Weekend Progress Report

Since this weekend has been consumed by holiday cleaning and decorating and a wee bit of sewing finishing before I dismantled the dining room sewing center and restored the room to its original function, I have very little to report. I have resumed work on TW's Autumn Faerie. This will be my focus piece for the remainder of December or until it is finished, whichever comes first.

First, a photo of it when last seen. And now, a photo of weekend progress, such as it is. There are several reasons it is going so slowly. For one thing, I am obsessive about stitching discrete segments of a design and I worked this weekend on the faerie's hair and one arm draped in a scarf which straddled two pages of the chart ... hence lots of juggling pages. I find when I just stitch a design page by page, there is a discernible "line" marking the joining of the pages once stitched ... probably a problem with my tension. But the problem is resolved when I stitch across page borders to complete motifs or design elements. Another factor is that I don't have the space to really spread out and set up one of those boards in which one can park all the needles threaded with the multitudinous blends and singles that make up a TW design. I actually am stitching this with one needle and I am rewinding all the floss that is left over after I finish a needleful in a particular symbol. This keeps me organized and neat in my little stitching corner but it is not particularly efficient. And lastly, this piece is on 18" scroll rods and set up in my stitching stand. I rarely use the stitching stand, preferring most often to use smaller hand-held scroll rods [usually 12"] or tension hoops so I have never really found my rhythm for stitching two handed and I am constantly flipping the piece to make sure there aren't any loops, knots or other flaws developing on the back side of the piece. With luck, as I progress on this piece I will develop the skill set of working with a stitching stand.

And, of course, I am still cleaning and decorating for Christmas. For me, this a piecemeal process. I have arrived at that certain age when housework is best done an hour at a time with breaks in between. If I go full throttle, I pay for it with aches and pains and a very irritable mood. Physical labor is now an incremental thing!