Wentzler Wednesdays Have Wings

It seems like I just put the Woodland Angel Christmas Stocking piece down but in reality I haven't worked on it since last Wednesday.  And in spite of all that has occurred in the intervening time [my husband's surgery and his less than rapid recuperation], it seems like I was working on the stocking only yesterday.  The time flew.  Perhaps that is a good thing.  With luck, I'll fall right back into the rhythm that produced such satisfactory progress last week.  I plan to work on the angel straight through till Friday evening so there is a chance that I will finish section 8 and have time to start section 7 this month.  I will wait until Friday evening to post a progress photograph since a single day's progress on a Teresa Wentzler project is seldom impressive.  I am going to do my best to get this done for this Christmas.  I know I have been saying that since Christmas 2009, without so much as taking a single stitch till this year.  But this year is the year!  I can feel it in my bones.

And with reference to yesterday's post about the Stitcher's Pocket:  I did finish the buttonhole stitch edging but did not get to the ribbon embroidery.  I have to admit that ribbon embroidery is not my forte and I want to practice my cobweb roses and my seed stitch leaves a bit on my Crazy Quilt Square before I attempt to stitch them on the pocket.  But that's a task for next week.

Wrapping Wentzler Week

It's been an exhilarating ride: starting one week ago I picked up The Woodland Angel and I have worked on it steadily for 8 days.  And it looks like the ride will continue.  Tomorrow I am taking my husband in for same-day surgery, removal of his gall bladder.  I expect to be at the hospital from 6am till around 4pm.  His surgery is set for 8am and I expect he'll be in a room from about noon to four, recovering enough for the drive home.  Since I expect to be in waiting rooms and hospital rooms for extended periods of time, I think I'll bring the stocking and Primitive Needle's Thy Needle and a book to while away the waits.

I figure I'll put the angel down on Friday.  I have been working on section 8 and have finished the bottom of the angel's robes and have gotten back to working on the snow and the woodland creatures standing about in it.  The turtledoves in the lower right corner of the stocking, small as they are, barely an inch square, each have a dozen colors and color combinations in them.  So I am slowing down a bit after the larger color sweeps, relatively speaking, of the robe.  And once I start the snow and dried grass, it's right back to confetti stitching.  Which will mean even slower progress.  So a change of pace is not really a bad idea.

When next Wednesday rolls around, I hope to extend my Wentzler Wednesday into a more modest three day stitch rather than the 9 day marathon I will be completing tomorrow.  That way I can attend to the other pieces in my rotation and still manage to make acceptable progress on the stocking.  At this rate I can be reasonably certain I'll meet my goal of finishing section 8 this month and I may even manage to anticipate October's goals by making a good start on section 7.  I am beginning to believe I may actually finish this stocking in time for Christmas 2012.  

Workaday Wentzler Wednesday

Yesterday was the third Wentzler Wednesday since I re-instituted the practice and I have to admit that I am going to have to get a lot more serious about this project if I am to have a hope in Hades of finishing it by Christmas.  It's just that I have been so preoccupied with The English Band Sampler lately that I haven't taken out my TW on any day but Wednesday.  And that is definitely not the way to make discernible progress.

And speaking of barely discernible progress, this photo really doesn't do justice to the time I spent stitching this piece yesterday.  The confetti stitching that is so typical of a Teresa Wentzler design takes so much longer than the more conventional style stitching.  Counting and recounting to make sure the placement is correct for all the bits of color ... especially those quarter stitches ... seems to take forever.  But the overall effect of a rich tapestry makes the time and effort well worth the trouble.
This Woodland Angel Christmas Stocking is intended for my oldest grandchild, Liam.  Having completed section 3 last Wednesday, I got a nice start on section 6 of the chart today.  This is not nearly as impressive as it sounds: sections 3, 6 and 9 are not much more than twenty stitches wide, being the very far right edge of the stocking.    I decided that I'd work down the right side of the stocking and then across the bottom to the left and up again to the top before cutting my fabric.  I want to have real hands-on evidence of the final size of the project since I hope to have enough of the fabric left to make at least one more, though possibly two more stockings on the same background for my remaining grandchild and the grandchild soon-to-be.  Since a stocking only requires a seam allowance, once I have an outline, I can trim this project more economically.  I don't want to waste so much as an inch because, with my luck, a mere inch would be exactly how far short I would fall for the third stocking.  I have a lovely Woodland Maiden Dimensions Kit  with a nice medieval feel that could be made to fit the dimensions of a stocking for my granddaughter Piper and I am always on the look-out for something that will be in keeping with this woodland theme for the baby boy that is due at the end of September.  Decades ago I stitched a Woodland Santa stocking for my son, the father of these three children.    And once I have the children's stockings done, I will have to find something suitable with a similar theme for my daughter-in-law.  The children's stockings will all be in a medieval style but since my son's stocking was a country primitive design, I'll look for something similar for my daughter-in-law.

And early this morning, before I went to work, I managed an hour of stitching and finished up the satin stitched band of The English Band Sampler as well as the bit of a divider between it and the second band.  I also started the second band but there is no use putting up a picture yet. Though I have stitched a fair bit of the first motif, it doesn't show up very well.  The pale tawny of DMC 3770 fades into the ground fabric and won't show to advantage till I have stitched some of the other colors in the motif and done the backstitching.  I plan to divide the rest of the week pretty evenly between the Woodland Angel and the sampler.

Ushering in the Year of the Dragon

I picked Tracery Dragons up again for the first time in approximately three months and have made some fairly good progress. At least, I am impressed with my progress. Back in October of 2011, I found this very slow going. But that has changed completely! I am moving through page 1 much more rapidly than I did through pages 2 or 3. Perhaps it is because I understand the flow of the design better, having stitched and backstitched more than half the piece. Or perhaps I just needed to take a break from it. Or perhaps it is because the only rose I have had to stitch so far is viewed in profile rather than full on. I hope I can maintain this pace and finish the dragons by the end of February. There was one small setback when I had to frog and restitch two of the leaves that were two threads further to the left than they should've have been ... the result of stitching in a poorly lit waiting room. But that was easily fixed. However, I have been working on the dragons for five days in a row. It is time for me to switch back to The Holly & Hearts Sampler, the other piece in my current rotation. I don't want to burn out on the TW piece again, like I did last Fall.

Woebegone Wentzler Wednesday

No stitching on the dragon today ... a lengthy regional meeting followed by leaving work later than usual [trying to make up for a whole morning lost to the meeting] ... left me a little too tired to risk Wentzler style stitching. Instead, I did a bit more work on the first block of Black'd Skie. After all, I couldn't go a whole day without any stitching whatsoever!

Well, Wentzler Wednesday Was A Wee Bit Weak.

Finally, I started on page 1 of the cross-stitching. Here it is late September and I foolishly thought I'd have this piece done by the end of July back when I started serious work on it early June. Talk about foolish optimism! I'll be happy to finish it by year's end, at this rate. Nothing much to show yet since I only managed an hour's worth of stitching today. I'll wait till next week to stun and amaze you with a progress photo ... at least, I hope there will be stunning and amazing progress.

"Woe is Me" Wentzler Wednesday

Dated for Wednesday but actually posted on Thursday because the camera battery needed recharging. My religious education program starts next Monday, the Annual Parish Picnic is Saturday and I am meeting with new catechists this week as well as with the perennial crew of last minute parents registering their children. Registration opened May 15 and the "deadline" was June 30. But in ministry, "deadline" translates as "please, for pity's sake, register on time so I don't have to update class lists and parent hall duty lists 90 times in the last two days before classes start". And that is just the tip of the iceberg: textbooks, workbooks, parent orientation packets, fundraising packets, program handbooks have to be re-counted/adjusted. Catechist binders and Attendance Rosters have to be updated. Name tags, Permanent Record Cards and student folders have to be added. Late registrants are a logistical nightmare of clerical mistakes just waiting to happen! But I stick to my philosophy that no child shall be denied religious formation or sacramental preparation because of an arbitrary deadline or parental inconsideration, idiocy, irresponsibility or discourtesy ... even though I send reminder postcards in July and August and do a follow-up phone call the Tuesday after Labor Day. This year seems to be a little harder on my nerves and demanding of my patience ... I guess I am getting too old for this. Most late registrants try to turn things around so this is all my fault, as in one woman's protest that "When I got the registration packet in May and saw the exorbitant fees, I just threw it to the side and said I'd deal with it later! Then, we were travelling all summer and I didn't get around to it." This same woman cheerfully pays three times the amount of my fees to place her children in Little League and has one child in travel hockey which ends up costing thousands of dollars a year when you consider ice time, hotels and meals for the family when competing out of state and still has sufficient funds to "travel all summer"... but she questions my fees of $270 a year for two children. Still, I manage to remain polite and welcoming even as I seethe inwardly ... and I did wait till she left the building before banging my head on my desk. To make matters worse, yesterday was primary day and my auditorium is a polling station. And the dear elderly folk who volunteer to staff the polls had me lowering, raising, lowering, raising the air conditioning temps at least a dozen times during the day ... the pastor insists that the controls remain under lock and key to prevent waste and to encourage accountability of the staff. The old darlings were very sweet and apologetic in the extreme, and I know and like most of them but still... So that set me a bit behind in my routines preparing for the first week of classes. Needless to say, I didn't get much stitching done today ... which is probably a good thing. My frazzled nerves would probably have resulted in loads of frogging. In any case, here is my progress photo. Only the most observant eye for detail will detect any progress since the last photo!!! Okay, I'll tell you. The trellis outlining/backstitching was finished Wednesday 9/7 and Wednesday 9/14 I started on the gold tourmaline metallic mane on the dragons.

Whiling Away A Wentzler Wednesday

There's no point in showing another photo. All I did this Wednesday was finish up backstitching on the trellis. Before I can start on page 1, I still have the long stitched dragon's mane and the wrapped backstitch connecting the leaves to the rose canes to stitch. If past experience is any indication, Tracery Dragons is at least two months from completion. It has been my most time consuming Crazy January Challenge piece yet. I picked it up in June and have been working on it all summer long. I don't know what I was thinking when I included a Teresa Wentzler chart in a stitching challenge rotation. Talk about sabotaging myself! Even though I balanced this BAP with six ornament sized pieces on the challenge list, I am beginning to have doubts that I'll finish all 15 projects before year's end. The two remaining pieces after this are Primitive Needle's Black'd Skie and Allesandre Adelaide's Zucca. Both, in my opinion, qualify as BAPs. The first because of sheer size and the second because of the complexity of all the tracery. There's that dreaded word again, tracery! You'd think I'd take it as a clue, wouldn't you? But I love the delicacy that the word almost always implies. I am hoping page 1 will go more quickly and more smoothly than pages 2 and 3, if only because I am more accustomed to the challenges of this design. I would love to have a finish by the end of this month but, realistically speaking, a late October or early November finish is far more likely.

A Weak Wentzler Wednesday

I didn't get much done yesterday, just filled in the odds and ends on the right side of the circle and have begun to fill in the upper right corner of page 2 of the cross-stitching chart. One reason progress is so slow is that there are so many color changes. Typically, I take one blended needle, stitch three or four whole crosses and half a dozen quarter crosses and then it's on to the next color change. Right now I have about a dozen needles threaded with all different combinations of thread, stuck in labelled sheets of memo paper. It saves a little time, having the needles ready to go, but not a heck of a lot.

When It's Wentzler Wednesday

Although yesterday was another Wentzler Wednesday, I got very little accomplished. It'd take an eagle eye to spot the progress made since the last photo: just the skinny branches of the rose bush. That's lots and lots of 1/4 stitches and three color changes for such a very little bit of stitching. Even though I am talking about two full hours of stitching, hard as that may be to believe. So there's no point in showing another photo at this time!

Though I am determined to finish this piece, it is beginning to wear me down. It is very complex and takes a great deal of care and concentration. Talk about a high maintenance project! I find the longer I work at it the more easily I am distracted by the siren call of other less complicated charts. This, of course, sets a vicious cycle in motion, delaying the finish and opening up the possibility of more distractions along the way, further delaying the finish, and so on and so on and so on. But I do not wish to put it aside "for a while", fearing the "while" would become an eternity. So for the time being, I will work on it only on the designated Wentzler Wednesdays until such time as I recover my enthusiasm for it. Perhaps I will be able to amuse myself with a wide variety of easier projects throughout the week, storing up reserves of concentration for my Wednesday encounters with the dragons.

A Wasted Wentzler Wednesday & a Winner

I am afraid this was a totally wasted day so far as stitching goes. Not a stitch taken all day.

The winner of the monthly giveaway is ABSGRAMS. I will be e-mailing her to get a mailing address later.

Wentzler Wednesday War Whoop

Okay, my goal this month is the well nigh impossible one of finishing this piece by the end of the month but I am going to give it my best shot. Don't ask me why I set myself up like this - it's an A-type personality thing and I have gotten used to it! I did spend Monday's and Tuesday's stitching time as well as Wednesday morning's stitching time on TD, so I am happy to announce that I am very nearly done with page two of the cross stitching chart. Once that is done, I think I will go back and do pages 2 and 3 of the backstitching chart. I really want to get a look at those dragons, if I can. As in most TW pieces, the back-stitching really pulls things together. It remains to be seen if I can finish up page 1 in both cross and backstitching charts by the end of the month. But for now, in the very early days of the month, I will maintain my optimism. It can be done! So say I! At this point, imagine you are hearing a very loud rebel yell or Celtic berserker's war cry!

?? A Week of Wentzler Wednesdays ??

It's been more like a Wentzler Week lately. I spent most of my Sunday, Monday and Tuesday stitching time as well as the usual Wednesday on the dragons. Every so often you reach a point in a project where everything seems to come together and, for a while at least, you can't seem to put it down. I think what did it this time was seeing the left curve of the lower circle of tracery begin to enclose the design elements, inspiring me to fill it in completely. Another factor was that I noted on Sunday that though I had been making considerable progress, the piece was more tracery than dragon. The only stitching justifying the word dragons in the title of the piece was a tiny serpentine curve from page three of the chart ... all the work I'd done on page two of the chart to that point had been done on the tracery and the blooms, leaves and branches of the rose bush. I wanted to see those elusive little devils! And a third factor is that I had to do some substantial frogging yet again and was determined to catch up to where I had been before the nasty amphibious visitation. Having devoted this many days to the project, I might as well finish out the week with it. There is the remote possibility that I could finish page 2 by the end of the month. And maybe finish the entire project by the end of August. That would leave me the remainder of the year to tackle my next TW BAP: The Woodland Angel Stocking, which I hope to have finished in time for this Christmas for my grandson Liam.

Wentzler Wednesday Whimper

I was making slow but steady progress on Tracery Dragons, stitching the tracery in the various greys, only to discover I had started one of the leaves one box grid further to the left than I ought to have ... throwing everything off. There was nothing to do but frog. And I suspect I'll have to frog one more leaf that I had counted over from the first. Well, what must be, must be. This is too lovely a project to fudge on the details. So here is a picture of where things stand now: some forward progress and some backward.


But since I would rather not end this post on a negative note: here is a photo of a pincushion I found at an antique shop in Sturbridge, Ma.

White-Hot Wentzler Wednesday

I seem to have picked up the pace on this project once I started page 2 of the chart. It is growing by leaps and bounds. I guess once it actually started looking like something other than a child's finger-painting, my enthusiasm for the piece was renewed. In any case, my needle seems to be white-hot and I am about halfway through page 2 of the chart. When you consider how long it took me to complete page 3 of this chart ... a page, by the bye, comprised less than a fifth of the area of page 2 ... that is saying something. Unfortunately, a photo is not a possibility at the moment - the battery is recharging. I will post photos of all of this week's stitching on Sunday since I expect to be rathr busy over the next few days.

Wentzler Wednesday Whack-a-doodle

I seem to have regained my momentum with this project and am now merrily working my way through page two of the chart. After a wee bit of frogging on the left side border, I have been concentrating on a good sized chunk of the pale grey tracery. It's a bit tricky because of all the quarter stitches in the darker grey used as a very narrow outline ... getting one of those off by one thread [easy to do] throws the whole thing out of whack. Whenever I want a rest, I switch to stitching one of the nice, manageable, self-contained, little leaves. The roses, once back-stitched, are absolutely lovely ... but prior to that look very messy with all the quarter stitches and exposed background fabric. And the little rose buds look like nothing at all, at this point. Still, I'll wait till I finish a full page of chart before I do any more back-stitching.

At least the piece is beginning to look like the model photo. There is some satisfaction to be had in that.

Wentzler Wednesday

Well, the routine is re-established ... Wentzler Wednesday is back in place ... even if I only managed an hour's stitching on Tracery Dragons. I am hoping to spend some more time on this piece on Thursday and Friday. My goal is to finish stitching page three of the chart [which comprises the bottom two inches of the chart] and to do the backstitching. That way I'll be able to get a sense as to how well this fabric is working with the design. The chart recommendation was for a very dark fabric but I dislike stitching on super dark fabrics. Anyway, here is a photo to prove that some small progress has been made!

As I said above, I did steal time from the Tracery Dragons to apply the cording to three ornaments in the Town Square SAL that I had assembled and to prep the boards for two more ornaments that I hope to "finish" finish by Friday: Jane Greenoff's Blackwork Owl and the first Lizzie Kate ornament I stitched in anticipation of the July 3-August 15 exchange round. I stitched a second Lizzie Kate ornament for this exchange as well, a very simple complimentary chart that I modified by stitching in appropriately colored Mill Hill beads and to which I added a few Mill Hill Glass Treasure hearts ... I have to cut and pad some boards for that ornament as well and then assemble it. I haven't decided yet which ornament I will use in the exchange. I'll be meeting with some stitching friends next week so I'll have them help me decide.

Woeful Wentzler Wednesday

For the first time since I started the practice of stitching on a TW BAP every Wednesday, I didn't take a single stitch ... pathetic, I know, but all I want to do is read light-hearted escapist little mysteries. Maybe it's the miserable stormy weather that is making me so lazy!

A Workable Wentzler Wednesday

The final verdict on this fabric choice isn't in yet and won't be till I finish the cross-stitching and back-stitching of Page 3 of the chart. Only then will I know if I made a really poor decision in using a mid-tone rather than a dark tone as recommended in the design specs. I do have some nice pieces of black linen and of a deep purple linen waiting in the wings if need be ... it's just that I dislike working on very dark linens. I know everyone recommends just throwing a white cloth over your lap when working with dark fabric ... but that doesn't work particularly well for those of us with a diagonal rather than horizontal lap.

But I am working on that problem ... this makes day five of my fresh start at exercising. I have been using the Sansalone 1 mile Walk Away the Abs tape every morning before going to work. I am determined to have a somewhat more accomodating lap by the time the grandkids visit in August. After all, how can we cuddle up for storytime if the kids keep sliding to the floor.

And, finally, I got around to getting my Photo Hunt "triangle" shot. I had hoped to get down to the marina and take a shot of all the sailboats with their triangular sails. But the weather has been so grim and overcast, alternating light showers with downpours, that that was not really an option. So, I took a quick shot of the view across the parking lot from my school building. The bell tower of our church is topped with a very elongated triangular steeple. The really odd thing about this bell tower is that for some reason known only to the local telephone company, it houses the main relay panel for the phones in my building. And since the bell tower is open to the elements, every time it rains heavily, my phones develop such heavy static that I might as well not answer them at all.

Wentzler Wednesday

Well, it's all about Tracery Dragons now. It really seems odd not to have the Autumn Faerie [finished 6/3, see that post] as my companion. She and I had been together so long. And my stitching bag is much lighter! Tracery Dragons requires only one bobbin case while the faerie required two to hold the complete fiber palette.

I am reasonably pleased with the progress on this piece this week. But I do have to admit some concern about a completion date. This little bit of stitching in the lower left corner took nearly five hours to complete. TW may have simplified her palette but everything else remains as elaborate as ever. If anything, there are far more quarter stitches than usual ... long strings of offset quarter stitches on the diagonal, requiring very careful counting and recounting. I am working from the bottom up which means starting on page three of the cross-stitching chart ... there's a second set of charts just for the back-stitching ... and have just passed the center point. At this rate, I'll be working on Tracery Dragons all year! There goes any hope of getting Liam's TW Woodland Angel Christmas Stocking done this year.