Achieved and Acquired

The Tudor Pin Cushion is finished!

I had planned to finish it last Sunday, but there was a snag. I couldn't find my almost full bag of stuffing.

I looked in the place it was supposed to be. I looked in the place it could potentially be. I also looked in the place it could possibly but was unlikely to be. It was in none of those places, although, actually, it could be in the possible but unlikely place. Dearly Beloved has decided to reorganize things in that room. His idea of organization and mine don't match. Enough said.

So, after checking the two local big stores who usually carry stuffing and finding empty spaces where the stuffing should have been, I ordered from Amazon and it was delivered yesterday. So one more project down.

But who would think that fiberfill would be another scarcity caused by the Pandemic?

I had planned to work on the side panels for Barbara Jackson's basket, but I need 16" and 8" stretcher bars. There are enough stretcher bars in this house to build this house, but do I have bars that cooperate with each other? Nope--so ordered those and I'm waiting for them to show up.

Meanwhile, I've finally finished the embroidery for my work project:

It needs to be blocked, but it's done. I should find another crewel project to work on at lunch time, so I may go stash diving later.

And I got two more rows done on the neon yellow needle case:

They look like previous rows that have been done. Not much new to see here.

Those are the achievements. Now time for the acquisitions. This has been a very good mail week--at least some lovely things arrived by mail.

Rachael Kinnison's limited edition ornament has been added to the retirement stash (45 weeks until then, but who's counting?).

And something simply lovely to add to my collection:

Beautiful hand-painted thread winders, made of Mother-of-Pearl, from Jackie du Plessis. I could not decide on a pattern, so I splurged and got them all.

Now I have to decide what to work on until the stretcher bars arrive. There seem to be quite a few UFO's hanging out around my chair--maybe I should just close my eyes and grab.

Something old and something new

In this dumpster fire of a year, the last week has been particularly tough. And when the going gets tough, the tough starts stitching.

At least in my world.

I needed something really happy to work on, and Barbara Jackson's designs always make me happy.  I've had her Fair Flowers Sewing Basket in reserve for just such a need. So I started the smaller pieces this week, and I have the scissors fob and the needle case ready for assembly.

I've been struggling with the last bit of goldwork on this pin cushion for a long time. Yesterday, I decided, by golly, it was going to get done this week-end. And it is.

I need to put it together, but I need to find the formula for getting gunk off the iron's plate and get the gunk off the iron's plate before I do any finishing.  Somehow a little wisp of iron-on interfacing was missed on my ironing board, and immediately melted itself to the iron. So I am going to take care of that. It will get me another finish so I'll have something positive to show for this dumpster fire of a year.

It's About Time!!!

It is about time. Tsubaki is DONE!!!

Here's the outside

And the insides.

And I am generally happy with it.

And when I haven't been poking at this, I managed to get a basket worked on Abigail Davis (aka Pandemic Project)

That little blue line is my basting line, which definitely helped. I highly recommend doing that when you have isolated elements.

And I've filled in another set of diamonds on the Queen stitch needle case.

So, what am I going to work on next?

I could start one of the Betsy Morgan designs from the workshop that Covid-19 prevented in June. Those kits arrived last week and have been very tempting.

I would have loved to have taken the classes with Betsy--one last time with her at Salty Yarns--but it was not to be. At least I can enjoy stitching the projects.

You know, I was thinking about this year the other day. It feels like it's happened in big blobs. We had a couple of normal-ish months, then there was the big March-April-May blob when I was working from home and staying at home and getting too much of home, then we've had the summer blob where I went back to work at the office but otherwise have been at home. It looks like the fall will be another big blob where nothing changes and there's not a lot to create any kind of structure.

Usually, by now, we've gone to visit The Flash, and Baby Girl and I have had a couple of road trips to Salty Yarns, and we've visited Mother, and I've had a chance to hang out with my stitching buddies at various guild meetings. I really miss all those things--so I wish people would just wear their damn masks and stay away from each other at a safely social distance so we could starve the virus out.

Rant over. 

I think I need to take a deep breath and stitch on something.