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Challenges/Stitch-A-Longs, Family & Friends, Stitching, Works in Progress

What I Stitched This Week – Jan. 9-15, 2023

January 16, 2023 2 Comments

The past seven days have been a heck of a rollercoaster here in Measi Land. I celebrated my 48th turn around the sun on Wednesday with a wonderfully relaxing day off. Then it quickly turned sad, as one of my Stitching Sisters of New England friends, Carol, passed away early Saturday morning. She was older – I refuse to go down the “elderly” road – and had been looking frail over the last few months, but it still came as a shock. So my brain and emotions are all over the place. My stitching circle has had a very rough couple of years between members dealing with cancer, heart attacks, other hospital-related illnesses, two Sisters’ deaths, and the losses of loved ones. Somehow, though, we just keep moving, reminding ourselves to hold each other a little closer in our hearts. I’ve been a bit more distant from the group as a whole lately as I work through some personal emotional/mental stuff. This is my reminder to stop hiding, even when everything in my brain wants me to.

I’d planned on making a WIP Parade FlossTube this weekend, but it’s just not the right time. Sometime soon – once I take a little breath about everything.

(deep breath)

So… despite that rockiness, it was a pretty good stitching week.

*ABCs of Parenting by Lizzie Kate – as of January 12, 2023 – stitched 2 over 2 on 28 count cream Monaco with customized DMC colors*

I started the week with some work on my ABCs of Parenting by Lizzie Kate, which was the second of my four WIPGO pieces for the month. It also wound up being the focus piece for Week Two of “Choose My WIP” over on Semi-Sane Stitchers on Facebook. I featured it this past week with my “before” photo here. It stitches up pretty quickly, and I’m happy with my WIPGO progress on it. I may put this in as one of my monthly focuses later this year for WIPocalypse, because I could probably get it done easily if I just did a length or two per night on it.

*Flying Lesson by Silver Creek Samplers as of January 14, 2023 – stitched 1 over 1 on 18 ct Hazelwood Aida from Fiber on a Whim with charted DMC threads*

On Friday night I just felt like curling up with something fairly easy as Erich and I watched The Matrix Resurrections for the second time. I grabbed Flying Lesson by Silver Creek Samplers and threw some green and black stitches in to complete the header text and the very top of the witch hat. I fully expect to finish this piece for Halloween this year. Once I get that witch hat and the moon behind it completed, the rest of it will go super fast. Hopefully it comes up on an early WIPGO month and I can just devote a week to it or something. It may come up next week for Choose My WIP – it’s only down by one vote right now! Maybe I’ll toss it in the ring for Week 4 if it doesn’t win this week. I’d like to get that hat done so I can move on from black floss for a little while.

*The Fruit of Plenty by Modern Folk Embroidery – as of January 14, 2023 – stitched 1 over 2 on 40 ct Antique Ivory linen from Silkweaver with DMC 800 and 840.*

I’d originally planned on working on my 3rd WIPGO piece for Saturday and Sunday. After the news about Carol, though, I knew I needed a night to work on one of my pieces that she’d expressed a lot of interest in. Solid color stitching, some basic rows, and nothing complicated. It helped ground me and let me work through my thoughts, both happy and sad, as I stitched late into the night after everyone else was upstairs. On this piece, I added the light blue at the top (where you see the “2” outlined), carrying it down the right side of that brown-outlined triangle. This is the other piece that is currently up for Choose My WIP for week 3, winning by one. If it wins, I’ll be working the blue down to the right (to outline the “0”) to form the other side of the octagonal motif just to the left of my needle minder in this photo. For those familiar with how this stitch-a-long was divided in 2021, it’s the February portion. I have January’s complete and have moved down into April a bit to let that blue Assisi-style band flow naturally. I do plan on roughly stitching the piece generally in month-release order. Where it makes sense to skip around to form a motif across the month dividers, though – I’ll make the jump.

*Apache Wedding Blessing as of January 15, 2023 – stitched 2 over 2 on Antique White linen with charted DMC threads*

Finally yesterday I started on my WIPGO piece, although I have to admit I’m just not feeling it. It’s one of my oldest pieces and all I have to do is backstitching – a LOT of backstitching – and a bit of fill-in repair where my stitches were way too tight. This was my first piece ever attempted on linen, so my tension was way off in a few spots – and I think that is part of my mental block about getting it done. I’m just annoyed with my stitches in the top left where I first started. I need to add a stitch over the originals to fatten them up here and there, and they’ll look much better. I’ll be doing a bit more work on it tonight – backstitching, and then it will sleep for a while. One of these days I’ll just suck it up and push through the rest of it. For now? No. I’ll just do what my goal was for WIPGO, which was the entire point of my goals. Some of these pieces I won’t be feeling as much. That’s okay. WIPGO will let me at least touch them for a couple days so I can remind myself where I am on everything.

So what’s in store this week? Apache tonight to complete my WIPGO goal. Tomorrow night I’ll be joining Abi Bellastitch on her #StitchYourAlphabet SAL. She’s working ABC Hornbook by the Primitive Needle. I’ll be working Alphabet of Stitches by Morning Glory Needleworks, since I have that fully kitted and partially basted. Wednesday/Thursday/Friday will be Choose My WIP focus, which will lead me into the first 24 Hours of Cross Stitch Marathon next weekend and a batch of “whatever I want” chaos.

A busy week – both past and upcoming! Hope all of you have a good week – see you next weekend!

Challenges/Stitch-A-Longs, Stitching, Works in Progress

WIPGO 2023 – Week 2 – ABCs of Parenting

January 11, 2023 1 Comment

Week Two of WIPGO 2023 brings me to ABCs of Parenting by Lizzie Kate. This is the first of Lizzie Kate’s patterns that I’ve ever stitched, although I have a few of them in my stash. I love the style of LK’s patterns, although like many designers, I get a bit limited due to the religious nature of many of them. This, thankfully, was one that was much more universal.

I acquired the pattern and some enclosed floss via a freebie table at either Stitcher’s Hideaway or Celebration of Needlework sometime 2019ish. It was charted with a mix of Crescent Colors (now Classic Colorworks) and DMC, but whomever had stitched it before donating it to the freebie table had converted the entire thing to DMC. I have decided to go the DMC route, providing any missing colors from stash with “as close as possible” conversions of my own. The irony being that it was the DMC colors I needed to swap! That’s the beauty of patterns such as this – you really can’t go wrong with whatever you choose. I’ll likely make a few changes along the way. I already changed that small diamond shape next to “fair” to a yellow instead of the same color as the text.

*ABC’s of Parenting by Lizzie Kate as of Jan. 6, 2023 – stitched on 28 ct cream Monaco with DMC conversion (listed below).*

I began my version of the project, like Week One’s Colonial Sampler, for the #nye12x12 stitch-a-long on December 31, 2021. I’m stitching it on 28 count cream Monaco (evenweave) over two with two threads. My photo to the left has the fabric showing it as quite white, but it’s a cream that borders a light lemon yellow.

Getting these first couple words in was a little tricky – the chart is quite small and not the clearest. But now that I have this initial bit in, I expect this to fly pretty quickly. Most of the piece is simple one-stitch wide lettering. It’s easy to bounce placement of new motifs and letters now.

My conversion, based upon the anonymous stitcher’s conversion, is as follows. Originals are Crescent Colors unless noted:

ORIGINAL COLOR	CONVERSION COLOR
Blacksmith Blue	DMC 3799
Eve’s Leaves	DMC 3364
Prickly Pear	DMC 3609
Queen Bee	DMC 676
Red Ribbon	DMC 3350
Tyler Boy Blue	DMC 813
DMC 829	DMC 420
DMC 937	DMC 3346

This is one of those pieces that I could stitch up pretty quickly, so although it’s only out right now for the two days of WIPGO, it may come up later for one of my focus months to complete it. We shall see. 🙂

For information on this blog series, please go to the WIPGO 2023 Introduction Post.

Stitching, Works in Progress

What I Stitched This Week – Jan. 1-8, 2023

January 9, 2023 No Comments

Every Monday, I’ll feature what I worked on for the past week (Monday to Sunday) to get the bit-by-bit progress shots on my pieces that I honestly think are fascinating. Sometimes those photos are the only proof to myself that I am making progress and that every single stitch counts. This week I’m adding in a extra day since January started on a Sunday.

I’ll kick things off with the annual New Year’s Day start. This year I chose The River by Modern Folk Embroidery. I received this pattern last year in the Christmas season advent box, “The Nice Box” from the Black Needle Society along with the gorgeous hank of overdyed floss I’m using. The model was stitched in red, but oh the floss I got… it’s called River of Life, and it’s nearly identical to one of my favorite fountain pen inks called River of Fire – a mix of jewel-toned jade greens into blues that just… *swoon*. Seriously. I need ALL of this floss. All the time. Give me a giant cone of it so I can do every Long Dog that exists in it.

Anyway – this is my second Modern Folk Embroidery piece in progress. I love his designing – the Quaker and Dutch motifs he uses, sometimes with just a bit of tweaking to make it obvious they’re not pure reproductions but inspirations. (Hey… his Designer Name is exactly what he does!)

*The River by Modern Folk Embroidery – as of Jan. 1, 2023 – stitched 1 over 2 on 36 ct Sterling linen from Picture This Plus with River of Life cotton (featured) from Forbidden Fiber Co.*

The hardest thing for me was deciding the fabric – did I want to go on dark fabric and let the floss glow, or lighter fabric so I could see it easier? Both effects would be awesome. I decided to go with the lighter fabric, though. I had a perfect color in my stash that was neutral and would let the floss shine – and ultimately, that’s what needs to happen here – the floss color absolutely needs to shine.

I’ve only put a couple hours’ work into this so far. As you can see in the photo – it’s not much. A little bit of the top border for fabric placement, and the beginning of the Alpha. I am going to be doing a modified parking method with my floss on the borders so I don’t screw up my counts. I also want to allow the floss color changes to roll through the piece naturally, so keeping each strand going to the end is ideal. It’ll be practice in color control to keep the pattern moving nicely down the line!

Hyperborea by Owl Forest Embroidery as of Dec. 28, 2022 – stitched on 32 ct Zweigart Monaco with kitted floss.

The next piece I worked on was for week one of “Choose My WIP” over on Semi Sane Stitchers. This game is held four months out of the year (Jan/Apr/Jul/Oct), and has four rounds per month. A couple days before the start of each official stitching week, participants post two or three projects, and all of the other active participants can vote which piece they prefer – the piece with the most votes is the one you must put at least 500 stitches in during the weekly challenge. My winner for week one was Hyperborea by Owl Forest Embroidery.

Hyperborea by Owl Forest Embroidery as of Jan. 6, 2023

I hoped to get the entire Owl done, but I had a bit more difficulty counting that wing than I’d expected. Still – I managed to get about 600 stitches in over three days and called it a success. I do have a miscount on the head – I forgot an entire row of stitches. BUT… it’s not going to affect anything else around it. Easy to adjust for, so I’m leaving the error. Part of the reason I’m a bit hesitant to rip is because this was a fully kitted project – from Russia. So I don’t want to be scraping for the floss at the end if I’m running low. If, at the end of the project, I feel like correcting it and have the supplies… fine. But it honestly isn’t a big deal here.

The final piece I worked on this week is my Week One WIPGO piece, The Colonial Sampler. My starting photo is in that post, so no need to rehash it. This one really doesn’t photograph easily due to the fabric color, so I’m going to leave the photo a bit bigger so you can see the detail better.

The Colonial Sampler by Betsy Stinner – as of Jan. 8, 2023 – stitched on 32 ct natural Belfast Linen 1 over 2 with charted silks

I completed all of the Band #11, which included cross stitches, satin stitches, and Smyrna crosses. I also completed Band #12, which is the tiny row of light yellow Greek Cross directly below it. It was a very satisfying couple of days to know that I made specific progress by finishing full bands!

And that was my first week of the year. Stay tuned for more updates next week!

Stitching, WIPocalypse

WIPocalypse 2023 Kickoff Post

January 8, 2023 No Comments

Hello everyone!

New Year, New Energy! Thank you for joining me on another crazy year of stitching on projects and making progress. I’m still amused that a little joke of a comment back in 2011 turned into this multi-year SAL. 🙂 I hope that your year is successful with your WIPs and that you enjoy every stitch… even those projects that occasionally drive you nuts.

As always – I want to remind you that this SAL is for fun. Join us when you can, but if life gets in the way… no worries! We all get busy. This is a perpetual hop on/hop off type of SAL. Forget to post your updates? So do I… and I’m running the thing! The important thing is to encourage you to have fun making progress on your pieces. That’s the sole purpose of this SAL. No one is collecting points, there are no rewards or punishments if you’re not active. It’s just a group to connect and celebrate our progress.

If you’re not a cross stitcher/embroidery hobbyist but want to participate with your knitting, crochet, sewing, quilting – or whatever other crafts you’re doing? Join us! It started as a cross-stitch SAL, but the spirit is universal. Enjoy doing the things you love. The more the merrier. Share your joy. We all need it in this world! Some of the things, such as the questions of the month, may not directly apply to you – but if you can alter them to apply to the craft you do… feel free!

I wish you and yours a happy 2023 and look forward to your updates.

Best,
Mel.

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Important SAL Announcements…

Question of the Month: Introduce yourself, your projects, and any goals you have for the year!

Next posting date: January 29, 2023

Topic(s) for next time: If you have been to retreats, what are your must-bring items and supplies?

Need all the basic info about the SAL? Go here for all details for 2023!

*~~*~~*~~*~~

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. If you miss a few months, not a problem – just jump back in when you’re back with us! It’s not a race or a competition – we’re all just here to cheer each other on with our progress.

Challenges/Stitch-A-Longs, Stitching, Works in Progress

WIPGO 2023 – Week 1 – The Colonial Sampler

January 5, 2023 No Comments

Kicking off Week One of my WIPGO year is The Colonial Sampler by Betsy Stinner. I adopted this project from the stash of my friend Sandy after she passed in 2017. I know that Sandy attended the class held by Betsy, but I don’t know when it was. The pattern does not have a copyright date printed in it.

Sandy either completed or reused the fabric for the small pillow class teaching piece in the bottom right corner, as that fabric was missing. She never started the full sampler. The entire kit was together. I was happy to take it as a piece to remember her by as I stitch.

It’s a fun sampler with a variety of bands in different stitches – cross stitch, four-sided stitch, back stitches, herringbone, satin stitch, three-sided Italian cross, darning patterns, smyrna crosses, Greek stitch, queen stitches, etc. The flosses are all silks – a mix of Soie d’Alger and Silk ‘N’ Colors. It’s stitched on 32 ct Raw linen from Zweigart and measures 107w x 189h. This is what I’d would consider a medium-sized piece.

*The Colonial Sampler by Betsy Stinner as of Jan. 5, 2023 – stitched on 32 ct raw Zweigart linen with charted silks.*

I began my version on New Year’s Eve 2021 as part of the #nye12x12 stitchalong held via Instagram. It really hasn’t seen any work since January of last year, though. I started on the top band, but massively screwed up my counting – so abandoned the original start down in a corner of the fabric (until I feel like frogging it out), and instead decided to start dead in the middle to ensure I had things counted correctly. I can’t remember what I did wrong on the original – but I clearly was annoyed enough to just jump on the fabric! That’s not a common thing for me to do.

The Finnegan’s Fog silk, which is that blue to grey dye down the sides is a color I just loooooooooove. It stitches so pretty and just has this mysterious look to it. My photograph has a dark line in the center under the green – but that’s just a shadow, not stitches.

My plan for this WIPGO is to fill in that center band (“Band 11”) with the called-for satin and smyrna stitches. It’s not a particularly complicated band, but will be a very pretty starting point to make some nice progress.

More coming later this week!