Saturday, February 26, 2022

Trying again with blogger

I don't floss tube but I do enjoy those who do so I have for a long time used a blog to share my love of needlework with the general stitching community. with Instagram and Facebook groups this way of communication has waned but I want to continue to share in this format where I can share questions and thoughts about what is going on in my little corner of the woods. It looks like blogger is doing a better job finally with allowing me to attach pictures which is really what I want to use this for basically. 

I stitch in a rotation and this year, as every year I make changes to try to be more productive. I stitch  slowly but am trying this year to be more consistent with my stitching. So currently I do one thread a day on a WIP, rotate weekly on 4 different projects and do a different Saturday and Sunday piece. I am slowly participating in 3 SAL's slowly but continue to work on them. 
First up in my one thread a day piece. February began Winter Cross Stitch Camp with Colorado Cross Stitcher on YouTube and shop of that name. I did a BBD freebie Petites Lettres Rouge from their blog 2009. I used Camelot's Lady a deep rose color that looks red in the photo but which is a rose shade that I favor. The fabric is antique white 32 count Belfast. I so enjoyed this piece. Sad to see it finished but YAY my first finish of 2022. Will frame it if I can find a frame for it. They are hard to come by up here. 


Next I pulled out the Quaker Turtles to replace it from the WIP pile, it had gone into time out because I thought I had a counting error and could not find it. After forever in the black hole of WIP land I looked at it and could not find anything wrong with it so I  put in the rotation as my once a day stitch for an hour piece. I have one half of one shell done as each shell has two pieces. Juniper WDW on green fabric of unknown name. 
I auditioned thread for the next freebie when the turtles are complete and I downloaded this freebie from Jan Hicks Creates entitled This is Home. I did not want to use DMC as a lot of my current WIPS are in DMC so I checked with her and for her personal one for her home she used Vicki Clayton silk which I do not have. So I raided my stash and found two colors of needle necessities I have used before and know they look good together so I pulled those out and into the future small start bag I keep at the ready. 

One new thing I started this year is doing stocking Saturday. It was a thing long ago in a totally different platform of message boards and I did Kathy Barricks Quaker Stocking because in my world it is stitch all the Quakers. They are by far my favorite comfort stitch. The next on I decided to pull out and finally revive, at least for me, is Stocking Saturday. It allows me to pull other a new start and at least get a few hours a week. Our weekends are super busy so not as much stitching time as I do during the week. This chart is being stitched On Elegant Bean Linens 40 count from Lady Dot Creates on Etsy. This is my go to linen and was super excited when Lois started adding it to her shop. 


On Sunday I am following Lori Holt's lead and stitching a Sabbath Stitch. On one of her last cross stitch floss tube's she discussed doing a Sabbath Stitch and a Christmas stitch on the 25th of the month. I chose a huge piece (no surprise there) that I am using for both and Started a Nativity design from Stoney Creek that I saw someone stitching years ago. Sadly I was not able to ever connect with that lady again to see her finish. I had the chart and it is stitched in what fills like hundreds of DMC but I have a lot of DMC so I kitted it up. It was my Christmas Day start in 2021 and has continued as my Sabbath Stitch and my 25th of the month stitch.




Next up in the weekly rotation is Winter from Cross eyed Cricket. It is stitched on the no longer available morning fog from R&R fabrics with the called for DMC. This has been a totally fun stitch for me. It uses a lot of DMC but that is what I bought it for and I am happy to be able to stitch as often as I can.




Next up is gift and or small stitching and I used that for me Winter Cross Stitch Camp piece I showed earlier. Next week in my rotation is Houses of Hawk Run Hollow. This is a very stitch dense project but it the perfect piece for me to pick up when I just have a few minutes to stitch or when I am stitching on a Zoom call because it is so much fill in with the same color. This is my current progress from the beginning of February. I am enjoying this on as well on Lakeside Linen, which is my second favorite fabric and am fortunate to have a stash of it. Still have the bottom to fill in with one color that I am leaving for a phone time or just pick up time during that week as well as the regular rotation stitching. This is using NPI silk and fabric as called for on the chart. 

 And last but not least is my Sampler of Stitches from the Drawn Thread kitted up long ago with called for linen and silks. It is almost all specialty stitches which I enjoy learning. This does take longer to stitch than the other pieces but it is good. This is the progress I made over January to February with the start being just the H being done in the beginning. 
Well this is picture heavy as it is so from now on I will just show progress on it as I go and see how Blogger works. Hope this finds you well and with needle in hand. Have a great stitching day and I will check in again soon. Marjo