Primitive Needle's Black'd Skie

Black'd Skies back in May

It's been a long time since I posted about any actual stitching progress ... since mid-May, as a matter of fact. The latter part of May was a near total write-off: long hours at work, too exhausted to stitch when at home, falling asleep in front of the DVD player/TV most nights.  Early June was somewhat better: working on Black'd Skie intermittently ... sometimes for no more than 30 minutes in the course of the day as opposed to my average stitching time of two hours daily.  My pace has picked up a bit this last week though.  Here is what it looked like the last time it was photographed with just the upper band and Blocks 1 and 2 stitched.  You can see Block 2 in its entirety and only a bit of Block 1 but you get the idea.  Well, here it is what it looks like today with Blocks 1, 2 and 3 complete and the outline of the borders of Blocks 4, 6, and 6 sketched in as well as the bottom band stitched.  Either my math was wrong or the fabric count was mislabeled, because I have more blank fabric on the right and at the bottom [having started with my usual to and a half inches in and down at the top left corner.  Since I am using one strand of silk and it is covering very nicely, I suspect the fabric is really a 36 ct rather than 32ct as marked.

Black'd Skie as of 6-23

Most of the time I am a devout rotation stitcher, craving the novelty of something different everyday.  But every so often I go on jags of just wanting to stitch one thing and one thing only.   After such a long period of little or no stitching, I am finding it very restful to pick up the same piece day after day.  None of the pressures of choice, no need to re-focus on something quite different.  For example, the two other pieces in my "current" stitching bag are a Japanese Kogin Tea Cozy, using straight stitches on the despised AIDA and a very colorful band sampler from SANQ, whose next step is a band of strawberries formed with Queen stitches - I think I'll wait a bit longer before tackling that!

Alas, I shall have to start a new project this weekend.  An exchange for which I thought the mailing deadline was 7/4 actually had a deadline of 6/15 and I got one of those dreaded "just wondering how you are doing" e-mails about it.   It's a simple enough project and if I really put mu mind to it, I can have the piece stitched over the weekend and assembled [a very simple sewing finish] by Monday and sent off on Tuesday.