Enough shop talk. On to the stitchy talk. Here's a little pic of my progress on Shores Block 2. Just a couple of fish and the remainder of the eel, and this baby's finished. That seaweed took me a long time. I was trying to watch movies while stitching it, and I had to divide my attention appropriately. Also entertaining me during stitching time has The Help on cd. What a great book! I stitched at a much faster pace while listening to it.
When you're stitching something untamed like that seaweed, do you pick out paths to follow? I do! Is it just me? I pick out paths that will make my stitching more efficient (kind of like working my way through a maze), so I'll have fewer stops and starts and shorter carried threads. Could this be that crazy OCD issue I've written about before? Or is it my feeble mind trying to find something extra to work on? Or is it my brain trying to free me from all the other things I have to think about? Hard to say.
Wanna see a couple of planned projects? Below is a picture of the supplies I've gathered to stitch Reed's Stocking by Shepherd's Bush.
To understand why I'm starting it, you'll have to hear a little story. My 25-year-old daughter, Nikki, sneakily (so like her mother) got married this summer (sigh ... I think 30 is a good age to get married, and yes, I realize that this isn't about me.). So I have a son-in-law (oh, my gosh!) who needs a pretty Christmas stocking like the rest of the family. Being a stitchy kind of mother-in-law (Geez, Louise, I'm a mother-in-law), I'll be getting that stocking done ASAP. All of those other projects will have to take a giant step back to let the stocking cut into line. Ready for the good news? Nikki will be having a baby at the end of March (huge gasp)! I know! Then I'll get to stitch a grandbaby stocking ... when not holding that baby, of course. I'm from a family of confirmed baby nuts. We love, love, love babies. It's nice to have something big to look forward to.
Something else I'd like to start is Sarah Esh. It's an OOP reproduction sampler that I was lucky enough to find on Kathy Barrick Dieter's (Carriage House Samplings) Etsy site. It's been on my list of have-to-haves for a long time, and I'm very excited about (eventually) stitching it. In the picture below is my conversion from DMC to Gumnuts Stars (my favorite fiber ... so far) and one Silk 'n Colors that Stars didn't have a close match for. I think the fibers will work out well, but I'm gonna have to have a little fabric spa time in the kitchen to work one of my stash fabrics into a suitably splotchy state. The Lambswool in the pic just isn't vintage enough for me.
It's time for this post to end. It started two hours ago, but my slow-as-a-snail computer needed a restart a while back, and I got sidetracked. Hope you're all having a good week. Thanks so much to you who visit and comment. Comments are like getting little letters from people who understand what's been written.
Make some fun.
