Paddy, plantings, and counted cross stitch I have done in the past

Hi to anyone still reading this. The last few weeks of summer got a bit crazy, what with being chosen for a jury, getting a ninth and eleventh grader ready to return to school, an earthquake and two hurricanes (well, technically, only Irene was a hurricane, Lee was just an amazing amount of water with not much wind to speak of by the time it reached us. Caused major flooding in the area, so the kids got two more days off school, in addition to the one they missed due to Irene.

But I am back to stitching, hooray! Spent yesterday afternoon at my Tangle group (anyone in the DC area interested in attending, just let me know), and we were doing salt silk dying. Here are some pictures of the scarf I did.

I love how the fabric looks very watery. Basically, you wet the fabric down, the spray with the colors of dye you want, then spray with water and sprinkle salt over it. I used kosher salt, which gives little tiny pools where the dye gets pulled up by the salt--each of the "bubbles" is around a salt crystal.

And here is Paddy, a couple weeks ago and yesterday--haven't had much "me-time" to stitch on him lately, but now the kids are back in school, hopefully I'll have more time to work on him.

Paddy's right leg, padded and started

Right leg mostly finished.

I had some cotton floche in a bright red which I used as padding, and just couched it down, then I started doing the long and short to cover it. Once I finish that, I'll do the metallic over his tail and then his hind legs.

My tropical trees have done well this summer. I am particularly amazed at the plumeria, she went leaf crazy.

Plumeria

Granny Weatherwax, the avocado tree

Lemon tree. I have two cats who like the taste of lemon. I always thought cats hated the taste of citrus

Castanospermum, an Australian tree

Hopefully, this fall will mark the last time I have to bring all these guys into the house for the winter, as we plan to build a greenhouse for my tropical gardening obsession. I am hoping we can make it large enough that I can set aside a stitching corner and turn it into a conservatory sort of space. It is the one room in stately English homes I really, truly envied.

Here are some of my other embroidery endeavors, in counted cross stitch. I have a couple of large counted projects I am working on, including a wedding sampler chinese style from Pinn stitch (no, I don't have a picture of it in progress... yet...) and a frog by Jo Lynch from the Heaven and Earth website. These are all finished projects, including the framing and hanging...

Teresa Wentzler's The Castle, finished as a hanging banner

 Curtis Boehringer's Queen Anne's Lace, from a series of which I only did this one because my Mum-in-law loves this flower. I was given it back after she passed away.

Anne Orr's pansy banner, inserted into a Sudberry box, also given to Mum-in-law, as she also adored pansies. I did this one ages ago, and she did not give color numbers, you just matched up the floss colors to match her colored in graphs. I used the closest matches I could find, and was quite sure I was getting the colors horribly wrong, but Mum-in-law had pansies in all these color sets.

I also put in an order for a new counted canvas project called Amazing Colors, which I purchased with the money I got for being on a jury. I ordered it from 123 Stitch, and Nancy there was so very nice about putting together all the supplies--except for the Threadworx which she does not carry.  I believe they are carried by Bedecked and Bedazzled, which gives me an excuse to go there--although it is dangerous territory for those of us known for our ability to get high on color.

THE Magpie