Twiddling My Thumbs On Tuesday

While I haven't abandoned my stitching entirely, I have certainly slowed down substantially. Half assembled ornaments litter my stitching table, cardboard forms are scattered about awaiting the addition of the stiff interfacing I use to pad and soften them. I keep forgetting to ask my husband to help in making twisted cord ... he is absolutely stalwart in holding his end firmly and steadily, though he does tend to make mildly sarcastic comments about the uses to which I put him. Even my camera has been idle. It's been nearly a week since I added a photo to the blog. As I sit here at the keyboard, tea tray beside me, I am working up the energy to go downstairs and put in an hour before work on ornament assembly. But somehow it seems easier to simply sip some delightful Assam and babble on.

When I get home from work, I am going to have to do a little exploratory surgery on my sewing machine. I suspect a broken needle fragment is stuck somewhere in the bobbin assembly and is causing my thread to break after stitching just a minute or two. And then I will devote the rest of the evening to finishing up the finishes.

I may even finish up this tote if I manage to get the sewing machine up and running again. The stitched piece in the center comes from last year's Halloween issue of JCS but I never really did understand how sheep were a Halloween motif. I think the design works better as the centerpiece of a knitting project bag. I am using a bunch of tweedy upholstery fabric samples to make the bag and I'll line it with muslin or some lovely printed flannel, perhaps putting a few pockets in the lining for knitting tools. I'll have to check my stash to see if I have a large enough piece of the flannel: a rich cream printed with a brown floral design. I think the whole project works well as a study in deep earth tones.