More Letters

 I can't seem to get away from stitching letters.

This is the top of the Bowhill needleroll, which is a forthcoming project (I think it will be a teaching piece) from my dear friend Sharon. It's based on a sampler in Sharon's collection, which she is also reproducing. Both are lovely, lovely pieces, and I'm happy to be stitching them.

However, this is not going in the tote bag for what BDE and I are calling The Great Escape. Nor is anything else with an alphabet, other than letters needed for personalization. I am escaping from all responsibilities, including stitching letters.

The laptop is going. I always take the laptop when I go anywhere, and never blog while I'm gone. Let's see if this trip breaks that pattern.

Something else for the tote bag

As I have mentioned before, Best Daughter Ever and I are going to Ocean City to stitch for a week--no classes, but an already-paid-for hotel room.

Of course I packed projects first--still trying to figure out clothes--but today something else arrived that went into the bag immediately.

Tricia Nguyễn designed a Christmas ornament for 2023. The free directions can be found on her site for Thistle Threads, but she also offered a limited number of kits. Let's face it, I'm still trying to organize my stash and it was just easier to order a kit. And since it arrived today, I can take it with me.

I'm up to five projects now. That's one a day for non-travel days. I may be overly optimistic about what I can accomplish.

Or maybe I need to add something else just in case.

Slow and Steady

I belong to a Zoom group sponsored by EGA that meets on the third Saturday of the month, It focuses on surface stitching, which I am beginning to do more frequently.  

I used to prefer counted thread projects, whether on linen or canvas, but I decided that as my life gets more random, maybe my stitching should reflect that. And crewel was the first type of needlework I stitched, after the obligatory dish towels and pillow cases from the dime store.

I just showed my age.

Anyway, I have a crewel piece set aside for this meeting, and here is where I am after yesterday's session.

I suspect it will take quite a few two-hour Zoom meetings to complete this project. That's OK--It's not how quickly you stitch that's important, it's how much you enjoy it that counts.

Isabel

 Isabel Redie was an over-achiever.

When I pulled her out of the stash, I thought she would be a good sampler for those times when I need to stitch but not necessarily think--beyond counting, of course.

But no--she has four-sided and Queen stitches and double running and multiple color changes within small motifs--plus a ginormous chart to manipulate and my next-to-longest scroll bars to contain her linen. Even the border, which looks like simple cross stitch, has extra stitches and curlicues that required more thinking than I could do on a Friday evening after a day spent setting up our guest room.

So I got the basic outline of the border stitch done by working half crosses. I'll fill in the extra stitches and curlicues on the way back.

And this meant that I had to find something relatively easy to work on during our Carolinas Region stitch-in on Zoom this morning. Believe it or not, Love That Red came back out, and I finished the numbers and did almost a whole decorative band:

I have another Zoom in a few minutes, so my crewel piece is going to get put back in the hoop.

Zoom stitch-ins do give you such a wonderful excuse to spend a Saturday with needle in hand!

Letters

 I added more letters to Love That Red.

For some reason, the alphabet left out the X--so I charted one and stitched it in. This is amazing, considering how much I dislike stitching letters.

And I decided to start and finish off each letter individually so the red thread wouldn't how through the linen, just to make the whole experience a little more difficult.

I lost steam before I finished the numbers, and I may do something else today that does not involve letters or numbers. Actually, I'm quite certain I won't stitch letters or numbers today.

I'm ignoring the fact that there are two more alphabets, each more elaborate, on this sampler, that I have to do before I can get to the fun stuff.

Sigh . . . 

So little

 Dearly Beloved told me that I have lost my mind. Completely and irrevocably. It's gone, and he may need to send me to live with my mother in extended care as I may no longer be responsible for my actions.

And what brought this on? Needlework, of course.

I decided, since I located some of the packed-up scroll bars, to mount a couple of samplers. One is Isabel Redie, whose chart is big enough to handle without also having to juggle a humongous piece of linen. The other is the Love That Red stitch sampler I took at Sassy Jack's last week. The linen isn't that wide, but it's long.

And of course, once I had the linen mounted, I needed to take a few stitches in the project.

I've started on the first alphabet and the border--the dime is to compare size.

And that's when Dearly Beloved decided I have gone around the bend. He's been muttering something about microscopic stitching and crazy stitchers all morning.

Good thing I have learned to ignore him on occasion.

Planning for a trip

BDE and I were planning a trip to Salty Yarns next week so we could both take classes from Jackie. Due to a series of unfortunate incidents, those classes have been postponed to April, but we have a non-refundable, non-transferrable reservation in Ocean City.

Well, we've been talking about having a week to just stitch with no other responsibilities, and we've wanted to explore Berlin, the town where Salty Yarns is now located, so we're going anyway. There is a stitch-in on Thursday afternoons at Salty Yarns, so we'll go to that and get our Salty fix. Otherwise, we plan to sleep in, eat out, and stitch until our fingers fall off. Er, hopefully not the last thing, but we want to stitch a lot.

Well, that means planning a project to take. Actually, that means planning multiple projects to take. I've spent the morning doing that.

Here's what I came up with:

I have Katie Strachan's Elizabethan Valentine, which I'd like to get done before the class for Queen Anne's Pyn Pillow starts. I have Alsion Cole's ornament from last year, which I did not get stitched last year. There is Catherine Theron's Flowers & Berries Band Sampler, started a couple of weeks ago. And I have Amy Mitten's Casket Keepsakes. The grasshopper/caterpillar part is stitched, but I have to make a snail.

This should keep me out of trouble. Or should I pick another project or two, and do something different every day?

Maybe I should think about packing clothes instead of more projects.