Weekend Progress Report: Sept. 25, 2011: My First Three Day Weekend

I have been doing a bit of crowing lately about my new work schedule that allows for a three day weekend every week ... of course, I pay for it with two beastly 12 hour days Monday and Tuesday ... but I expect it will be well worth the sacrifice. So here is how the first one went.

Friday morning: I have only two "engagements" this weekend: a baby shower for my goddaughter and the farewell Mass and reception for Fr. Bill who has been transferred to a new parish after just 10 months with us. So it should be a good stitching and gardening weekend, always assuming the rain stops. Lots of time to enjoy my passion for my backyard and for the textile arts. I am hoping to get the yard cleaned up completely so that I can start on a "landscaping" project. Who knows, I may even get some finishing done! The current favorite in my stitching rotation is Black'd Skie. The Needlepoint Inc Silks are a joy: so smooth, such luscious colors, such amusing names for the fibers. And I always enjoy working on 40 count linen. It may be my imagination, but I do believe the details are more defined and sharper on the higher count linens. And, of course, I love all The Primitive Needle designs I own. The pre-mature death of the designer in a tragic flooding accident was a great loss to the stitching community. But I am also enjoying a nostalgic return to needlepoint with my Owl sampler and a lovely little patriotic piece that I am stitching for Barbara who won my blogaversary drawing. So there will be lots of options to choose from this weekend and plenty of quality stitching time.

Friday afternoon: Well, the rains came in spite of my hopes, so after a bit of grocery shopping and housework, I settled down to some stitching. I finished the cross-stitching of the patriotic piece for the blogaversary prize and dug out the perfect fabric for finishing it. I had hoped to have it ready to mail Monday but that didn't quite happen. Maybe Tuesday or Wednesday. Photos will be forthcoming when I hear that Barbara has received it.

Saturday: One of the problems with a rotation that is currently four BAPs and no smalls whatsoever is that I need the occasional little project to keep my stitching energy going. So this morning, I put together a little something from odds and ends found in my stitching stash. The chart was A Friendship Sampler, a complimentary chart by a designer unknown to me. When I downloaded the chart, I failed to notice that my printer scanned only 5/6ths of the page. The missing portion had the designer's name and all the DMC #s. I don't mind missing the #'s since I never really play by the rules anyway but I am annoyed that I didn't catch the designer's name and can't give the proper credit. I have changed everything about this sampler except the positioning and shape of the houses, so it is nearly as much my own creation as the original designer's but still I would like to give credit where credit is due. Keeping to the recent stitch from stash theme, I pulled out a scrap of fabric that I had cut and zigzagged around the edges before deciding it wouldn't do for a project way back in April. And since I was planning on stitching my Friendship Sampler as an Autumn piece, I pulled out the same Catherine Jordan overdyed cottons I had used for my Earth Day Make Do Sampler and supplemented those fibers with a bit of Caron Wildflowers Marigold left over from my Autumn Spots of Fun Sampler from 2009. Just to be on the safe side, I also pulled some WDW Chrysanthemum from stash and some odds and ends of green floss from other long since finished projects that I have stored on a darling little wooden hornbook shaped floss holder. Okay, the houses remained the same shape and in the same relative position to one another but I changed the tree to a deciduous one so that I can stitch some lovely orange-y gold leaves, I will replace the tulip like flowers of the original with my own interpretation of spider mums and will add some greenery and a few pumpkins, and I have changed the border to a brick stitch checkerboard with corner squares in tent and Rhodes stitch using the Caron Wildflowers Marigold floss. I'll probably go back and frog out the border on the upper right corner and re-stitch it to create a smoother color flow. I still have some spaces to fill and haven't quite decided how I will fill in the blanks but I am happy with this start.

Sunday: It was back to Black'd Skie for the remainder of my stitching time. I have to apologize for the failure to iron the linen before photographing it but I didn't really have the time before work to do so. I am still working on the boring border and have yet to decide whether I will do all the borders at once and be done with them or stitch each block as I come to it.

All in all, a fairly productive weekend and not a bad precedent for all the three day weekends yet to come!