I found Nepali stamps!

Hello again!  I am trying to live up to my word and post more here.  Anyways last month on the Martin Luther King Jr. American holiday, I took a trip to Durbar Square in the Patan neighborhood of Kathmandu.  This Durbar Square (there are three of them in the Kathmandu Valley which I learned when I went to the wrong one and missed my tour group) was in the Patan area.  Patan is one of the nicer, more affluent neighborhoods in Kathmandu and it also contains the Patan Museum.  My new friends and I actually discovered the museum by accident when I found the gift shop first.  

One of the first things that caught my eye in the shop were these beautiful hand carved wooden stamps.

It's been awhile since I've blogged about it but I really love to use rubber stamps to make cards so I was thrilled to find these beautiful Nepali stamps!  The top one is a lotus flower, the second row are mandala designs, then there is the eyes of Buddha (who was born in Nepal and "Buddha was born in Nepal" is a very popular bumper sticker on busses here in town), a mandala with Nepali characters, a temple image, and the number 30 with the sunburst which also represents Buddha.  

I decided to try them out the other day but unfortunately these hand carved wooden stamps don't work quite as well as rubber or plastic stamps with a stamp pad and paper...

But I am still happy I found them here and they've made their way into my stamp collection.  I may try using a paint brush to add paint to them and seeing if that will give me a better detailed image next time.  Does anyone out there have any other techniques or suggestions?  Thanks for sharing my crafting journey with me :)

First Finish of 2015!

Hello again!  Earlier this week I had my very first project finish for this year!  I came really close with Medieval Lady but my first actual finish this year is my sons owl birth sampler.

Here it was in its "infant stage" the last time I showed it to you...

And here is the big finish!

It is designed by Heather Yothers and I purchased it from her Etsy shop One of a Kind Baby Design.  The colors I chose match my sons crib bedding theme.  It will be awhile before I can get it framed and hang it up on his wall but I can't wait!  Once I completed the border and my sons first name I really lost interest because the stitching wasn't going quite as quickly as I thought it would.  That's when I had to take a small break and restart my HAED Mom and Baby Turtle.  But I did go back and once I finished the owl which I changed slightly from the chart to match the bedding, the rest stitched up fast (even the whole column of dreaded French knots!).  I'm still waiting on my one skein of thread from Amazon and then I will have another finish to show you soon.  Thank you everyone for following my progress and for all of your wonderful comments on my last post.  Happy Stitching!

Late February and VERY Late January YOTA post!

Hello fellow crafters and bloggers.  Today I am showing you my progress for the YOTA or Year of the Acronym SAL hosted by pull the other thread.  I have been stitching a lot but not blogging much this year.  I was really hoping to finish or purchase the one lonely floss I needed to complete Medieval Lady while we were home in the US but I didn't.  When we made it back to Nepal I was however able to finish all of the beading!  Here are some photos of her from January.  I only last week ordered the floss to finish her so I have no idea when I will get it in the mail.

Anyways here she is overall!

And a close up of some of the beads...

And here is a view of her beautiful face and the tiny amount of stitches left to complete when my floss arrives.

I really enjoyed stitching this design from Karen Brittan found in Cross Stitch Gold Magazine!

Ok that was what I should have posted for January...now on to February's YOTA project.  I have been dying to get back to my first HAED start Mom and Baby Turtle.  The last time I worked on it was almost a year ago and I had just finished the first page which you can see here : http://craftingacrosscontinents.blogspot.com/2014/02/first-haed-start-mom-and-baby-turtle.html

Here is the stitching I have done so far...

This page is almost twice the size of the last one.  I started working on it again because I needed a break from my son's birth sampler.  I really love the colors and haven't had too much confetti stitching to do yet.  Hopefully I'll have more to show you next month and my post will actually be on time!  Happy Stitching!

Happy New Year 2015!

Hello everyone and happy 2015 to you all.  Thank you to everyone who has stuck with me on reading this blog!  I had a very wonderful year in 2014 mostly because my son joined our sweet family.  December seemed to race by and I was busy visiting family and friends while we were home in the US.    I am pretty proud of the fact that I had 12 finishes last year (almost 13)!!

For 2015 I set a very crazy stitching goal for myself...it's to only work from my stash and not buy anything for an ENTIRE YEAR!  Yes you read that right.  I found a group on Facebook and thought that I could be ready for this challenge, so here I go.  So far 6 days in and I have kept the promise.  BUT I did buy a few things that I am waiting to arrive in the mail before 2014 ended ;).

Here are a few new stash acquisitions I received before we went home in December...

This is Thea Gouverneur's Paris kit.  I've had my eye on this kit since I first started stitching but it was always out of my budget...until it went on an amazing sale at Keepsake Needle Arts!

I also picked up this Elmo pillow kit from the sale that I thought was needlepoint after all the fun I had on my Chi Omega pillow earlier this year.  But it turns out this is a yarn cross stitch kit.  I'm sure my daughter will love it all the same when it is finished.

Also this year I have signed up for the YOTA Year of the Acronym SAL challenge again.  In the past it has really helped me dwindle down my WIPs and I will show you some progress soon.

Here is my latest start...

I know at this point it just looks like a postage stamp but this is my owl birth sampler I have started stitching for my son.  I think I had put a few stitches in it last fall and then stopped to focus on Medieval Lady.

I hope you all are enjoying the fresh start of the new year and I can't wait to see what you are up to stitching wise.  Happy Stitching and thank you for reading:)

YOTA December and I want Santa's Mittens

Happy December!  I still can't believe it's almost the second week of December and almost Christmas!  I'm a little late but I have been diligently working on my Year of the Acronym piece Medieval Lady...and she is so close to being finished 😄.  I'm writing this from my iPad so I don't have the "before" but here is where I am now...

The lighting is horrible because it's really late here but you can see her in her almost completed self.  All I have left to stitch are the flowers in the border and then add beads to them and to the cloak and the jeweled part of the dogs leash and I will be all done!!  Oh and I ran out I'd DMC #797 with only about 10 stitches left.  But I am looking forward to being able to pick them up soon when we get to travel back home to Michigan for Christmas this year!  Here is an image of Santa wearing Michigan mittens that is my theme for us this year.

After a bit of googling I found out that they sell these mittens in lots of colors at www.michiganmittens.com .  For those of you who don't know, Michigan is unofficially known as the mitten state because the Lower Peninsula is shaped like a mitten.  We Michiganders even have an odd habit of explaining to someone who is unfamiliar with where a city is located by showing them and pointing to the equivalent location on the "map" on our hand.  

I am really hoping that Santa brings me a pair of these cute mittens ;).  I also hope that I can find the time to finish Medieval Lady before the end of the year to make her my 13th finish of the year and get her framed while I'm home.  How are your Holiday plans coming along?  I hope that you find a little time to stitch during this busy time of year and happy stitching!

  

12th Finish of 2014!

Hello!  I have a small finish to share with you.  I completed this back in September or October and I don't know why I haven't shared her ...

This is Saint Kateri.  She is a present for a friend who chose her confirmation name after the saint.  I got the pattern as a freebie from the blog Do Small Things With Love.  I changed the colors a bit but this only took me a few days to finish.  I still can't believe this is my 12th finish this year!  I still have no idea how to finish her up?  Do you have any suggestions?  Until next time happy stitching!

YOTA November Progress

Hello everyone!  I can't believe it's already November.  I really need to write some posts about some fun Nepali cultural events I got to experience, but I guess I'll s. Thanks for stoe those for later.  Today is the first Saturday of the month so it's time for my Year Of The Acronym or YOTA post. 

This month I stitched only on Medieval Lady so there is loads of progress.  After September I was worried that I wouldn't finish this design by the end of the year so I decided to focus my efforts on it instead of making some new starts. 

Here's where I was last month...

And here is all the progress I made in October!

I think the most obvious progress is on the Celtic braid and that I completed the outer edge of the border.  

This design doesn't have very much backstitching.  But I tend to leave that for last and then a force myself to do it to finish or abandon it all together.  So I decided to start the backstitching early this month.  Here are some close ups of where the backstitch helps put the design into focus.

I also started both of the shields and tassels in the upper left.

And started the veil attached to the lady's hat (I still have a bunch of white to do there) on the upper right corner.

On my last post I received so many encouraging comments that the dirt I couldn't wash out wasn't noticeable.  It is there but it doesn't photograph well.  Now that I've touched all four walls, I think the dirt is far enough away that if the frame is cropped tight you won't see it.  But here is a photo where you can see one of the stains.

Yesterday was Halloween and here are some decorations I made using my Cricut cutting machine and the October 31st cartridge.

This year I had two back to back days of trick or treating with my little ones and now I am completely exhausted.  Hopefully a good night's rest will do the trick ;)  

Thanks for stopping by and I can't wait to read what new and old projects you've been stitching on.