Acorns and an ornament

Hooray! I finally finished reweaving the nut portion of the acorns.

The frogging went a little easier tonight, since I just cut out the old parts. After talking with my MIL, I discovered that I didn't need to worry about running out of thread. MIL and I both started this piece in a class together, and a few weeks after the class ended, one of the stitchers realized we would likely run short of this thread. The teacher (who owns a nearby shop), provided extra balls of pearl cotton to each person in the class. MIL picked up one for me, and I know she gave it to me. Can I find it? Nope. I've looked everywhere. However, she has both of her balls of pearl cotton, and is letting me take what I need from one of them so I can finish this piece! Thanks Mom!

On another note, I'd like to share something that I picked up from the finisher a few weeks ago. Here is the First Christmas ornament I made for my cousin's little girl. The hand-painted canvas was by Kathy Shenkel. It came out a bit oddly-shaped, because the heel of the stocking is almost as large as the toe. This wasn't that obvious in the original canvas, but it's evident now since it's been stuffed. I'm still pretty pleased at how it turned out.

And last, but certainly not least, today marks the END of NaBloPoMo! Posting every day for a month was difficult at times, but overall I've enjoyed it. I can't say I'll post quite as frequently going forward, but this experience has forced me to think about possible blog topics as I go through my day. Hopefully it has become a bit of a habit, and my posting may be a bit more regular than it was before this month. As for this weekend, though, I'll probably post a monthly recap and goals tomorrow, and then take Sunday OFF from blogging - just because I can! :-)

Framed Mystery Sampler

Tonight I picked up my framed Mystery Sampler. Because of the borders on this piece, I found it did not need a mat. Rather, it looked best with just a simple frame. I tried several cherrywood frames, but they were all too red. It's hard to tell from the pictures, but the sampler is stitched in a cranberry color, almost a red-violet. (Specifically, it's Winterberry 1431 from Vikki Clayton.) So, instead of a true cherry frame, I went with a dark reddish-brown, and I love how it turned out!
On the current works front, I'm still frogging and restitching acorns. I should be back to working the acorn caps tomorrow evening.

Holiday Freebies

Not much to report on the stitching front today. I'm still ripping out and replacing acorns, but got a late start tonight since I was baking for the "winter feast" at work tomorrow.

Since I don't have progress to share, I thought I'd pass this along, instead. A few designers have started to come out with their holiday freebies:

• Mirabilia's 2007 Cherub
• Rosewood Manor's first ever "Christmas Gift": The Sugar Plum Tree
• Victoria Sampler has three new holiday freebies in their "VS Club". (You may have to sign up (free!) to get access to these.)

That's all I know of so far. Thanks to Nora, Karen, and Thea for these great designs! If anybody knows of other designers who have released new holiday freebies, please let us know by leaving a comment. I'll be sure to add the links to this post.

An obligatory post

Not too bad - this is only my second post all month where I really have nothing to share. It's just a post for the sake of NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month), wherein I've pledged to post every day this month. Only 3 days left to go, and I'll probably slack off a bit. :-)

Some errands tonight kept me from stitching much. All I managed to do tonight was to rip out the center acorn from Traditional Elegance. It's not worth a picture.

I do want to thank everyone who's posted comments lately - there have been quite a few! Thanks so much - it's good to know folks are reading, and if you leave your blog address (or post via your blogger profile), I do try to visit the blogs of those who comment here. I am notoriously bad at leaving comments, though. I need to work on that. Maybe that will be one of my New Years Resolutions! It's never to early to start thinking of those!

Frogs waiting in a UFO

Don't you hate it when you pull something out of the UFO pile, start to work on it, and then find out that one of the reasons it was a UFO in the first place was because it had a major screw-up in it? One that can't be fudged? Yup. I was there, last night.

Here is the top portion of Traditional Elegance I by Pat Taff. This is is fairly old chart, and all I have left to do is finish up the needleweaving in the cutwork portion at the top. I figured I could plug away at this for a few days and get it done. I started working the horizontal bars, filling in doves's eyes where needed. Then it hit me. I didn't have enough room to get all the dove's eyes in before I hit the woven part of the acorns. All of the weaving was one row too low! This can be seen in the center and two right-hand acorns. Since the acorn caps are the same on top and bottom, it would have been obvious that something was wrong!

I stopped working the horizonal rows, and found I was able to unweave the vertical wrapping and the fully-woven areas with minimal damage to the thread. This is important because I'm almost out of thread. It's only Anchor perle 12, but I'm worried about dye lot. Sometimes the dye lot is worse with white and ecru threads than with darker colors. Since Anchor's not the easiest to find, I'm trying to make this ball last through the rest of this cutwork section. As a result, I'm trying to reuse the thread, as long as it's not too fuzzy.

I've been able to take out and reweave the 1-1/2 acorns on the left side so far. (See how they're one row higher?) I should be able to finish all the frogging and fixing by the weekend, and then I can start back with where I thought I was yesterday!
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On a (rare) more personal note: It was two years ago today that my Dad, only age 62, was taken from us by way of an unexpected major cardiac arrest. We miss you, Dad! :-(

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!