The One Million Page Views Giveaway

Rebecca Wood's Haunted House

Sometime in early May Blog hit a major milestone--one million page views!  This is pretty astounding to me.  The number when I first drafted this article two weeks ago stood at 1,019,475 which is the sum of the page views when Blog was hosted at Yahoo and the current page views here at Blogger.  Amazing!

dede Odgen's Tassel Wreath

In celebration, I'm teaming with RS to give away two needlepoint canvases.  One is a haunted house by Rebecca Wood and the other is an ornate tassel wreath by dede Odgen.  The tassel wreath is on 13 count needlepoint canvas with a design area that is 16 inches square.  The Halloween house is on 18 count canvas and the design area is 12 inches wide by 16 1/4 inches tall.  Note that this is the house and moon only.  I think a stitcher might want to stitch several more inches of background, depending on how this is finished, and there is room to add 2-3 more inches all the way around if you like. The tassel wreath piece doesn't have much canvas margin, especially since the edges have been turned under and sewn to prevent unraveling.  Still, these are both large canvases.

I'm going to include helpful books with the painted canvases.  Haunted house comes with two June McKnight books--her Architectural Stitches book and her Needlepoint Wisdom book--to help the contest winner get to work building a house with stitches.  These books are old and the book of architectural stitches is well loved but they are fabulous books for painted canvas stitchers.

Tassel wreath also comes with two books--Needlepoint 101 and Needlepoint 202 from Ruth Dilts.  These books are like new.  They show how Ruth stitches twenty different canvases with tips, stitch diagrams and encouragement to help anyone learn to stitch like Ruth.  The introduction to the first book is particularly helpful to those who are tackling a painted canvas on their own for the very first time.

Ok, for the rules:  Place a comment here telling me which canvas you prefer.  (Or email the same information to me at chilly hollowat hot maildot com.)  I'm hoping that intermediate level stitchers who are unsure of stitching painted canvases will enter this contest as the canvases are really more suited to someone with a little experience doing fancier stitches who has a stash of threads to draw on.  You have until June 5.  On June 6 our contest patron RS will pick a number between x and y for each contest.  I'll announce the winners sometime June 6.  (I'm not sure when, since RS has a somewhat busy schedule. )

If you are an experienced painted canvas person who could stitch these without much trouble, please don't enter.  I'll do a contest for you later.  Just enter if painted canvases are intimidating to you.  With a free canvas you can probably stitch mostly from your stash, you will be free to play around without the pressure of "ruining" the design--which is impossible, by the way--and you will have some help in the form of the books with each canvas.

Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com and at http://chstitchguides.blogspot.com

Stars (for Glenis)

I'm in a bit of trouble with Glenis, who misses seeing progress on my Stars for the New Millennium piece.  I hope the fact that Liz is gathering threads to get started on her own version will make her happy, particularly since Liz says she's going to pair with Jan at Thread Medley and they will work the project together.
http://lizartblog.blogspot.com/2011/05/stars-for-new-millenium.html

http://threadmedley.wordpress.com/2011/05/24/stars-of-the-new-millennium-by-tony-minieri-colors/

The Spinister Stitcher is busy with her patriotic colors version, too. I love that she is working from the bottom up.  It's a preview for me of the blocks I'll be doing when I get back to this.
http://spinsterstitcher.blogspot.com/2011/05/why-my-mo-ther-is-daft-cow-by-master.html

http://spinsterstitcher.blogspot.com/2011/05/holey-schmoley.html

I really have to get back to it but there are deadlines.  My mother's not getting any younger, you know!

Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com and at http://chstitchguides.blogspot.com