Measi's Musings

Lots of folks have been checking in with their Wipocalypse updates for May.  Keep them coming!  A few people have emailed me theirs, and I’ll be replying this weekend as I add those links to the excel sheet that I’m using to keep track of check-ins.

I’ve finished my stitching for this round on Witches Wheel. Sorry for the slightly blurry photograph – I took it on the Amtrak train home to Providence tonight, and while I shot the photo in a relatively smooth area of the trip, the tracks between Boston and Providence are a bit bumpy.

Next round I think I’ll focus on filling in at least one of the other faces. My original plan was to do a quarter of the pattern at a time, but I think it’s probably a better idea to work out from the center on this one and fill in each similar motif around the circle to ensure that everything’s balanced correctly.

I’m not sure if I’ll bring any pieces with me for my commutes for the rest of the week. The weather has been quite rainy lately and I don’t want to risk getting anything wet during my walks from the train to work. I bought the new Sookie Stackhouse novel last night, so I’ll probably just inhale that by Friday. Next week, though, I’ll bring my Mirabilia round robin with me to attempt to get the rest of the cross stitches complete.

I’ve also been working on Pocketful of Peppermint by Blue Ribbon Designs for the last few days. I’m still in the early stages on the piece, creating some of the border squares. I’d like to do all of the borders first, then fill in each individual square separately. I should have my 10 hours done with that by the end of the week.

This weekend is International Hermit and Stitch weekend. I have a full weekend planned already, so I don’t know if I’ll have much time to stitch. Whatever time I do have, I’ll put into Floral Bellpull and try to push that fifth square forward a bit.

Hope you’re having a great week!

If you’re looking to check in with your WIPocalypse updates, here’s the correct post.

Due to some insanity, I missed my update entirely for April, so my progress is actually two months’ worth of work. I’ve made some good progress on a few different pieces and have finished one WIP. I’m starting to really see some progress in my stitching this year, and that’s making me feel quite happy with what’s going on.

The two pieces that really needed their own posts for updates were my finish – Ye Olde Coffee House by Little House Needleworks and progress on Deep Blue Sea by Chatelaine.

I’ve also done some work on other pieces that don’t need quite as much story telling, but have progressed nicely.

Witchy Washy (Raise the Roof) is coming along nicely. I’m using the original overdyes called for in the pattern, and I’m stitching this on an older piece of Manhattan Mist from Silkweaver. I’ll be working (and hopefully finishing!) this piece in June, but it’s taking a rest for a few weeks.  As it stands, it’s probably about 60% done.  The hat is the final thing that’s sittig on the clothes line to stitch.  Two trees, a couple objects on the “ground” and the Witchy Washy title, and this one’s done.  My witchy hat needleminder will NOT be staying on it, despite looking like it should remain on the piece!  This is a fun little piece – I don’t know why it’s taking me so long to stitch because I do enjoy stitching on it and absolutely love it.  For some reason, it just makes me a bit tired, too.  Almost like it’s an intense piece for me, without any real reason that it should be.

Witches Wheel (Glendon Place) is my current commute piece. I grabbed it to take to Celebration of Needlework since it’s one of those easy to transport pieces – only one color of floss needed. It also turned out to be a great identifier for people looking for me. I imagine I was likely the only person there stitching on tie-dyed orange fabric! I spent the first couple days fixing a miscount that I’d needed to frog out – thankfully it was caught early because this piece definitely depends on everything matching up correctly. Unlike so many pieces, I really couldn’t fudge a miscount here. So it was fixed by taking out the central spokes on the left side (both diagonals and the horizontal) and moving them out a square. And then I stitched the two cats on the left. For this week’s commute, I’m going to add the fourth cat, and then I’ll see if I’m still in the mood to keep adding to it. This is one of the pieces I’d like to finish this year, so I don’t plan on putting it aside for too long.

Floral Bellpull is my Teresa Wentzler focus for the year. I’m now on square five of six, and it’s going well. It looks like my stitches are a bit scattered in this square, but this is how I tend to stitch Wentzlers – I try to carry a color as far as I can go to use up my currently needled floss, starting with larger blocks of color so I have something to neatly anchor the confetti stitches onto. Other stitchers who have done this piece may realize that I made a couple of errors. I accidently started the wrong square here – instead of Pansy, which is labeled as Square 5 on the pattern, I grabbed Peony… so my last two squares are going to be in reverse order. It’s not a big deal, as all of the squares are the same size. But I did a bit of an eyeroll when I realized what I’d done.

I also have my standard “Measi makes a mistake in the piece that she’s just going to leave because virtually none of her projects are completely perfect” stitch. Unintentional again – but it’s one of those stitches that just won’t matter in the long run. Can you find it here?

My final piece to update is my Mirabilia Round Robin from last year.  I’m stitching the bottom block and will add my name to the bottom of the center block when finished.  I’m stitching Enchanted Mermaid, flipped 180 degrees so she’s facing left instead of the originally charted right.  It’s a trivial thing, but I just felt that having four faces going left and four facing right may balance the piece a bit better.  Whether or not it does, I don’t know… but it was something I just felt I needed to do.  I don’t expect this to take me that long to complete.  Once I finish that cat on Witches Wheel, I’ll be taking my Mira RR with me on the train until the stitching’s done.  I’d hoped to have her done last month.  So this month, I’m determined!

Funny that this update wound up being the four pieces that I am gunning to finish this year, but I suppose that’s just how the stitching ended up this month.  Hopefully May will be another good month of progress.

Happy May everyone! Can you believe we’re already on month #5? This year is absolutely flying.

I’ve been hearing from several stitchers how they’re making great progress this month, and I’m thrilled that the SAL is working so well for so many people! I’ve had a couple folks ask if I’d be interested in continuing the project next year, and the answer is very likely yes, although it probably won’t quite have the pun-ney impact that it does for 2012 and the whole end of the world.

I had the pleasure of meeting Carol from Stitching ‘n Stashing at Celebration of Needlework last week, as well as a few people I’ve known for years on stitching message boards. I continue to be amazed how small the world is, and how these little connections via the internet turn into bigger connections, whether quick in-person meetings, or more long-lasting community like the one I’ve started to form with the women I stitched with that Saturday.

Hopefully I’ll have the opportunity to meet more of you over the years!

Important SAL announcements

Problem with the Auto-Linky in April – Several stitchers mentioned having trouble with the auto linky form last month. I tested it with a few links, and it was working fine on my end… but I know the internet is full of tempermental things and don’t doubt there were some problems. For this month, I’m removing the auto form. A new update to WordPress this week has some of my blog plugins not working, and the linky form is one of them. So please add a comment – and if that doesn’t work, drop me an email (see the bottom of the post).

Cut off Date for this Full Moon – is May 31st.  Please feel free to link your post anytime between now and then for it to count toward the drawing!

Stash box – I’ve started a page on my blog for a listing of the stash that will be in the drawing at the end of the year. Carol gave me a bag of some great goodies to include, and a couple other stitchers have sent items as well. If you are interested in contributing to the stash box, please drop me an email at measiwitch(at)gmail.com, and I’ll give you my address.  Please read through the information at the bottom of the FAQ for the types of items I’ll accept toward the drawing.  You’ll get full credit for your contributions.  :)

Upcoming Olympic Stitching – a couple of the message boards I belong to are involved in different stitch-a-long challenges for the Olympics, and I think I may adapt some of those as a fun mix-it-up challenge for the summer. If you’ve ever been part of one and would like to recommend a specific Olympic-themed challenge that worked great for you, I’d love to adopt it for the group! Just add a comment or email me.

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Please remember that this stitch-a-long is intended to be fun – so if you’re too busy to post, too busy/ill/etc. to stitch - no worries.  Post when you can and share what you have going, even if you’ve only been able to toss a single stitch into it.  It’s not a race or a competition – we’re all just here to cheer each other on with our progress.  :)

I know some stitchers were having some difficulty with my blog commenting system when signing up, so I want to try to make this a bit easier/more accessible for everyone.  You can check in in one of two ways:

• Via comments (make sure you include your blog address!)
• Via email – to measiwitch(at)gmail.com, only if the comments are not working.  Again- make sure you include your blog address!

Deep Blue Sea had a bit of an adventure last month. I’d hoped to finish part one completely, but before I could get those other waves done, I had a catastrophe.

Or properly spelled, a CAT-astrophe. Notably of the “claiming by cat pee” variety.  One of the cats did a drive-by on my stitching bag, which I’d stupidly put on the floor, and decided to give it a rinse.   It was partially my fault.  It’s springtime, and the windows are open for the first time this season, and it tends to make a couple of our cats a bit… antsy, particularly Hoodsie, who was abused when he was a neighborhood cat to the point that we’ve had to put him on medication for anxiety.  He goes on a short-term marking tear in the spring as he smells all of the new scents from outdoors, and I’m figuring it was probably him.

The problem in a household of multiple cats, however, is that it’s a bit difficult to pinpoint who did it. In addition to Hoodsie, there’s Colley – who’s now fast approaching age thirteen and getting a bit senile.  I don’t want to punish the wrong cat, but it was very tempting to go on a tear around the house when it happened.  So rather than do any punishing (which isn’t exactly going to work with a cat anyway), I just worked as quickly as I could to save the things that were hit.

Thankfully I caught it almost immediately, ran it up to the sink and with some careful handwashing of the area hit (plus another washing later, just to make sure), I’ve managed to remove ALL of the smell. The fabric is overdyed, so there’s a slight change to that area’s color due to my spot washing, but it still works fine with everything else on the fabric (it simply turned darker blue). The good thing is that it was several inches away from any completed parts, so I was able to wash the fabric without having to go near what I’ve already stitched.

So crisis averted.  Barely.

I’m going to be taking a break from Deep Blue Sea for a couple months.  I feel like I’ve been so fixated on getting part one done, and it’s bogging me down when I really do want (and need) to get some work done on the glut of other WIPs and UFOs I wanted to push forward this year.  I think I need some time away from it to take a breather and stop stressing about keeping up with all of the parts, which was never going to happen anyway.  I need some objectivity on it.  Working on some other projects will be just the break I need.

To kick off the stitching updates this month… I have a finish!  This is Ye Olde Coffee House from Little House Needleworks.  I started it last year in late August and finished it on April 20th.  It’s stitched in Sullivans threads in lieu of the DMC colors on the pattern on an older piece of Silkweaver I had in my stash.  I think, but not certain, that the color is Cinnamon Roll.  I know it’s 28 ct Cashel.

This was a fun stitch.  I got a bit bogged down in the house, but once I got past it, the rest of the piece absolutely flew by.  I did the entire bottom half in probably three evenings while watching hockey playoffs!

This was my first project with Sullivans floss, and I do like it.  I don’t find it any better or worse than DMC, honestly.  It’s just different.  It has a matte finish when compared to DMC.  I think the darker colors do have better coverage than DMC, but I don’t think it’s universal across all colors.  I’m not planning on switching exclusively to Sullivans, particularly because I do have a ton of DMC in my stash that I want to use, but I can see the appeal for some projects, especially ones that are more primitive in style, where the sheen may be a bit distracting (or at least where I might lean toward the matte as more style-appropriate).  I definitely will use it, and I’ll likely start picking it up for a few projects here and there.  For the moment, though, it’s not particularly cost effective for me.  The only place near me that I can purchase it is at Bush Mountain, which is a bit over an hour away from me (via highway), and DMC is far cheaper for me to pick up in Warwick (only 10 minutes away… on city roads).  I will pick it up from time to time and add to the collection – just another fiber in the types that I use.  :)

There’s still fabric left on this, too – so I’ll have plenty of this perfect LHN color to work some ornaments or another smaller piece.

Woo hoo!  A WIP checked off the WIPocalypse list!

My goals for April were…

1. Complete part one and part two of Deep Blue Sea, and work on part three.  No – but I did make some progress
2. Put 10 hours of stitching into Floral Bellpull Yes! :) 
3. Put 10 hours of stitching into Why I Love New England  No.  Didn’t even touch it.
4. Catch up on TAST stitching.  No (and have likely given up on it due to falling so far behind).
5. Finish my Mirabilia RR  No – but did get some hours in on it.
6. Stitch on one other piece (for commutes)  Yes!  And got a finish!

Deep Blue Sea (Chatelaine) – I want to get this as close to up to date as possible. I’m just about done with part one. I also want to get through parts two (and at least part of three). More than that and actually be caught up? Gravy.

Didn’t do this. I did get a good amount of work done on it, but then had a bit of a catastrophe that put it on hold for the rest of the month (more on that in my WIPocalypse recap). I’m still on part one.

Floral Bellpull (Wentzler) – As my primary TW project for the year, I just want to push this forward so I can have a finish by the end of the year. Goals for this month would just involve getting as many stitches as I can into block 5.

I did get some work done on it. Will be continuing in May.

Why I Love New England (Sampler Needlework) – No real goals here. I’d just like to put some stitches in it.

Nope.  As mentioned above,  I didn’t even touch it.  :(

I haven’t meant to be so quiet in my blogging lately. Work has been the main culprit keeping me away. I’m getting home, completely exhausted, and the last thing I want to do is plug into a computer again (after hours of it at work). I also had some phone photo issues (now fixed) which put some stitchy updates on hold.

But hey, that’s life, right? In any case, I’m doing okay. Crazy at work, but that seems to be the norm, and it’s just getting busier for me (which worries me). I’ve had another person assigned to my already over-extended workload, and I confess to being more than a little concerned about burnout because I was already doing the work of two people, but I’m trying to keep up as best I can and try to stay positive about the situation. The biggest positive in this is that I do genuinely like all of the people I support, and I think that most of them understand that I’m really being stretched, although they still need their work done, so they can’t afford to be too lenient.

Our office also recently switched to a paperless filing system that is really causing some backlog on my end. After my entire working life using folders on computer drives to stay organized, I now have to switch to what’s essentially a document management/filing system that makes sense on paper but I’m finding surprisingly difficult to adjust to. It’s dropped my workload speed down quite a bit, which is not helping the stress level. I’m hoping that I’ll mentally adjust soon so I can speed things up.

On a positive note, I received a VERY good yearly review at work and received a raise that did mitigate one huge stress factor – an upcoming monthly commuter train increase of $75 that goes into effect on July 1st, which will bring my monthly pass total to $316 per month. It’s not as bad as some of the proposals that were out there by the MBTA (one would have raised my pass up by $127 per month, which would have forced me to look for a new job), but it’s still not an easy amount to swallow. My raise has essentially eliminated that particular problem. I’m hoping I’ll still be able to bring home some additional money after the transportation increase, but as the raise hasn’t hit a paycheck yet, I’m still not sure how taxes play into it all.

Needless to say, I’m a little run down and in need of some vacation days, but I need to wait for a few weeks after taking that week off in March. I’m just waiting to see how all of the new assignment factors at work play out for a few weeks before I ask for time.

I have been doing a lot of stitching this month, which I’m setting up to share in multiple entries over the next few days (so I’m not disappearing for weeks on end again). I completely missed my own WIPocalypse posting last month – so I’ll have a lot to share this week!

I promise to be better about blogging this month!

Hi everyone!

I’m going to be away for the weekend, so I wanted to get the check-in post up before the chaos of packing takes over my life tomorrow evening. I’ll be getting my own report up probably once I return on Sunday night.

Important SAL announcements

Sad News – It is with great sadness that I  announce the passing of one of our fellow WIPocalypse stitchers. Carol of Carol’s Needle Sketches passed away in March. Her family has asked that I remove her from the participant list, and I will be honoring that request.  I didn’t feel right removing her without mentioning why the change is being made. My deepest condolences go out to her family and friends.

Meetup at Celebration - It feels awkward going into other announcements this month, so forgive me for what may sound like a bit too quick of a focus turn.  If you are one of the many stitchers attending Celebration of Needlework in Nashua, New Hampshire at the end of April, I’d love to meet you!  If you are going and would like to have aWIPocalypse stitch-a-long in person, I’ll be up for Saturday (all day until I essentially drop).  Let me know your email address via a comment below and I’ll contact you to see what your schedule is that day.  If nothing else, I plan on stitching up in the 4th floor stitcher’s lounge in the evening (probably 7 onward), so pop on by and say hi!

Cut off Date for this Full Moon – is April 30th.  Please feel free to link your post anytime between now and then for it to count toward the drawing!

Stash box – A few people have asked me if and when I’ll be accepting donations toward the stash drawing.  The answer is yes, I am – and you’re welcome to send them my way anytime.  Drop me an email at measiwitch(at)gmail.com, and I’ll give you my address.  Please read through the information at the bottom of the FAQ for the types of items I’ll accept toward the drawing.  You’ll get full credit for your contributions.  :)

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Please remember that this stitch-a-long is intended to be fun – so if you’re too busy to post, too busy/ill/etc. to stitch - no worries.  Post when you can and share what you have going, even if you’ve only been able to toss a single stitch into it.  It’s not a race or a competition – we’re all just here to cheer each other on with our progress.  :)

I know some stitchers were having some difficulty with my blog commenting system when signing up, so I want to try to make this a bit easier/more accessible for everyone.  You can check in in one of three ways:

• Auto linky form (you’ll see that below)
• Via comments (make sure you include your blog address!)
• Via email – to measiwitch(at)gmail.com, only if the other two options do not work.  Again- make sure you include your blog address.  I’ll add your post to the auto-linky if I receive it this way to confirm I received it.

A quarter of this year has passed already?  Yikes, it’s going fast!  March was such a whirlwind here that I’m all confused.  We’re finally getting around to our St. Patrick’s Day dinner today.  Spring flowers are a full month ahead of schedule, and the plants are all confused, so the blooms aren’t anywhere as vibrant as they normally are.  But hey, I’ll take it – it’s a lovely sunny spring morning around here and warm enough to open some of the windows and air out the house.  We have a cat in each open window, and I’m taking advantage of a brief lull in all of the insanity for today.

I’ve been doing some thinking about my stitching for April.  I didn’t set myself any goals for March, and I think that kept me a bit unfocused.  Theme-a-licious completely bombed for me – and WIPocalypse wasn’t too far behind.   I’m hoping with a (reasonable) plan, I feel better about my progress this month and maybe get a couple of finishes.

The Theme-a-licious theme for April is “Amazon April” – a month to push forward on your largest WIPs.  Me?  Large projects?  Hmm… in theory, I could just merge March and April together as one theme, considering what I have going in my stash!  But I need to keep this sane, so I’m instead going to pick three big projects for work this month:

• Deep Blue Sea (Chatelaine) – I want to get this as close to up to date as possible.  I’m just about done with part one.  I also want to get through parts two (and at least part of three). More than that and actually be caught up?  Gravy.
• Floral Bellpull (Wentzler) – As my primary TW project for the year, I just want to push this forward so I can have a finish by the end of the year.  Goals for this month would just involve getting as many stitches as I can into block 5.
• Why I Love New England (Sampler Needlework) – No real goals here.  I’d just like to put some stitches in it.

My general goals for the month will be:

1. Complete part one and part two of Deep Blue Sea, and work on part three.
2. Put 10 hours of stitching into Floral Bellpull.
3. Put 10 hours of stitching into Why I Love New England
4. Catch up on TAST stitching.
5. Finish my Mirabilia RR
6. Stitch on one other piece (for commutes)

I’m hoping for a good month.  I don’t think these are unreasonable goals.  If I make them all, I’m definitely going to be feeling good and on top of things.

I’m off to get my weekend cleaning finished up and the corned beef in the pot.  Hopefully I can settle down with some stitching for most of the day!

Happy weekend, everyone!

Ever regret taking a week of vacation, even though you absolutely needed it? That would be me. The volume of work that was dumped on my desk during my absence in the first week of March has kept me scrambling all month. Any stress release that was gained on vacation, gone and re-replaced with even more stress.

*sigh*

I won’t go into it much on a public blog, but I’m feeling incredibly overwhelmed and burnt out these days. I’m hoping the feeling will pass, although I’m thinking it may be a permanent situation, and that’s frustrating me a lot.  I just feel that no matter how hard I try, I will never feel like I’m caught up – or at least keeping pace – with the workload I’m assigned.  And that’s sadly taking a mental toll on me.

Due to all of the work craziness, I haven’t had any energy to do blog updates. I have done some stitching, and forgot to update for the WIPocalypse this month.  In a way I somewhat did already do that with my post-Stitcher’s Hideaway recap. So retro-actively, I’m going to turn that into my recap post. No sense in doing photos now when the next recap is approaching quickly, I think.  I’ve been kind of doing the grab-and-go method of stitching this month, and haven’t been switching projects out like originally planned for the

My TUSAL jar has gotten a workout over the past few weeks. I took it to the stitching retreat at the beginning of the month, and it acquired not only my own orts, but the orts of some of the women who were sitting next/across from me, including some yarn orts from needlepoint (that’s not cheating, is it?)  :)  The orts from me are from a whole mess of projects, and it’s now sitting at a lofty 1/3 jar full.

As I logged in to do this entry, I saw that Rose over at Christmas City Stitcher kindly gave me the Liebster Blog award, which is given from blogger to blogger to share fellow blogs that have inspired and motivated them.  Thank you Rose!  I want to give some thought and a proper blog post to the blogs I’ll be offering the award to, so I’ll update once my brain is in a slightly better, clearer place with the blogs I’d like to offer it to (and come up with things that people don’t know about me).

I have a blogoversary coming up this week – perhaps I’ll do it on the 29th to celebrate.  :)  My blog’s a “tweenager” now.  Perhaps I should do tweeney facts about myself!  Anything in particular you think the world should know about me?  Ask away!

I’m going to kick back and attempt some stitching to relax away the rest of my evening – see you around the blogosphere (hopefully) soon!

Hello again everybody!

I hope February was a productive month for you all with your projects.  I’ve seen some gorgeous work from so many of you as I’ve been browsing blogs!

Looking forward to seeing what you have done in the past month!

Important SAL announcements

Please Label Your Posts -(just a reminder)  Either with the title of WIPocalypse check-in, a category, or a tag/label you have for posts – so I can find it.

Join Us at the Forum – If you’d like to get to know some of your fellow stitchers and share on a more active basis, come join us over at the WIPocalypse forums!  There’s a weekly Monday update thread, and you can chat about whatever stitching you have going at any time.  There are even several designer-specific stitch-a-longs going on, if you’re looking for people who are working on similar projects for some mutual support.

Check-in Totals – Starting next month, I’ll start adding the number of check-in totals I have per person to the participant page. I’m running a bit behind, but hope to have this up to date by the end of March.

Cut-off date for this Full Moon - to have your post count toward THIS full-moon’s stash drawing credit, you must have it posted no later than March 31st.

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Please remember that this stitch-a-long is intended to be fun – so if you’re too busy to post, too busy/ill/etc. to stitch - no worries.  Post when you can and share what you have going, even if you’ve only been able to toss a single stitch into it.  It’s not a race or a competition – we’re all just here to cheer each other on with our progress.  :)

I know some stitchers were having some difficulty with my blog commenting system when signing up, so I want to try to make this a bit easier/more accessible for everyone.  You can check in in one of three ways:

• Auto linky form (you’ll see that below)
• Via comments (make sure you include your blog address!)
• Via email – to measiwitch(at)gmail.com, only if the other two options do not work.  Again- make sure you include your blog address.  I’ll add your post to the auto-linky if I receive it this way to confirm I received it.

Apparently the posts I thought I had saved to publish while I was away not only didn’t publish, but I somehow didn’t save them.  Boo.  So much for the blogging every day this month thing.  (Ah well.)

Good news:  my laptop is fixed!  Apparently it was the video card.  The good news was that said video card was part of a lawsuit Apple had against the manufacturer, so I got the $500 part replaced for free.  :)  The MacBook – it lives again!

I had a lovely time at Stitcher’s Hideaway this weekend.  The winter retreat is organized as an alumni retreat – basically to get together and stitch for two days.   No classes, no specified project.  Just bring your own stuff and stitch.  Some people were stitching previous class projects, but most of the attendees brought a project (or two, or ten) to work on as we chatted, laughed, vented, and ate way, way too much food.  It was great to see familiar faces.  This was my fourth Stitcher’s Hideaway, so there are a lot of familiar faces now.  Some of the women I’m friends with on Facebook, and that’s definitely helped make it easier to jump in and be active.  Surprisingly, my social anxiety didn’t kick in much this weekend, although I was absolutely exhausted and hermitish on Sunday when I got home!

While alumni of previous Stitcher’s Hideaway retreats get first dibs for the winter retreat, any space left after January 1st is opened on a space-available basis to whomever is interested, so we had a few newbies among the group.  I sat with three of them for the weekend – Janice, Marie, and Lynn, all from Connecticut, for the weekend, and we had a great time.   I hope to see them either at another retreat or possibly at a casual stitchy get-together in the future.

My scissor fob for the exchange was finished JUST in time for the exchange (hooray! Finish #2 of the year!)  I was frantically finishing it in my hotel room on Thursday night.  I’m pleased how it came out, although somehow the fabric still is a little wonky after putting it together.  If you think you’ve seen this pattern recently, you’re probably right.  I grabbed it from the most recent issue of Just Cross Stitch – it’s the fob that’s part of a sewing box set.  I’m hoping to do the entire set for myself later.  The cord is storebought from JoAnns.  The tassel is simply the ends of the cord, pulled apart into a fray.   In return, I received a cute crocheted frog-shaped fob that matches the froggy drink coasters I received at October’s retreat.  The body of the frog fob is a sleeve for the scissor shears.  I took pictures of it and all of the insanity stash from the retreat and put them on my Flickr Account.  Warning – don’t go if you are on a tight budget!  I think at least three of my purchases were brand new from Nashville Market releases.  Between my purchases and the generous gift bags received by everyone at the retreat, I have definitely had a wonderful weekend of stash enhancement.  :)  I also won a gift subscription to The Gift of Stitching, which is great – my subscription runs out later this year, so I’ll be happy to jump on for another year.

I didn’t get as much done as I’d hoped, but really – when do I ever?  I always misjudge how long it actually takes me to stitch things.  Still, I made some nice progress on a couple of pieces.  I brought four pieces to work on – Deep Blue Sea, Witchy Washy, my Mirabilia RR, and Four Seasons of Mystic.  I threw a few stitches into the Mira and Witchy Washy, but nothing worth nothing into either.

I stitched most of the time on Deep Blue Sea, and finished a good chunk of the Rhodes Stitches in the center (all of the very light blue clusters) and balanced the light aqua cross stitches on the top, bottom, and two sides.  I misread the chart and did the rhodes stitches in two strands instead of one.  I like the coverage of the two strands, so I’m planning on doing the darker Rhodes squares in the same way, rather than frog everything.  I’m planning on working on DBS again tomorrow, and hopefully I’ll have part one done soon.  It’s just really, really slow.  *sigh*  I know I shouldn’t feel pressured with time on this one, but knowing that I’m two parts “behind” on the releases is frustrating me a bit.  I know this isn’t a race, yet my brain won’t knock off being idiotic.

The other project I worked on was Jeannette Douglas’ Four Seasons of Mystic, which was the teaching piece for the October retreat.  It’s not published yet – I’d expect it will show up in stores probably sometime later this year or early next. It’s a fun sampler full of different specialty stitches and different fibers.  The satin stitches of the border are done in wool.  Everything else so far is in various blends of silks with a small amount of metallics. I added a couple rows and swore a lot about my french knots, which I despise (I’m no happier with Colonial knots). I’ll likely be taking the blue knots out to redo, although I haven’t decided how I’ll approach it yet.  The strand in progress is a basket that’s cross stitched over one.  I adore this piece.  There are just so many things to do that I can’t be bored.  The stitches are intricate, so the bands go slowly.  That purple band just above the word “Spring,” for example, are woven bars done with one strand over 3×3 threads.  I needed to use my magnifier for them. Someone asked before on my blog, and I’m  not sure if I ever answered – but the reason the bottom two rows are done is because I’d never done Jessica stitches before, and I wanted to get them done in the class back in October while I had Jeannette there teaching.  So the trees and the Jessica on top of Jessica stars were done months ago.  I finished the woven bars, Spring band, and the partial green floral band below it on Saturday afternoon.

It was a great time. I’m still a bit tired from it all, but it was a much needed break.  Now I have through Wednesday off at home, so I’ll be splitting my time between some projects and some putterings.

So… this month flew by.  February was to be “Fangirl February,” where we stitched on our favorite designers.  I suppose in a way, I did do this with my Wentzler and Ink Circles stitching, although I feel like I didn’t quite do what I wanted to.

Yet I really did.

Meh, I’m too hard on myself.

Anyway – I haven’t done anything else on my personal projects since my last entry on the 22nd, so the photos remain the same.  I’ve focused the past week on a scissor fob for an exchange on Saturday night.  The stitching is done, but I need to put it together tomorrow.  That shouldn’t take me very long.  I’ll post a photo of it on Sunday once I return, since by then it will be heading home with its new owner.  I’m very happy with it.  It was a quick stitch, very cute – and I’ll probably make another one for myself one of these days!

March’s theme is “March Madness,” in which we’ll stitch on a different project every day.  Now… I probably could stitch literally on a different project every single day, but rather than go that insane, I’m scaling it down to a group of “priority” projects that I want to make progress on.  I was originally going to set a schedule, but instead I think I’ll do a daily draw to see what I’ll be working on next from the following projects:

• Deep Blue Sea (Chatelaine)
• Floral Bellpull (Teresa Wentzler)
• BoInk (Ink Circles)
• My Mirabilia round robin piece from 2011 (my square)
• Apache Wedding Blessing (Kooler Design)
• Witchy Washy (Raise the Roof)
• Why I Love New England (Sampler Needlework)
• Ye Olde Coffee Shop (Little House Needleworks)
• Waiting in the wings: Cats on a Staircase (Kooler Design) - if I finish one of the others above

A couple of these are very close to being done, so hopefully I can make some great progress and clear a couple off my list.

Since I’ll be stitching on a different piece every day, I’m also going to attempt to do a daily blog posting all month.  We’ll see how that goes!

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Today brought some of the first real snow we’ve received in Providence since the snowstorm just before Halloween, and it still amounts to just barely over an inch. Supposedly we’ll be getting more tomorrow – but I’ve also heard it will be mixing with rain, so who knows – it may all be gone by mid-afternoon. It’s crazy how warm and dry this winter has been.  It’s definitely the warmest I can ever remember in my life.  The temperature has been much more like the Bay Area in California – my mom lived in Danville and San Ramon for a number of years when I was a teenager – only without the winter rain that California gets.  I’m a bit worried that this may be leading to a miserably hot summer.  Hopefully not.  ;P

I’m now on vacation for a full week, and SOOOOO happy for the time off.  My brain has really been fried from work, and I just need a big breather.  Tomorrow night I’m off to Stitcher’s Hideaway until Sunday to stitch the weekend away on whatever I feel like bringing.  The winter Stitcher’s Hideaway is an alumni retreat (although first timers are welcome – alumni just get first dibs on seats), and the entire thing is open-ended stitching.  No teacher, no specified projects.  Just come as you are, bring whatever you want to work on, and stitch and chat.  It should be a lot of fun, and I definitely am looking forward to the retreat time.  I’m definitely bringing my Chatelaine – that’ll be my Friday focus project, and I’m setting a goal to finish part one this weekend.  I’m also going to bring Apache Wedding Blessing, since it just needs backstitching to finish, Witchy Washy, and my Mirabilia RR (for show and tell, but I may throw stitches into the final square, too).

After the retreat, I still have a few days off to putter around the house.  I have a couple of house things I’d like to get accomplished – doing a mini-purge of my clothes is one.  Other than that, I plan on just resting and taking time for myself because my workload has just been crushingly insane lately, and I desperately need the downtime.

Happy Leap Day everyone!

Just a heads up if you’re trying to reach me – my MacBook decided it wanted to throw me for a loop, and for some reason it won’t reboot.  Since I have cash tied up in other commitments, I’m sharing a computer with my husband for a few weeks until I can get it fixed.  So please be patient if you email me, etc – I’ll get to responses as I can from my cell phone. 

As I mentioned in my TUSAL update last night – I’ve had a good month of stitching.  So far this month I’ve touched four projects and made good progress on them.  I posted my updates on Inn at Fox Run Mill on my WIPocalypse post earlier this month.  Since then, I’ve been working steadily on Book of Ink Circles (BoInk) and Floral Bellpull.

Book of Ink Circles was honestly only supposed to be my focus for a couple of days, starting with Jury Duty on the 9th and going through that weekend.  I figured I’d get a couple border lines done and be happy with it, but it just stayed in my work bag, and I’ve been plugging away at lines on it on my train commute ever since.  On Friday I finally got the sense that I needed to move on, and it got one final night yesterday on the train ride home before being photographed and put away for a couple weeks.  The photo to the left is the result of my work this month.  I’m very pleased.  I’ve managed to get roughly a third of the edging of all of the squares done, and I’m finding it much easier and faster as I progress because I have reference points for all of the squares(less double-check counting, more stitching).  I’m hoping that next month I can finish the edging.  Once that’s done, my progress will go much faster for a while because I’ll just be filling in the actual border before moving onto the individual square patterns. 

My color scheme for BoInk is a bit of a work in progress.  My goal is to have it entirely in autumn tones because I find the original just a little too gaudy for my personal tastes (even if the gaudy is probably more historically authentic), but when I pulled colors at Celebration last year, I somehow managed to pull just about the same colors as it called for.  So I have a few more swap-outs to do.  I’m doing the edge work in Crescent Color’s “Cinders,” so it’s all a very deep reddish-brown with occasional pops of bright red along the border. 

Floral Bellpull is progressing a little slower than I hoped, purely due to me having to pull out the leaves – twice – on the border for square #5.  The chart’s to blame on this one, to be honest.  The colors are backward of what they really should be.  On the chart, the satin stitches that build the leaves in the borders are indicated by grey lines, but not in a logical sense.  The lighter grey lines were used to indicate the darker greens, and vice versa.  My brain of course sees darker lines = darker colors, and that’s what’s been stitched… for four of six squares.  I’m not picking out every border, especially over something that’s completely arbitrary in the scheme of things.  Once I figured out what the heck I’d been doing, it was easy to correct to what had been done in the squares before it and get the darker set of leaves done.  Tonight I’ll curl up and finish the lighter leaves, the purple flowers, and hopefully the vines.  And then I’ll have reached my goal on Floral Bellpull for the month. 

I still have backstitching to do on square #4, and on inspection as I moved the piece on my scroll bars, there’s still a little to do on square #3, too.  I’m planning on bringing it to Stitcher’s Hideaway with me next weekend.  It’s a perfect opportunity to do the backstitching and chat away, making the whole thing less painful, and hey… I’ll get a mini-finish out of the weekend!

The new project for me for my commutes this week is the scissor fob I’m doing for the exchange at Hideaway.  I think I may be making my fob a little bigger than most (it’s going to end up around 3 x 3 inches, give or take a little), but I also have the habit of misplacing my scissors, so I’d find a larger fob to be more practical.  I found a lovely tonal bluework piece in one of my magazines that reminds me of our Spode dishes a bit.  It’s a bit more generic in style, so I think it’s more appropriate and hopefully easier to appeal to the recipient for the blind yankee swap style draw (take a number, pick a bag in number order) we’re having for the exchange. 

I’ll post the finished project late next weekend once the exchange is over (and once the piece is stitched!)

Happy stitching all!

I had another great month of stitching – lots of different colors this month on several projects. My TUSAL jar has a rather large variety of colors this month, thanks to work on approximately a half-dozen projects (and the inevitable frogging that goes with them).  The blues are almost entirely from Deep Blue Sea – I’m still well-entrenched in part one for the Chatelaine Mandala, and it’s a big collection of blues and teals.

I’d hoped to also include some photos of my updates for the most recent two projects – Book of Ink Circles and Floral Bellpull – on this update, but my uploads from my cell phone are running very slowly.  I’ll get them posted sometime tomorrow.  Maybe I’ll even have a better update for Floral Bellpull tomorrow – I’d love to have the border for square 5 done!

Happy stitching!