Two Swans a'Flappin'

I actually found a few stolen moments this week-end to stitch.

This is half of the needle book that will be installed in the center of Betsy Morgan's Swan Bower Etui.

I thought about outlining the white swan, who almost doesn't show up against the lovely pale yellow linen, but I think it shows up sufficiently well, so I'm leaving it.

Normally I have more time to stitch on a week-end, but we went to visit Mother yesterday, and that's an all-day trip.

Mother has taken up Wiii Frisbee golf and Wiii bowling. The Saint and I are amazed. She is doing quite well at both, which is even more amazing, since neither of us think she has ever touched either a real Frisbee or a real bowling ball. Ever. Mother is revealing hidden talents.

However, we do wish she still had some filters. Luckily the majority of the people she insults are either too deaf to hear what she says or have no short term memory so they don't remember it.

Bless her heart.

Another Slip

Well, I got the rest of the tent stitch for the Golden Accessories done:

The blank spots will have small gold work motifs worked into them, and then they will be assembled into another set of smalls. That is on another slip of paper in my projects-to-be-finished bag. This means that I am not getting something out of the workbasket but putting it back.

There seems to be a problem with my logic on this, but I'm not going to argue with myself about the way I wrote the projects down. What may cause problems is if I pull out a slip that tells me to finish-finish something that hasn't had the embroidery completed. I believe Dearly Beloved will allow me to draw another slip in that case.

At least, if he knows what's good for him, he will.

Yes, it's been a long, difficult week, and I'm a little cranky.

Anyway, that meant I got to pull out another slip so I would have four projects to work on, and Betsy Morgan's Swan Bower was the choice.

I took this class last year at Salty Yarns, and finished one of the accessories in class. I started the outlining for the fob in hand after the class was over, but decided I wanted to put it on scroll bars to do the rest of the stitching.

And didn't have a scroll frame free at the time. And I was absolutely not going to take an unfinished project off the right size bars to start another project. It takes me forever to sew things to the bars to my satisfaction ( due to that first-born girl-child perfectionist thing, plus classes with Joanne Harvey) so once something is attached, it stays attached until the project is done.

Do not ask how many things are on scroll bars all over my house. Just don't. Because I don't know. And I don't want to.

See, still cranky.

Anyway, this was one of those slips that said both stitching and finish-finishing, so you may be seeing this one for awhile.

And since I love Betsy Morgan's projects, that's fine with me.

Painting myself into a corner

On one of my last posts, I mentioned that I was trying a new method to get some started projects to the finish line. I wrote what I wanted to do on each project on a slip of paper and had Dearly Beloved pull it out of bag.

I did not realize that he was going to assume responsibility for making sure I did what I had written on the slips of paper.

For Pineapple Perfection, I had written, "Finish embroidery for Pineapple Perfection and put the set together."

Well, I got it embroidered but I wasn't feeling the love for finish-finishing because I never feel the love for finish-finishing. I was thinking I could just mark out the first part of the order and put the slip back in the bag. 

Oh, no, this would not do.  Dearly Beloved was adamant that I should do everything on the slip before I pulled another one. And, he was right. The whole reason for this was to get some things finished, done, completed, and out of the workbasket.

So this is the result:

And I am very happy with the whole thing.

As always, the finish-finishing took much longer than I had anticipated. And the whole time, my stitcher's ADD was screaming for some alternatives when I just didn't feel like sewing bits and pieces together.

So I made a deal with the devil Dearly Beloved.   This time I could pull out four slips. And as soon as I finish something on one of the slips, I can pull another. And I can alternate among those four slips.

So the next projects on my to-do list are:

• assemble Cherry Berry
• finish the tent stitch sections of the Golden Accessories
• stitch and assemble Tsubaki (I have got to remember if I ever do this again to put stitching and finish-finishing on separate slips!)
• stitch a band on Hannah Thornbush (at least I had sense enough NOT to write finish Hannah Thornbush)

So, onward and upward. 

Why I should not stitch when I'm tired

Look at this picture closely.

If you look very closely, you'll see a row of tiny eyelets on the piece on the left. This will be the front of the scissors case that goes with Pineapple Perfection.

Then, if you look at the bottom of the piece on the right, you'll see more teeny little eyelets. They aren't supposed to be there. This is the back of the scissors case. They are supposed to be on the bottom of the front of the scissors case.

How I managed to make this epic goof is beyond me.

I will admit I was very tired last night.

And why was I so tired?

We traveled to Wild and Wonderful West Virginia last Friday to visit The Wild and Wonderful Flash. It was a tiring trip through the mountains--we had to deal with the Friday afternoon "lake traffic" before we even made it out of our home county--then it took a solid hour to go from the Virginia/West Virginia border to the town of Princeton. Princeton is nine miles from the border. We do not know why there was so much slowly moving congestion. By the time we finally arrived at our destination, it was almost 8 o'clock and we hadn't had dinner--so we grabbed a bite to eat, then visited until almost midnight. And then were up and out the next morning. And spent most of the day with The Flash and his parental units. And then drove home on Sunday.

The Flash is currently constructing a Lego city that is about the size and density of Manhattan. To accompany it, he is writing and illustrating a comic book about the citizens of this city. There is a hero, and a villain. Apparently by the third comic book in the series, the villain becomes reformed.

We generally live a quiet life and this much excitement is more than we usually have in a month. Dearly Beloved, who is retired, has had all week to recuperate (not that you can tell the recuperation from his regular schedule in retirement). I had to go back to work on Monday. And it's been a busy week.

So, I am tired. Very tired. And I have decided that tonight I'm not even going to try to thread a needle, much less cut out eyelets that are in the wrong place.

I'm just going to sit in my corner and stare into space until bedtime.  Which may be any minute now.

Beady Little Eyes

Tuesday night I finished the last stitch on the pocket for Pineapple Perfection.

I thought.

In the middle of the night, I woke up and realized I needed to stitch on the beads that create the eyes for the birds. And then I started worrying that I would not remember those beads until I had put the whole thing together. I finally talked myself off the ledge and went back to sleep.

And I didn't think about it again until about 4:30 a.m. today, when I woke up again, trying to figure out what was nagging me. Beads, that's what was bothering me.

I rolled back over and tried to get back to sleep but since I had then remembered that I had already forgotten about the eyes once, sleep was not going to come.

This is the true mark of a stitching fool. I got up and went downstairs.

Now, as anyone who has kept up with this blog knows, I do not have a good working relationship with beads. I either flick them across the room or stab myself with the beading needle--assuming I can get it threaded in the first place--or drop them into a black hole or a rift in the space-time continuum, never to be seen again.

I needed four tiny little black beads.

There were four tiny little black beads in the kit.

No room for any of my usual disasters.

I found the black beading thread with no problem and got the needle threaded on the first try. I was amazed.

I very gently eased one of the beads out of its little plastic bag and cradled it in my left hand. I ever so carefully inserted the point of the needle into the hole in the bead and gently eased it onto the needle's shaft.  Barely daring to breath, I sewed the bead into its appropriate place.

And repeat.

And repeat.

And repeat.

And the birds have eyes!

The Carrots

I was trying to straighten up my corner Friday evening, and realized I have way too many things started in my workbasket.

I decided I needed something to motivate myself to get a few things done.

And this showed up in the mail:

Lakeland Odyssey

Jenny Adin-Christie

It followed The Ort King by only days.

Two things that I really want to work on. Soon.

So I've decided to use them as the "carrots" to get some of the previously started projects finished.

But which one to work on first?

I wrote the names of all the things in my workbasket on little slips of paper, put them in a bag, and made Dearly Beloved choose.  

And this is what he chose:

Pineapple Perfection

Barbara Jackson

So this is what I'm stitching until it is done.  Then I'll get him to pull another slip, and then another until I don't feel guilty starting something else.

Please note that I have never felt guilty about starting a new project, so I'm not quite sure how well this will work--but at least there will be fewer projects falling out of the basket.

Christmas in July

This lovely little dude came to live with me last week:

This is Rachael Kinnison's 2019 Limited Edition Christmas Ornament, The Ort King.

The directions are wonderfully complete and detailed--and you can hear Rachael's voice in her instructions. The materials are lovely and include my favorite Soie de Paris colors. And there are some unique trims and materials that truly make this a limited edition.

And it is a limited edition. Once it's gone, it's gone. There are a few kits left at Rachael's Diamond K Folk Art site, so if you're interested, you may want to go right over.

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And on to other things.

Like this poor, neglected blog.

I blame the weather.

It's hotter than the hinges of Hades.

Not that I would know about that personally, but it's hotter than I imagine they would be.

Believe me when I tell you that I stay in the AC as much as possible, and there are fans running as well just to keep the air moving. However, the air just feels heavy from the humidity. We have not only heat in this part of the world, we also have steam. Steamy air. Air you can practically see and can definitely feel.

I take my daily constitutional at 6 in the morning, and it's humid then.  It is just wearing me down. I thought it might be my age and relative decrepitude, but Baby Girl is having the same reaction. She is 30+ years younger and a gym rat, so she should be able to withstand it.

It is affecting my life in a number of ways. I trudge out to the car, which has been sitting on an asphalt parking lot all day, drive home, and trudge inside, where all I want to do is take a cool shower and put on as few garments as possible. This means that social life has vanished--but then, our friends don't want to do anything either.

And I have not been stitching very much for the last couple of weeks. This is most unusual, and it does not do my stress level any good at all.

That's the same stress level that is caused by the heat.

I'm thinking of moving to Antarctica.