I'm getting dizzy!

Well, not dizzy but I did feel a bit cross-eyed as I worked on the temperature SAL from Friday afternoon until last night. Of course, part of the problem is that the 1.5X readers that I use are not as helpful as they used to be, especially on the 36ct fabric, so I guess I need to go up to 2.0X soon. But it was worth a bit of struggle as I now know that I can finish it this week. Here it is as of last night, with most of the second skein of floss used:

Luckily I had something pretty to look at while I stitched, as I was able to nab one of Claybykim's sweet little Christmas dragon needle minders:

And of course I had my wonderful little stitching buddy Murphy, who kept me company all weekend while my guys were gone:

To those who celebrates it I hope you have a very Merry Christmas, and to everyone a wonderful 2020 (with lots of stitching time)!

Dreaming of diamonds

Actually, I didn't dream about them but I thought I would after spending the weekend working on the Carolyn Manning Daily Temperature SAL! Last night I finished the first skein of purple, so it looks like the outlines will require at least three skeins:

I'm not sure if I'll have the outlines done before the first of the year, but this coming weekend my guys are headed out of town so I'll get all the chores done this week and then see how much I can get done over the weekend. I'd like to start the year with a complete outline, so I might have to cheat a bit and use some time during the week after Christmas...

For now it's back to Quakers in Scotland, which is now more than half finished. If you've seen any of Deb's "Quakers in..." designs you'll know that the top portion is a series of motifs and the bottom is a scene (or scenes) from the country; I've finished the motifs and am ready to start the scenes. The scenic portion might have more stitches all told, but should stitch up a bit more quickly because there are fewer color changes in small areas. I had hoped to have it done by the end of the year, but it will most likely go into early January.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Always a relief...

...when you work a border first and get to the joining point to find it meets as it should, which is what happened this weekend. I spent Saturday working on the temperature SAL and completed the outer edges, so now there's less chance of error as I fill it in:

It looks a bit wonky because the linen is kind of flimsy, but hopefully it will look even when finished. The linen is 36ct from Weeks Dye Works, and it just isn't as nice as the Zweigart linen I usually use; it's not as strong so it doesn't seem to support the tension of the stitches very well.

Leonore asked about how the squares will be filled--as designed there are 27 different motifs that can be used, ranging from a temperature of -30F to 100+F (each motif covers a range of 5F). I plan on doing just the high temperature for each day, but I have seen people talking about splitting the squares in half to do high and low temps, so really you can do it however you like. Splitting it into two just sounds like too much work to me; I'll be lucky if I can keep up just doing one temperature per day!

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!