Almost time to Get Your Stitch On

This Thursday is the start of Needle Bling Design's Get Your Stitch On retreat, and I am both excited and nervous. The other night I had a dream that I forgot to take stitching with me, and even my sleeping brain must have known that that was ridiculous as it morphed into having my stitching but someone had purposely taken just the clamps from my Qsnaps, so I couldn't frame my fabric and stitch--too funny!

I haven't been to very many retreats over the years since I am a pretty extreme introvert, but I've always enjoyed them when I've gone. I never participate in any exchanges because that's just too much pressure, but now it seems to be a thing to have gifts for your tablemates, so I made my first foray into that custom. I got some cards with small designs that would be suitable for stitching on perforated paper, small easels and canvases that could be painted and then used to display the finishes and the floss and paper needed to stitch the designs, and I made some counting pins; this is the result:

Credit for the counting pins goes to Honeybee over on her blog, where she explained her process for making them; I just bought a couple of strings of beads and went for it:

Now I just need to pick up a few groceries to take with me, gas up my car and pack. I'm happy that I can drive to this one, as it's just about 4.5 hours away, which is part of the reason I decided to go. I am also hoping to go to Stitchville while I'm there--the store is closing and I'm not sure how much will be left, but I'd like to see it one time before it's gone. The retreat starts Thursday at 10am, so I'm driving over on Wednesday and will try to get to Stitchville then. I also need to look into the location of Welcome Stitchery relative to the hotel; I used to shop there when it was located in Illinois, so I'd kind of like to stop in just for old times' sake. 

I decided that I would take Mirabilia's Silver Moon Tea with me to work on; I had taken it to Charlotte last October, but then didn't work on it very much since I started the retreat design there. I pulled it out last Friday to put it on the Qsnaps and stitch on it for long enough to figure out where I was in the chart and get a feel for the symbols; this is where I started:

When I started this back in 2012 I used to do all the back stitching and beading at the end, but now I do them as I go so this weekend I had fun bringing her face to life:

I am hoping to make a lot of progress at the retreat, and possibly even finish her sometime in May. I don't want her to disappear into the WIP bin for another 12 years!

Speaking of finishes, I do have a couple since my last post; the first is Mill Hill's Puppy Love, which I wrapped up the day after I wrote that post:

And I finished Nora Corbett's Miss Pink Mushroom, which was good because I needed the Qsnaps for Silver Moon Tea!

The fabric for this is Autumn Leaves on 36ct linen from NicholasFlamelDesign on Etsy. At one point I did get a bit worried that it was too similar in color to the design, but I'm very happy with the finished piece.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Tiny Town #10 is done

The day after my last post I finished Just Nan's Enchanted Hearts:

This was such a satisfying stitch: a variety of different stitches, each band went fairly quickly, that band of lace hearts at the bottom is such a beautiful touch and just the overall feeling of community as I worked on a class project with notes from 30 years ago. I've stitched quite a few of Nan's smalls over the years, but this was my first band sampler and now I'm already looking forward to picking another one to start.

Once that one was off the Qsnaps I immediately loaded them up with Heart in Hand's Frosty Tiny Town, to which I added the separate Frosty Frill chart. Every time I stitch a Tiny Town it becomes my new favorite, and this one was no exception. I chose a Silkweaver solo on Belfast linen from my stash; it was a darker gray than the recommended fabric, but I liked that because I wanted the snowflakes to really pop, and it had some nice mottling with even a tinge of purple in it; I finished it last Thursday:

I did have an issue with two of the flosses being too similar in color; my Deep Fennel was a bit too dark, so it didn't have much contrast with the Chesapeake Bay. I had already stitched the first snowman's house when I pulled a different skein of Deep Fennel and tried a bit on a different house; it was definitely lighter, so I made the difficult decision to do some frogging and restitching:

I'm glad I took the time to make the change. because I think it looks better with more definition between the two colors when they're used next to each other. I did make just a few changes to this piece: I added a purple that I used for the scarves on the snowmen (one that was complementary to the tinge of purple in the fabric), I used orange for their noses instead of brown (carrots instead of sticks!), I used a button for the pom-pom on the first snowman's hat and because I switched the second snowman's scarf from red to purple I was able to change the blue jay into a cardinal without having too much red in that area.

This is my 10th Tiny Town so far, five of which have been made onto drums and four of which are at the finisher waiting to be "drummed". While I've already stitched the Any Town Tiny Town, I'm going to stitch it again as charted (I previously did a modified version where three of the buildings were based on shops local to me), and there is a now a More Any Town Tiny Town chart, so I have both of those kitted up (they use the same threads except for one used in just one of the designs) with a piece of PTP Demoiselle Belfast, ready to go when the urge strikes.

I've also done a bit more on Nora Corbett's Miss Pink Mushroom; all of the orange is now stitched so there's just greens left to do:

I was going to keep working on her until she was done, but this past Saturday I played pickleball for the first time and managed to get hurt almost right away! I played tennis in high school and college, and racquetball with my husband after that, but it's been at least 25 years since I've done anything on a court and it turns out I can't make those quick feet adjustments when a ball comes right at me--somehow my lower legs/feet got twisted together and I fell like a tree trunk right onto my right side! My hip took the brunt of it, but I definitely squashed the tendon in my shoulder, so I have limited range of movement for now. I thought at first that I'd have to go to the doctor this week, but so far it seems to be improving so hopefully that won't be necessary; I have a stitch retreat (Needle Bling Design's Get Your Stitch On Retreat in Bloomington, MN) coming up in a couple of weeks, so I really hope it continues to feel better. To add insult to injury, later on a ball bounced up off my racket and hit me in the nose, which made my nose bleed--that's when we called it a day!

Since my right shoulder is very sore, yesterday I pulled out another Mill Hill kit and worked on that, using my left arm to pull the perforated paper to and fro instead of pulling the floss with my right hand. My Callie was not impressed that I'm now working on the Puppy Love kit instead of Kitty Love:

I'm just glad that I was able to stitch on something, and made good progress:

I'll probably have this done by the time my shoulder is completely healed, which is hopefully soon...

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!