Not Much Stitching Going On

Work has been particularly busy lately.  Lots of evening meetings:  Parent meetings for the sacraments of Reconciliation, Eucharist and Confirmation, Safer Spaces classes for catechists and CYO coaches, Parish team meetings about upcoming Christmas liturgies, the Parish Advisory Committee meeting.  My evening leisure time has been virtually non-existent.

This bodes ill for meeting monthly goals in November.  However, there is still some hope.  The Veteran's Day and Thanksgiving Day holidays will replace some of the lost stitching time.  I am committed to a work-related event for the morning and early afternoon of Veteran's Day but by 3pm I can call the day my own.  We are going to a restaurant for Thanksgiving with my husband's sister and cousin and with our youngest son, so I won't be tied to my stove during the earlier part of the day ... more stitching time.  I'd really like to get some more finishing done as well.  As the year comes to an end, I want to whittle down my annual goals a bit more.

On the Town Square project: The Gourmet Shop was done on November 1 though it was my October entry in this series.  I won't be doing the assembly finish on this till I do two more Town Square charts on the same piece of linen ... at which point I will have five Town Square ornaments and one Prairie Schooler  and one By the Bay ornament on that cloth to assemble and finish.  I guess that will be my finishing for December or January.  If you have the chart, you will note that I stitched the middle window to the right of the door differently than intended by the designer.  I am determined to stitch this series from stash, buying more blue linen only as needed.  I am substituting fibers and changing colorways  and designing stitching to replace charms and buttons to be able to work from stash for all the rest.  In this case, I didn't have a whisk charm to hang in the window so I stitched some cheeses like the ones I see in my favorite Italian Foods Import store.

And here is one in progress photo of the November entry, the Town Square Pet Shop, a simple project chosen precisely because it can be picked up easily and put down easily: no complicated specialty stitches, no complex design features, just straightforward cross-stitching with a relatively limited palette demanding little substitution.  I am missing only three of the charted WDW fibers and have been able to find substitutes in my overdyed cotton stash:  WDW Pebble to GAST Pebble, WDW Collards to Crescent Colors Spinach, WDW Kohl to GAST Soot.

I want a quick finish under my belt by the end of the second week of November.  At least that will give the illusion of sticking to my goals.