All but the cutwork

Last night the last wide band went in, and tonight I've finished the 4 acorns on the bottom corners and the last colored band. All that is left of To the Acorn is the cutwork sections, one between the two initials, and one in the blank area of the bottom whitework.

I've really been enjoying this sampler, especially since I finalized the color scheme. To answer a comment on my last post, this is an EGA group correspondence course. It will be available to individual EGA members (for a $20 registration fee + text fee instead of the $150 group registration fee + text fee) with signups in September and October 2008 through the EGA website.

Mojo or mood swings?

Do you find you have to be in a certain "mood" to do certain types of stitching? Or maybe there are different types of stitching "mojo". Apparently my "stitch-laying mojo" has gone out the window, because the last thing I've wanted to do over the last few days is to pick up a laying tool.

Unfortunately, that means that Camelot is out of the picture until I feel like laying stitches again. The vast part of what's left on this piece is laid stitches with three strands of floss.

In any case, my "single strand sampler stitching mojo" (4S mojo?) is here in full force. Just the brief break to start Camelot worked to refocus my efforts yet again on To the Acorn. I've skipped the cutwork portions for now, and am nearing the bottom of the sampler! The band in progress has the numbers of the year alternating with pulled-work patches. The only large band left is the same as the top wide band, just inverted. (Please click to see a bigger picture. This is Blogger's large picture setting. Apparently it has to do with the height of the picture, and the length of this sampler makes the picture show up small, no matter what the setting!)

Guenevere's Crown

Alternate post title: Oooh! Sparkly!

I had a hard time figuring out what to call this post, after only adding metallics yesterday and the later portion of Sunday. I like to think this is supposed to be a crown, given that the piece is Camelot. It's really got much more shimmer and sparkle in person than in the picture.

There probably won't be much progress tonight, since I'm on my way to an EGA board meeting.

Outlines and Eyelets

Since I started yesterday, I've stitched through the first 4 (out of 31 pages) of instructions. Here is the beginning of Camelot.

Have you ever found, while stitching a row of eyelets, that you have to keep flipping the piece over to run under to the next eyelet? I have a solution to this problem. Simply stitch the top half of the eyelets across the entire row. After reaching the end of the row, work back along the bottoms of the eyelets. If you can't quite imagine this, a picture is worth a thousand words:

Camelot...

The latest Jim Wurth ornament arrived on my doorstep this afternoon. I eagerly opened it to see what was next in the Dodecagon series, and immediately started singing (much to DH's dismay):

Camelot (da da dum dum dum)
Camelot (da da dum dum dum)
In short there's simply not
A more congenial spot
For happily ever-aftering
Than here in Ca-me-lot!

(with apologies to Lerner & Loewe)

Yes, the next ornament is named Camelot. Appropriately enough for February, one of the main colors in this piece is pink.
Between my determination to keep up with this series and a need to set To the Acorn aside for a bit after 3 straight weeks, I've started it already.* I'll try to frequently post my progress on this piece, so stay tuned.

* This is an exception to my WIP-loss challenge, remember?

A lot of progress

I had to laugh when I saw Dani's latest post. She made the following comment:

If I've said it once, I've said it a million times : if you work on a project you can actually see some progress!

I'm going to add a corollary to that:

If you work only on one project, you can actually see a lot of progress!

To the Acorn has seen a lot of progress. I'm through "lesson 3" of 6.
Lesson 4 has a large cutwork block in it. Since cutting the fabric makes it less stable, I always try to save that part for last. As a result, I'm just going to baste as needed for that block with some surrounding stitching, then move on to lesson 5.

Thanks to all for the wonderful comments about this piece.

Making My Day!

In catching up with my blog reading, I was very surprised and pleased to learn that Kathryn awarded me a "You Make My Day" award! Thank you so much, Kathryn!

Not knowing the actual rules for what I'm supposed to do now, I traced the award back to Mel's blog, which listed the rules for this award.

The Rules:
Give the award to 10 people whose blogs bring you happiness and inspiration and make you feel happy about blogland. Let them know by posting a comment on their blog so they can pass it on. Beware you may get the award several times.

I read many more than 10 blogs regularly, so it was really hard to choose. In no specific order, here are some of the bloggers who frequently make my day:

1. Jane - whose blog is the place for inspiration and encouragement in stitching painted canvases, not to mention lots of notices of sales, new designs, and new threads.

2. Carol-Anne - who shares her journey of learning Japanese Embroidery with beautiful photos of her work.

3. Joanie - who stitches some beautiful reproduction samplers and is another upstate NY stitcher.

4. Elisabeth - who inspires with her amazing surface embroidery.

5. Karen - who mostly knits now, but her sense of humor still amuses me as it did when she was a local stitcher (before she moved away).
   

6. Jocelyn - who does a range of creative needlework styles, including some really neat freeform needlepoint - and she often leaves great comments here.

7. Rissa - whose blog highlights her amazing range of textile hobbies, from stitching to crazy quilting to spinning. Plus she's a fellow "dog person", though her pups are much smaller than my greyhounds.

8. Pierrette - who shares my enjoyment of many stitching techniques.

9. Karoline - who stitches gorgeous repro and historical-style samplers and smalls, and always leaves a kind word on my posts.

10. And last, but certainly not least, Kathryn - who somehow keeps track of all of her cross stitch projects (many with sheep!) while being constantly on the go between two homes (in Maui and Las Vegas) and the many conventions she and her DH manage. Plus she always takes the time to comment here!

Thank you all for making my day!

What a difference!

Thank you to all who made recommendations on how to fix the color scheme of To the Acorn. I considered each one carefully.

In the end, my decision was made at the LNS when I looked for silks in the cranberry and olive-green colors. The shop had a perfect match for the olive-green in the variegated thread, but nothing that matched the cranberry. As a result, Thursday evening was spent ripping out the blue and starting to replace it with the green. I found, as I did this, that Jocelyn was right. (Sorry, Kathryn and Doris!) The pink now really does work. The piece is now fulfilling my original intent of having an autumn feel. (Acorns show up in autumn. Why shouldn't a piece with acorns in it remind the viewer of autumn?) It was the combination of the two pastel colors that caused the problem.

Now that I've settled on the color scheme, I should be able to make really good progress on this.

To the Acorn progress

It's hard to believe that I've only managed one post in the last week. My only excuse is that I've been stitching! I've made really good progress on To the Acorn so far. This shows all of "lesson 1", which includes the whitework band and the repeating bands above and below it. I've started on lesson 2.

I picked all of my own colors for this, with some success. Unfortunately, I do need to change at least one color. All of the colors are supposed to come from the variegated silk. The pink flowers in the border are too pink. I need to change this to more of a cranberry color to match the red tones in the variegated thread.

The light blue used for the inner border and the acorns in the corners of the outer border is also doubtful. The chart called for this to be gray, regardless of the variegated thread used. I didn't like the true gray with it, so I went with this light gray-blue. I think this needs to be darker, and I might switch to a gray-green that would work better with the main variegated thread.

Suggestions would be most welcome!

January recap & February goals

I didn't set any goals for the month of January, but I did accomplish quite a bit:

• Finished and sent off a treat bag for the Quaker Quarterly Exchange
  
• Finished Treasured Snowflakes & Trees by Mill Hill
• Finished Crossed Wing's White-eared Hummingbird
• Finished the Strawberry Purse wool applique design from FingerWork
• Made progress on Winds of Color

All of these led to the completion of the first round of my WIP-loss challenge, so I was able to start To the Acorn!

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For February, here are my goals:

• Keep blogging!
  
• Start and finish the Jim Wurth ornament that's due out this month.
• Stitch at least through "session 3" on To the Acorn.
• Make progress on several areas in Winds of Color.
• Finish one small WIP.
  

I hope everybody has a great month!