Bittersweet and Melancholy

I started crocheting a baby blanket for my nephew and niece-in-law who are expecting a baby.  I am not sure if this blanket will be needed for very long.  The pregnancy is a very difficult one.  Pre-natal tests indicate the probability of Downes' Syndrome which, of course, all involved can accept with love.  But there are also indicators that the baby may be born with life-threatening deformities and may not survive the birthing process or, if he does, his first year of life.  While the brain and heart are developing at a normal rate and a proper size for this stage of the pregnancy, the rest of his small body is under-developed.  This is the first baby for the couple who were married last April and the whole family is praying that the doctors and technicians have over stated the risks.  Whatever the case, every baby is entitled to be welcomed with love and with some gifts from his family.  Even if his life is hopelessly short, his presence among us needs to be recognized and celebrated ... though, perhaps validated is a better word, in this case.

I am using a very soft bamboo yarn in palest silver grey and winter white.  The eye-popping vibrancy of the colors used in the blanket I recently finished for my great niece Hazel just don't seem appropriate.  Something softer, something a bit wistful, something that underscores the gossamer nature of life itself ... that is what is needed here.

Still Sampling

I am determined to complete this sampler this month.  Yes, I know I have said the very same thing every month since January but this time I really mean it.  Of course, if I end up failing to finish this month, I will "really mean it" when I say I'll finish in October.  Oh, the lies I tell myself about my ability to stretch time!  And for all you serene and placid philosophers who will gently remind me that it is all about the journey and not the destination ... well, all I can say is: I am far too flawed and obsessive and goal-oriented to subscribe to that nonsense notion.  I'd say "Bah, humbug!" or "Damn your eyes!" or some other tasty 18th/19th century Brit type imprecation in reply to the philosophers but that would be insufferably rude.  Can you tell that I've been reading [and watching] quite a bit of British fiction lately and some of the quaint phrasing is seeping into my own daily speech.  So much more amusing than the bald and overused-to-the-point-of-blandness effing this and effing that.  But I digress.  And isn't that last sentence a charmingly self-conscious mouthful?  Wordplay is such fun!

But this is a stitching blog, after all.  So back to the topic: I've been working on the spiral border.  It's been a two steps forward, one step backward sort of progress with nearly as much frogging as stitching going on.  I seem to have hit a slump when it comes to the more complex stitching that I love.  I think all the stress on the job has made me less competent so far as my stitching is concerned.  I trust this is a temporary condition and that as soon as things smooth out a bit at work, I'll be back to my old self.  Right now I am frogging the top leg of the border.  I've frogged and restitched the middle upright twice and may have to make some minor correction on the far right upright as well.Satin stitching the spirals has been a rather fussy and mistake-ridden affair.  I look forward to satin stitching the fill, once I finally get the outline done.  It's a much more relaxing and error free task.

Fall Feelings

The air is a crisp 39 degrees these mornings though it is still warming up to the high 60s and low 70s during the day.  Indian Summer is here: those late Summer and early Fall days for which one never knows how to dress.  Should it be for the morning's chill or the afternoon's warmth?  Layering becomes the order of the day.  And being the sort of person I am, that means a trail of cotton sweaters and bolero jackets left behind.

Alas, though it is still warm enough for an afternoon of stitching on the patio, I am confined to an office and have been since August 25.  Tomorrow, we kick off the Religious Education Program with Parent Orientation and Meet the Catechist Night and repeat the process on Thursday.  It will be very good to see the children again.  So much pleasanter than dealing with the duplicitous archdiocesan bureaucrats.  This year will be bittersweet and full of last times as I will be retiring next September.  So I am determined to enjoy every moment with the children.  And, next year, I will be enjoying the Indian Summer afternoons stitching on the patio.

A Town Square Finish

This is The Quilt Shop by Nancy Pfeifer from the Indy 2006 Town Square series.  I used the recommended GAST flosses with one exception, i.e.: I substitued half crosses in Belle Soie Bahama Breeze for the window oanes that were originally charted in full cross stitch using GAST Lambs Wool..

Final Fruits

While we are not expecting an evening frost for another week or so, I harvested all the vegetables that are ripe:  a whole bunch of eggplant and the only three red tomatoes to ripen on the vine all summer.  It has been an unusually cool summer and overcast at least half the time.  The tomatoes didn't even set fruit till mid-July.  There are more than a dozen or so mid-sized and very green tomatoes on the vines but I hold out very little hope that they will ripen before first frost.  I will have to use the old brown paper bag and apple trick, which rather defeats the whole purpose of growing you own tomatoes.

At least the local Farmer's Market has been a great place to fill in the gaps.  One of the booths has organic produce and each Saturday morning I buy two ears of the sweetest corn I have ever tasted.  Both my husband and I have to watch our carbs, so that one day a week indulgence is all we can afford.  I have found local peaches and plums, and the vegetables have been wonderful: potatoes, tomatoes, onions, radishes and peppers.  I have even bought a local Reisling and some jams and preserves.  The only things our local market lacks are a booth with artisan breads and rolls and a booth with flowers.  Otherwise, it is well-nigh perfect.

Town Square SAL

I took a short break from the sampler to work on another one of my monthly goals: catching up to where I should be on my Town Square project.  I missed stitching up one of these charts in August and so have two to stitch in September.  Naturally, I chose the easiest and most straightforward chart to stitch first.  The Quilt Shop by Nancy Pfeifer who, if memory serves, is one of the ladies from Blackbird Designs, is fairly simple and shouldn't take more than another day to complete.  It also had the advantage of being very easy to kit up, having less than 10 GAST fibers.  The other chart I had pulled for the month is Sandi's Sweet Shop [The Sweetheart Tree] which requires scads of DMC, four MH bead packets and a few specialty threads to boot.  It was ever so much easier to start with The Quilt Shop.  I expect the Sweet Shop will be as complicated a stitch as the Cafe du Monde, also from this series, which I had stitched in June and July.

And It Is Back To The Sampler, Again!

I have been stitching on the English Band Sampler for the last two days.  After a brief stint of frogging, it has been a case of "slow and steady wins the race."  This half of the band is just a little bit difficult and disorienting since the motifs are upside down.  I realize it shouldn't be any more difficult to stitch from a chart that inverts a design than to stitch from one that does not.  But, my mind's eye keeps correcting the image before me, causing some small confusion as I try to stay properly oriented.  I never claimed to have much in the way of spatial intelligence.  My primary learning and perceptive  styles are verbal/linguistic and logical/mathematical.  Visual and spatial perceptions are definitely secondary and even tertiary.  So upending the chart takes me out of my comfort zone.

But the colors continue to enchant me, and the difficulty is just enough of a challenge to keep me on my toes.  I don't know how many other stitchers have the same experience but I find the easier the chart, the more likely I am to make a careless mistake,  Charts that are a bit of a challenge keep me focused and accurate.  I'll post a photo when I have some more substantial progress to show.

And just a reminder, comments may still be made to my 9/3 Blogaversary post featuring a $10 gist certificate to 123stitch as a giveaway.

Hazel's Bib & Blanket ...

... are ready for mailing.  I hope my niece likes them as much as I enjoyed making them.  I think the bib turned out rather nicely and I am quite pleased with the blanket as well.  I'll be making my way to the post office some time today.

And just a reminder, comments may still be made to my 9/3 Blogaversary post featuring a $10 gist certificate to 123stitch as a giveaway.

Belated Blogaversary

This post is a little over a week late.  The proper date was 8/24/14.  I have been blogging for 7 years now and thoroughly enjoy the process of writing what is essentially a stitching journal, with the rare side trip into real life.  Writing about stitching is very nearly as relaxing as stitching itself.

I have the mind of a statistician and it seems very natural to take stock annually of what's been happening on this blog.

So, I find it interesting that during the past seven years:
* I have written 1147 posts.  That's 190 posts since my last blogaversary.
* Blogger has recorded 130,693 Pageviews, which means that there were 41,282 page views in just this past year .  That's up a little over 5,000 more pageviews than last year.  So I guess my readership is continuing to grow 
* Readers have left 3,829 Comments in the past seven years, 900 of which were in the last year.   Which works out to approximately 3 comments per post or 1 comment for every 34 pageviews.  The numbers of readers may be increasing but, clearly, I don't evoke much of a response from my readers.
* I also have 228 followers.

What I'd like to do this year is ask a few questions about blogging.  If you choose to answer these questions in the comments section, you will be entered in a random drawing for a $10 gift certificate to 123stitch [an online cross stitch shop].  Seven questions, one for each year I have been blogging.

1. Do you prefer a blog that is
      a] 95% stitching and 5% personal, roughly what my blog is .
      b] 100% stitching and no personal stuff at all
      c] 50% stitching and 50% personal chat

2.  Whatever the preference selected above, what are your reasons for the preference?

3.  When reading blogs, be honest, do you just look at the photos and skip the prose?

4.  When reading a particular blog, do you enjoy tracking the progress of a specific project?

5.  How many blogs do you read on a regular basis? [Regular basis being defined as once weekly]
     a] 1-25
     b] 26-50
     c] 51-100
     d] over 100

6.  What sort of things do you expect to find on a blog, things that will keep you coming back to read?

7.  What do you like about my blog?  What don't you like about my blog?

Another Small Finish and A New Start

I spent most of the long holiday weekend stitching and got a fair amount accomplished.

The second tea towel was finished.  As predicted it worked up more quickly than the first.  For one thing, I had already worked out my changes on the border when stitching the first towel.  So, with the second, it was just a matter of duplicating the border.  And then the chart for Cumin was so much more open than the chart for Rosemary.  So here is a finish photo.

And I started work on Hazel's bib.  As it happened, the alphabet I remembered as being in the Better Homes and Gardens 2001 Cross Stitch Designs was not there.  I figured it couldn't be too hard to design my own Building Block Alphabet, so I made a very rough sketch on graph paper and started stitching.  I've only one block more to stitch.  I hope to have the bib ready for mailing, with the crocheted blanket, on Wednesday.  The bib is a pre-fab affair made from a terrycloth fingertip towel printed with kites in bright Crayola colors wjich I echoed in the color of the blocks.