Big sigh of relief!

Last Friday I put the final stitches into the last of three models for Tempting Tangles and sent them off to Deb; I feel so much lighter now! They were Quakers in England, Quakers in Japan and Quakers in Scotland. I've already shared the final photo of England, while the Japan SAL is currently halfway completed:

The Scotland SAL will begin in March, and sign up info can be found here. Here is the first snippet of that design:

I haven't spent much time on my own stitching for a long while, though I am still keeping up with the Carolyn Manning Daily Temperature SAL, which now looks like this:

And I spent the weekend working on a Nora Corbett design, which I have sorely missed. This is Luce Mia before the weekend:

And as of last night:

The fabric is an orphan from Ship's Manor, and I love that it looks like underwater foliage. I have a similar piece in a different colorway that I'll probably use for another little mermaid. I plan to work on this one this week, with the hopes of being able to finish her this coming weekend, then I will need to decide if I should start a Mirabilia model or one for Rosewood Manor.

On the non-stitchy front we are still getting used to having Roxie in our home, and I am feeling a bit better about the training issues. We seem to be getting into more of a routine, and she has started to whine when she wants to go outside which is a big improvement, though I still don't trust her when she is alone. Luckily, in our house she's not often alone! She's also getting used to spending some time in my craft room so I have been able to get more stitching done, and she's already able to climb the steps back up to the main level much more easily than she used to. She has lost just over half a pound in the first two and a half weeks, so we are on the right path!

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Weird weather

I was able to finish the frame for the daily temperature SAL on Christmas night. Since there were 13 open spaces I decided to indicate the start of each month and the year at the end:

So far I've been stitching one square each day; I though the year would start out with a lot of white and blue, but we've had some temps that are 15-20 degrees above average so it looks like this so far:

Watching the temps has been interesting because on a couple of the days the high reached 43-45F, but only for an hour or two and then dropped back down into the 30s. I check two sites, so I know they are correct readings, but it just seems strange. Yesterday we hit 45F, and today I found this little guy on our sidewalk (he must be pretty confused!):

For Christmas my husband got me this book from Lakeside Needlecraft:

It has a design by Nora Corbett in it, so I knew I wanted it and it made a good present, but there aren't many other designs in it that I would stitch--a few, but not many. You can find info about it here, and if you're on Instagram you can check both Lakeside Needlecraft and #lnwinter19 to see some pictures. I did start Nora's design the day after Christmas, and finished it on the 28th:

I took a few liberties with the colors and used beads for the berries instead of the called-for floss; hopefully I'll find some time this year to finish it into an ornament for the tree next Christmas.

In other news we took in a new dog on New Year's Eve, an approximately 8-year-old beagle named Roxie. She is a very sweet girl, but is obese and has problems with house training; she knows the basics, but in her previous home she would often go more than 12-18 hours without being taken out so she is not as well-trained as she should be. It has been a problem and I'm really hoping she improves in that area with some hard work because I just don't know if I can deal with it on a permanent basis. She's also very time-consuming right now, which isn't good for my model stitching schedule.

When we got her we took her straight to our vet as she hadn't seen one in several years, and found she had an ear infection and low thyroid function, both of which are now being treated with meds. She weighed 58lbs so we have a weight loss goal of 30lbs, which is probably going to take at least 15-18 months with diet, exercise and thyroid medication. Here are a couple of pictures on her first day with us:

Murphy is not thrilled with the addition to our household, but aside from a couple of minor dust-ups they seem to have agreed to ignore each other. I plan to take a picture of Roxie on the last day of each month, and hope to be able to see some weight loss results in several months; wish us luck!

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

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!

Temperature Stitch Along

I've always liked the idea of stitching a daily temperature chart for a year's high temperatures, but I'd never found a format that I liked until Carolyn Manning released one last week. It's based on a granny square afghan, which means stitching 379 little squares (or diamonds, since they're tilted)--I'm about 1/25th of the way there!

I decided to use light purple linen and dark purple floss for the squares; living in Wisconsin means there will be quite a bit of white used for the lower temperatures and I wanted to provide some contrast. I also created my own motifs for each temperature range, so it will be fun watching this come to life next year.

I plan to work on the squares periodically when I need a break from the Tempting Tangles model I started last week, and which I hope to finish sometime around the end of the year. The current TT SAL is Quakers in Japan, which has had the first four parts released to date:

Mirabilia's MD169 was finished, accepted and sent back last week, after discovering one last error that meant pulling out one of the colors used in different areas and replacing it. That wouldn't have been quite so bad if I hadn't already beaded those areas as that made cutting the stitches trickier, but it's all in the past now and I am greatly relieved! MD172 arrived the next day, and as it has a lot fewer colors than the previous one it should stitch up more quickly; I'm hoping to be able to start it next January.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Orchid Party

Two new Nora Corbett designs were released last Friday, so I can share them now. They are part of a new series called Orchid Party, and the first is NC269 Imperial Lady D:

Followed by NC270 Miss Cymbi:

When I stitch these NC designs I usually try to do the largest one first so I can feel like I'm on the downhill side once it's done, so I started with Imperial Lady D. However, the skirt on Miss Cymbi felt pretty big while I worked on it, so it's almost a toss up as to which was actually more work!

Today will be a very happy day, as I should be able to finish the the current Mirabilia model and submit a picture for return approval; hopefully no changes will be needed and it can be on its way. I was so worried that I might not make the deadline and now it'll be done three weeks early--after 30 years of stitching you would think I could estimate time better, but I'm still horrible at it! There were a lot of mistakes in the chart, most of which occur when the graphic designer at Wichelt converts Nora's hand drawn chart to a computer-generated version--this one has a lot of colors/symbols, so maybe that caused more mistakes. Hopefully I caught all (or at least most) of them, as I'll be disappointed if any are found after printing; I guess I'll find out next April, after it's released!

Now I will be taking a few days to get my house in order and maybe do a little stitching just for fun, then it will be on to the final Tempting Tangles model.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Tempting Tangles to share

Last week two Tempting Tangles SALs came to an end so I can finally share pictures. The first is Moment of Time, which I actually stitched three years ago:

I think this one would be fun to do again using over-dyed threads (and maybe some beads) in a different colorway, but no idea when I'll have the time to do it!

The second design is Quakers in England, which is the third in Deb's "Quakers in..." series:

I loved working on all the little motifs in this one, and while the cottages were quite a bit of work they look amazing, so well worth the effort.

The first in this series was Quakers in Holland, which is currently unavailable; it will be released in full chart form next March. The second was France, which is still available for a short time more, then will be absent for a while until it comes out as a full chart. England has just been completed, and Japan is currently three parts into a SAL; I stitched that model as well, so I'll show some of that design as more parts are released. Scotland will be the next stop in the journey, and I'll be starting that one very soon. You can check out Deb's new shop for these and a lot more gorgeous designs. A word of advice: if you like any that are current or just-completed SALs you might want to get them now, as when they are released in full chart form later they will cost about twice as much.

I am very relieved to report that I am now confident that I will be able to finish the current Mirabilia model by the December 10 deadline. It is a big design, and I was really concerned that I hadn't set enough time aside, but I have made good progress in the past six weeks and the end is starting to appear so I am feeling much better.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

For Marilyn

A little while back I received a comment from Marilyn that I needed to share some recent pictures of Murphy, so this post is for her! I even found a fleece blanket for him that has dogs on it, instead of the one with cats on it that he's been using for the past year:

Unfortunately Murphy's love of people food combined with our pleasure in making him happy by giving it to him led to some rotundity, so he is currently on a diet and is about 20% of the way to his goal weight. I think the diet is as hard on us as it is on him!

On the stitching front the only thing I can share is a small start I made on Just Nan's Bumble & Hoot Needle Book; I spent about 2.5 hours at the auto service shop, and was able to complete the border:

Very soon two of the Tempting Tangles SALs will end, so I'll be able to share the pictures of the completed pieces, and maybe two Nora Corbett designs if they are released in November.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Finished before Halloween

The third and final part of the Lizzie*Kate Frightful Mystery Sampler was released just under a month ago, but I put off working on it until I finished the Rosewood Manor model that was my focus for the month of September. I finally sent that on its way in early October, so I took a few days to finish Frightful and I am really pleased with how it turned out:

I used the optional embellishment pack for this design, but also added some more beads and the little ghost button at the bottom; there was supposed to be a stitched acorn in that area, but the ghost felt like a better fit for a Halloween piece. Now I just need to work up the ambition to take this over to my framer, but since it won't be done in time for Halloween this year I'm not feeling particularly motivated!

Once again it will probably be some time before I have anything I can share here as I have a Mirabilia model that is due in early December (with another one being sent to me in early November), the last of three Tempting Tangles models to stitch after that and another Rosewood Manor already here to get in the queue...

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!