Looking ahead

Having finished My Way last week, I now have no fewer than THREE large canvas projects on my near-term radar.

The first, of course, is Mystique, the project from my Carolyn Mitchell class over the next two days. We did have to stitch the borders for the project as pre-work for the class, but fortunately the most time consuming part of this was the counting. The stitch is a simple slanted gobelin stitch over two canvas intersections.

Unlike My Way, Carolyn strongly suggested that all students use one of her two color combinations, so there’s no chance for my progress to stall simply due to decision paralysis. I’m looking forward to this!

Also on the horizon is Jim Wurth’s Prelude to Peace, an online class through Shining Needle Society. This class is scheduled to start October 1st. I’ve chosen my colors – just slightly brighter versions of the original blues and browns, but haven’t actually purchased any of my threads yet. I guess I’d better get going on this! (Note, the picture in the link above is another stitcher’s, not Jim’s original. I couldn’t find a picture online of the original colors, except in the SNS Home Room. If you’re really curious, you can always join – it’s free!)

Finally, my local EGA chapter is doing the correspondence course Cleopatra’s Cat by Mary Long. Since I’m not a cat person, I’m taking some liberties with this project. I’m making a greyhound outline from a picture of my Sophie, and will be stitching it in shades of brown and black to match her brindle coloring.

I’ll try to post a bit more frequently to share how I’m approaching this. Yes, it means a lot of decisions, but since it’s mostly thread decisions rather than color decisions, it shouldn’t be too difficult, yet will still present an interesting challenge.

In the meantime, I’ve actually picked up one of my slow WIPs. Over the past week, I’ve made a bit of progress on the border of Rae Iverson’s Blackwork Band Sampler.

If I don’t actually finish a few things, I’m never going to meet my goal of ending the year with fewer WIPs than last year. But then again, I’m sure that’s not the only yearly goal that won’t be met! :-)

Happy Dance: Fabulous Finale

This post not only celebrates the completion of Jim Wurth's Fabulous Finale ornament, but the completion of all 12 ornaments in the dodecagon series!This ornament was a lot of fun to stitch, and it was my first opportunity to stitch with the Finca cotton floss and pearl cottons from the Spanish company Presencia. I did find that the pearl cottons had a few slubs, which were far enough apart that a stitcher could just use the length of thread between the slubs without a problem. The floss was just a tiny bit fuzzier than the DMC I often use. A color card for these threads might be useful, for when I'm trying to find colors that just don't come in Anchor or DMC (like the turquoise family I'm using in My Way).

Happy Dance: Peace Tree

So much for switching to Summer Dream. On Wednesday, I received the kit for the last ornament in Jim Wurth's dodecagon series. I was reminded that I had not finished the previous ornament, Peace Tree, though I did work on it a bit a few weeks ago.

Because I'm switching some of the colors on Summer Dream, I decided it required too much thinking for the Thursday evening stitch night at the LNS. Instead, I brought Peace Tree, and finished the remaining beading.

I had hoped that this ornament would grow on me as I stitched it, but that really didn't happen. It's probably enough to say that it's my least favorite of the series, despite the beautiful, challenging crescent stitches done in Flair.

After I finished Peace Tree, I took it off the stretcher bars and reused them for Jim's Fabulous Finale. This ornament is not in my usual colors, but I'm really enjoying it. The proof is in the amazing amount I've stitched since Thursday evening, when I only had part of the border done.

The highlights of this piece are the five large flower-like motifs stitched in the Chilly Hollow stitch. This stitch was invented by the one-and-only Jean Hilton and named by fellow blogger Jane from Chilly Hollow.

A start on Peace Tree

Well, I haven't been blogging, but I have been stitching. I mentioned last week that the latest in Jim Wurth's dodecagon series had arrived. After finishing the notebook class samples that were on my 10" stretcher bars, I reused the bars to mount the canvas for Peace Tree.

The ornaments in this series have had a lot of variety in terms of their layout. Some have been four-way geometrics, some two-way, some completely abstract. This one has a different "feel" to it, though. It is a two-way geometric, but it's also trying to be an abstract representation of a real thing, in this case a Christmas tree. I don't think this is going to be one of my favorites in the series. It's interesting, and I love the way the crescent stitches come out when stitched with Rainbow Gallery's Flair (more on that in another post), but it's not really a pattern I would have picked out to stitch if it wasn't part of this ongoing series. I'll keep stitching to see if it tries to change my mind!

Strawberry Girl begins

Thanks for all of the wonderful comments on ScottLee. I certainly will share a picture of the finished tea tray, but first I have to find the right handles (drawer pulls) and frame. Since these aren't found in the same store, it might pose a bit of a challenge! (By the way, Jane, our mutual friend told me about your request to have the tea tray and her tote bag placed together somewhere from which they might easily be stolen by you. Keep trying!)

I have since moved on to a NEW project! Here is the beginning of Strawberry Girl by Gay Ann Rogers. I'm hoping that once the outlines are done, the worst of the counting will be over!

I'm also trying to finish up the final three stitches in the online notebook class The Sky's the Limit, authored by Suzanne Howren and Beth Robertson and sponsored by the Shining Needle Society. Once I get this canvas off of my 10" stretcher bars, I can move on to the latest in Jim Wurth's dodecagon series. The kit arrived this week.

As you can see, there's a lot going on here, and that's not even considering the fact that I leave for seminar in just 8 days!

Dodecagon presentation

In response to my last post about finishing another of Jim Wurth's ornaments, both Mary and Cynthia asked what I was going to do with all of the dodecagons. I really had no idea about final presentation when I started doing these. They're really a tad bit too big to use as regular ornaments, and I'd like to display some all year.

Somebody in my ANG chapter is also doing these, and she came up with the idea of making them up as individual ornaments, then hanging them in a frame, allowing for them to be switched out seasonally. See?Thanks for the idea, Lynne! I'm adapting this slightly. Lynne's frames were black with a black background. I'm going to have the framer leave off the craft paper on the back of the frame and provide me with several suede mats so I can customize the background. I haven't quite figured out what frame to use yet. I'm going to start by having a few of the ornaments made up. I'll find a good frame for them after that. I think I'll have 2 of these frames, but I don't yet know where they'll go in my house!

Happy Dance: Old Country

Here is Old Country, the latest in Jim Wurth's Dodecagon series. It's one of my favorites so far! The color palette really reminds me of Eastern European needlework, so the name is perfect. Also, I love the "string art" stitches, invented by Jean Hilton, but used wonderfully in this design. It's impressive that Jim has managed to use multiple large stitches while making them part of a whole instead of "fighting" each other.

This evening I'm working on my piece for a Quaker exchange. Unfortunately, I won't be able to show my work on this until it is received by my exchange partner.

Old Country progress

Just a quick note before I head off to work. I'm making good progress on Jim Wurth's Old Country! This is a fun piece. I love all of the large stitches that are quick to do but add a lot of interest.

Winds & Wurth

Thursday evening, I finished the dress in Winds of Color. If you'll recall, I didn't like the transition to the really light pink in the bodice of the dress. I thought that the fourth section from the top was too light. I raided my stash, and found I had another skein of this color that was a few shades brighter than the one in the kit. (For the record: yes, this was DMC. There can be differences between dyelots.) I also found a "better" (for my purposes) skein of the color for the top-most section in my stash, too.

After I fixed the dress, I started the lady's hair. I had my doubts at first about the colors: a bright blue and two shades of mauve. After I started, though, it made sense. The blue is around the edges and in a few places in the middle, showing where the dark sky is showing through the less dense areas. The lightest mauve is used for highlights, and everything else is the darker mauve, which actually turns out looking like a brown with violet-red undertones.

The hair is all stitched in french knots. As I've said before, I like french knots. Unfortunately, I've discovered that stitching mass quantities of french knots triggers my early-stage carpal tunnel syndrome because of the twisting motion used in making the knots. It took a while for it to flare up at first, so I was able to get quite a bit done. After about an hour of stitching yesterday, I started to get the familiar tingling in the thumb, forefinger, and ring finger of my right hand. Being right-handed, loss of feeling in these fingers means I can't continue to hold the needle. This is not very conducive to stitching progress! I had to start alternating between this project and another: one length of thread (sometimes less) on the hair, one or two lengths on the second project. The picture shows where I left things yesterday.

I can hear some of you asking: what was the "other" project? After running some errands, DH and I came home to a perfectly-timed package tucked inside the garage: the latest in the Dodecagon Series by Jim Wurth! Old Country is a combination of orange, red, purple, and dark green. Orange is not one of my favorite colors, but with this combination, it looks great! I was able to stitch quite a bit on this last night. The center area stitched up very quickly! The picture definitely does not do this piece justice. There are lots of metallics, and the sparkle doesn't show up in the picture!

Happy Dance: Camelot

The second attempt at stitching the center of Camelot was successful! This is such a cool stitch.

One of the best things about canvas is its ability to hold up to stitches like this. While this stitch could be done on a softer ground fabric like linen, the fabric would likely buckle. If you're intrigued by canvaswork, you might start with a freebie like the one I linked to in the last post or those on Rainbow Gallery's site.

Thanks again to Jim Wurth for another great design. Camelot is #9 in Jim's dodecagon series. It's good to finish another piece!* My stitching focus has now returned to Winds of Color. I'll probably pick up one of my other linen WIPs to alternate with this when I need a change of pace.

Pierrette asked how I was going to frame To the Acorn. I really don't know right now, but it doesn't matter, anyway. I'm taking this GCC through the CyberStitchers chapter of EGA, and it's due to be sent in for critique by mid-April. I can't frame it until it is returned. Then I'll probably take it in to my LNS. The owner has a real gift for helping customers make appropriate framing choices.

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* Since this series is one of the exemptions to my WIP-loss challenge, the finish doesn't count against the challenge.

Mini stitch retreat & Camelot progress

Today was the day scheduled for our local annual "March Madness" one-day stitch getaway at a local hotel. (Ok, so it's the same group that met in January for a similar get-together, but previously it's only been once a year!) Yesterday afternoon and evening the weather forecast was for 4 to 10" of snow & ice. Luckily, we fell on the short end of that, so while the roads were pretty slippery in the travel across town, they were passable, and we had a fun day of stitching, gabbing, and admiring each other's work.

I had great hopes of finishing Camelot during today's event, and almost accomplished it. The final step was a Double Fan Doubled, a stitch invented by Jean Hilton. (Carole Lake uses a variation of this stitch in a freebie pattern on her site, and describes the stitch well, so I won't try it here!) Unfortunately, in rushing to finish this before leaving, I didn't quite get the first part of the stitch centered or tensioned correctly, so it ended up lopsided. I frogged it when I got home.

I hope to post that this is finished tomorrow!

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?

Happy Dance: Czarina

After some concentrated stitching today (since yesterday was spent shopping because my sister was working on Friday), Czarina is done![Edited to answer Janine's comment: It worked much better to stitch the Amadeus and other non-metallic parts of the quadrant before putting in the Flair crescents. I did have to be careful not to snag any of the plies of floss used for the Amadeus with my laying tool, but that was less trouble than stitching around the bulky crescents!]

I think this is my favorite of the series so far! Thanks to Jim Wurth for a wonderful "color play" experience!

After almost a week off, I'm back to work, reality, and UFOs tomorrow!

More progress on Czarina

Czarina is coming along nicely! Since the crescents were so time-consuming, I decided to move on to some of the other portions of the first two quadrants before moving to the remaining quadrants.I found that laying the Amadeus motifs was difficult because the crescents were so bulky. Because of all the layers of Flair, the top of these motifs are almost 1/4" off the canvas, so it's really hard to get floss to lay next to it, especially since I was trying not to snag the Flair with my laying tool. As a result, I decided to stitch the Amadeus motifs in the remaining quadrants before stitching the crescents. I continued on with a portion of the rest of these quadrants, too, but did not stitch the woven metallic portions yet because I thought the metallics would catch on the Flair. I'll let you know tomorrow if I have any problems stitching the crescents with the other stitches already in the quadrants.

Czarina progress

Czarina, the new Jim Wurth ornament, is progressing nicely.* The big fleur-de-lis crescents are a bit of a pain, since they're stitched with Flair from Rainbow Gallery. This is a tubular nylon thread (think Barbie pantyhose!) that wants to snag at every opportunity, and to make it look right it has to be laid flat on both the front and back of the canvas.

Plus, since I don't want to stop and start the thread several times during the stitching of the crescent, I'm using a really long length. After needing to start and end threads three times on the first crescent, I cut a 70" thread for the second, and had just a few inches left over. I'll stick with that for the rest, even though it increases the chance of snagging the thread. I just have to be careful not to drag the thread across the edges of the canvas.

*Of course, it helps that I've been on vacation for the past two days. The only Thanksgiving preparations I've had to distract me were the baking of two pumpkin pies and helping my mom with some setup for the 17 people she's having over tomorrow. DH and I go to his parents' place for Thanksgiving, so I help my mom out ahead of time.

I'll post again tomorrow, but in case it's not until later, Happy Thanksgiving everybody!

A new ornament

The kit for the next ornament in Jim Wurth's dodecagon series arrived in yesterday's mail. Here are the supplies for Czarina:I did start this today (recall that this series is exempt from my challenge), and made some decent progress. I'll post progress pics tomorrow.

Meanwhile, I'm having a hard time staying away from some LNS sales. The last thing I need is more stash, but I've had a cart open at Bits and Bobs for several days, since they have most of their stock at 20-25% off. There are five charts in my cart now. (Why do I do this!?!?!?) The sale is going on through the weekend. I'll wait at least until after Friday to check out, because one of my local shops is having a 20% off sale on Friday. If they have any of these charts, I'd rather spend the money locally. Stay tuned, and I'll share what I eventually purchase, if anything. (Who am I kidding?) :-P

The Baroness Edie is done!

Don't look now, but I've actually had two postings in two days, and since it's the beginning of the month, I'll be posting my monthly goals today or tomorrow, too!

I mentioned yesterday that I wanted to complete the latest dodecagon ornament from Jim Wurth sometime this weekend. Here's what it looked like after last night's stitching. -->

<-- And here it is now! Yes, The Baroness Edie is complete! Happy dance! I really enjoyed the play of all the "Easter" colors on this piece. If you look closely, you can see that each of the four quadrants (outside of the center and the bargello areas) is stitched with the same stitches, but with different combinations of the same 4 colors. (If that makes sense!)

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Unfortunately, as one of the exemptions for my WIP-loss challenge, this piece does not count toward my total.

So, the WIP-loss challenge status is still: 1 down, 9 to go