Weekend Progress Report # 7 & # 8

Since I was sick for 8 days and consequently didn't post very often, this will be a catch-up report with photos of what was accomplished in the past two weeks.

Focus Project: TW Autumn Faerie: still no progress ...

Travel Project: Heartstrings' Santa Factory Card - Santa with Noah's Ark. This was finished earlier in the two week period and finished as a fringed ornament for my grandson whose middle name is Noah. All I need to do is make a braided cord hangar but that will have to wait till this evening. I need my husband's help to hold the ends of the cord taut while I work the drill. I have decided that I will stitch him a Noah's Ark ornament every year. This past Christmas, I gave him the Homespun Elegance Santa with Noah's Ark. I know Prairie Schooler also has one, which I will have to pick up for Christmas in 2011. Now, all I have to do is come up with a theme for my grandaughter who has been saddled with the name Piper by her oh-so-yuppie parents. Where did I go wrong?

Medium Project: Brightneedle's Ghosts & Ghoulies Etui. All I can claim to have done on this is to have taken it out, looked it over carefully and have come to the difficult decision that I really will have to frog out the over one stitching of the first line of the poem. But startitis hit with a fury during my convalesence. I needed the bright colors of Workbasket's Mermaids Singing and worked on that piece fairly steadily during the past week. It is a rather quick stitch as well as an enjoyable one. I anticipate being finished with this in early March.

New Start: I just couldn't help myself. This project has been burning a hole in my stitching bag since I got it at the Mystic Stitcher's Hideaway. Chris of Chris' Collection [the LNS that sets up the on site shop at the hideaway] gave all in attendance this adorable little tuckaway pouch and a matching piece of fabric as well as some floss and a chart. I knew I wouldn't use the chart included because I had already stitched it earlier last year as a needlebook. I just couldn't decide what chart I wanted to use instead. Well, finally, I decided to use some Belle Soie silk [Blue Lagoon] to stitch a Quaker motif fragment from the Workbasket Quaker Sampler chart. Now all I have to do is decide whether I want to secure the insert with a few buttons or just with some very discreet stitches. The second photo shows the piece with some brass buttons with incised tracery similar to the pouch fabric print. I have only laid them on the piece and haven't decided yet whether I wish to sew them in place. Perhaps you guys can vote: buttons or plain. The pouch is just the right size for the hand-held calculator I always carry in my purse. I also had to start this little scissor keep from The Antique Sampler and Needlework Fall 2009 issue, using the triangular Tokens and Trifles. Since I didn't have the Kreinik silks called for I substituted similar shades of YLI silk that I had on hand ... though I have used a lighter shade of lavendar ... I thought the darker shade was rather jarring.

Ornaments: Bride Tree SAL, back of the January ornament: Done. I also managed to stitch a back for the above mentioned Santa With Noah's Ark, which will be the 2010 Christmas ornament for my grandson, Liam Noah. And I stitched my March Thanksgiving ornament using one of my old Homespun Elegance Wooly Tyme charts ... I had to finish it a month early since I mailed all the charts in that series to Myra who won the February Giveaway. I didn't want to violate of copyright laws. I am in the middle of assembling my January, February and March Thanksgiving ornaments and will have photos within a day or two. I also did the final assembly on my January Bride's Tree SAL ornament ... all I need to do is add a hangar ... and in keeping with the country primitive stle of the finish, I will probably use a bit of jute cord.

One more task I tackled this past week was organizing my button collection by color family, as I incorporated all the buttons from my mother's srash into my own.

All in all, I am satisfied with the progress I have made these past two weeks ... neglect of the Autumn Faerie notwithstanding ... especially when you consider that no stitching was done for five days while I was dealing with the worst of my bout with the flu or intestinal virus or whatever it was.