Catching Up

Thank you everyone for the comments on my framed Egyptian Garden and Santaberry Pudding. Jill Rensel's framing makes my stitching look so good! I do send all my framing to her, whether it's matted or not. For very good reason, she's known for her mats, but I know that my stitching is being treated well when I send them to her - one of the big box stores? I've had good jobs but I've also had disasters. Jill has an amazing stretcher/mounter and the packaging is nothing short of an art in itself.  Anne Marieke - I don't think my WIP list is complete - I really need to do a thorough search of the house and not just the den for the others.

We took Egyptian Garden to its new home today. My in-laws were totally blown away! They took down a painting and hung it immediately. It is so gratifying when a gift is so well received!

It's been a couple of weeks since I posted, and I've been fairly busy stitching. I joined the Chatelaine SAL over at The Stitch Specialists Yuku group. I chose to work on Hawaiian Garden mandala. It's been a WIP for two years and I'd really like to get it to halfway by the end of the year I haven't finished part 1 so that may be a bit of a stretch. I bought the pattern and kit right before the Hubs and I went to Hawaii. I stitched to the first round of blue Petite Treasure Braid hard to see but just near the large white squares while I was there so it will always be a special piece for me.

Here's where I started Saturday afternoon:


Hawaiian Garden by Chatelaine
Stitched on Summer Sky Jobelan with threads as charted by designer

 and here's where I finished up Saturday evening mostly beading and metallic work:

As usual, the colors are much more vibrant in real life and oh my! does it sparkle. And the fabric is a mottled blue not white as in the first picture and definitely not the greenish shade in the second.

I stitched on Socks and Underwear - Santa 2010 one day this week during my commute. Not a lot done, but it did make the person next to me laugh when they peaked at it.

I was able to sit myself down almost every night this past week and stitch for about an hour on BoaF mystery. Not a lot of progress but it's getting there:

And now for something new. I was blog surfing the other day and found a new SAL at iStitch's as though I really needed something else to work on AND this one has a deadline - you have to send a picture of each finished part to get the next part... Forgetting the whole "I don't have time to stitch something else" issue, I signed up. The first part was released Friday, so in an effort to keep up with this, I took it with me this weekend we *finally* got to Virginia Beach, got the boat out, cleaned it (about 2 hours worth) and spent the day on the water. I have almost finished the first part which includes the outer border and one small motif.

I pulled everything from my stash. The fabric is R&R Reproduction's Espresso and is a leftover cut. The thread is HDF's Cloud. I ordered one of her conversions on a Chatelaine a number of years ago. Unfortunately, I did not like the thread, so instead of making myself miserable working with materials I didn't like especially on such a large piece I ordered the materials kit from European Cross Stitch and put the HDF fibers away. I'm still not thrilled with the thread, but as this is a fairly small piece, I think I can deal with my dislike.

And last, but certainly not least. DMIL had an UnChristmas present for me when we went over this morning.

This is a Vera Bradley messenger bag in Citrus pattern. This is an older pattern and old style messenger bag (somewhere around 2006). DMIL said that one of her coworkers was showing these around the office before she put them on Ebay and she thought this color was me. It is bright and I do have this bag in a different color and have almost worn it out, so this was a great gift (of course *all* gifts are great).