A Belated Merry Christmas!

Here's hoping that everyone had a safe and blessed holiday. If you still have traveling to do, I wish you safe journeys.

The cats and I traveled to Kentucky for the holiday. It was Mimi's first road trip. As you can see, she and Timothy took the opportunity to relax from the ride.

I have a carrier that's big enough for both of them and I think that helped. She wasn't crazy about going in it, but once she was there she was a good little traveler. Timothy always is; he just lays down and goes to sleep. I think it helped Mimi that her buddy was with her.

I managed to get some stitching done while I was home. This is Silver Stitches, which I started before I left. The fibers are DMC light effects silver metallic and 3 DMC flosses -- blanc, 927 and 3743. The center band is Rhodes stiches in the silver metallic, with white eyelets above and below. Above and below the eyelets are something using DMC 927; I cannot for the life of me remember the stitch and I'm not traipsing downstairs to look it up. The bands above and below that are rice stitches using the metallic for the base X and couching it with DMC 3743. I've got part of the upper band worked and none of the lower one :-)

I worked on my elephant yesterday. Here's where we started:

And here's where I stopped:

He's coming right along. I'm pleased with my progress.

New Start (but no pics)

I sat down this evening and put a few stitches in the next ornament on my unoffficial ornament stitching list. It's Silver Stitches by Charlotte Smythe, from last year's JCS ornament issue. I did about half a dozen Rhodes stitches and a couple of eyelets and called it a night; I didn't take a pic because I just didn't feel like trudging upstairs for the camera :-) I'll get one when I've made a little more progress. The Rhodes stitches are done with DMC Light Effects silver metallic and boy is that stuff a PITA to stitch with! I love doing Rhodes stitches but with that fiber -- ::shudder::

How I Spent My Sunday Afternoon

It ended up to be a fairly productive afternoon. I did a bit of ironing after I got home from church, then pressed and trimmed the bookmark. I decided to just fringe the bottom; I think I prefer that rather than fringe on both ends. I'm pleased with how it turned out and I hope my guy's mom will like it. She's not a big reader, but maybe she will want to keep it in her Bible.


I finished up the redbird ornament whilst watching the Steelers beat the Packers (woohoo! Go Steelers!) The game literally went down to the last second. Anyhoo, here's how the ornie turned out. Backstitching isn't my favorite thing to do, but it's amazing the difference it makes.

Now I just need to have a finishing day!

Snowy Day

If we have to have snow and lousy weather, I'm glad it's on a Saturday and I don't have to venture out. I'm grateful for those who do venture out to try to keep things moving; I was awakened about 4:15 this morning by the beeping of a snow plow backing on the street behind the house.

Here's how the deck looked along about 2 or 3 this afternoon:


Mimi and Timothy were supremely unconcerned.

I spent most of the evening with needle in hand. I finished the stitching on the bookmark for my guys's mom; tomorrow I'll press it, trim off the fabric and fringe it. I wasn't sure I'd have enough pink floss for the nun's stitch border, but I gambled and won. I had enough with a tiny bit left over.

I was still in stitchy mode (hooray!) after I finished the bookmark, so I pulled out the redbird ornament and finished his beak; now he looks more like a cardinal and less like a red Godzilla. I have a very little stitching left, including the backstitching so he'll stand out a little better on the red fabric. That's on the agenda for tomorrow afternoon.

Stay warm and stay safe!

9 O'Clock and All's Well

No snow yet, which is good, but I think it's actually not supposed to start until around 10p.m. The forecast is for anywhere from 1 inch to 6, depending on what broadcast you listen to and/or choose to believe. I had planned a trip to Virginia this weekend but the weather outlook both here and there put the kibosh on that. I stopped at the grocery on the way home from work, expecting there to be about nine thousand people in the store, but I was pleasantly surprised. It was busy, no mistake about that, but I actually got a parking place fairly close to the door and it seemed a little less busy than a regular Friday night.

I put in a little bit of stitching time tonight; I finished the bookmark design and got a bit of a runny-go at the nun's stitches around the edge. When those are in, I'll trim the fabric off on the sides and fringe at least the bottom. The pattern calls for fringing both ends and the one I did in class many moons ago is finished that way and looks very nice. It'll just kind of depend on my mood once I start trimming!
I'm planning to do a few chores in the morning, then sit down and finish this baby tomorrow afternoon.

Stay warm!

So what do you do when you're overwhelmed with too many WIPS?

Easy...start another one!

Last year, my intention was to stitch an ornament for a Christmas gift for my guy's mom. I stitched the ornament, but I didn't get it done for Christmas so the stitched piece never got made into an ornament. So I had every intention -- again -- of getting it finished as an ornament and giving it to her this year. (Never mind that she doesn't put up a tree.) It was one of the items that I intended to finish on Thanksgiving day and didn't.

In the meantime, I thought that I would like to stitch a bookmark for her. My favorite bookmark design is one that was a class piece at one of the Spirit of Cross Stitch Festivals back in the '90s; it's called Nell's Bookmark and the designer is Lucy Lyons Willis. The snag with that was that I couldn't find the chart. I have the bookmark that I stitched in class and I figured I could stitch another using that one as a pattern if I had to but I really wanted to find the chart.

Can you tell that I'm just a little disorganized?

Anyhoo, I finally accepted the fact today that the ornament probably won't get finished again this year. It might, but I'm not holding my breath. I decided to have one more go at finding the bookmark chart and stitching that for her. And find it I did, hooray! It was, of course, in the last place I looked :-) So I found a piece of evenweave in my stash -- 28 count, I think -- and found the Eva Rosenstand flosses from the original class piece and got to it this evening. Here's a picture; aren't the colors pretty?
This will be a fast stitch; I've done several of these for my mom and aunts and I should be able to do it this weekend.

And speaking of Eva Rosenstand, does anyone know if there is still such a thing as Eva Rosenstand floss? I know Nordic Needle used to be the U.S. distributor, but I just looked at Rosenstand's website and the products page lists kits, fabrics and accessories, but I don't see anything about fibers.

My Stitch is in Hawaii Without Me

I know that I’m not the only person whose stitch seems to have taken a wee pre-holiday vacation, but it was a bit of a relief to see it validated on some of your blogs. I put a few stitches in the red bird ornament this past Friday evening I think it was, though I confess that I didn’t have much enthusiasm for the endeavor and ended up putting it away and watching the final episode of “Monk”. Other than that, I’m not sure I’ve done any stitching since I spent Thanksgiving with Elisabeth Timms.

It’s not the first time I’ve been in a stitching funk. They happen sometimes. I think part of the reason for this one, though, is the time of year. It’s generally dark by the time I get home – not late, but dark. When 7pm looks like 10pm, it’s hard for me to get my mind around the fact that I can sit down and stitch for an hour or so and still get to bed at a decent hour. It also doesn’t help that it’s the holiday season. I don’t do the holidays real well – I laid out the holiday placemats the other day but haven’t put them on the table yet and probably won’t – and that seems to affect my stitching mojo. But when it comes to sending my stitch on sabbatical, the biggest culprit is, well, me. I’ve been digging around in my WIPs, and it’s almost depressing when I see the number of projects I have started or even just kitted up, as well as how many of them are BAPs or almost-BAPs. I used to be a one-project-at-a-time kind of gal, but those days are long gone! The starts and stops have kind of snowballed. I’m sure there are people with WAY more WIPs than I have, but it’s still a little daunting.

Oh well, one thing I know about the departure of the stitch is that it always comes back. It always has in the past and I’m sure it will again. In the meantime, I guess I’ll just read a book…