Rotation Report

Monday:  The English Band Sampler.  I had to frog all the work I had done in the center of the flower because it was all one stitch too high.    There's no photo since there was no forward progress.

Tuesday: Sage Tea Towel.  Another leaf stitched.  There is a reason this piece is being stitched just one leaf at a time.  Each leaf in this chart has eight or nine different colors.  The whole thing is an exercise in confetti stitching.  And while I love the outcome, I am not all that crazy about the process.  So one leaf at a time is all I can manage before I want to throw my floss box across the room.

I did take a little time to start crocheting a blanket for Liam since I had some more stitching time but no wish to keep going on Sage.  I had originally started a blanket in pale silver grey and winter white but realized I didn't have enough yarn for a crib-sized blanket.  And, I wasn't sure my great-nephew would be home from the NICU before he had outgrown a bassinet sized blanket.  He was born 8 weeks early and weighed in at only 2 lbs.  He has a long road ahead of him and will be spending most of his first year in a hospital.

Wednesday: The Dragon of the Summer Sky.  I am back to this piece again and will probably make it my stitcher's choice piece for the weekend as well.  I find that Dragon Dreams charts stitch up rather quickly, rayon floss not withstanding.  I'd like to have this chart done before the end of December so that I needn't add another item to my WIPs list in the sidebar.  Here's today's progress photo.  Some more back stitching, some more fill stitching and a bit more done on the bottom right.

Today, it is back to the Mystic Smalls and I hope to finish all the cross stitching and the over one stitching on the needle book.  That will leave just the specialty stitches for next week.

• 
  

Catching Up

Since I was unable to stitch Tuesday and Wednesday, I did just a little catching up Thursday and Friday mornings: 3 hours working on The Dragon of the Summer Sky and 2 hours on the Sage tea towel.   This way most everything in the week's rotation saw a little time on the hoop, scroll bar or Q-snaps.  

Most of the remainder of Friday, was spent power napping vegetating.   But power napping sounds so much more dignified.

I made Dragon Dreams' The Dragon of The Summer Sky my weekend choice piece again and made some pretty substantial progress on it.  If you count four linen threads from the right edge of the comet, you will have located the division between page one and two of the chart.  As you can see, I am nearly done with the fill stitching of page one and have made a good start on the defining stitching of page two.  I can not even begin to express how much I detest the DMC satin floss [aka rabid rayon].  If I hadn't already used rayon floss in the companion piece, The Dragon of the Winter Moon, I would have switched it out for a silk in the same color.  The wretched stuff has a recoil, requiring a very tight tension when stitching, which slows the process down.  It's like using pulled stitches.  It also has such a high loft that each stitch obscures the linen threads immediately beside the stitch taken, making it necessary to use a thumbnail to locate the exact hole for the next stitch.  This also slows down the process considerably.  It took me a full hour to stitch just two rows of the fill stitch in the dragons' haunch.  This is the last of my Dragon Dreams charts.  And while I love Jennifer Aiken Smith's designs, I very much doubt I will miss her penchant for using rayon fibers.  I will not be using the nasty stuff again with the possible exception of using my remaining and very small stash of the stuff on Christmas ornaments.  I can manage small stints of stitching with rayon and even I will admit that it gives a nice sheen to an ornament.  But large areas like my dragon's body ... never again!!!

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.

  

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.

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..