Measi's Musings

Posts Tagged ‘floral bellpull’

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.

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!

Hi to everyone popping on for WIPocalypse browsing! If you read me often, the first half of this post is likely stuff you’ve seen before.

It’s been a good month since my last update.  I gave up on Crazy January (and don’t plan on ever attempting it again).  I returned instead to a few pieces – some of my new starts for this year, some WIPs, and one traveling pattern (which is my first finish of the year!)

All of these photos “pop” if you select them so you can see larger sizes if you choose.

Here’s my first finish of the year. This is a traveling pattern by Lizzie*Kate that’s now en route to the next person in the Stitcherhood. I pulled random colors for this. The original called-for colors are much, much softer. Blame it on watching the Winter X Games, perhaps – but I wanted to stitch BRIGHT.  I’m planning on finishing this into an ornament for my tree, dated with the year and the stitcherhood on the back.  I’ll make the backing out of the same fabric and whip-stitch it together, just as I do for most of my ornaments.

Floral Bellpull continues to progress well. I finished all of the cross-stitches in the Morning Glory square and started on the backstitching. That leaves me with two full squares to go before it’s done. My goal this month is to get the border for the next square stitched up so I can start filling it in during Stitcher’s Hideaway next month. This is the big focus Teresa Wentzler piece for me this year – and I’m confident I can get it done. With the glut of TW projects in my WIP/UFO pile, I won’t be starting any more anytime soon. My plan is to start weeding them out one at a time, one year at a time. If I manage to get more done, great… but I really want to get these done and on my walls!

Cowboy Cats is one of the pieces I began for Crazy January. It’s not on any timetable, and since I’m in those starting doldrums, I haven’t quite gotten a rhythm going on it yet. It’s a good commuting piece, but I had it in my bag during a seriously insane portion of last month and just didn’t move it along as I hoped. I made most of my progress on this during one evening when all of the Amtrak and MBTA trains were tied up going out of Boston last month. Three hours of hanging out on a train provides a LOT of stitching opportunity!

Deep Blue Sea continues to progress. This is probably the best color-accurate photo I’ve managed to get of the fabric. I’m still not done with part one, but I’m getting there. I managed to take this on a few commutes in and out of Boston to push it along, and I also focused on it during a stitch-in at Bush Mountain on Superbowl Sunday. I did soooo many eyelets on Sunday that I needed to take a serious break from it and work on light fabric for a while. I’d really like to get all of part one done by the end of the month. It’s definitely possible, although I’ve set it aside for now – I’ll come back to it later once I’ve progressed some of my pre-2012 WIPs!  I will admit, it’s getting much easier to stitch as time goes on and I have more reference points to line things up.  I did add a little “this way up” arrow to the center of the piece (which will obviously be removed at the end).

I think what I’m surprised about as this center mandala develops is just how BIG the thing is.  I’m used to seeing gorgeous centers for all of the Chatelaine designs on other stitchers’ blogs, but photo size doesn’t quite give a good sense of size reference.  For some reason, my brain was interpreting the photos I’ve seen as only 4 inches across or so.  But no… from the top to the bottom yellow lines is just about the same length as my hand from tips of fingers to the heel of the hand.  It fills up a significant chunk of space on my 11″ Q-snaps!

Last but not least, I played a bit with Inn at Fox Run Mill today while hanging out in the jury duty pool. The top border is now at its full width. I report to jury duty again tomorrow, so I’m going to fill in the acorns that are missing, the small leaves that are missing, and then carry down from there if time permits.

It’s definitely been a productive month! And next month promises to be even better, thanks to the three-night retreat (and week of vacation!) I have coming up.

Happy stitching everyone!

It’s the new moon – and it’s the first of the year, so it’s time to empty the jar and start fresh for the Totally Useless Stitch-a-Long.  I’d been filling my jar for two years, so to see it this empty is a bit… weird.  My orts from the last two years have been put into a baggie – I’ll spread some of them in the yard for the birds in the spring, and others I may use to stuff ornaments or something similar.

My orts this month come from a wide variety of projects.  I attempted (and failed) Crazy January.  I started my first Chatelaine.  I did some work on a couple of my long-neglected WIPs.  The pile of orts will only grow from here!

This past weekend was International Hermit and Stitch Weekend, and I decided to focus entirely on Floral Bellpull for the January rendition of IHSW.  I had two goals – finish the cross stitches on the Morning Glory square, and get it entirely backstitched.

I completed goal #1 easily. I’m about half-way done with the backstitching. I forgot that the inside of the frame is backstitched, and wound up having to do it twice thanks to a quietly building knot of string that built as I went along (whoops).

In any case, I’m happy with what I got accomplished.  Once Castle is done tonight, I’ll get a bit more done tonight before bedtime.

For the rest of this week, I’ll likely split my time between an adorable little Lizzie Kate that wandered into my mailbox from Jo a few days ago (great for my commute) and either Book of Ink Circles or Seasons of Mystic.

This weekend is International Hermit and Stitch Weekend!  Grab a project (or two… or four), curl up, get some stitching done, and share with the world.

It’s kind of like WIPocalypse, but much shorter and even more freeform.  :)

BUT WAIT – It’s also Jardin January for Theme-a-licious, which means that my selection for this weekend fits all of my ongoing SALS at the same time.

I know – right?  It’s epic stitching convergence time.  And at the end of the weekend, it’s time for TUSAL to finish it all off.

What piece is so epic in my stash that it can fulfill all of these SAL’s?  It’s none other than…

Floral Bellpull!

Yes, the ongoing WIP that has been ongoing for years, gone out on a UFO Round Robin cruise, and still remains an unfinished piece.  It’s the one Teresa Wentzler I truly want to complete this year – and completing it is actually possible if I sit my butt down, get the needle going, and get to work.

While yes, it’s only Thursday, I’m getting a start on it tonight for the weekend.  My goal is to finish the square you see – which is the 4th of 6 in the bellpull.  I don’t have that much actual cross-stitching left to do in the square, so it’s quite possible I can get it and all of the backstitching completed by Sunday night.

*crossing fingers*

Want to join up in one of the non-WIPocalypse SALs this weekend?  Click on the appropriate button below to follow to their hosts.  :)

For some reason, life has been absolutely non-stop since about mid-November.  I’m thankful I haven’t had any five-day work weeks since Christmas week because honestly, I desperately need the longer weekends right now purely for recovery.

This week was no different in the insanity, although it took a different twist.  Erich’s job was transferred to a new hospital as of this past Monday, so both of our commute schedules have changed again.  In his case, it’s much, MUCH better.  He’s gone from a 1 hour and 20 minute drive to Dorchester, MA to approximately 20 minutes over to Fall River, MA – much, much more tolerable.

In my case, it’s a mixed bag.  Technically it’s a bit of a shorter commute for me, but unlike with driving, I now have a very firm schedule as to when I need to leave the house because I’m back on the commuter train.  For me it’s about 90 minutes each way to and from Boston.  The train is much easier than driving, and once I get used to the train schedule, I’ll be back stitching on my commutes.  This week, though, was a bit painful with the adjustment.  Hopefully my brain will make the switch soon.

Wednesday was my birthday.  Erich and I went out to dinner after work and had a relaxing night.  I took Thursday off – I had a scheduled dentist appointment, and decided I’d just take the entire day so I could have some “me” time – I got my nails done and went milling about Thistle Needleworks over in Glastonbury, Connecticut for a couple hours.  I didn’t buy much, but did pick up a couple of the colors I still needed for Deep Blue Sea.  That evening,  Erich and I gathered with friends for a laid-back dinner at one of the centralized hangouts we like to go to.

Yesterday morning I went to my monthly stitchy gathering at the Warwick Public Library – the Rhode Island stitchers gather there every month on the second Saturday morning.  It was a quiet month – only four of us this time.

And then last night was the Patriots game – I was relieved they won.  Hopefully that will quiet down the Tebow mania for a while!

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I’ve been doing well on stitching this weekend – I’ve become a bit burnt out on new starts, so I’m putting my Crazy January on pause.  My current projects are just screaming a bit too loudly for attention!  I’ve been focusing on Deep Blue Sea so far this weekend, correcting my miscounts from my January 1st progress and pushing forward on the next two colors.  Once that’s done (hopefully this afternoon), I’ll be picking up Floral Bellpull, since it’s the Wentzler I want to complete this year above all others.

Remember that WIPocalypse signups end tonight at midnight my time – so if you’re reading and waffling, jump in and join us!

Before I go onto my news – I finally managed to get some stitching time in on my Floral Bellpull this year!  I’ve joined the Love4Stitching group on Yuku, where a number of different designers have SALs scheduled on a set of standardized days every month.  The 21st through 25th was Teresa Wentzler projects.

It was good to sit down with it for a few days.  I’m happy with what I got done.  I’ve nearly completed the actual crosses on this square.  I’ll finish the backstitching before I move onto the next one.  Morning Glory is the fourth of six – so I’m making good progress, and I think there will be a finish in the first quarter of next year on this one.  (If I didn’t have ornaments to stitch, I might say this year!)

I’ll feel quite proud when this one is done.

Through the rest of the month there is a SAL for HAED projects.  I was going to pull out my Muse of the Midnight Sun, but then something very funny happened today…

With no plans whatsoever, I was invited to go to Stitcher’s Hideaway in mid-October!  I’ll be joining Lisa and her mom, Kathy, for a two-day class with Jeannette Douglas in Mystic, CT.   Lisa’s sister was unfortunately unable to get the time off from work, and since all of her fees are already paid, Kathy invited me to take the spot.

I guess it was fate – I wasn’t able to afford it and had decided to hold off and save my money for the alumni retreat in March.  As it stands, I probably will be commuting to the classes rather than stay at the hotel to save some money.  Providence to Mystic is just under an hour, and that’s shorter than my normal commute to work (by quite a bit), so it’ll be an easy drive.

So that’s changed my stitching plans for the next few weeks by quite a bit.  Rather than my HAED, I’ll be focusing in on the Mirabilia RR so I can get her mailed off before the retreat weekend.  There’s also going to be a fall-themed ornament exchange at Hideaway, so I’m going to attempt to get one done.

I also did something a bit crazy on Friday afternoon and jumped into what will be my first Chatelaine stitch.  I decided to join Rachel (and I imagine others who I know from stitching & blogging) in the Mystery Mandala XV starting in January called Deep Blue Sea.  As I said – first Chatelaine design.  It will also be the first time I’ve ever done any sort of mystery stitch, so I’m quite excited.  Since it’s one of the mandalas, I know it’s going to be gorgeous.  Since it’s themed to the sea, I know it will have some gorgeous blues in it, with likely greens and flashes of brights.  I will not be kitting it exactly as suggested.  DMC will be heavily used with perhaps a few more expensive threads as I can afford them.

It’s midnight, so I need to get to bed.  TUSAL tomorrow!

I actually have quite a few things to post about but have just been really busy, so there may be several blog entries over the next few days.  To sum up what’s in store:

• It’s time for the Totally Useless Stitch-a-Long update.  I had it in my calendar to post yesterday, but between the wild weather we had in New England yesterday (including confirmed tornados in western Massachusetts) and the Stanley Cup game (go Bruins!), I got a bit distracted.
• Erich and I started the updating process for two more rooms in our house over the weekend- our bedroom and the bathroom.  So story time about that adventure (and some helpful tips for others with old houses) will come this weekend
• Updates on the round robin stitching front
• Another Caturday post on Saturday.  :)  Any specific cat requests?
• Some gardening updates
• Warhammer painting updates
• Monthly stitching goals – my updates and my new goals for June
• Wanderlust drive musings.  It’s summer, which means I start wandering back roads in New England.

I finally got the Google Friend Connect working on my blog (hooray!) so all of you Blogger folks who prefer to follow that way (honestly, I do too… Google Reader is glorious) –  I’m up and running.  Let me know if there are any problems.  You should see it on my sidebar just above the Project: Do Me graphic link.

Today’s entry, though, is for the Thursday Thirteen.  A few weeks ago, I made a semi-joking, but semi-serious post about declaring 2012 my WIP apocalypse year.  (for those non-crafters, WIP stands for “Works in Progress”).  I’m a chronic serial starter with my stitching.  I love beginning new projects.  I love the journey of stitching projects.  But I’m not particularly good at finishing projects.  So now I have a glut of them.  I’m starting to get the itch to really get through them, too.  So what started as a joke is now really going to happen.  2012 will be my project clearing year.  :)  Any crafty folks (regardless of what you do) who want to join me and use it as a sort of Stitch-a-Long are most welcome.  I’ll set up a signup/discussion page in October.

For now, my brain is going to the projects I really, really want to finish.  So for this week, here are the Thirteen Projects Riding on the Measi WIP-ocalypse Train.  The links go to the Flickr photo  set I have for the piece.

1.  Apache Wedding Blessing – this is a gift for my friends Ivanna and Joe for their wedding, which um… happened several years ago.  Thankfully Ivanna’s a fellow crafty person and understands how these projects can go into a black hole.  But all the same, it’s annoying me.  Right now I have this out on a round robin to give it some extra oomph, and it does actually look like it’s going to get finished before the end of 2011.

2.  Witchy Washy – It’s so damn cute.   I want this done and framed on the door to my laundry room.

3.  Floral Bellpull – I’ve had this for years, and it’s absolutely gorgeous.  I just need to focus on it.

4.  Legends of the Dragons – I started this as part of a stitch-a-long in the beginning of 2010, and it just started to fall off my radar as I got into robin stitching.  It’s not a particuarly big piece, and definitely doable to finish.  Again – I just need to focus on it.’

5.  Cats on a Staircase – Right now, this is my longest running WIP.  It’s a Christmas stocking.  I think I’ve had it going for ten years now.

6.  Witches Wheel - I adore this piece.  I have a ton of energy to work on this piece.  I simply have too many commitments with the robin to stitch on it right now.

7.  Walk in the Woods – This is the second of the WIPs I inherited from my late mother in law.  The first I finished last year.  This one will get done next year.  It’s not a particularly difficult piece to stitch – but again, it’s just been a time commitment issue.

8.  Astrology Sampler – for YEARS I wanted to start this piece, and when I do – I’ve barely gotten anything done.  It’s not a particularly large piece.  It’s just stitched on black fabric, which makes it a bit more difficult to work on.

9.  Elemental Dragons – Two of the five are done (Fire and Spirit).  I have three more dragons to do (Earth, Water and Air).  I’ll take getting one done next year, but getting all three done so I can frame the project would be wonderful.

10.  Magical Night – I sent this out on a robin in 2010, and the wonderful stitchers who worked on it made tremendous progress.  It’s now about half done.  I don’t expect to finish this in 2012, but I’d like to make a good dent on what’s left.

11.  Egyptian Sampler – I adore this piece and the fabric I chose to stitch it on.  I don’t get why I struggle so badly to stitch on it, because I absolutely love it.  Hopefully in 2012 I can get into a zone and finish a good chunk of it.

12.  Noah’s Ark – this is a piece I adopted from another stitcher.  I haven’t done a particularly large amount of work on it since I got it, but I’d like to get some more of the animals around the border done.  The problem is that they’re done in petit point, so the work is so tiny and intricate that it goes very, very slowly.  My goal for 2012 on this one is to get one of the remaining side borders (left, top, right) done.

13.  Book of Ink Circles – I don’t have a photo of my WIP uploaded yet, as it was a new start in May (one of my other entries for this weekend to do).  It’s my first attempt at recoloring a design from someone else.  It’s a fabulous piece when completed, though.

Thanks for stopping by!  I’ll be catching up on blogs this weekend between my own writing.  :)

Another Round Robin has just closed for signups, and now it’s time to start thinking about what I’ll send around. My photos below are about a round out of date… I seem to have misplaced my latest updates on them. But you’ll get the general idea.

I had an initial decision to send Walk in the Woods (Cross-Eyed Cricket). Now that I see everyone else offering up their UFO’s, I’ll do the same and see if there’s any preferred piece folks would like to work on.

All photos pop larger.

Here’s Walk in the Woods:
It’s on 16 or 18 ct. Aida.

I have Apache Wedding Blessing (Kooler Designs), which is for a friend:
On 28 ct linen – a very slippery linen.

Floral Bellpull (TW), which went around on a previous robin:
On 28 ct evenweave

Smoky Mountain Cats (Pegasus Designs), which is a solid sea of blue. No. Not kidding.
On 14 ct blue Aida

Cats on a Staircase (Bucilla), which is a Christmas stocking and my longest UFO piece at this point. My one hesitation on this is that I have a blatant stitching error on it – somewhere along the way, I instinctively switched my stitching direction, so it’s a tad… messy.
On 14 ct Aida

Millennium (TW), which I got from a fellow stitcher who was looking to offload some UFOs. It’s sadly stalled with me, too.
On 28 ct Evenweave

Alternatively, I could send around my restart of Spring Queen (Mirabilia), which had a rather annoying color malfunction with the fabric. That one hasn’t been restarted, but I could put two weeks of work into the gown folds before sending. It would be on either 28 or 32 ct evenweave.

Ones I won’t send…

Egyptian Sampler – because I really do want to do that one myself
Noah’s Ark – most of the remaining stitching is over-one, which I don’t want to force anyone to do
Legends of the Dragons – I’m feeling an itch to work on this again myself
Fantasy Triptych – really big piece, really expensive postage.

Any thoughts?

So… I’ve moved on in my rotation again, and with it come a new round of photos. The only one I haven’t updated yet is the ornament I stitched for Jo for the TWCOE exchange. I’ll post that and the one I received sometime this week.

First off – after nearly a month, my energy finally fizzled on Floral Bellpull. I almost got the entire square stitched, but I just needed a break. I managed twenty hours, which is double what my rotation requirement was, so no complaints.

I also decided to put Spirit Dragon away until the new year – I haven’t put any stitches into it for the past three weeks, and instead have been reading on the train. I’ll get back to it next rotation round (when I’ll probably finish it).

My first attempt at my TWCOE ornament was scrapped, although I do plan on finishing it for myself. It’s Teresa Wentzler’s Beginner Whitework Ornament. My chain stitches wound up very off, but for my own tree, I really don’t care. Instead of sending this one, I stitched up Father Winter (another TW pattern).

So that leads me to the current piece in my rotation: Apache Wedding Blessing. This is how it started yesterday morning:

I’m hoping to get the top border done this round so that I can position it better on my scrollframe. The fabric’s pretty cranky and doesn’t want to stay put.

That’s it for now… more later this week!

- Mel.

I have a lot to get done this weekend. Some of it’s holiday related (getting a tree, putting lights up outside, cards), some of it’s belated autumn stuff (cleaning up the yard before they stop picking up yard waste for the year), and some of it’s stuff I’d planned to do over Thanksgiving weekend but just didn’t get done for one reason or the other (laundry). I’d also like to find some time to relax – play some WoW, maybe do some stitching.

Stitching is going great since I started. I have two slots left on my rotation once I finish my hours on Floral Bellpull tonight. I may actually finish my rotation before the end of 2009!

Here’s where Floral Bellpull started on November 18th:

I started my rotation during our Cape Cod weekend – but also wound up doing a whole lot of frogging (UGH). I’m not sure whether the problems were all present when I took this photo, but I know for certain that small batch of green stitches close to the middle were misplaced (they were a row too high), and caused a whole mess of alignment problems.

I didn’t feel like I was making a lot of progress on this piece, but looking at this photo versus what I have done now, I realize I really have done a nice amount… and all I’ve been doing are leaves. Lots and lots of green!

So tomorrow morning I’ll post the end-of-rotation photo for this piece before moving onto Apache Wedding Blessing, which was meant for Ivanna’s 1st anniversary. At this point, I’m figuring maybe I should plan for an early 10th anniversary present with the rate it’s stitching! I expect to make some good progress on it, though. I seem to be in a good stitching zone lately, so hopefully I can make a push on it.

South Station in Boston is prepping for the holidays this week. The Nutcracker banners are up in full force, as they are every year. This week the annual electric train display has been going up. In years past, it was done on a weekend so I never got to see the building of it. But this year I’ve been able to get the progress pics.

Here’s Tuesday’s shot as they set the supports up:

The black poles are supports for the plastic clear boards (think hockey rink glass) that will surround the display so people can get right up close to look at things.

Here’s yesterday’s shot, with the ground and the train tracks laid:

They were beginning to put the actual trains and the buildings on the display last night, so I imagine by tonight it will be completed. I’ll take another photo on my way out of town tonight.

Off to work – lots of typing to get done today.