Report From a Blustery Day

My goodness did we have wind today!  There's a large oak tree in front of the house and when the wind blows it brushes against the siding and makes the most dreadful racket.  I took the cats to the vet this morning and drove through little whirlwinds of leaves.  And yes, you read that correctly, I took the cats, as in both of them.  I've never taken them both at the same time before, but it actually worked out very well.  I had them in separate carriers but took them into the exam room together.  Timothy, Mr. Social Butterfly, wandered around and looked out the window, then settled down with his feet tucked under him and waited for his new best friend the vet.  Mimi wasn't quite as thrilled with the whole situation and stayed under the chair until it was her turn.

I haven't been doing much stitching, but I wanted to show you the stitches in the Tapestry Sampler.  This first picture shows some of the bargello work and petit point, but the diagonally-stitched area with the blue thread coming off it is cross stitch with 2 strands of DMC (on 24 count!)

More bargello and petit point:

There will be another pear to the right of this bit, then another section like the first bargello.  The white stitches around the pear are kind of an open basket-weave stitch; I believe the designer called it "dotted Swiss stitch".  It's a nice contrast to the petit point.

More petit point, some satin stitch and some herringbone:





I'm glad I remembered this piece and pulled it out.  I like the design and I like the earth tones.  It'll be fun.

Happy stitching to everyone!

Musings on a Rainy Weekend, or Fall Has Fell

Fall seems to have fallen with a definite and resounding thud! in western PA.  Mother Nature began teasing us on Thursday and Friday with cooler weather; the sprinkles started Friday afternoon and had developed into a steady rain by the time I got to Panera for stitch night that evening.  It rained pretty much all day yesterday and most of today and the cool temperatures prompted me to put the flannel sheets on the bed yesterday.  I love flannel sheets.  This morning on the way to and from church, I noticed that many of the trees that had green leaves just a few days ago now have a lot of red and yellow mixed in with the green.

It's been the perfect weekend to stay in and stitch.  I did do some chores around the house yesterday and I'm happy to say that the laundry basket is more empty than full for the first time in recent memory.  The ironing board is also clear of ironing (although not so clear of finished stitching smalls that need to be finish-finished).

I think I've made good progress on the stocking this weeknd:



The brownish round thing is her head and I hope it will look more like a head when I get some Alpaca to do the French knots for her hair.  I have the embellishmet package from Shepherd's Bush and there are some little doo-dads to go in her hair as well.  I made the discovery this afternoon when I started on the sleeve that I had used the wrong shade of green for part of the wing.  I thought for about 2 seconds about frogging it and re-doing it, but the error isn't glaring and the green I used works, so it will stay as it is.

I worked a little bit on Spring Sampler #2 at stitch night on Friday, and yesterday evening I started a new ornament.  Sharon (Daffycat) had posted on her blog the other day that she is working on a new reindeer and that reminded me that I had only done two of the three that she has already designed, so I started on her Jinglebell Reindeer.  I'm working it with DMC on 40-count mystery fabric; it's Lakeside I'm sure, and I think maybe Maritime White.

I don't remember if I've shown you a picture of this next piece.  Long ago, in a galaxy far away, I went to a Spirit of Cross Stitch festival in Winston-Salem and one of the classes I took was for a piece called Tapestry Sampler.  I don't remember who the designer is.  Her signature is on the chart and her first name is Jill; I think the last name is Siegle or Siegler.  I started this back in 1990-something, whenever the first SOCS was, and this is all the further that I ever got on it:

The ground fabric is 24-count Congress cloth and it's more yellowish than it looks in the picture.  The fibers are DMC and Ginnie Thompson flower thread.  A lot of the stitching is done in petit point, so that might go more quickly than full crosses on the 24-count.  For some reason I was thinking about this piece this afternoon and decided to pull it out of UFO land and try to finish it.  I'll try to post some close-up pictures of the different stitches; it's really very cool.

Stitching buddy du jour:



He likes being my stitching buddy until I have to shift my position or get up, then he gets all offended and jumps down.  At least he doesn't try to play with the floss.



Wishing everyone a good week...happy stitching!

A Blog? Oh Yeah, I Have a Blog!

Well!  I certainly didn't mean to be away this long!  Sometimes life just gets in the way of other things.

There hasn't been a tremendous lot of stitching done around here lately, though I've made a little progress on a couple of things.  I stitched on Sophie's Stocking last weekend and got to this point:



Then I made the horrible discovery that I'd miscounted and would have to frog.  The point where I discovered the mistake was at the stitch connected to the lower needle; it was late in the day and I was getting tired so I decided to just groan and put it aside for another day, as I envisioned having to take out most of the wing that I'd stitched that day.  As I thought about it from time to time this past week and remembered how I'd stitched the wing, it began to dawn on me that maybe the frogging wasn't going to be as bad as I'd feared and, indeed, when I took a good look at it today, I realized that I would have to pull out only 3 stitches.  3 stitches!  I can cope with that!  So I re-did the stitches and managed to make a little more progress:

I've been working a little bit on Margaret Havelock but didn't make enough progress to make it worthwhile to take a picture.  I did do a little bit on Spring Sampler number 2 last night.  This leaf border is allllll around the piece, but it's broken up in places by the little yellow-ish berry thingies, so those will make it more bearable.  I'm planning to go to stitch night on Friday, so I may take this piece to work on.

Finally, doesn't this look yummy (and, I have to say, kind of pretty)?

A couple of years ago, the New York Times published a list of summer salads (hope the link works) and this is #8 - mango and jicama dressed with lime juice and chopped mint.  I made this for lunch last Sunday.  I found the mint a little overwhelming, so will probably go a little easier on it next time.  You can also use radishes instead of the jicama and cilantro instead of the mint.  The radishes would probably not be as sweet but would add a little more color and are a heck of a lot easier to cut up, especially for those of us who are klutzy and manage to take a hunk out of the skin over their knuckles when attemping to slice off the top of the jicama, but I wouldn't know anything about that, of course.  I first found the list on Laurie Perry's website. 

All is otherwise quiet on this front.  I will be stopping by Home Depot tomorrow after work to purchase one or two of those no poison/no touch mouse traps.  I have 2 cats and have been finding signs of mice in the laundry room.  Next to the litter boxes.  ("Yo, mouse!  How's it goin'?"  "Howdy, cat.  Looks like another nice day.")  Sigh.

Happy stitching, all!

A Finish and Two New Starts

I put the last stitches in Spring Sampler this afternoon...hooray!  Here is the finished product:

I love the soft colors in this sampler; they really are very spring-like to my mind.

Of course, once I finished that one, I had to start another.  I liked the Margaret Havelock reproduction that was in SANQ a few issues back, so I've had it kitted up and ready to go.

I'm stitching Margaret on 32 count linen from Lakeside; I think it's Vintage Examplar.  It's charted for AVAS silk but I'm using the DMC conversion that's provided.  The blue border is actually more of a periwinkle color and isn't as violently blue as it looks in the picture.  I'm not sure what happened with that pic.  My camera usually does a better job than that on colors.  Must have been my lighting, which wasn't optimal.

And while I was starting new things, I decided I'd start another of the Spring Samplers.  There are three of them in the same leaflet and I want to do all three of them.  This is the one I decided to go with next:

I'm using 36-count Navy Bean from Lakeside and the called-for DMC flosses.  All three samplers use the same color scheme and they complement each other well.  I was a little hesitant about stitching this sampler because that border looks like something that might just send me over the edge and, in fact, a couple of ladies in our Friday night stitch group suggested that I could do just the block with the sun in it, but I decided that I like the whole thing well enough that I can suck it up and manage the border.  I put in about a dozen stitches this afternoon, really just enough to say that I've started it.

These will probably be my stitch night projects; I expect that I'll be focusing on Sophie's Stocking on the weekends.

Wishing everyone a great week and happy stitching!

Well, THAT Was Different!

Did you feel the earthquake today?  I had just got up and was talking to a co-worker when I heard a noise that sounded like someone walking in the drop ceiling.  Then I began feeling like I was losing my balance; it was few seconds before we realized that the building was moving -- very disorienting!  I was wearing a pair of MBT shoes -- they have soles that kind of rock and it was only my second day wearing them -- and at first I was blaming the shoes for making me feel off-balance, but not so!  The building was evacuated for a brief time, maybe 15 minutes, until it was determined that there was no damage.  We're a good ways away from the epicenter; hope you guys in northern VA are okay!

Getting There...

No stocking or ornaments this weekend, just Spring Sampler.  I went to Stitch Night (more about that in a minute) on Friday and finished the "C" block and got a good runny-go on the frog, then this afternoon I sat down and finished the frog and did the little blue flowers around him and the pink butterfly.  The last critter is a bird (the brown blob in the lower left), then a little more border and one last rectangle with 2 pink flowers on the bottom.  There are two more samplers on this chart and I'm thinking seriously about stitching both of them.  I just love the colors in these.

This is the whole thing so far:

I've been joining some ladies for Stitch Night on Friday nights recently.  They used to meet at the French Knot, a recently-closed local LNS :-(  and now are getting together on Fridays at a couple of local Panera restaurants (yummmm!), alternating Fridays at each location.  Lee invited me to join them; my first Friday was two weeks ago and then I went again this past Friday and enjoyed myself tremendously both times.  We stitch in the "VIP" room at Panera.  It's a great group of ladies and they're fun to stitch with, not to mention that it's a good excuse to have dinner at Panera (broccoli and cheese soup -- mmm, mmm, good!).

Hoping everyone has a good week -- happy stitching!

Ornaments

I put the finishing touches on Snowdon this evening.  It was about time; I started him at the end of January.  The stitching has been done for a long time but I was procrastinating about putting in the seaweed and the ornament thingies.  The chart called for Glissen Gloss for the seaweed but I didn't have any so I used some stuff from Rainbow Gallery that I had in my stash -- Arctic Rays, maybe?  Whatever it was, it was a PITA to work with.  But it's on, it's done, and he's kinda cute.

He is from Jemini Designs, from the 2008 JCS ornament issue, and he's stitched on 28-count "miracle mint" Lugana with DMC and GAST fibers, that green stuff and buttons from Just Another Button Company.

Having finished one ornament it was, of course, necessary to begin another.  This one is from the 2008 ornament issue as well -- Bluebird of Christmas Happiness, by M Designs.  Here's the picture from the magazine:

I'm using the called-for "crystal icon" linen from Picture This Plus (32 count) but I switched out the DMC fibers to some HDF silks that I had in my stash.  I don't know what the red is; some mystery silk, also from the stash.  I put in a couple of rows of stitching this evening, but not really enough to be worth taking a picture.

Maybe it won't take 7 months to get this one finished.