front of the line to get into the ballroom and secured spots for us. We were joined by Katie and Clare - both from Toronto. They got a great table beside a wall where we could lean our bags, and with an electrical outlet nearby; handy for charging lamps between bouts of stitching.

There were about 32 tables with 7 chairs at each. Most chairs were filled, although we did have an empty (defective) chair at our table - so only 6 of us.

I started two projects:

Hello from Liz Mathews’ ‘Merry Christmas Quaker Star’ from last year’s Jingle Ball. I’m doing it with the called-for DMC floss, 1 over 1 on 28ct Monaco from my stash.

I hauled out this long-abandoned sea turtle project,

and suffered my first casualty. Fortunately, one of the vendors,  ‘Gammas Treasures’ supplied bandaids to our retreat goodie bag.

I also had one finish - the Pumpkin Biscornu. I’ll sew it together and stuff it when I get back home.

As I wrote this on Friday, I was scarfing down popcorn up in our room, preparing to go back downstairs for ‘Make Your Own Sub’ for supper.

Door prize tickets were drawn at 8pm (didn't win anything) and the ballroom stayed open for stitching until 11pm. 

We stitched 'til about 9:30.

Days later...

Saturday we continued stitching. We had lunch each day at Wendy's/Tim's across the parking lot and went for dinner at Boston Pizza just down the road on Saturday night.

This was as far as I got on my 'birthday start'. 

My new stitchy friend, Amanda, showed me more features I could use on my Markup R-XP software - making it easier to stitch from black and white charts.

With my newfound knowledge, I was able to get a lot of stitching done on my Jan Hicks 'Love Birds'. Once home, I was quite obsessed with working on it some more.

Of course, Ernest was my supervisor.

Another project I finished was adding the 'bling' to my 'Smitten' project. I just need to figure out how I want to finish it. For scale, Ernest is 5 1/2" tall.

I participated in the smalls exchange. I had duplicates of the hummingbird biscornu and scissor case. Our table was the last one called. My donation and one other was left. This is what I received - a very cute, tiny, colourful flatfold. We stitched until 10pm.

Barb wasn't there when we took the group photo on Sunday before our departure; she was loading the car with her stuff. From left to right: Poppy, Clare, me, Katie, and Amanda.

I thoroughly enjoyed the whole weekend. Getting there and home via the $$$ 407 $$$ was a delight.

On Monday morning, I surveyed the stitchers and MaryK was keen to attend Stitch North in the fall and has consented to be my roomie. Last night I signed up for the retreat and booked our room. She was going to sign up today.

It's always fun spending time with enthusiastic stitchers. There were lots of vendors but I didn't buy much and nothing for myself. My current stash is vast so I'm hard pressed to expand it unless I have a use for any stitching item I would create.

Next up will be our stitch day this Saturday - the first Saturday of May. That's also the first day of the 'Victorian Embroidery Sampler' by Why Not Knitting Academy which I'll try to keep up with every day for a week. Videos of the live stream will be available for 30 days.

I've got it all kitted up and ready to go. 

Pumpkin Pincushion

While rummaging around in a pile on my desk, I found another abandoned project - a partially done Blackwork Pincushion that I started (then abandoned) back in 2022. Kim Beamish's design was in the October 2022 issue of Just Cross Stitch Magazine.

The partially completed  piece was stapled to a printed copy of the chart. I'm doing it on 14ct Aida because it's full coverage. This makes it very easy to stitch as one doesn't need to be quite so careful counting threads than if it were on an evenweave or linen.

I was missing one of the colours - DMC Variations 4124 and ventured to Michaels after stitching yesterday to pick it up. It's a variegated orange thread. 

Michaels didn't have it so I bought 4130 instead.

Well that didn't work at all. Instead, I decided to stitch with one strand each of the lighter and darker pumpkin colours in the pattern. That worked out much better. Then I added the blackwork.

There are two charts for this pattern - one for the top and one for the bottom. Initially I was going to use quilting fabric for the bottom but didn't find anything appropriate in my stash so have decided to stitch the bottom after all - basically the same.

Then came the hunt for more 14ct Aida fabric...

I seem to have given most of it away or stashed it someplace that I've forgotten about. The only white 14ct Aida I have is some Fiddler's Lite that I must have bought back in the Mesozoic Era for only $4.86 (plus tax, I'm sure).

Just out of curiosity, I did a search for what it costs today on the open market.

Yikes!

Since it's all-over coverage, it doesn't matter that it's a different colour fabric - as long as the fabric count is the same. 

Thursday's going to be a BIG DAY. The girlies are taking me out for brunch for my birthday, then I'm heading up to Quilter's Cupboard to take advantage of my 20% birthday discount. I have my eye on the wool felt appliqué kit - Fine Feathered Friends.

Not that I need any more fabric or projects (cough), but there may be something else that appeals to me.

Then I'll scurry home and get packed up to head to Brampton for the first weekend of the Stitch North Retreat with Barb and Poppy that begins the next day. 

There will be lots of vendors there selling hand-dyed fabrics, stitching supplies, project bags and stitching mats, needle minders, patterns, etc. Who knows what I'll be tempted to buy there?

But before all that festivity, tomorrow I'll be visiting my dentist to see about a broken tooth. The lingual cusp of one of my premolars cracked last week and is only held in place buy suction and the gum. I'm hoping it can be patched up so I can again chew on the left side of my mouth.  More work will need to be done on it, in fact I'm scheduled for a root canal on that tooth mid-May.

Another Project Finished

I've continued to work on the Silk Sampler from Yvette Stanton's 'Frisian Whitework' book and finished it last night.

It was quite different from usual stitching on linen in that most of the elements are over 3 threads, not 2 so looking for the more open holes doesn't work. 

I liked how easy it was to un-stitch when I found mistakes and usually could use the same strand of Perle cotton again. It used a lot of thread but only one ball of B5200 was required. I had two balls of it but one looked lighter than the other - almost like the one I was using was Blanc and the other was B5200 but they both had the same label. No matter, though, because I got the whole sampler done with the one ball.

Initially I was drawn to this design because my late stitching friend, Sharon, had this hanging in the foyer of her home and I used to admire it every time I saw it. She told me our stitching friend, Sylvia, had stitched it so I asked Sylvia about the pattern and it was she who told me about his lovely book.

Of course, I ordered the book and found the pattern. The original was stitched with many colours of hand-dyed silk threads.

It is lovely but I like the all-white version better.

I would like to order a frame for it but I'm still waiting for the rest of my previous order to arrive. I sent them an email yesterday so hope to hear from them about it soon. I'd like to get another couple of pieces framed, too. 

I've been on such a journey to get some of these old pieces finished and fully finished. I'm gearing up for my birthday start.

I've also been half-assed working on the biscornu stitchalong.

I got tired of counting a lot so added some grid lines last night. There's a lot of 'confetti' so only counting within a 10 x 10 area is a lot easier.

I have also signed up for a week-long stitchalong that starts on May 4. It's the Victoria Sampler Challenge from Why Not Stitching Academy.

It's a pincushion that features several different stitches - two colours of DMC thread and some beads.

I was going to print the design on Sticky Fabri-Solvy and stitch through it and the fabric. I decided instead to use my lightbox and trace the design right on my fabric. I ordered new Frixion pens because all my other ones are crap and the felt-tipped one that does work makes lines that are too thick for this project. 

I also want to start this design I've admired from Hobby House Needleworks.

I'm sure I have appropriate fabric in my stash. I just need to settle on what thread colour I'll use. DMC 115 is nicely variegated but there are bits of it where the red is too bright and I didn't want to be cutting those bits out (as I have on another project). I'll go through my thread stash and decide on a colour. 

All this planning and thinking about stitching is because I'm gearing up for Stitch North this weekend. Kimat Designs will be there as vendors so perhaps Meagan and Kim will have suggestions for me. I would like a slightly variegated thread for this.

When I take a break from stitching, I work on my Mystical Lanterns crocheting. I have about 40 of the 154 lanterns done. 

Every once and a while I pick up my Helix sock project. I'm about halfway through the foot of the second sock.

The light-coloured yarn will be removed later, the stitches above and below it will be picked up and the afterthought heel will be inserted. I forget why the stitch marker is there...

It's going to be a busy week.

Somewhat Obsessed...

Since getting reacquainted with the Yvette Stanton 'Silk Sampler' piece from her 'Frisian Whitework' book, I've become quite obsessed with working on it.

I had a lot of trouble doing the horizontal spacer lines of chain stitches until I ran some sewing thread through that line, spacing the running stitches in 3s - the width of each chain stitch. Much less bad language was uttered after that. 

Looking at this photo, I realized I've left out a couple of elements in band 5 which I'll go back and add.

My daffodils are in various stages of blooming - depending on where they are located and how much sun they get. 

In the back garden.

By the corner of the deck (SE exposure)

By the side door (full eastern exposure).

We still have about 6 weeks until the danger of frost is past. I look forward to all the colour in the garden.

This photo from last year popped up on my phone yesterday. It made me very happy. 

I'll be glad when all this gloomy, rainy weather abates.