Eyes crossed over eyelets

That about sums up what I did yesterday.

Martha Edlin stitched an alphabet in eyelets, which meant that I had to stitch an alphabet in eyelets. Each letter was taking me 30-45 minutes to stitch and were about as boring as they could possibly be. So, after yesterday's trip to the farmers' market and reading of the morning newspaper and sorting of the laundry, I announced to Dearly Beloved that I was going to work on that $&!@#% alphabet until it was complete.

And it is.

(Sorry for the shadow--this has been yet another rainy, gray week-end and I've had no sunlight for photography. Not that daylight would help my photographic skills, but it'll serve as a reasonable excuse at the moment.)

I had a Warehouse 13 marathon on Syfy to listen to as I stitched and it was raining off and on, so I spent the entire day and long into the evening doing eyelets.  My shoulders and back started aching and  I progressed from a case of numb butt to P3 (Painful Posterior Paralysis). When the last stitch in "Z" was completed, I lurched out of the chair like an old lady (please ignore the fact that I could quite likely be defined as an old lady), staggered into the shower, and fell into bed.

Needless to say, a needle has not been threaded in this household today.  However, I have only one more alphabet and a small spot section to stitch and Martha will be ready for the framer. There is a finish coming in the very near future!

Too tired to stitch

That about sums it up.

The office where I work is being renovated literally around us as we try to perform our daily duties.  The floor is divided into four quads and they are working on one quad at a time. Some people were moved off-site, where they will stay until the process ends. Some are telecommuting. And those of us who are on-site are moving around from one area to another as each quad is worked on.

So this week it was '"my" quad's turn to move.

It's like a cross between fifty people renovating fifty kitchens in the same space while catering a dinner and moving the contents of fifty homes whose inhabitants have lived there for fifty years.

I am mostly moved. This has taken all day. I still have a few vital things that must be relocated but I can't relocate them until IT sets up my station and connections--so I'm working at two desks. Of course, whatever I need at one is at the other. The two are about as far apart as they can be without being in another building.

I am supposed to be going to an ANG meeting tonight. I came home so filthy, dirty, sore, and tired that I immediately tottered upstairs and into the shower. Dearly Beloved has coated me with Ben-Gay and I have dosed myself with Aleeve. I am now slumped in my chair. Dearly Beloved is making scrambled eggs for dinner since that requires little in the way of chewing. When I say I am tired, I mean I am really tired!

This is on top of the most important event in recent times--we went to visit The Flash. It's been six months since we've seen the urchin in person and OMG, he is so much taller! And the baby roundness is starting to go away, leaving a lean and lanky young man who is still as busy as before. Sadly, it rained most of the day Saturday, so the outdoor festival we attended was a little muddier and messier than we had hoped. The Flash managed to entertain himself however. We also got to baby sit and (don't tell anyone) we let him stay up a wee bit past his bedtime so we could all watch Rise of the Guardians. We highly recommend it, particularly The Flash, who has taken to growling, "I'm a bunny." (If you don't catch the reference, you need to see the movie.)

Alas, there are no pictures. My camera battery died and I didn't have the charger with me.

The battery is now charged, but there is no stitching to show. Martha Edlin went to visit The Flash but she wisely stayed in her pillowcase in the tote bag. And at the moment, I'm working on the eyelet alphabet which takes awhile and isn't very interesting to see. It takes about 30-45 minutes to do one letter so I'm trying to do two a night. I am really, really happy that Martha lived in the 17th century and left out J and V--that means there are only 24 letters to stitch!

Nary a stitch . . .

Not a single one was stitched this past week-end.

I had planned to do some intense finish-finishing. However, I didn't sleep well--not a good thing when you need to concentrate and deal with a new sewing machine that still has bells and whistles I haven't tried yet. Then it was gray, gloomy, damp, and cold. This is supposed to be the sunny South and I was wearing a turtleneck and a heavy sweater with an afghan wrapped around me.

I caught up on the stack of magazines by the wing chair. We went to see Iron Man 3. We did Chinese take-out. I let my brain get sucked out by the innerwebs. And all of a sudden the week-end was over.

However, tonight was different.

Recognize this?  Martha Edlin has come out to play. And I think I'm obsessed with her again.

I had so much momentum going when I ran out of white silk, then it took awhile for the new spool to arrive, then I went to Jeannine's, then came home to be distracted by other things. But, oh, my, I pulled Martha out of her pillowcase and that was it.

So please excuse me while I thread up another needle and get back to Martha.

Now what?

For a variety of reasons, I didn't have a lot of stitching time in the evenings after work this week, but I was able to finish the needlework for the smalls for the Tea Time Basket.

After being obsessed with this project for the last couple of weeks, it's over.

So now what do I do?

It's not that I don't have a multitude of projects in progress as well as a stash of frightening proportions. Somehow, though, when I've been totally immersed in one project, it's hard for me to see it end and move on.

Yes, I could do the finish-finishing but that's another situation entirely. Putting together is not a stress-free experience for me, and this week-end I'd like a little stress relief instead!

Maybe I should dust and run the vacuum instead of stitching . . .

The second band is finished!

And this is what has obsessed me this week:

The left side of the second band of Barbara Jackson's Tea Time Basket.

And the right side of the band.

This was a class I took online through Shining Needle Society. I had "ghosted" the class when Barbara taught it at one of Carole Lakes' guild chapters, but auditing the online class added so much to the experience!

I still need to stitch the scissors case, the pincushion, and the fob, but the major part of the stitching is complete.

Now I need to find fabric for the actual basket lining itself. This may necessitate a trip to a fabric, preferably a quilting fabric, store. Dearly Beloved is wondering why, since I have literally yards of fabric already. The problem is this: either the colors in the fabric I have don't work, or the fabric has such a distinctive pattern that it fights with the design on the band. What I need is a very subtle tone-on-tone fabric in a shade that cooperates with the colors of the silk used in the band. And that means that I need to mount an expedition.

It is quite possible that Dearly Beloved is in fear that I will go to a quilting store and be so seduced by the fabrics that I will take up yet another passion.

Little does he realize that the fabrics I've been accumulating are destined for that very thing . . .

More basketing, less multi-tasking

After the workshop last week-end, I had a couple of logical options. I thought about starting on the finishing for the Elizabethan casket, but I need a couple of spools of thread to do that.

Then I started to reach for the Mermaid Treasures kit from Amy Mitten so I could baste the five-foot-long piece of linen.

Somehow the Tea Time Basket jumped into my hands.

By the time I toddled off to bed, I had completed this much:

You will notice there is some stitch-removal occurring in this picture. I was attempting to multi-task. I was watching a DVD, talking to Baby Girl with the cell phone balanced on my shoulder, and I was stitching. The result of all of this was that I missed a key plot point in the movie, I was answering somewhat absent-mindedly to Baby Girl's queries, and I got a thread off.

So I spent some time ripping, re-watching the movie, and talking to Baby Girl again to get what I missed the first time.

Anyway, as of tonight, this is where I am:

I think I'm going to continue to work on this for awhile, especially since every time I sit down it jumps out at me. Obviously it wants to come out and play.

Wonderful Workshop

After doing the prework for this class a year ago, the workshop for Betsy Morgan's Elizabethan Casket Class was held over the last two days.

And I have finally mastered Aztec stitch!!!

I did not do this in class as I am unable to stitch in a class with results that anyone wants to see. I did this last night in the wing chair in my nest.

Actually, the class focused on finishing and most of the people there worked on putting a button bag together. As I was absolutely convinced that I would be the person who would iron the interfacing onto the stitched side of the piece rather than the wrong side of it, I did not participate in this part of the festivities. I did take notes and fiddled around on a doodle cloth, so I feel confident that the set of smalls will be completed in a relatively timely manner.

Betsy is a really, really, really good teacher with a very reassuring manner about the assembly of all the bits and pieces that make up this set. I so enjoyed myself that I am lined up to take two more workshops with her.

She had brought her current teaching pieces for us to see, and pictures do not do them justice. She's teaching a brand-new piece at Christmas in Williamsburg--so check out just-crossstitch.com/seminar for information on that. Our sampler guild is already planning to bring her back to teach that and the other Edinburgh set she has recently designed.

Of course, the best part of taking classes is getting to see people who speak the same language and love doing the same things. And our group is planning to get together to continued working on putting all the bits and pieces together. I'm looking forward to that.