life

Considering how wild April was around here… I got quite a bit done on my projects! I’m happy. April’s short-short version, in no order of priority, are:

I’m back on track with WIPGO. Finished my stitches for March and all of April
My husband got a new job, started his training, and today started his first regular shift – which means a total adjustment for Max and me in the evenings.
Max passed his most recent belt test at martial arts and is now an apprentice black belt (yellow rank). 7 more stripe colors and he will test for his full black belt.
Work was crazy… total chaos. But that’s April at my job every year. Now with just a bit of added zing as the department gets bigger.
I got absolutely no writing done this month for letters. Very frustrating. Work stress just had me in a mood where in the evenings I needed to grumble and stab fabric.
I did get quite a few postcards out for Postcrossing, though.
My eye doctor has confirmed that I get to avoid bifocals for another year (yay!)
Erich’s new job confirms that we can actually take our first family vacation this summer since Max was born because Erich finally has TIME OFF.
Max is all signed up and ready to go for summer camp. (Day camp – not away camp).
I’m now the Secretary for the Tudor Rose Sampler Guild, and loving the energy. Me taking minutes during meetings? Sold. Great way for me to be involved, especially as a long-distance member.
What the heck Boston Bruins?!? Grrrrrr….
Cities: Skylines is an obnoxiously addicting computer game.
So is Dinkum – which is the Australian-themed Animal Crossing. Introduced to this one at PaxEast.

And onto the April stitchy updates. The theme of this month was “frogging and move forward.” Oh, so much miscounting that had to be fixed to get anywhere.

Picking up where I left off in March, I completed my stitches on the Halloween Candlestick SAL from Lakeside Needlecrafts. This was a SAL that I had a very, VERY small start on last October.

*Halloween Candlestick SAL as of 4/30/23 – stitched 2 over 2 on 32 ct Pumpkin evenweave from Fabric Flair with charted DMC.*

It turned out that my small start of only – 30? – stitches from the link above was already miscounted. That’s what I get for rushing it through during a short SAL! Thankfully I wasn’t off by too much. Repaired the count and moved it forward. It’s now starting to look much more like the center ghost-shaped candlestick. I can start removing some of those grid lines that I needed to center it. With Halloween Candlestick done, I could cross off my final WIPGO goal for March. Huzzah!

Next came Book of Ink Circles (aka BoINK) by Ink Circles. I joined a challenge on this one to stitch for Stitchy Clue in Semi Sane Stitchers, but had to bail on the game after only a couple days… just too much with everything else going on. One 600 stitch roll just killed my momentum for the game. I’m not a fast stitcher, even when I’m just doing lines like on BoInk. But hey… again, made some really good progress here:

*BoInk by Ink Circles as of April 16, 2023. Stitched 2 over 2 on 28 ct Thunderstorm linen by Silkweaver. Outlining in GAST “Cinders”.*

I added another row of squares at the bottom of the framing for this one. One more set of those large squares with the notches from the top row, plus the adjoining middle squares, and then I just have the edge work to finish for the full frame. And then the fill work will begin! My d20 needleminder is positioned in the exact center of this piece, just for perspective. It’s not as big as I thought it would be. I seem to say that about a lot of projects.

The next piece I worked on was Early Americans. With Betsy Ross and Molly Pitcher squares completed, it was time to move onto a new one. I decided to add one of the gents – John Hancock. It’s a much lighter square than the other two so far. I’m nearly halfway done already.

*Early Americans: John Hancock by Little House Needleworks as of April 16, 2023. Stitched 1 over 2 on 40 ct Granite Dust linen by Silkweaver with charted threads.*

Very brown, I know. But it moved quickly! After how long Molly Pitcher took me, it felt so good on this piece to get through a bunch of the block in one go. There’s a pretty heavy roof on this one, but it’s straight back and forth rows – so again, should go quickly. And then three down, six to go! Maybe Martha Washington will be the next, since that one is the one with the exceptionally large house.

I then took a break from WIPGO for a weekend online stitch-in with the Tudor Rose Sampler Guild. Members in the Dallas-Fort Worth area had an in-person stitch in, and I hosted the remote one. I decided to pull out my Temperature Tree SAL and start adding some leaves on it. I was able to get all of January and most of February’s high temperatures recorded!

*Temperature Tree by Stitchin’ Mommy as of April 30, 2023. Stitched 2 over 2 on 32 ct Dreamin’ Lugana from Silkweaver with custom DMC temperature range.*

Really, really liking how these colors are patterning so far! Eventually this piece will come up on my WIPGO this year. When it does, I’ll post my exact temperature breakdowns and the colors I’m using for each range. But the quick summary is that I have 4-temperature increments. I start at 23F (-5C) and below, and the highest is 96F (35C) and above. So far it’s clearly cold – but that’s January and February in New England! The colors will get much warmer in tone to deep reds for the summer. Each branch on this one is a month, and each leaf is colored to the high temperature for that date as recorded on Weather Underground. Knowing how fast these leaves stitch up, I’m going to plan to do some on other meetup weekends with the guild. This will definitely get done this year!

Next up was L ive on Little by Plum Street Samplers. This was the second piece that needed some frogging work before I could stitch. The entire white line that starts running to the right at the roofline was miscounted. I had some legs going over one, some going over three. Really not sure what I was doing when I originally put them in, but I figure I may just not have had good lighting! So I had to carefully frog those stitches out.

*Live on Little by Plum Street Samplers as of April 30, 2023. Stitched 1 over 2 on 40 ct Old Massachusetts linen from Primitive Hare with charted threads.*

My floss was pretty ratty after that, so I finished off the end that remained good. I then moved back over to the bricks on the “front” of the house to do a little work there. But I didn’t get much done. That’s okay. Not quite feeling this one right now. But the correction work is done. That’s what’s most important. I won’t be stuck. I’ll get back to this one!

Finally, I stitched on Winter Welcome by Park Hopper Bart for a couple of evenings while watching Bruins hockey. I did some very good progress on this one, especially considering the evil Etoile thread. One more good round of stitching, and this one will be done!

*Winter Welcome by Park Hopper Bart as of April 30, 2023. Stitched 2 over 2 on 32 ct Winter Berry linen by Fortnight Fabrics with charted threads.*

This project is very hard to photograph well. The fabric is a beautiful blue, but it just washes out in photos. The white floss is much more visible against the fabric in person. I’m guessing I may have about 4 hours left of work to wrap this one up. Not much at all! The rest of the “Winter Welcome” text on the bottom, a few smaller snowflake motifs in the center and on the side of the words, his arms, his carrot nose, eyes, and hat. That’s it!

So a very good month. I’m happy with the stitching progress. Now it’s time to settle into the insanity of Stitch Maynia. I want to film a FlossTube this week for Maynia. I’ll probably do it on Friday night since Max has a “parents night out” event at his martial arts studio and I’ll be free for about 3 hours.

Until then – happy stitching!

Mel.

Taking a little time during my lunch break to catch up on some general writing, blogging, mini-project updates. I hope if you’re reading this that you’re doing well, and that your loved ones are doing well too.

Things here are pretty good. We have a few friends we’re worried about, who are dealing with positive test results, but I obviously will not mention their names here out of privacy. My immediate and extended family is also heavily active in medical care – nurses, PAs, workers at assisted living facilities, hospitals, etc. So while everyone in that circle is still okay, there are daily worries and prayers for everyone involved.

I’m now at the beginning of week eight of working from home. Max is on week 7 of remote school. He will officially be finishing his first grade year remotely. That makes me both relieved and sad at the same time, for obvious reasons, just as it does for one of my cousins who is graduating from high school this year – and sorority sisters graduating from college. It’s just so hard to see kids lose out on all of the rhythms of school that I took for granted as part of just what happened.

Max is doing pretty well with school so far. Each week it gets a little easier as he gets used to the system – and his teacher gets used to it, too. I know the teachers are having meetings, and I’m sure they’re sharing ideas of what they’ve found that works. I continue to be incredibly impressed with how adaptive his teacher has been, even as I can hear the exhaustion during her zoom meetings because it really just is an impossible thing. Trying to have a full class of 20 1st graders on a zoom meeting with various technology capability is just… rough. But she’s doing the best she can, and the kids are, too. I have learned that Max, unlike me, does NOT like to write. He tries to resist every writing project he’s given. But on the other hand, he loves doing math and is already at the stage where he doesn’t need to show his work – but after he answers a question, I have him go back and show how it would be done.

Work for me is going a bit better, too. It’s still very hard to balance the time demands of school, my usual job, and training others to help take some of my workload from me. I hope I’m doing okay and just keep plugging along. So far no work needs have gone unfilled, so I guess that’s something. I won’t lie – I don’t mind avoiding my commute! For the first time in fifteen years, I’ve had a sane commute. When we eventually go back to Boston, it’s going to be hard for me to get back into the swing of things. I wonder, though, if this will change things permanently as far as remote working goes. Will companies (including mine) start to think differently about needing people to be present in the office? Maybe we start sharing space a bit more?

Erich and I are making slow, steady progress through some house purging projects we’ve wanted to do. One whole room is now done, and bits of two others are, too. I figure if we focus on one room per week, we’ll have almost the entire house worked through by the 4th of July. The basement will likely take a while, though – there’s a lot down there. It’ll feel good to get it done, though. The only problem right now is that all of the locations we’d normally donate through are closed for both pickups and drop-offs. For now, we’ll just have to keep donations sorted on one side of the garage so we can get it all ready to move later.

Stitching has been a definite social relief. I’ve continued connecting weekly with friends on Zoom. I look forward to it every week, and actually make some good stitching progress! Nothing finished recently, but I have a couple pieces close.

If you didn’t see my last post, I’ve finally jumped into the “FlossTube” pool and made my first video. You can find my channel here. For now, I’m going to plan to update on Friday afternoons, and once I’m back at work that’ll likely shift to Saturdays.

And that’s about all going on here. We’re doing fine, keeping on keeping on. I hope the same is happening for you and yours.

Hugs to all, and May the Fourth Be With You,

Mel.

April Stitching/Life Wrap Up

Quick Life Updates