Neck and neck at the finish line

 Earlier this week, I finished the stitching on Emie's Etui:

One of the habits I wanted to establish this year was to do the finish-finishing on any smalls I stitched as soon as the embroidery was done.  So why haven't I started putting this together?

Baby Girl and I had decided to work on this together, since we couldn't take the class together. That included the assembly. Then she was seduced by the lure of a bag of luscious plum-colored yarn and decided she would alternate projects, which means she's about a week behind me in stitching.

So I pulled another UFO out of the pile, the Strawberry Purse and Accessories from a class Catherine Theron offered through Shining Needle. I hit the wall on tent over one and put is aside a couple of months ago.

Now the embroidery is finished on it.

Now I have to decide what to do--pull out another UFO and finish the stitching, or start putting one of these together, or spend the afternoon in another pursuit entirely . . . I think I'll start a pot of vegetable beef soup while I think about it.

Almost on the home stretch

I stitched Sunday afternoon. I ripped out what I stitched on Sunday on Monday evening. I restitched what I had ripped out on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings. And I finally got the second panel for the body of Emie's Etui stitched.

 I was under the weather for a couple of days, so no needle was threaded. However, I did dream, because this arrived in the mail this week:

There are a dozen projects in this book. I want to stitch nine of them.

Not sure I'm going to live to be 400, but I may need to plan for that.

lots of teeny tiny stitches

 I finished one of the panels for Emie's Etui this week.

I was muttering to myself about how long it was taking me to stitch this panel. In the middle of the night one night this week, I woke up still muttering. Then I tried to figure out how many stitches I was doing. 32 count linen, cross over one.

So I multiplied 32 by 32, which would be the number of threads in a square inch of fabric, and came up with over 1000 stitches if I just worked tent. If I worked cross stitches, it would be over 2000.

Surely not, I thought. After all, my abilities to do math in my head are more like inabilities to do math in my head, much less doing math in my head in the middle of the night. So when I got up the next morning, I pulled out the calculator--and, yep, still over 2000 if you do cross stitch over every intersection in a 1 inch square on 32 count linen.

No wonder it takes so long!

And that's also why the next two bands on the next section of the etui seemed to zoom by.

But the next step is tent over one and cross over one (again) to make the wreath for the center of the panel.

Over one again . . . sigh . . .

Ends and Beginnings

 Happy New Year!

This is going to be a red-letter year for me. I will be retiring. And this means that I will finally have daylight hours for stitching every day and not just on week-ends and holidays and vacations--time to create and stitch and do all the things that working full-time interferes with.

I've been online looking at all the projects people completed last year. I have piles of UFO's and WIP's instead, with not many completed projects to show for the time I've spent stitching. Now, there is no way at all that I can make a dent in those piles before I retire, but I can focus on them--so that is how I plan to start the new year.

I also want to work on some of my more challenging projects, and get some finishing done.

I am not making resolutions about this. I am not making lists, or setting up a rotation, or making rules like I have to finish five things before I can start something new. And I will likely start a few new things before I retire, and I know I have two big new projects that will be underway before the next New Year rolls around.

But I plan to start the year with UFO's and WIP's.

Today I did the gold and silver thread on the second of the Golden Accessories:

Just one more to stitch before I can start putting these together. I just have to wrap my head around plaited braid. My head doesn't want to wrap around plaited braid. It wants the stitcher who originally came up with this stitch to spend eternity in a very hot place. I've been watching videos and practicing, but there's a step that I keep forgetting to do which keeps the braid from plaiting. I am going to work on it again tomorrow and see if I can get it to stay in my head just long enough to finish the last piece of this set. Or I may sit in the corner and rock and drool.

After this, I went back to Emie's Etui and worked the bargello variation. That was much easier.

After this, there is another double running band, then a satin stitch band, then another cross-over-one band, and then this piece will be finished.

But first, I need to plait that braid.

So long, 2020!

 Chances are good that I will not be awake to see the end of 2020 so I decided to write the last blog of this weird year now.

First of all, before I go to sleep, there will be the ceremonial dumping of the ort jar.

You can't really see, but there are metal threads all throughout. It's actually kind of pretty, and I was of two minds about dumping this year's collection.  I know about the ornaments you can stuff but it is tradition to dump out the jar right before I go to bed on December 31. Since so many things haven't followed the usual pattern this year, I decided that this had to be one thing that did.

I didn't blog last night because I had decided I couldn't until I got that over-one band on Emie's Etui completely stitched. FINALLY! Simplest thing in the world and I couldn't count accurately on the last two stems. But it's now done, along with the band that comes after it.

And now to catch up on:

Wretched Excess, Day Six

Another beautiful kit from The Crewelwork Company.

That purchase was precipitated by this:

This may be my oldest UFO,  and it's probably fifty years old. I was rummaging around awhile ago and wondered why in the world I didn't finish this. It was probably another "ooh, shiny" moment-but I was doing a pretty good job on it. And then I found several other vintage kits (never started) that were all variations on Tree of Life motifs, and I started thinking that the grouping would make a lovely display, and the next thing you know, I was looking for similar designs to stitch. We'll see how that goes.

And that takes us to:

Wretched Excess, Day Seven

Another design from the latest Inspirations volume, and it's a Cynthia Jackson, and I really like her designs--so no-brainer. And she's announced that she is going to teach a Tudor Embroidery class online for ten weeks in late spring--be still my heart--so I'm very excited by the whole prospect.

And that's the wrap-up for this year's Wretched Excess.

And aside from being happy to see the end of 2020 and looking toward the future vaccination--first time in my life I've ever looked forward to getting a shot!--I want to wish everyone a very Happy New Year! See you tomorrow!

Sort of a White Christmas

 I have decided one of the many, many things I want to focus on when I retire is Whitework. So . . . 

Wretched Excess, Day Five

Inspirations magazine struck again, so I have a book of projects, and the pattern for another, and

two kits that I think I'm going to love to add to my home.

I think the last person in my family who did much whitework had to be my late-Victorian great-grandmother. That's two generations away, and I feel the need to make up for lost time.

Hopefully I'll live to be 386.

And there is no progress on Emie. I discovered that I was off by one thread high and one thread to the left, which meant I had to pull out cross stitch over one.

And now you know why I'm twitching.

Un Upheaval

 We've been having intermittent internet issues since Christmas Eve--when we lost the cable and internet completely. It's been up and down since--and when I tried to plug in my work phone yesterday, it went down completely.

So I packed up the work stuff and took it back to the office, where I worked today, completely alone. It was amazing how much I got done!

There is a piece of equipment that needs to be replaced and it will take a week to ten days to arrive, so I have permission to work in the office.

And, tonight, the internet is sort of working but the cable isn't. So I'm getting this posted while I can.

Wretched Excess, Day Four

I've been tempted by this crewel kit since it was introduced. Then Phillipa offered a series of tutorials on youTube. Then she offered it at a discount. There is only so much temptation I can withstand.

Now, you ask, what about Emie's Etui? It has two more flowers on it. Cross stitch over one takes forever!