Stitching Report, Such As It Is

If you have been hearing the joyful strains of Handel's Hallelujah Chorus, it's just me.  I can see again.  No sooner than my right eye had healed enough after cataract surgery to allow me to see with that eye again, I had surgery on the left eye.  And the world was again a mere blur.  Apparently, I am a slow healer.  It takes three to four days for the dilation to subside.  That meant I went nearly 8 full days unable to read, stitch, use a computer or drive.  Manageable activities were limited to sleeping,  cleaning, cooking and watching TV ... none of which make it to my top ten list of preferred activities.  But now with the aid of a pair of dime store reading glasses, I can do all of the tasks requiring the ability to see clearly objects smaller that a grape.  I may even begin to enjoy puttering in the kitchen again, now that it is a choice rather than a chore.

Naturally, I had to test myself on different count linens and different style projects to see what would be most comfortable as I continue to heal.

First I picked up the July Prairie Schooler Year Round piece again and finished all the red and white points surrounding the star studded blue field.  The center field is slow going.  The 40 ct linen was not the easiest to work and I found myself frogging frequently after miscounting by one thread.  I am not sure I will even bother with the August entry in this series: a sun with a face, rather trite and uninteresting.  On the one hand, it does seem wrong to my orderly soul to skip one chart in a monthly series like this.  But on the other hand, why stitch a piece that would bore me to tears when I have so many more interesting projects on hand?

I also finished work on Sue Donnelly's Best Ships sampler, stitched on a much friendlier 28ct. linen.  It was charted without a border but I stitched a row of waves beneath the last line of text to give the piece a little more weight.

And I put in a few minutes on CEC's Swimming Instructor, working on the spider roses that form the bra.   I am not sure that the dimensionality of the stitching shows to advantage in the photograph.  But I imagine if you account for the scale, this rather buxom little mermaid wears a C cup.  I'll hold off re-charting the face for a few days till I am ready for some over one stitching.  Then it will just be a matter of adding a bead necklace and deciding if I want to embellish it with a few sea creatures. [Now that I know how to make a bullion stitch star fish, I am looking for excuses to use the new found skill.]

And because I seem to be dealing with chronic startitis this summer, I started another Prairie Schooler piece, Primitive Americana.  With all the primary election hoopla going on, it seemed an appropriate time to stitch a face off of party symbols.  I substituted silks for DMC and I am using scraps of mystery 28ct. linen sewn up  into what I have heard described as a flea market pillow top.  It's a format used in some Homespun Elegance designs I've stitched and I thought it would work nicely here.  I haven't decided yet whether I'll stitch Uncle Sam or Lady Liberty in the tall patch to the right but I have started the alphabet sampler with eagle corners that makes up the last design in this PS leaflet.on the bottom panel.  I'll probably have to make some adjustments to the chart to fit this panel.   I seem to be in a Prairie Schooler frame of mind   I can't seem to put this piece down.

So far as ease of stitching goes, the perfect project for the moment is the Jacobean Elegance afghan, stitched over two with four strands on what must be a 10 or 12 ct fabric.  I have started another of the blossom squares.  And though it is the most comfortable stitching of all the projects currently in my rotation, it is awfully bulky and warm to work with..  I think I'll alternate it with the Prairie Schooler piece for a few days.





Ah, it is so good to be able to stitch again.