Need I Say More?

Finished last night at midnight when I should have been asleep.

A Tiny Little Thing

I finished another one on the 11th just as my parents were walking in the door for a visit. And I was able to get it framed up. That's quite a step for me. It's just a little thing. My first time working on silk gauze. I liked it, but I think maybe not enough to do more - although there are a bunch of HAED projects I have that might be really awesome on silk gauze. So here it is...

And, of course, it's the time for holiday shopping and holiday sales. normally I ignore this kind of stuff. But then I got the sale email one such as myself cannot resist so I bought fabric on discount...

And that's the 18 different fabrics I got in my grab bag purchase. They're all in the 8"x8" range - just right for ornaments or little motifs, etc. And here's the big stuff...

The purple blue one on the left is an 18"x26" 32 ct linen. The middle red one is a 14 ct Aida, same size. And the last is a 40ct opalescent linen. I have so many good ideas for them! I have some really great samplers that would look stunning on these.

I have been working on Sudden Showers lately:

I'm hoping to get a WIP photo soon. So far I have most of the top 1/3 done. I'm hoping I can get some time in on it tonight, but I have some other little crafts to work on for the holidays. I should probably get those done since I only have a couple of days ;-).

I Pledge to Finish More Projects

Yay I finished the pledge! It was sitting around with about 3 hours of work left on it for at least 2 months!

I actually pulled out a couple of projects that had been languishing. Hopefully I'll be getting a little more time in on them now that my life is settling down again. There was far too much travel going on for the past few months. And now that the puppy is old enough not to require constant supervision... XXXXXX :-)

Stash.. A HAHAHAHA!

OK I have a problem. I admit it. But I'm happy with it. I bought more stash. I need to stay the hell away from the store and just work some of this stuff. I need to be left in a small room for long periods of time with a TV or radio so I can stitch. I need to quit my job so I can stitch (ok maybe I don't need to do that).

I got a few Erica Michaels patterns because there was a trunk show. They's silk gauze projects. I've never done one, but I can't imaging it's all that difficult. it's just 1/2 stitches on 40 ct. I've done that before. My only problem with it is coming up with my method for holding the project while I work on it. I could use the mat board method where one cuts a little window out of the mat board and mounts the gauze on it. But that seems like a lot of work. Or I could sew the gauze to some fabric and use my usual stitching frame. But that seems like a lot of work. So I have to sit around and think (while I stitch) of some simple, lazy way of holding the gauze. I think that "in hand" stitching of this might not work so well. But I have to think about it.

I also now have my mom's copy of 'Son of "Chickens?!"'. I'm not sure if/when I'm going to stitch this one. But hey, it's more stuff just in case of a stitching emergency.

I also finally listed the new fabrics I got from my fabric of the month club in my inventory. I have another on the way. Come to think of it, I should run over to the post office to see if the next one came in. You know, since I'm updating everything today and all.

And just to be complete, I should report on my stitching progress. I'm sooo close to finishing the pledge of allegiance project. I only have one more line at the bottom to do and the date. I've also been working on my Amish game board a little here and there. I'm planning to do a little more work tonight. I'm also hoping to start working on my Nova project again. It was making faces at me this morning.

Pledge

Here's the progress on my pledge project. I have a little more of the bottom band finished as of last night. I decided I needed to take a break to work on another project. Strangely I don't have a photo of that one ;-). I know... I'm bad!!

I'm hoping I can wrap this one up by mid-month so I can have it ready for the county employee art show. I'm not sure how I want to finish it. I don't think I'll be able to get it framed. Feel free to post ideas of how I might finish it. I'm fresh out! ;-)

Red, White, Blue &.... Pink?

I finished another project recent.y. I was going through my pile of little travel projects and needed something light to do. So I wrapped up this one:

 It's the second time I've done this little project. I'm not sure I'll do it again. It seems like a waste to do something you've already done when there are so many projects just waiting to be started. But it was a nice diversion.

Currently I'm working on a sampler from the March retreat. I'm now much further along on it than this picture shows, but yet again I was remiss in my photo documentation. This is the problem of not having internet access at home - can't run out and get a photo when you think of it ;-).

 As of now the top is completely finished through the "indivisible" and I've started the line under that. I'm hoping to finish it soon so I can have it for our employee art show in the fall. I thought it was a nice touch since I work for a county government and it's the original Pledge of Allegiance.

I'm happy to be back working on a few of my projects that have been outstanding. I'm hoping to get back working on "Nova" soon - that's the crazy huge canvaswork project that's done in DMC floss.

What;'s Your Vector, Victor?

I finished the next letter in the Art Deco alphabet... V! OK this is not the best photo out there, but at least I remembered to take it! I allowed the variegations to occur on the diagonal with this one. I think it really works with the lines of the letter:

I'll be starting on the letter D later today. Well, that's the plan at least.

Oh and here's a photo of the garden sampler that I meant to post a while ago ;-).

Remiss in my Photo Documentation

I finished the garden sampler from the retreat last weekend, but haven't been able to get the photos into the system. This seems to be the theme for the year ;-). But in order to make up for this oversight... check out this: http://www.debbeesdesigns.com/GlitzGlamourIndex.htm.

It's Spring - on with the Garden Theme!

The business of the past year is slowly dying down for me and, as a result, I've been able ot find a little time to work on my stitching. I was able to finish one of the little kits I received at the stitching retreat on the 15th of May. It's a cute little project. I'll have to come up with a nifty way of finishing it.

I'm also made progress on the garden sampler from one of the retreat classes. I don't have any major commitments this weekend, so I'm hoping I can make big progress on that one and maybe even finish it!

Before I can get to that, I have to prep the week's workouts for the triathlon training group I lead, take the puppy tracking and update a couple more blogs ;-). Hopefully mid-afternoon will see me stitching for a bit!

Behold.. The Letter Q!

Friday night stitch-in was a good time as always! A few of the regulars didn't make it and were missed. I was very happy to be there as I haven't been stitching much lately and it gave me a chance to get my art deco alphabet project moving again.

Today I put the last stitches in the Letter Q:

I'm starting the Letter V today. I've already made some decent progress on it. The Letter V has a lot of large blocks of stitching without much counting, so I'm hoping it will go fast!!

I also started a sampler from the stitching retreat. I haven't done too much on it lately, but I'm hoping to have an opportunity to make more progress this week:

I'll Update, Really I Will

Tonight I'll be heading to my stitch in with Jerry. I have a few things to update on the blog. I just keep having a hard time being in the same place as my camera when there are active batteries in it. So tomorrow sometime, unless of course it's later than that. ;-)

Stragglers

And here are the last few stragglers from the retreat. The kit in the lower left is the retreat sampler. I also won another prize (the Celtic Lads) and bought another two projects (yeah keep laughing). ;-)

I also finished one of the punchneedle buttons from the Artful Offerings class on Sunday. This is my first punchneedle experience. It was fun to play with the project a little. I'm happy with my little start button!

Today in crafts, I'm prepping the magnetic numbers for my car. I started stock car solo racing last year and am planning to go out 5-6 times this year in competition, so I'll need my car numbers and team mascot :-). I'm also assembling a project that I finished on Friday. I'm hoping I'll be getting to that soon, but I can only do 10 things at once!

Stitching Retreat Wrap Up

It's been a busy few days since the stitching retreat. It's been a strange time over the past year where it seems that almost every minute of my life has been filled with some commitment. I'm hoping that I will be able to relieve that trend. *fingers crossed*

I had a wonderful time, as always, at the retreat. I received some lovely gift items:

Also, I got plenty of stash in the goody bags handed out:

I also won a few items in the games we played:

And then there's the stuff I purchased (as if I needed more):

I even did a little stitching while I was playing with all the new shiny stuff. I was able to finish the three projects from the round robin class on Saturday afternoon early on Sunday:

I've been sorting and filing all of the stash I received from the weekend. Most of the charts are logged on my patterns and kits inventory blogs. I also put all of the fibers into their appropriate locations. I mostly prepped up a couple of kits for two of the charts that I'm really looking forward to stitching (ooof I have a big pile of even those). Yesterday morning the last of the accessories were put in my stitching spot. I still have a few photos to take of the last of the items I received on Sunday and of course... the unfinished projects are on my plate. Now if I can just tell everyone to go away for a while I might be able to get some of this stuff done!!! *grin*

Fun Was Had

Today was the big day at the stitching retreat. Gifts were received, classes were taken, purchases were made and great conversation occurred. I have photos of all of the stuff I received/purchased so far, but it's rather late to format and load them. I'm planning on getting most of them up tomorrow along with the finishes I whomped out. Time to hit the bed so I can be ready to stitch tomorrow!

Found it :-)

I found a photo of my name tag for this year's retreat in my backups!

Stitching Retreat Introduction Day

Today was the first day of the stitching retreat. There are a lot of people this year. I think more than either last year or the year before. The theme is Reflections of Americana. Jan and the retreat committee are shaking things up a bit. We're going to wait to vote on peoples' name tag designs until tomorrow. I was planning to post mine tonight, but I discovered after I got home that the photo I took in January was lost in the horrid death of my memory stick, so I'll have to remember to get a photo of it tomorrow and post it then. The name tags being displayed were rather impressive!!

We did a little meet and greet game where we had to tell 2 true things and 1 false thing about ourselves. Some of them were really tough and the true facts were astonishing. I had the following for mine (which were moderately interesting):

1. I have 2 girl cats with boy names
2. I went to Germany in 5th grade
3. I'm missing a bone in my foot

Well, I'll just leave you to ponder that. We met the designers for the classes and got to scope their trunk shows. Cheesecake was served (yum) and great, silly conversations occurred.

We had a little mini class tonight. I made good progress on the Garden Sampler project they handed out - photos to follow on that too. I also was able, between last night and tonight, to completely finish the A/B page in my sampler book project and get the C/D finishing stitching started. So I was feeling pretty great about all that.

Tomorrow we'll be doing a class in the morning, lunch, a round robin after lunch, some free stitching/shopping and some evening fun activities. I'm looking forward to being there and should get to bed soon. However, I should share my most recent finish... the E in my Sampler Book project:

Quick Finish

I wrapped up a quick project Saturday afternoon while I was being driven around in the car. I'm thinking that a chauffeur is a critical component of a fine stitching addiction.

This project is one of the pieces I won at last year's stitching retreat. I figured, since the other one is coming up very soon, that I should whomp through a couple of the remaining little projects from the last one so I can make space for the new ones that will be coming in ;-).

I'm not yet sure what I'm going to do with this one. I'm sure a nifty finish will occur to me at some point.

In the mean time, I have made excellent progress on the E is for Elephant/English Stitch in my Sampler Book series. I'm expecting to wrap that one up tomorrow. At that point I'll be starting into the F is for Fox/Four-Sided Stitch. I doubt I'll be able to get too far on that one before the retreat on Friday.

I was hoping to wrap up the E tonight, but instead I nicked the vein in one of my dogs claws and dealt with a kitchen full of blood and a 100lb baby. He's doing just fine now, even though he thought he was going to bleed out. I swear!! Now I'm just trying to get up the motivation to hit the sack. The time change is messing with me!

D is for Done!

I finally finished the next letter in my sampler book series. I wrapped it up at the March stitch in at A Stitcher's Garden. I'm hoping to spend the day working on prepping the next couple of pages for stitching. But, then again, maybe not - lol!

Tea Time!!

This morning I put the last stitches into the hardanger tea cups project. I'm happy to have this one finished. Now I get to concentrate on my sampler book project. Here's a photo of the full piece:

I also have close ups of each of the cups:

 

 This past week I also finished off the scarf to match the hat I did. I started the scarf a while ago, but wanted to get the hat done before I wrapped up the scarf so I could use all of the remaining yarn on the scarf. It's pretty long. :-)

Now, off for a run!

A Hat

I have successfully knitted my first ever hat. It is a fine hat. I'm a little shocked at how well it turned out. My first attempt at the brim was a bit questionable. I tried first with a 36" size 7 circular needle. The cable on that needle was too long. So I knitted it off to my double pointed needles. The DPNs were a bit too shirt so it was a bit of a trick trying to use them without the stitches falling off. On top of that I apparently twisted the stitches as I was knitting them off as there was an enormous ridge. Now I want to figure out who I did that because it was really nifty. It would be cool to do a hat with a few of those big ridges going around the brim.

Right. So here's the photo. It's a bit of a cruddy photo since I'm still not very good at taking pictures with my cell phone. And no you don't get to see my whole face, not because I'm worried about my cover being blown, so much as I was making a stupid face and don't feel like taking the time to get a better photo :-).

I'm almost finished with the matching scarf. I wanted to wait to finish that until after I had wrapped up the hat so I could use all of the left over yarn for the scarf. There's no point in having a tiny little ball of it lying around!!

I'm hoping to get the scarf done tonight while I'm at the dog club meeting. Then I'm planing on wrapping up the hardanger tea cup project. I'm soooo close on that one! All of the white work on the cups is done. All of the specialty stitches on three of the cups are complete. I just need to do the cut work on the last cup, do 11 doohickey stitches (yeah I can't remember what they're called) and then do the green accent stitches on the last two cups. It should be the work of one Lord of the Rings movie.

Oh and I'm excited because it's just under a month til the stitch in and just over a month to the stitching retreat. YAY!

Yay - I caught up to last year!!

Yippee I finished the stitching retreat sampler. I did it before the next one which is scheduled for March. I also finished another big section of my hardanger tea cups project. An update will be out on that soon. In the mean time, check it:

Oh And....

Apparently I have a new convert to the stitching revolution....

I converted her father too - if only for one project...well, two ;-).

Woof!

Yesterday I finished a gift for a close friend of mine. I was up against the deadline, not so much because the person for whom it was made had appeared, but because I was in the country where she lives and figured it would be easier to get it to her there than try to post it later. So here it is...

The idea to decorate a onesie was one of her friends. I think it's a great idea; however, a practical person and responsible mom-to-be pointed out that she feared getting decorated onesies with glitter and puffy-pens that would not be wearable. The stitched one met the cut ;-). I just hope its not too scratchy on the inside!

I did a little on last year's stitching retreat sampler today, but mostly I was knitting because I have a scarf that I feel should be finished before summer.... but we all know how that goes!!

Organizing and Finish I Can't Post (Yet)

I'm starting to get back into the stitching mood. Not that I don't want to finish knitting the scarf I started for myself, but hey - it's a hobby. I don't need to follow the rules!!

This week I stopped by the store on the way to work one morning and found closet organizer stuff on sale. I've been meaning to come up with a better way to store my fabric collection - voila!

The details? All counts of 26x36 are on the top, then 32ct 18x26, then 28ct 18x26, all counts of 18x18 are on the left of the next rung and misc sizes in the other cubby, then the left two on the bottom are 32ct and 28ct 13x18 and the right two are 32ct and 28ct 9x13. I'm thinking I need to get more just to fill in the spaces! Nothing like a good addiction :-).

I also completed my first cross stitching finish of the year. Sadly, since it's the nametag for the stitching retreat in March, I can't post a photo of it lest I give away my fantastic design! My next project won't be able to be posted right away either because it is a suprise gift for a friend. But I promise I'm going to get them up as soon as they are revealed. Hopefully I'll have lots of other stuff to post soon.

ADDED: Oh and I made big progress on the hardanger teacups project at the stitch in the other night. Maybe that will be the first finish I get to post.

And Here's the Finish...

Tada... here's the other scarf I finished :-).

It has little pockets at the ends for cold hands. I knitted it using the seed stitch - pretty easy and rhythmic to work up. I have a bunch of left over of this suede feeling fiber, so I'm planning to do a little stuffed toy with it. Hopefully soon. In the meantime I'm finally working on a scarf for me. I had a bit of a stressful moment today when I dropped an increase stich, but I bulled though. I'll see how bad the booboo is tomorrow.

New Year, Less Money...

Well, it's been a good new year so far. Not that I'm deep into it yet, but hey it's good to start out on a high note!

I went to Toronto to visit friends on the new year. While I was there we knitted a bunch. Unfortutanely, I forgot to get a photo of the scarf I finished. Hopefully I'll remember to get a pic of that before I give it to the intended scarfee. I did pick up some gorgeous yarns at a the local shop:

 The top one is a 100% merino wool, the pink one is a cotton cashmere, and the blues are a 100% wool. I'm planning to use the merino to make some socks. I'll have to practice with something else first though. I'm thinking a scarf and mitten set with the wool. I couldn't decide what to do with the cashmere, but one of the ladies at work today was chatting with me and we decided on an open weave shawl to wear with a little black dress :-).

Just before Christmas I signed up for the Stitching Retreat run by Jan at A Stitcher's Garden (my LNS). I'm really looking forward to the fun in March. Of course, now it's the dreaded name tag challenge that's hanging over my head! The theme for this year is Americana. I have some ideas for the piece, but have no idea when I'm going to work on it now that I'm running a triathlon training program at one of the local Ys and have weekends filled up with visits to Canada (maybe for more yarn?). I'm sure I'll be able to pull through!

I am going to the stitch-in at my LNS this week, so at least I'll be getting in a little time on a few of my open projects. Maybe I'll work on the teacup hardanger piece this time.