Tale of a Shooting Star…

I’m not feeling terribly talkative today, so I’ll let the photos speak for themselves.

Picasso’s Rooster by Ladybug Designs – framed by my favorite framer at Michaels:

Summer Breeze by Brittercup Designs – framed in a standard frame:

Snowflake Surprise by Laura J Perin Designs – framed in a standard frame with a mat I cut to the proper size:

I had one other piece framed at Michaels, but I can’t show it because it’s for Stitch Bitch‘s challenge.

After this, I’m reframing a crewel piece that Terry’s late mom made for us years ago. It will go back into the powder room that I finally finished painting Monday night. I’m excited to have found a standard frame that works really well with the design (since I didn’t have the design with me when I bought the frame) and a mat that I think will work okay. I didn’t have Summer Breeze with me, either, and the frame that I picked for it worked out pretty well. I’m getting good at winging it, I guess.

Well, I’m going to go and work on stretching and lacing the crewel piece. I think that it’s going to take a while before I get it to a point where I’m happy with it because it’s really puckered. Terry’s working on putting the powder room back together this weekend, so I want to have it reframed and ready to go as soon as possible.

One more finish under my belt and I am really happy dancing over this one!

This is Picasso’s Rooster by Ladybug Designs:

I have wanted to stitch this since the first time I saw it in The Stitchery catalog years ago. I finally broke down and bought the kit sometime last year, I think, after having missed an opportunity to buy the chart directly from the designer and then finding out that it was seemingly discontinued.

The moment I saw it, it reminded me of my college, since we are known as the Fightin’ Blue Hens (modeled after the Blue Hen of Delaware). I’ve wanted to stitch it ever since and now I have!

I’m so glad that I was able to finish stitching it this weekend because I want to head to Michaels tomorrow with another piece or two in tow to get framed. I will be so happy to finally have this hanging on my wall! Perhaps I will hang it in my home office, near my diploma.

That’s it for me, for now. Time to mount another piece on the scroll bars that I just freed up (which is the real reason that I busted my hump to finish this one) and do some more stitching. We had planned to go to the Philadelphia Museum of Art today, but I did hours of yardwork yesterday and buggered my shoulders up, so now I have a headache. Oh well, it was worth the pain to get the lawn mowed and trimmed and a mass of weeds pulled. There is still a lot more to do out there, but it’s a start, at least. Maybe next time I won’t try to do so much at once. 😉

This is highly unusual, but I have a third finish to report this weekend. What can I say? I’ve been steaming through some of my shameful WIP list.

Today’s finish is the 3rd instance I’ve stitched of Janie Hubble‘s Strawberries & Cream design, which was available for free in one of her newsletters. I actually have 2 more kitted up – another full-sized and one stitched over one that will look exactly like the one I did in June, unless I decide to switch up the floss colors a bit.

Anyway, I think that this WIP had a grand total of 4 stitches in it when I picked it up last night. I finished it this afternoon while watching Get Him to the Greek, an insane little movie.

Since I finished that, I’ve been back to working on Picasso’s Rooster by Ladybug Designs. I would dearly love to finish this in the next couple of weeks so that I can reuse the scroll frame to start the adoption piece. That and having a bigger finish under my belt would be nice, too.

However, I have a mountain of work-work and yard-work standing between me and any more stitching time after tonight, so I’ll have to take what I can get, when I get it.

Have a great week, everyone!

I told you that I would finish the piece I picked up last night before the end of the weekend!

This was one of my traveling in the car pieces for a while because it was worked on hardanger fabric; however, working with white floss and making sure that my hands were completely clean while in a car was proving to be more and more difficult, so I had to retire it from car duty. For that reason, it sat in one of my project bags for months and months, unloved and untouched. But now it is finished and I’m quite pleased with how it turned out, especially considering the fact that I think the whole kit was either free or incredibly inexpensive from Nordic Needle. Of course, it is many years old. It came with the design, fabric and generic white floss. I added white Delica beads and Nordic Gold thread (from Rainbow Gallery) in silver to the piece, instead of doing it in all white with french knots. I also ignored where some of the french knots/beads were supposed to go because some of them were over top of the smyrna cross and just didn’t make sense to me.

Overall, it turned out well and I’m glad to have another finish under my belt. Next up is probably a new start for me. I designed a simple piece many months ago (perhaps over a year?) at the request of a co-worker and friend to commemorate the adoption of her little girl. It took me forever to finish the design and I’m still not happy with it, but it will just have to do. Then I brought in my DMC color card for her to pick out colors, we discussed a potential fabric color, I ordered samples from Silkweaver/Zweigart and we decided on a color. I ordered a fat quarter of the fabric, being careful to match the exact specifications (fabric type, count, etc.) of the sample to ensure that I received exactly what I saw in the sample. Imagine my quite unpleasant surprise when, after a month of waiting, the fabric arrived and was an incredibly pale and washed out equivalent of the sample. Terry’s comment was that it looked bleached in comparison. I wrote to Zweigart in late April explaining the issue and asking for help to resolve it. Jim Kornecki explained that perhaps the sample was old, that nothing had changed with the dyeing process and the same woman from Silkweaver was still dyeing the fabrics. He asked me to mail him the sample so that he could go through the fabric that they had in stock to see if anything was a better match. I mailed the sample in early June and then didn’t hear anything for weeks. After about a month, I sent Jim an email asking for an update. Nothing. A couple of weeks later, I sent another email. Nothing. A week later, I sent yet another email. Still nothing. I finally broke down and called Zweigart, leaving a message for Jim, but he never called me back. As you can imagine, after months of screwing around with these people, I was very close to writing a blog post slamming them for their complete lack of customer service. Something told me to just give them a little bit more time.

I was completely shocked when, a week ago, I received an email from Jim out of the blue saying that they had just finished up dyeing several batches of the fabric and after many attempts, they were able to reproduce the sample that I had sent back. I was in disbelief to hear that they had been working on trying to dye a batch that would properly match the sample. They sent me a fat quarter that I received a couple of days ago and, lo and behold, it does match the sample closely enough that I am pleased.

I guess the bottom line of the whole experience is that, despite the lack of communication from them, Zweigart ultimately came through for me and got me a piece of fabric that I can use to finally start the adoption piece. I am a happy camper.

Now I have to make sure I stitch and frame the piece before the 2nd anniversary of the adoption next April. 😉

It’s official, I have a finish to report! Except I’m not allowed to show it to you. 😛 It’s my custom piece for Anna‘s stitching challenge. I’m quite pleased with how it turned out and it’s coming to have much more significance for me than I had ever dreamed. I might actually be ready to talk about that part by the time I’m allowed to show off the piece. Now to decide whether or not to have it framed before the September 15th entry deadline. I might have to take a run to Michaels this weekend and see if something jumps out at me. I need to get out of the house more often anyway.

Besides that, I am quite embarrassed to report that I have already failed at my restarted 10 project challenge. I didn’t last very long, did I? I blame it all on Just Nan’s fall collection, with all of the limited edition items. I guess I’ll try again next month? 😆

Since I finished my challenge piece tonight, I have picked up another WIP that was a travel project for a while. I am hoping that I might actually finish it by the end of the weekend, if I don’t find something better to do, like go to a museum or something. This ties into the aforementioned trying to get out of the house more often. I am especially guilty of isolating myself on the weekends while I try to recover from the work week and my goodness I am getting to be SO boring!

Let’s see, what else was I going to say? Hmm… Nope, lost it. I’ll post again if/when I remember.

Have a great weekend!

I am way overdue for a trip on the Wagon again, so I am restarting my 10 Project Challenge.

As a reminder, this is what it looks like:

The Purpose:

The purpose of this challenge is to reduce the amount of patterns you have not stitched.

The Rules:
• Have fun reducing your stash.
• There is no time limit – people have different sized projects they would like to work on.
• Thou shall not purchase any new patterns until 10 projects have been stitched. Pattern size does not matter.
• Freebies count as part of your total and you can aquire them at any point.
• Rinse, lather and repeat, as needed, in order to reduce unused stash.
• The official (re)start date of this challenge is July 1, 2011.

My personal exemptions include any fabric and floss required to kit up any designs in my stash, though I will probably choose to work through my stash as much as possible at first.

The Projects:
1. Janlynn – Pooh — Finished July 24, 2011

As you can see, I have backdated the start of this challenge to July 1st, which is fair because I haven’t purchased any new stash since then. Unfortunately, I also only have one finish under my belt since then.

I probably won’t make much headway this weekend, either, for two reasons. One, I’ve been on a reading kick, having finished 2 books this week and zipping through a third. Since what I’m working through is a series (the Apocalypto series by L.K. Rigel, see my GoodReads page) and there are only 3 books in it so far, the fever will probably die down a bit once I finish the third book. Two, I’m finally painting my powder room. I ripped it apart 4th of July weekend, intending to finish that long weekend, before I was then sidelined by bad menstrual cramps. Then we went to Maine. And now I could use the excuse of not being allowed any strenuous exercise for 48 hours after my neck procedure on Thursday, but Terry and I are seriously tired of not having a functional powder room. So, he helped me finish sanding the walls today (because the original painter when the house was built was too lazy to clean off the walls before painting them, thus trapping all manner of drywall dust and dirt underneath the paint) and wiping them down. I then taped off the trim and cut in and Terry has now rolled on the first coat of paint. Ordinarily, it wouldn’t need a second coat, but the roller threw off some junk when he first used it, so we’ll have to sand down that area and paint it again. After that, it will need to cure for 24 hours or so and then I’m going to do a hand-ragged faux finish over top of the base coat. I did the same thing in our main bathroom upstairs and liked the look enough that I plan to do it for every bathroom in the house. It will take a couple of hours to do, even in a small room, but I feel like it’s worth the effort.

However, I will have time to stitch while the paint is drying, if I can force myself to not dive back into that last book. 😉 Of course, my landscaping outside is in terrible shape with weeds everywhere and the grass has browned out from all of the intense heat and lack of rain. But I really can’t work on that until my neck has a little time to heal, so I’ll have to work on that next weekend. I’d hire someone to come do all of the weeding for me, if I wasn’t such an el cheapo. But I am, so I won’t. At least, not this season. Maybe with some of next year’s tax refund, I’ll have someone come in and do some real landscaping work. Maybe. After we replace the shed with a two-bay garage.

I hope that you are all having a great weekend!

I took some time yesterday to update my totally shameful and totally public WIP List. Feel free to look if you want to have a laugh. It will probably make you feel better about your own WIP lists. 😀 The sad thing is that this list still isn’t complete. I haven’t bothered to take a full inventory of every project that is laying around either fully kitted, nearly fully kitted or with stitches even in it. So embarrassing…

Anyway, I have only managed one finish so far this month and I’m not thinking that I will fit any more in unless I manage to get in some really solid stitching time this week. Considering the fact that I have my powder room ripped apart so that I can paint it but I haven’t finished the prep work yet, I really need to realign my priorities and I think that stitching will be further down the list.

Last night’s finish is a tiny Winnie the Pooh, stitched from a Janlynn kit:

He’ll go with the Dreaming Piglet that I did last month, plus the Bouncing Tigger I started last night and the Eeyore that I will stitch after that.

And then there’s my last finish for the month of June, which I neglected to blog about weeks ago. This is Summer Breeze by Brittercup Designs:

There’s supposed to be an American flag button at the top of the mast, but it was horribly oversized, so I left it off. I also changed the sail color from the pale pink and purple stripes that were charted to a white. It’s actually Snowball by Crescent Colours, I believe, but there’s little (if any) actual variegation to it, unfortunately. And the color didn’t stand out nicely from the fabric, so I had to add the backstitching around the sail to make it more visible.

That’s it for me today, so TTFN! (That’s “Ta-ta for now” for those of you who don’t know your Tigger speak.)