The Stitching Slump

I fell into a stitching slump a couple of weeks ago and I'm just now recovering.

I think I had too many things going on at the same time, and I kept hitting the wall on all of them. Why? Who knows--maybe I had been stitching so much (is that possible?) that I burned out a bit.  Anyway, I pretty much stopped stitching for a few days. I read three books, and then, last week, I went to Salty Yarns for classes with Jackie.

And all three classes are amazing and enticing and extremely doable.

 Cleopatra's Needle is one of those deceptively simple designs that don't show up well in a photo. Let me tell you--there is very subtle stitching that looks almost like hieroglyphics on the obelisk itself, and an interior structure that serves to store needles and three spools while sitting on a stack of pin cushions.  I still think Jackie would be an engineer in another life.

Oh, and the white blob on the right of the picture is my slightly smushed, definitely askew paper mock-up. Some things don't travel well.

Just look at that luscious purple silk! This is an amazing storage pouch for all sorts of silk spools and thread winders and whatever you need to store. To be perfectly honest, I was totally intimidated when I first saw it opened--like, how in the world does this thing go together? It was too much to take in. Then we went over the directions, and it's going to be a breeze. I mean, a breeze to assemble.

And, OMG, look at the colors in this one. The original name was All That Glitters--you can't see it in the photo but there is gold metallic along with the silk colors. The stitching is going to take a minute, but I think it will be perfect to work on during a long winter's night with something good on TV. That gorgeous silk makes pockets for the interior as well as lining the back of the embroidery. It's just yummy.

Have I started working on any of these yet? Nope, I decided once I was home I need to simplify my stitching life and clear a few things out of the way. So, I put a couple of the headache pieces in time-out temporarily. I set Carmen back up, and I decided to pull the Artisan's Workbox out from the last trip to Salty Yarns.

This will be the stitched exterior of the sewing roll. I was hoping to audit this at Sassy Jack's in November.

And that leads me to the weather. I live in North Carolina, where part of the state has been decimated by Helene's rain, winds, and flooding. Where I live, we had torrential rains, flash floods, and tornado warnings but nothing like the destruction in the western part of the state. The area around Asheville, where Sassy Jack's is located, is one of the hardest hit--the flood waters rose to a point that hasn't been seen in over 100 years. There is no cell service at the moment. The roads are cut off--I have a very dear friend who lives in the area, and there are no roads open in or out of her town. 

It's going to take a long time for the area to recover, so there's no guarantee that we'll have classes in just six weeks. Actually, I'll be surprised if we do. I'm hoping and praying that Kim is fine, that the shop isn't damaged by flood waters, and that the whole area will be back to normal sooner rather than later. And so I'm going to continue to work on Carmen and the Artisan's Workbox so I can take them to class, whenever and wherever that may be.