SFS2015 B October Report

Month: October
Earned: $14.00
Spent: $ 26.67
Carried over from September: $ 1.17
Budget: $ 25.00
To be carried over to November: $ 13.50

Hello dear friends and followers,

it's been a while since I last posted here, but life kept me more than busy! I did however manage to squeeze in a little stitching, here is the piece I have just finished today:

Isn't he a cute fellow? What about you out there, are you also already busy stitching for Christmas? Only a few more weeks left...

I'll be back on Saturday with the letter of the month, which is going to be D. I already have something very Austrian in mind for this...

Happy stitching to all of you,
Silvia

September SFS-B 2015 report

Earned: $ 16.00
Spent: $ 94.21
Carried over from August: $ 54.38
Budget: $25.00
To be carried over to October: $ 1.17

Hello dear friends and followers,

it's hard to believe that another month is already over. This September I have done a lot of shopping for Christmas stitching, both presents and projects I want to stitch and sell at a Christmas market. But I managed to stay within my budget, yay! I guess that the next two month will see a lot of stash money earned by those projects, well, at least I hope so.

I finished a lovely project that still needs some framing, I already have the frame at home but still need to do the work ;-) and a small project a stitched for an exchange.

For a wonderful friend of mine a plan to stitch a Lizzie Kate design for Christmas. He has had some pretty hard times lately and this little saying has become a kind of code word for us when he needs some uplifting, so it might made a very suiting small present:

I had to buy the chart, the threads and the fabric, this explains why I nearly blew my budget this month as I also bought some other small treats.

I hope you are all having a good time and enjoying autumn or spring, depending on where on this beautiful planet you live.

Best wishes to you all,
Silvia

THE ALPHABET CLUB - LETTER "B"

Hello dear friends and followers,

it has been a loooong, hot summer here in Austria and with the start of September autumn has finally arrived. So it did not take me long to come up with a "B"-word for my contribution to the Alphabet Club this month. For details of this fun club please click on the icon to the right. The word that I chose for this month is:

BLUTZER

So what have...

... these three pieces of stitching...

... in common?

Your guess was right, there is a pumpkin on each of them! So the word you learned today is used in wide parts of Austria for the standard German word "Kürbis".

As pumpkins tend to be round and sometimes quite large, it is also used for the human head, especially a rather large one. For example for "I hit my head" (Ich habe mir den Kopf angehauen) you could say "I hob ma den blutzer anghaut".

Pumpkins are widely grown here in Austria and used to cook wonderful autumnal dishes. The Styrian Oil Pumpkin is not grow for its fruit pulp, but for its seeds, that are used to obtain the "Styrian Gold" - pumpkin seed oil.

It may sound a little strange at first, but one delicious way to eat it is to pour some over vanilla ice cream, yummy!!

Your can also roast the seeds and eat them for a healthy snack, the come salted, with cinnamon or vanillia or chili...

And to give one of you the chance to taste them, I decided to have a little giveaway this month:

A packet of roasted and salted pumpkin seeds from an organic farm only a few kilometres from where I live. If you are interested, please leave a comment saying that you would like to receive them. If there will be more than one entry, the winner will be randomly chosen.

So I wish a wonderful and hopefully sunny autumn to all of you out there, and if you're living in the southern hemisphere, have a lovely spring!

August SFS-B 2015 report

Month: August:
Spent: $28.27
Earned: $6.00
Budget: $25.00
Carried over from July: $51.65
To be carried over to September: $54.38

Hello dear friends and followers,

the end of August in nearing and so it's time to my monthly Stitch From Stash report.

I have only managed one finish this month, but this really is a stitch from stash, it has been in my stash for several years and this group inspired me to finally get it out and work on it.

It came as a kit from DMC together with a second one with a dog on it, which has long been sent to a friend.

I ordered some goodies from Stoney Creek: The latest issue of their magazine, some fabric and threads and a prefinished bookmark.

It has not really to do something with stitching, but I want to share with you the little fellow I crocheted recently:

Sally Sheep

Isn't she lovely? It was fun to do something different for a change.

Hope you all are having a nice late summer weekend!

Hugs, Silvia

IHSW August 2015

Hello dear friends and followers,

it has been a really hot weekend, most likely the last one like this for a long time...
I took lots of time to sit outside in a shady place and stitch to my little heart's content. Friday noon I started here:

 It is a design from a spring issue of Cross Stitcher called "Locked on you" and I really enjoy working on it. On Sunday afternoon I finished the top half and now it looks like this:

The first photo is much more true to the actual color. I hope to be able to finish it soon, because my fingers are already itching to start some Christmas project.

What are you all up too stitching wise?

Greetings from good old Austria!
Silvia

THE ALPHABET CLUB - LETTER "A"

Hello dear friends and followers,

I joined The Alphabet Club hosted by lovely Chiara over at "The Grey Tail".

It is a fun idea, we post a letter each month, starting with "A" and get creative with it. I chose to post words in my mother tongue, Viennese German. Those of you who speak standard German, be warned: This may look like a completely different language to you sometimes! ;-)

So here is my word for this month:

ACHTERL

You can hear the word spoken here. I would pronounce it a little different, the speaker is definitely not from our region, but it gives you an idea.

There is a lot of wine grown around here, both white (Grüner Veltliner, Riesling...) and red (Zweigelt, Blauburger...) one and many winegrowers have small wine bars that are open for a few weeks every year, named Heuriger. There the wine and the food (only cold dishes allowed) are rather cheap and it is the perfect place to spend a warm summer evening. You usually order your wine by the amount of an "Achterl", which means 1/8 of a liter. If I would like to order a glass of red house wine I therefore would say "A Achterl Rot, bitte" (the "A" means "Ein" = "One" in Viennese German, so this month's letter alone would also be a word).

I'm looking forward to seeing what everybody else posted, hope you all have fun with this idea!

Greetings to all of you, I am off to the next Heurigen! ;-)

July SFS 2015-B report

Earned: $30.00
Spent: $3.35
Budget: $25.00
To be carried over to August: $ 51.65

Hello dear friends and followers,

time for my monthly report on Stitch From Stash. As I enjoyed a two week holiday at home, I was able to do a little more stitching than usually, which really boosted my budget.

Here is the finished HUG pillow that earned me $ 16.00:

I also finished a cover kit from a magazine, a lizzie*kate design called "My To Do List" and a Christmas design by Stoney Creek (has been a UFO for three years with about a third of it stitched and was finished only yesterday). I will show you pictures of these two finishes when I have finished them into a standup and a framed picture. So stay tuned for these two lovely projects :-)

Summer greetings from Austria,
Silvia