Weekend Progress Report: October 23, 2011

In opposition to the habits of most other stitchers, as the weather cools I seem to be stitching less. That has more to do with the academic and liturgical calendars than with the seasonal calendar. This is a busy time of year, with parent and candidate meetings for sacraments, gearing up for Advent this year with the dreadful changes in the language of the litorgy, making sure all the Safe Environment paperwork on all adults is submitted in a timely fashion, starting up the Safe Environment sessions for the children, and still managing to squeeze in 5 fire drills [one for each session] before the weather makes that too problematic. And still doing all the routine daily tasks that go along with running a parish religious education program for 400 children. I am spending more time at the parish and come home less inclined to stitch. Oddly, I find myself anticipating "snow days". Now, normally, I'd prefer a snowless year ... I have always disliked snow, even as a child. But I could use a cozy, snowed-in, unscheduled day off ... sipping tea, stitching, perhaps baking a batch of scones or tea buns. It's way too early in the year to be feeling this malaise. It could be I am just slow to recover from last weekend's bout of the flu and am feeling a bit wrung out for the time being. I am just grateful this is not one of the two seasons of the year when all I seem to do is run from one archdiocesan or regional meeting or special event to another. Now, that's a really wearying time ... I am not a natural commuter!

In any case, this is what I have accomplished this week: The Black'd Skie: I picked up Primitive Needle's Black'd Skie again this week and tackled some of the frogging required as a result of my misreading of the chart's top band ... I didn't notice that in three places, the diamonds were three crosses apart rather than two ... which means my total width is three cross stitchs short. Irritating, to be sure, but I am not such a purist that I will be ripping out all that work. Instead, I will adjust to the shorter width. The first step was to frog out the flower motif on the right side of the first block below the top band and re-stitch it one stitch to the right for a more balanced look. I will make other adjustments as I go along since all the blocks on the left will be one stitch less wide than charted and all the blocks on the right will be two stitches short of the charted design. I will be much more observant of my next Primitive Needle project ... after all, the primitive irregularities add to the charm. Query: Don't you just hate it when you misread a chart? Sure, it's generally fixable but ... ! I have concluded that I misread charts because I have been stitching for over 30 years and tend to see what I expect to see when I do that first whole project at a glance scan. I need to be more alert and awake and aware. Well, after frogging, I continued stitching the first block, completing it before picking up ...

Workbasket's Quaker Sampler. Here, I just managed to stick with my plan to stitch one of the larger motifs and and two of the larger letters by my self-imposed weekly deadline. When I first saw GAST's Forest Glen, I thought it an ugly, muddy green ... in spite of the fact that I have always believed that there is no such thing as an ugly color in all of creation ... just poor light and bad settings. Well, I find I am justified in that belief since Forest Glen looks fine, thank you very much, against this fabric. I started this motif and hope to have it finished by Monday evening or Tuesday morning. Next, I made...

Some Small Progress on Ornament Finishing by gathering up all the various bits of needed cardboard and the stitched pieces. Today at work I will steal a bit of time from my lunch hour to use the copier and the paper slice to shape and cut my boards for five ornaments and four floss tags. I should be able to get the padding taken care of tonight and then finish the pieces throughout the week.