Happy October!

Uh Oh! It's the start of October, and you know what THAT means: a month filled with black cats and bats and witches' hats, right?  Are you stitching on something black and orange right now?  Are you pulling out a new Halloween design or perhaps getting back to work on something you started last October?

As for me, I was switching out my framed seasonal stitchery pieces, putting away the summer ones and hanging up the autumn pieces around the house.  One of the designs I put away was the LONE STAR COTTAGE, with its cheerful summery flowers (yellow roses, cone flowers, and black-eyed susans):

And all of a sudden, inspiration struck!  Why haven't I designed a Halloween-themed house?!?  Well, DUH, how much fun would that be to stitch???  So I whipped out a bunch of autumnal colored threads, a piece of sandstone canvas, did a bit of graphing, and started stitching.

I decided to make it my STITCHING CHALLENGE for this week, to see if I could "marathon" and get the model stitched and the pattern finished so I could release it this month.  Pant, pant, pant.....After a week of stitching, here's a peek at what the model looks like so far:

I've decided that this house will have a definite Autumn-y feel, but not precisely Halloween-y.  I like having something that can be displayed for a few months during the appropriate season, so this will be nice to look at during October and November....
 
Yesterday, while watching the Ryder Cup finals, I got the trees stitched, the owl (hidden in the tree), the pumpkins, the cattails on the porch, and the start of the lawn done.  Still to go: the flagstone path, the black cat (of course!), the rest of the lawn, chrysanthemums on the bushes,and itty bitty pumpkin stems.  Whew, almost done! .... Then it's on to the instructions to get everything on the Main Graph and all the text written.  It's a scramble, and I usually give myself a LOT more time to get patterns done, but I feel confident I can pull this one off in time! 

Oh, and by the way, I think I'm gonna call this one "HARVEST MOON HOUSE" (cuz there's a big fat moon hanging above the house).... Stay tuned for further developments on this new piece....