Spring Fever

This wretchedly small amount of stitching is all I've accomplished thus far this week.

I started to say that I have no excuse, but then I thought of one. I have Spring Fever.

And I better recover quickly. Dearly Beloved and I are planning to leave before dawn tomorrow morning to drive to Ocean City, Md, and Salty Yarns, for a class with Jackie du Plessis. Then we are driving home on Sunday.

And a couple of days later, I'm going to repeat the trip, this time with Baby Girl, for another class with Jackie.

It is possible that I will meet myself coming and going.

 

Lost Weekend

 The root canal wasn't going to let me get away easily.

At about 3 a.m. Saturday morning, I was awakened by my tooth throbbing in unison with my heartbeat. This is not a good sign. So, after getting in touch with the dentist's emergency number later Saturday morning, I was armed with antibiotics and pain killers.

The antibiotics seem to be doing their job, but I have to tell you, the pain killers killed the pain and then some. Nothing hurt, not even any of my arthritic joints.

But there was fog, a deep mental fog that kept me from doing much of anything that involved thought or intentional actions. Napping was good. I could nap. I could nap sitting straight up in my chair. I did, actually.

But, my plan was to put something together. Dearly Beloved felt I should perhaps not fling a rotary cutter around, and since my eyes weren't focusing all that well, I had to agree.

I'm more than a little hypersensitive to pain meds, as if you couldn't tell.

So, I lost Saturday. I lost Sunday. I decided to try to go without any pain meds today, and I've managed to do all the Domestic Diva stuff I didn't do over the weekend. 

I am very happy that I'm getting back to normal, because this lovely thing arrived in today's mail:

Amy Mitten has started a new series, and this is the first Slip of Evidence. It's an etui. There are pages and pages of Amy's most excellent directions, and loads of beautiful silks in luscious colors, and a bag full of other bits and bobs needed to create the design.

My only problem is deciding where to fit this into the pile of things I want to work on.

I'm sure I'll figure it out.

Survived

I survived the early hour, the rush hour traffic, and Phase One of the root canal. Apparently, I clenched my jaw, which I didn't know you could do when your mouth is hanging wide open. This means that the tooth and gum don't hurt, but I feel like somebody socked me in the jaw.

And, since I was afraid I would oversleep, I woke up every hour on the hour throughout the night, so I am weary. I did try to take a nap when I got home, but spent time dozing and jerking awake for a couple of hours. That isn't very restful at all.

Based on this, I do not believe it would be a good idea to stitch on anything that requires thought. Actually, I could pull out an ancient needlepoint canvas that requires only a basketweave background and putter with that, but at the moment, I'm grouchy and grumpy and should probably not thread a needle.

Last night, though, I did finish the band I had been working on:

And I got most of the dividing row on the next band stitched:

I think it's time to work on something else, and I believe that I may start the finishing work on Carmen's Etui tomorrow. 

After a decent night's sleep, hopefully.

Bazillions of teeny stitches

 I have done several bazillion teeny tiny cross stitches over one thread in the last two days.

 

I need to stitch teeny little buds and then this band will be done. I believe, if I get them done tonight, I can go ahead and turn the scrolls and start the next panel, which is almost all lettering. My favorite. (Please note the sarcasm.)

I'm not sure what I will do tomorrow. I have a root canal at 8:45 in the morning. That alone is torture, plus my dentist's office is close to center city, so I need to leave that much earlier to deal with rush hour traffic. 

I am so looking forward to tomorrow. Not.

Edging back to normal

I'm slowly emerging from my Daylight Savings Time jet lag foggy feeling. I tend to feel a lot better on Standard Time, but I do eventually adjust somewhat to DST. It just takes awhile . . . 

You may have noticed that blogging has been sporadic. So has my stitching. Again, I've realized that I'm in a weird loop. If I want to blog, I have to stitch. If I don't stitch, I can't blog. So . . . I'm trying to get back into that routine. 

There has been a wee bit of needlework. I finished the top for the Mountmellick Scissors Case that I found in the stash, and it's now been mounted on top of the wooden case.

I'm going to see what trouble I can get into with my needle this afternoon. We have an EGA meeting this evening, but we also have the potential for bad storms, so I'm watching the weather and we'll see if that happens. Some of our members have lengthy drives to make to get to a meeting, and it looks like th second wave of storms may hit right at drive time.

Always something . . . 

Blah de blah blah

I have been afflicted by a bad case of the blahs for the last couple of days. I think part is because we planned to visit Mother yesterday, but there's been another breakthrough case of Covid at her residence, so they are limiting visitors.

I may be suffering a bad case of pandemic fatigue.

I did read two books in two days--both John Sandford Prey novels, which are fast reads anyway. And good escapism. I'd read them before, but it's been years, so they were like new.

And there has been a minimal amount of stitching.

My little purple flowers have bigger petals now. Naturally, I ran out of thread before I got the last two stitched.

I think I'm going to stitch those petals, then rummage around and see what appeals to me for the afternoon.

I may read another book.

 

Annual Discombobulation

 I thought, being a Lady of Leisure, that changing to Daylight Savings Time would be a non-event this year. After all, I don't have to get up an hour earlier to go to work--so why should the time change have any effect at all?

Well, it does. The light is wrong when I wake up. I know that sounds weird, but it throws off my whole day.  I'm sure a lot of it has to do with stitching when the light is at its best. Since it isn't when I get up, I do other stuff and the next thing I know, I've puttered a chunk of the morning away.

My plan was to get the needle lace for Harmony's first panel finished this week and to assemble Carmen's Etui. Instead, I decided that maybe I should do things that don't require quite as much focus, like organizing and sorting out my stash.

And I discovered another reason to keep on blogging. It gives me a way to know when I started or worked on a project.

In sorting through things that have been stashed in bins for decades--seriously, decades--I found things I forgot I had. And then I found something I forgot I worked on.

It's a Rae Iverson design for a needle case. It's done except for the detached buttonhole petals for the center flower.

Did I take this as a class? Did I buy the kit somewhere? And where was I when I bought it?

I know I worked on it because at one time it was attached to scroll frames. It has the remnants of the blue thread I generally use to sew linen to the frame tapes. But why did I stop before finishing the flower?

The only reasonable explanation is that I needed to turn the work the petals, easier to do off the frame. But why didn't I go ahead and do them?

It's a mystery.

Meanwhile, since I still feel the need to stitch, I've been making teeny tiny little cross stitches over one thread on Behold Thy Beauty. I'm not sure you can see them--they're a very light purple thread--but they're there.

I may continue with this for another day or so.

Or I may see what other mysteries are hidden in my stash.

Ohhhhhhhhh, goose poop!

 The Canada goose is a majestic creature in flight. However, on the ground, it is a disgusting and messy beast who leaves indications of its passing with just about every step. Those indications are a slimy shade of green, which in this house, is known as goose poop green.

I mention this because I've spent the day filling in the rest of the goose poop green on this band of Hannah Thornbush. It is Sampler Sunday, after all, and I've abandoned her on the last few Sundays.

I need to cover a couple of leaves and the strawberries with detached buttonhole, but I think I've done enough for today. That will be next week's endeavor, and then I can finally turn the scroll rods and start another band.

more vining and twining

When I went to bed last night, I planned to start putting Carmen's Etui together when I got up today.

Then I slept late, much later than I usually do, even as a Lady of Leisure. And that threw my whole day off, plus I had an online lecture that I had signed up for that was being broadcast in the early afternoon.

By the time it ended, I needed to do some Domestic Diva stuff, and by the time that was over, the last thing I could do was assembling anything. Actually, I just wanted to veg in front of the TV with some easy stitching.

So the basic vines are stitched for this panel of Behold Thy Beauty:

 Didn't even need to look at the chart, just stitch, just what my brain was capable of.

Now, of course, I have to embellish the vines with flowers and leaves, which may be just a wee bit more involving than simple repetition. I think I'll look at the design and see how much counting and thinking I'd need to do.

Or I could take my book and stretch out under my nice comfy blankets in my nice comfy bed. That actually sounds pretty good.

Stitched but not finished

 The last piece that goes with Carmen's Etui is stitched.

 This will become a pin cube. But not today. I'm taking a day off before I dive into putting the whole thing together.

What I Stitched

I showed you the beginning of the Cylinder Needlecase from the class I took from Catherine Theron. There's a little more stitching on it now, and it's going into the schedule when I get back to the schedule.

There were a few days between the first class I took and the second, so I spent some time in the stitching room and worked on Hannah Thornbush.

I filled in leaves and stems. I spent way more time on them than I wanted to, and I'm not particularly happy with the way my satin looks in those spots. At the moment, I'm debating whether to rip them out and re-stitch, or assume that what I'm looking at can't be seen from the back of a galloping horse and leave them alone. I think I'll wait until Sampler Sunday and decide then.

The last two days of the getaway were spent taking a new class from Jackie du Plessis.

I did a lot of stitches on a doodle cloth and took pages of notes, and this is going into the schedule somewhere because I don't want to forget what my notes and doodles mean. There is a lot going on in a small space.

To make space for this, I need to finish up Carmen's Etui, so when I got home, I finished another bit of it.

This will become an appliquéd needlebook on the outside of the etui body.

I've outlined two more of the sections that I need to stitch, and I really hope I can finish them and the final accessory piece today. That could mean I could start the finishing process tomorrow, but I am not making plans.

We all know what happens when I make plans.

There and Back Again

 The plan was to blog just about every day while I was gone. The plan didn't happen, mainly because there were things going on,  places to go, people to see--and seeing people that I generally see only once a year is one of the most important reasons I go to this event.

However, Baby Girl and I took off on an expedition of our own one day. I've wanted her to visit Agecroft Hall in Richmond since the group took a tour a number of years ago. This year we had a chance to go and to see some of the textiles in their collection, so I signed us up and off we went.

Agecroft is a Tudor home that was purchased by a real estate tycoon who had it disassembled and transported from the UK to the US. It was originally planned to be the centerpiece of the development of exclusive homes he was creating a hundred years ago. Sadly, he died a year after Agecroft was restored, and most of the homes in the development were constructed in Colonial Revival style (guess what--Colonial Williamsburg was being restored at the same time!). However, the grand house is still the centerpiece of the development, and, according to family wishes, was open as a museum after its time as a family home had ended.

Due to a special arrangement, thanks to Catherine Jordan, we had an opportunity to see some of the textiles in their collection.

I like stitching sweet bags, although I haven't made any in the last few years:

The hypothesis is that this one was created from another textile.

I thought this was an interesting piece. It's listed as a book pillow. Books were relatively rare and quite valuable. You would rest your book on this cushion as you read.

There were also gauntlets on gloves:

This was probably all metal thread, which has tarnished with time. If you look closely, you can see gold plate filling the petals of the flower.

This is the top of an embroidered box (it was sitting on a red tablecloth). It's in remarkable condition, considering its age.

But the best thing is what was located inside, an unfinished needle book. Just goes to show that the more things change, the more they stay the same!

Tomorrow I'll show what I worked on last week.