Monday, November 12, 2012

November was supposed to be ...

a month fully devoted to The Woodland Angel Christmas Stocking.  Instead, the month was ushered in by Hurricane Sandy and power outages lasting 4 days.  Even after the power returned, matters were complicated by the blow-out of my Ott Lite bulb.  Granted I have had the lamp for nearly five years and have stitched almost daily with it.  That's a lot of hours from one bulb.  But without a proper stitching lamp cum magnifier, I have been limited to simple projects on 28ct linen.  So the first week of November was consumed by "smalls" stitching: ornaments, pin keeps and needle books.

 I ordered a Vusion Mighty Bright lamp/magnifier from 123 stitch, thinking it would be more portable for retreats and generally more convenient in case of power outages since it offers the options of using batteries or a plug in adapter.  Until, I get my Ott Light back online, the Vusion is a reasonable back-up.But still, it has a very small field of illumination and I continue to work on smalls

It pains me to have lost more than a full week of stitching on the stocking.  Still, I am can't see my way to working on it without proper lighting.  That's only asking for mistakes.  There is still so much to do that, realistically, I don't expect to have it done for this Christmas.  But maybe, just maybe, by 2013, I'll have stitched both Liam's and Piper's stockings and can give them to my grandkids at the same time.  Rocco will be just past a year old and won't really know any better ... so I can probably hold off till 2014 for his stocking without too much bad grandma karma.


In the meantime, I have had one small stitching finish:
The Elizabeth Designs Souvenir Stitcher's Hideaway Needlebook  For this piece I substituted some Crescent Colors cotton overdyes left over from some of my PS Special Edition Santa kits: Bandana for all the reds, Desert Mesquite for all the greens and Sassy Brass for all the golds.



And I am working on this WIP: Papillion Creations Moonlight Serenade complimentary chart. But I haven't decided whether I'll be finishing this as a biscornu or a small pillow.  For this piece I dug out an old skein of NeedleNecessities overdyed in shades of lavender, teal and pale sage.  I no longer have the label so I can't share the name.


3 comments:

Vickie said...

Regina, I have the same Mighty Bright and am pretty happy with it.

riona said...

Vickie I am not really crazy about it since the illumination is so limited. In a well-lit room, it might add just the right amount of focused light for stitching. But I am afraid my living room tends to be rather dark. [I live in a townhouse with windows and doors only at the narrow front and back of the building.] I rally need to find a replacement bulb for my Ott light or invest in a new high performance table of gloor craft lamp.

Rachel S-H said...

Very pretty work. I am glad your power came back on "fairly" quickly.