Fall trees finished!

I finished Fall Trees last night!



I'm going to do a little work on the remaining parts of Catherine of Aragon's skirt and then some more on Halloween Fairy. Of course, this plan will probably fly out the window when the Just Cross Stitch Halloween issue gets here. Can you tell I have a BIG weakness for Halloween and Fall designs?

Fall trees update

I thought I might get around to finishing this over the weekend but I didn't quite manage it. Almost there though!

New stitching - Fall trees

Yes, I've been doing a little more stitching! Woo-hoo! This design is "Fall Line Up" from The Cross Stitcher magazine October 2009 issue. I chose a sparkly hand-dyed 32-ct fabric for it (although the sparkles and color don't show up very good in the photo - I'll get a better one in natural light when I finish it).

Some stitching!! *faint*

And if it looks familiar (say... like something in this previous post) there is a good reason for that! A friend went to the UK recently and brought me a Tudor rose bookmark kit that I had already done before. I was planning to stitch them together and make it two-sided until I discovered that one was 14-ct and the other was 15-ct. Oh well, I guess I have two now!

Now I think I'll try to finish a few of the autumn and Halloween projects I started last year (and the year before that - yes, I still haven't finished Halloween Fairy!). Thinking of the fall is about the only thing that gets me through Texas summers.

Since I still don't have stitching to share with everyone

I thought I would pass along this awesome article...

From the Wall Street Journal:

Idle Pastime: In Off Hours, Truckers Pick Up Stitching

With Less to Haul, Drivers Try New Hobbies; Quilting in the Cab

By JENNIFER LEVITZ

WALCOTT, Iowa—Semi driver Dave White happily sequestered himself in his rig at a truck stop on a rural stretch of Interstate 80, waiting to pick up his next haul: 45,000 pounds of Spam. He used to loathe the downtime in his job.

Then, he bought a sewing machine.

Since last year, when the economy left drivers with fewer hauls, Mr. White, a 6-foot-2, 240-pound ex-Air Force mechanic with a bushy mustache, has hunkered down inside his truck in his many off hours, making quilts from patterns with names like "Meet Me In Paris." When he's not sewing, he's daydreaming about it, he said as he ran a square of yellow cotton with little violets through his machine. "Oh, there's many a time you're just going down the road at O-dark-thirty in the morning and you just start thinking about a particular pattern."

Full article

(and maybe some needlework soon... I've really been itching to do some stitching!)

Happy New Year!

I did manage to get some stitching done in 2009, but not as much as I would have liked. I haven't even done as much over my winter break as I had planned, although I did get around to rinsing a bunch of hand-dyed fabrics and washing some small projects so I can do the final finishing. I mostly finished stitching one small ornament from a kit I got in a grab bag a while back, but I'll post a photo when it is totally complete.

Goals for 2010? To finally finish Halloween Fairy and Catherine of Aragon! I am still hoping to make a dent in some of the old kits still sitting in my organizer bin but a lot of those are pretty big projects. Maybe I'll try to get the smaller ones done first so I'll feel like I've accomplished something. :)

Halloween Fairy update

I can't believe it has been so long since the last update of Halloween Fairy, but then again, I haven't worked on it much! Over the weekend I finished all of the top half of the chart and worked some more on the skirt:

Another fall finish

This is another fall design from the Just Cross Stitch Fall/Halloween issue -



I used a great small piece of Silkweaver hand-dyed fabric that was perfect for this design. I'm in their Fabric of the Month club and I have the "surprise me!" option, so I never know exactly what I'm going to get. When I first saw this piece I wasn't sure what kind of design I would be able to use it for, but it ended up being just right for this one!

First of the JCS fall/Halloween designs done!

I actually finished this last weekend but I'm just now getting around to posting the photo since it has been a very busy week.

It was nice to be able to finish a small project since I've been slowly (VERY slowly) working on two larger projects for about a year now. Plus I was finally able to find a good use for this one small piece of needlework fabric that was just begging for a design like this! Of course, working in those lovely autumn colors has really made me wish that we could skip September and just go straight in to October.

Two years!

Today is the second anniversary of this blog, which I've basically been using as a journal to keep track of past and current stitching projects. Eventually I should add some quilting and costuming, but I don't have nearly as many examples of that as I do the cross stitch (and a few other types of needlework). And to celebrate two years, maybe I'll do a little stitching tonight! Several of the designs in the new Halloween issue of Just Cross Stitch are calling me...

Spring (and the four seasons) is done!

Here's the final photo for the spring quarter of the Four Seasons design:



And here are all four sections together:



I still haven't made a final decision on how I'm going to complete these - I'm flipping between a quilt or four thin, black frames - so for now they will sit in my "waiting to be finished" basket!

Spring update

Lots of stitching on Spring was done this weekend because it was just too darned hot to do anything else.



Given the horrifically high temperatures forecast for this weekend, I'll probably be able to finish it!

More stitching on Spring

I actually did some more stitching on Spring from the four seasons design!! The photo isn't great since I was trying to do it indoors (at night) without a flash, but you can see I got quite a bit done over the weekend if you compare with the photo from earlier in the month.

Spring update

Here's an update on the (slow) progress on the spring quarter of the 4 seasons design I've been working on. Below is a test of the macro function of the new little camera I got for my birthday this year. :)

More stitching!

Wow, I'm on a roll... I've actually managed to stitch about three days out of this month! BTW, I did eventually find the missing Anchor black floss mentioned in the previous post. It was tangled all over the living room!

I finished the outer part of Catherine of Aragon's skirt last weekend and I started the "Spring" section of the 4 season design I've been working on for the past few years (Fall, Winter and Summer here).

A little more progress on Catherine of Aragon

I managed to get a bit more done on Catherine's skirt last weekend. In the process of setting up my stitching space, I noticed that my bobbin of black floss was missing... I suspect a feline culprit (and I still haven't found the floss). Thankfully I had some extras since I stocked up during a sale a while back!

Catherine of Aragon March update

You can't see a whole lot of difference between this one and the last update, but I *did* get a little more work done on her skirt. I've figured out one comfortable stitch place in my apartment, but I still need to rig something up in the other room. Still experimenting.

Way too long

It's been way too long (a month!) since I last posted, but unfortunately it has also been way too long since I did any stitching! I really need to start a couple of small projects that I can work on here and there, since the only two WIPs I currently have are quite big - Catherine of Aragon and Halloween Fairy. Time to start flipping through my patterns, I guess. I really want to start on the Book of Ink Circles, but that's another large design so it will need to wait until one of the other two is finished!

Catherine of Aragon update

These are the photos that were supposed to be up over a week ago!



I finished the brown around the left side of the skirt and began working on the black and brown parts of the right side. I'm hoping to get some more work done on her tomorrow but I might end up doing my taxes instead. The sad part is that I'm not even expecting a refund.

Finally, some stitching!

But no progress picture right now, gotta charge the camera batteries. But I did actually put needle and thread through fabric yesterday and will today too. I've been working on the dark part of Catherine of Aragon's skirt, which actually stitches pretty fast. The golden parts are going to take longer, I think, but I'm hoping to get her finished in the next month or two. I'm going to be very, very busy between now and mid-March, but I'm going to try to make a little time to stitch since it really helps keep me sane!