Rotation Stitching To Date

Over the pre-Christmas weekend, it was stitcher's choice and I chose to jump around quite a bit:  I made a little bit of progress on several pieces but nothing worthy of a photograph.  All, in all, it was a very simple and relaxing weekend: just some very easy stitching while watching a marathon of an old PBS series, The Duchess of Duke Street.  In short, it was a hermitting weekend.

Then came Christmas week:

Monday, it was back to The English Band Sampler, picking up from where I frogged out the errors.   When last seen this flower was a mere outline, now it is quite filled in.  I stitched a few more curlicues around the acorns and stems.  Now, that I have relaxed and stopped stressing over when I will finish this piece, I have begun to make discernible progress again.I also spent a little time cutting all the boards for the stitched ornaments.

On Tuesday, I finished the Sage tea towel.and kitted up the Mint towel.  The pair of tea towels was meant to be a Christmas gift for my secretary, but clearly I didn't get it done in time.  She'll have to wait till little Christmas, The Feast of The Epiphany, on January 6.

Then on Wednesday it was back to stitching on the dragon with the result that page 1 of the chart is completely done but for a few beads that will just have to wait till all the stitching on page 2 is done.  I have gotten a good start on page 2: the breast plates; the scales along shoulders, neck and head; some of the fill stitching and a bit of the face are done.  Of course, that still leaves the wings, shoulder, front claws, neck and face to be completed as well as a bit more scenery.  I doubt this will be finished in 2014 but it may very well be the first 2015 finish.  I do have yet another reason to despise rayon fiber: it is the very devil to frog.  No matter how carefully one picks the stitches, the wretched stuff shreds, leaving one with a fuzzy tail useless for weaving under existing stitches.  The only option is to lay it carefully on the underside of the linen and ever so delicately stitch over it, avoiding bringing any of the fuzzy mess to the front of the linen as one pulls one's stitches.

Then on Thursday, I worked on the Mystic Smalls and finished up the cross stitching and over one stitching on the needle book.Now, all that's left is the ribbon embroidery.  I'll tackle that tomorrow, since the Sage tea towel has dropped out of the rotation.  [I have deferred the Mint Tea Towel to January's rotation.]  With luck the needle book will be my final finish in 2014.

I didn't do any rotation stitching on Friday and so have no assembly finishes to show.  I did page through some of my baby and toy charts to pick out a design for a bib and a burp towel for my great-nephew Liam who is now weighing in at 3 pounds, having gained a full pound since his birth in November.  He is off the ventilator and is strong enough to have yanked out his feeding tube.  The NICU nurses, of course, replaced it immediately.  But it's good to know that Liam is a tough little guy and a fighter.  I have decided on a train motif for the burp towel: a locomotive pulling four flat cars carrying the letters L - I - A - M and a caboose bringing up the rear.  I will probably just use the same alphabet to stitch Liam's name on the bib.

As to the weekend goal of doing some non-stitching activities, I tried a new recipe: Egg Nog Pancakes from cooking.com.  I can't call it an unqualified success.  Though my husband enjoyed them, I found them both too sweet and too heavy.  I also detected a slight metallic aftertaste but I am guessing that was due to baking powder past its prime.  I'll be putting that on the shopping list before I bake again.  While still in a cooking frame of mind, I made a tray of stuffed pasta shells.  Then I puttered about the house, decluttering a closet, reorganizing my kitchen counter space and cleaning out the refrigerator and oven.

Wednesday Report

Tuesday's rotation piece: the Sage tea towel.  Unfortunately, I was unable to stitch at all yesterday.  There was simply too much going on at work.

Today's piece is Dragon Dreams' The Dragon of The Summer Sky.  I made tremendous progress over the weekend but it is unlikely I will manage a single stitch today.  I started my day at 8:00 a.m. prepping for a breakfast meeting that I hosted for the Regional Catechetical group.  Following that meeting, we moved on to the Regional Christmas luncheon at a local restaurant.  That took us up to 2:00 p.m.    On the way back to the office, I picked up the 3 foot hero for the parish Catechist Christmas meeting/party.  Once back at the office I cleaned up the meeting room and set it up again for the second event and then ran out for the trimmings: more paper goods, beverages and Christmas baked goods.  Then, labelled all the catechist Christmas presents [thank the Lord, they were already wrapped] and got the meeting materials ready: the agenda and the handouts.  The party ended around 9:30 p.m.  I am way too old for 13+ hour workdays  Normally, the regional Christmas meeting/luncheon is on the 1st Wed. in December and the catechetical program is the second.  It's just my luck that the year I host the regional event, they fell on the same day.

I am really looking forward to this weekend but I fear I will be in a state of total collapse for most of it.  I still have my Christmas cleaning and decorating to do.  That was the plan anyway.  We shall see if it comes to pass.

It's that time of year: a lot going on in the parish for Advent and Christmas.  And it will only get more hectic.  Next week is the last week of classes before the break.  We start off with a Pancake Breakfast with Santa after all the Sunday Masses, the Advent Reconciliation services on Monday, classes on Tuesday and Thursday with all the usual Christmas hoopla for the younger children.   Wednesday evening is the parish dinner at the rectory.  I am exhausted just thinking about it, especially since the plan for the following weekend is to do my Christmas food shopping and cooking and baking.  Gift shopping is a breeze, at least: my adult children just want American Express gift cards and I shop for my grandchildren on the Internet and have their gifts mailed directly to them.  I expect to be worn quite thin by Christmas but hope to avoid the Bah, Humbug spirit.  Come to think of it, I have a cross stitch chart of those famous Dickensian words.  Maybe this will be the year to stitch it.

I must have second sight

In September, I wrote

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!  

I had hoped to be done by now but clearly, as you can see, I am not.  Close, but as my husband says, "Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades."  Such a charming sentiment.    I have reached the point where I imagine I will still be working on this project when I am 90.   I have a recurring stitching nightmare in which I see my family tucking the sampler into my coffin so that I can take just a few more stitches as I wait in line for my final judgment at St. Peter's gate.  

I began this sampler with such giddy optimism that I actually stitched "2012" in the line with my name.  How mortifying to have to frog out the 2 and replace it with a 4, or perhaps a 5.   Or maybe I'll just find a way to squeeze a tiny 2014 or 2015 into the bottom right corner of the last band as a reminder of the length of time spent on the project.

Ah, well, here is a photo of my Monday rotation progress.  It may not look like much has been done since I last posted about it here but I have done four Rhodes Squares, finished the center curlicues on the bottom left and top right, finished frogging the spiral border and the bottom border as needed, re-stitched the bottom border, and stitched another two flowers on the right.   I think that is pretty good progress for just one day's stitching: an hour before work, half an hour on my lunch break and a two hours while watching TV in the evening.
The first photo is of Band 7 in its entirety.

The second photo is a close up of the right side of the band, so you can see a little more detail.  I am enjoying this sampler again.  I haven't stitched on it in a little over two months.  It would seem that this piece is rather overwhelming, at least for me.  I need long breaks from it to maintain enthusiasm.

The Tuesday rotation piece is a pair of tea towels from Cross My Heart's A Sampling of Herbs leaflet.  I got a nice start this morning on the first one, Sage, as seen in this photo.  There is a lot of confetti stitching in these charts and I am not entirely crazy about that aspect of them.  [ The two overlapping leaves, small as they are, have 14 different shades of DMC in them. ]  But they do stitch up quite prettily as you can see here and here on the last pair I stitched.  Well worth the effort though I do believe I will be passing this chart on after this pair.  I don't think I'll be stitching any more of these herbs charts.  They are just a little too fussy and finicky for me.  I have some other herbal charts that were designed specifically for Huck towels that I will be using for the next pair I stitch.

  

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.

Moving along with the tea towel ...

I am trying to lose myself in my stitching since everything is going to the proverbial hell in a handbasket at work.  So yesterday, at lunch time, I continued to work on my second tea towel .  And then continued after work, as well.  As I suspected it would, this chart is stitching up a lot more quickly than the first.  It's a much more open design.  I just need to add one more green, stitch the flowers and do the back-stitching.  Probably just another three or four hours of stitching.

Monday Madness, Part II

Monday evening, I had planned to decompress after work by stitching on my sampler.  Ordinarily this is a good plan and one that usually works quite well.  I was stitching on the bottom bright navy lozenge border.  When I finally got to the end, you guessed it, I realized I was off by one lousy stitch.  And, of course, that stitch was at the very beginning of the border.  I'll need to frog the whole damn thing and re-stitch about one and a half hours worth of stitching.  Needless to say, I put the scroll rods down, muttered a mild imprecation and went upstairs to do a few crossword puzzles before going to bed.  At least, the end of my day was consistent with the beginning.

And now it is Tuesday and things can only get better.  I am avoiding the sampler.  In my current mood, I fear I may do it irreparable damage were I to frog today.  Instead, I started my second tea towel using the Cumin chart and my own tile-like border.  I expect this chart to work up more quickly than the Rosemary chart.  There is a more open feel to the Cumin chart and a lot less confetti stitching.  This will be paired with the Rosemary towel finished last week and will serve as a housewarming gift for my administrative assistant who just bought a new home.

More Progress on a Variety of Projects

Tuesday, most of the morning was eaten up by errands: dropping my car off for some body work, running out to A. C. Moore for more yarn, mailing off some giveaways at the post office and doing the first serious grocery shopping in about a month.  Wednesday was more relaxed, almost a full day was spent in the stitching chair.  Thursday was a day divided between kitchen, laundry room and the stitching chair.

The English Band Sampler:  I have continued working on the largest pansy in coral.  I plan to really concentrate on this piece over the weekend.  The month is nearly over and I had hoped to have this sampler finished. The sad truth is I haven't even reached the halfway mark on Band 7 and I still have to go back to Band 3 to add my initials and the date.  Things are looking grim for an August finish.

The Tea Towel: I am finished with the Rosemary towel.  The next one up is Cumin which will probably stitch up more quickly as there is a lot less confetti stitching in the chart.  The booklet I am using also has some tall slender charts, 77 stitches by 32 stitches, of mint, rosemary and sage.  I believe I will use the mint and the sage for the next pair of towels.  That will give me a pair with a tile like border around a 45 stitch square design and a pair that files the space vertically.  For the final pair, I may use the fruit charts that came with the towels. That way, the folks I give them to will all have something different.

Hazel's Blanket:  This crocheted  blanket is done and measures 48 inches long by 34 inches wide, a good size for either a crib or a baby carriage.  The photos are my attempt to give you an idea of what the whole blanket looks like, border and all.  My bedroom is too dark for me to photograph this blanket spread out on the bed.  The patio furniture seemed to be my best bet, albeit not a perfect solution.  I used Sugar and Cream cotton yarn since a cotton blanket is comfortable in all seasons and stands up better to repeated washings.

Some wools need such careful washing that they are just not suitable for frequently laundered baby items.  I wouldn't want to put all this work into a blanket only to see it felted by being washed or dried in the wrong way by busy young parents.  Now all I have to do is wrap it up and mail it.  But before I mail it, I want to personalize a bib for Hazel to add to the package.  If I remember correctly, my BH&G 2001 Cross Stitch Designs has an alphabet done in building blocks that should fit the Aida insert in a fingertip toweling bib that I have in stash.

Some Sewing Finishes.  While I was at A. C. Moore the other day, my husband went a few doors down to PetSmart and got me a bag of crushed walnut shells [aka lizard litter] so I now have the filling for a bunch of pin pillows.  I am hoping to find some time this weekend to sew them up, fill and trim them..

Random Monday

It's mid-August and time to start working on worrying about stitched Christmas gifts.  I thought this year I might make sets of tea towels, stitched with botanical charts, herbs for the most part.  I am also in need of something a little easier on the eyes than my two current projects.  So tea towels with 14 ct Aida inserts are the perfect interim projects when the sampler and the stocking get a little wearisome.  In any case, I pulled some tea towels out of stash and a few herbal charts and started on one today. The charts I am using are from a Cross My Heart booklet called A Sampling of Herbs.   The chart I am using is actually a sampler with 12 blocks, each featuring a different herb.  I am using six of  the single blocks for the tea towels.  I didn't care for the charted border, a sketchy pseudo Greek back-stitched cross and reverse cross sort of affair.  So I stitched it as a solid border using two blues from the rest of the piece.  And since these will be tea towels, I replaced all the gold beads with floss.  I still need to stitch two more sprigs of rosemary to complete this towel

At least, this is a productive sort of startitis since I'll have a few Christmas gifts as a result.  I tend to get antsy when my rotation slips down to 2 or 3 pieces.  And it is currently at 1. what with my steadfast concentration of the The English Band Sampler.  Here's a photo of my progress on the sampler over the past few days.  As you can see, I am still working on pansies.  I want to stitch all the floral motifs in the left section of the band before finishing the spiral border.

I know I have to get back working on Piper's stocking if I am to have it done this year but the mere thought of facing all that pink is daunting.