Summertime stitching slump

 August hasn't been a great month for stitching, and pretty soon the fall yard work/cleanup is going to cut into my time but for now I'm going to try to get back into the groove for a while! A new Mirabilia model arrived a couple of weeks ago, so that will be my focus for the next couple of months.

Speaking of Mirabilia I received an email from Amber at Rensel Studio with some mat/frame options for Princess Elliana. After a bit of shuffling things around this is what I chose:

Now the real waiting begins; I doubt I will see this again until the end of the year at the earliest as Jill and Amber are swamped with even more work than usual right now. I can't wait to see how they decorate the mats--so many fun elements in the design to play with!

I spent another weekend working on Cinderella Castle, and now I think I remember why I've put off stitching this for so long--the fireworks are a pain! They are done with two strands of Glissengloss Prizm Holographic thread; to avoid knotting I pull it through the fabric a lot more slowly than regular floss so it takes longer to see results. Add to that the counting required over the dark fabric to get the placement right and the size of the finished fireworks and I'm looking at several weekends just to get them done. On the plus side once they're out of the way the castle itself should feel like it's stitching up quickly! Here is my meager progress as of now:

My temperature SAL continues to grow, now almost three quarters of the way through the year:

I do have a small finish to share, which is Joan Elliott's Luna Biscornu. I chose black Belfast for the fabric and I love how it makes the colors almost glow:

Not sure when I'll feel like attempting to finish it into a biscornu as I've never done one before, but it'll be waiting when I'm ready. Or maybe I'll send it to SewMuch2Luv and have her use it in a stitching bag...

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

She's done, again!

The last time I posted I said I was hoping to finish Princess Elliana by the end of that week, but it turned out that was a bit too optimistic. It took until Wednesday afternoon of the following week to do, but she is finally done (for the second time)!

I knew that I wanted to send this to Rensel Studio for framing so I emailed them right away and heard back the next day that I could send it any time. So last Thursday she started her journey to Utah and should arrive today. Amber said they are even more backed up than usual, so I don't expect to see her again until the end of the year at the earliest.

I spent last Thursday putting things away in my craft room and running errands, and most of Friday was taken up with cleaning so it was Saturday before I stitched again. For the last couple of weeks of Elliana I hadn't been stitching a temperature square each day because I just wanted to get her done, so I was 15 days behind on my temperature SAL; it took most of Saturday to get caught up again:

We're only a couple of days into August and I'm already dreading the coming of winter! I've seen geese flying overhead, a few early leaves on the ground and the high temperature yesterday was only 70F--ugh! I'm not going to enjoy this SAL nearly as much as the cooler colors start to come back...

I was planning on starting a Rosewood Manor model yesterday but I couldn't quite get in the right mood for it so I picked up a project that I hadn't worked on since April 2019 and made a start on the castle:

I'd like to make this a weekend project, but I've said that before and it doesn't usually last very long so we'll see how it goes. It's such a gorgeous design and I've had it for close to 20 years now so it's really time to get it done.

Marilyn asked for pictures of Murphy and Roxie so here are a couple I took last week. Almost all of Murphy's pictures are taken in the chair behind my craft table because that's where he spends the majority of his time:

Roxie needed her thyroid medicine refilled early last month so we had her weighed and she was down to 37.3lbs. She had been losing 8 to 9lbs between refills but this time she only lost 2lbs. I guess it's just like with people--those last 5 to 10lbs are the hardest! The vet looked her over and said that she still needs to lose 10lbs, so the original goal of 28lbs was about right. Here she is as of yesterday:

This photo from early March has her in a similar pose and I think it shows a pretty drastic change:

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!