Weekend Progress Report: January 23, 2011

Before I discuss actual stitching, I want to do a little stitch-related happy dancing. As a 40th wedding anniversary gift, my husband has enrolled me in the Sturbridge Stitcher's Hideaway Retreat scheduled for this summer. Thea Dueck of The Victoria Sampler will be the instructor ... it'll be my second time with her, a real bonus to my way of thinking ... she is a phenomenally gifted designer AND teacher. Those two skill sets do not always go together. The setting will include an historic hotel and possibly, a trip to Old Sturbridge Village's back rooms where they keep the antique textiles and embroideries. Whatever the added field trip is, I know it will be imaginative ... Sue Donnelly runs the best events I have ever attended ... and I have been to several CATS and one or two EGA events ... so I do have a standard of comparison! Anyway, what could be a better gift than a stitching retreat? And, because he didn't want to be empty-handed on the day of the anniversary, he gave me a box of Godiva chocolates, as well! What a guy!

Yesterday, we celebrated two First Confession liturgies in the parish ... so a workday that normally ends at Noon was extended till 3:00pm ... resulting in a little less stitching time than usual ... Saturday afternoon after work/before dinner is usually primo stitching time. I have been trying to limit my rotation to five projects that I work on steadily. It is my attempt to avoid morphing any of the Crazy Challenge pieces into UFOs and to still manage to work on the WIPs and UFOs from 2010.

But such as it is, here are photos of progress since my last post.

Crazy Challenge Day 1: Sue Hillis' Cookie Santa. Steady progress on this. It has been my focus piece since Wednesday, so I have gotten quite a bit done. I am doing the back-stitching as I finish a significant section. I tend to like the immediate gratification of seeing the finished look of a project ... even before I have earned it with a real finish. I am reasonably confident I can finish this Crazy Challenge piece by the end of January or very early in February. The second challenge piece on the list is Dragon Dreams' The Ice Dragon's Kingdom. I look forward to getting back to work on that piece although two of the flosses needed [one of the Anchor Marlitts and one of the Kreinik VF Braids] are still on backorder. Even so, I am hopeful that I can work with what I have ... I'll make a gentle reminder phone call this week to the shop that has the flosses back-ordered. If they can't promise delivery within a week or two, I'll cancel and look for another source. I had really hoped to do all the challenge pieces in order. But some of them require such unusual [for me] flosses that this may be problematic.