Ornament Check-in and a Year in Review (a bit early)

Despite me initial doubts, I did it!!  I managed to stitch twelve ornaments this year as part of Stitching Lotus' Ornament SAL.  I did stumble a bit and not finish one in September but I made up for it by finishing two in November.  You can see all my ornament finishes in the 2013 Ornaments tab.  So without further yakking about it, here is my final ornament for 2013:

1999 Schooler Santa from The Prairie Schooler.  Stitched on an unknown 28-count blue evenweave with called for DMC.

I left out the backstitching on the front of the coat as I did not like the look, but I think it turned out okay without it.

So my slightly early recap of my 2013 stitching. Other than missing IHSW during the summer, I didn't officially participate, but I did stitch those weekends, I think I kept up with all the SALs that I was a member of.  It did help that none of them are really stressful ones and mostly provided me with the incentive to keep stitching.

I was going to post all sorts of before and after photos, but I kept track of my finishes and progress in those little tabs up top there, so decided to save us all from a huge, picture heavy post and just link to the tabs.  I don't have a lot of stitching time, but I was able to finish 17 pieces this year. If you'd like to see them, they are in Finishes tab. WIPocalypse and YOTA were great helps in keeping me focused on finishing four of my long-term WIPs, making progress on two others and reducing my WIP list to 18 and the Ornament SAL filled my need for a new start and quick finishes.  My WIPocalypse recap can be seen in the 2013 WIPocalypse tab.  I am looking forward to participating in YOTA and WIPocalypse again in 2014, as well as all the other SALs that I have signed up for.

I normally start a project on New Year's day, but this year, I didn't wait.  My parents Thanks Mom and Dad gave me this

for Christmas. It's Three Tulips from With Thy Needle and Thread along with the called for threads and fabric.  I immediately had to adapt my stitching plan Kevin at Cabbages and Kings discussed plans and resolutions so much better than I could.  I decided that as I now have five pieces in my rotation and I am off work this week that I would stitch on a different project each day and start my stitching plan on Sunday - I will work on my Smalls project on Saturday.  Three Tulips went on the frame first and is coming along quite nicely - it will be difficult to stop working on it, but I want to give some time to the other pieces in my rotation that have been neglected since about July when I went OAAT (one at a time) with 99.

Currently, my 2014 stitching plan is to do a one week rotation, Sunday through Saturday, with Sunday mornings and my compressed Friday (I am scheduled to work 44 hours the first week of the pay period, 36 the second and have every other Friday off) set aside to work on smalls.  As I am participating in the Just Nan SAL, a Just Nan project will be in the rotation every month.  I haven't yet decided if I will designate a specific week or just randomly tuck it into the rotation.  I am leaning towards random, but the plan is a work in progress and subject to blowing up dismantling being ignored revision at any time.

And before I forget, again, Welcome to my new followers and an apology to anyone that may have commented and didn't receive a response.  Yahoo! revamped things and went to a conversation format - they lumped all emails with the same topic into one list.  I suppose it makes sense if you have only two people involved in the conversation but with blog post comments, it was hard to keep track of who I had responded to and who I hadn't.  I wasn't ignoring any of your comments, just not dealing well with technological "advances".  I have finally figured out how to turn that feature off, so there should not be a repeat in the future.

A multi-tasking post

My one and only stitching resolution for this year was to keep up with all the SALs that I had joined.  I did fairly well, until August (missed IHSW) and September (missed IHSW and the ornament SAL).  I have missed a couple this month but will make this my catch-up post and try to keep up with them for the rest of the year.

Before I get started, thank you everyone for your kind comments on my finishes and WIPs, I really appreciate you all taking the time to read and comment.  And yes, a temporary deal was reached on Wednesday, so I was back to work on Thursday.  Only one voicemail message but oh my aching email!!  As I work as support for our field offices, I thought that there would be minimal emails as they were all closed as well, boy was I wrong.  Seems I get more outside emails than I thought as I finally finished sorting and flagging and could start answering them Friday morning.  I should be busy the next couple of days, at least, with that.

So back to stitching and SALs:

The first Saturday of each month is the YOTA SAL - a fun, no pressure, WIP reducing SAL much like WIPocalypse but with different posting days.  As I posted photos of the WIPs that I had worked on for the last month in my last post, I won't post them again - to see them again, click here.

It's hard to tell, but I had a lot of new threads in TUSAL container (I think I am going to use something different if this one continues into next year):

Lots of new browns from 99 but a fair number of more colorful pieces too.

In addition to the pieces shown in the post linked above, I do have some new ones for my WIPocalypse and IHSW:

This is Poinsettia from Brittercup Designs.  It's from the 2007 JCS Christmas Ornament magazine.  It's stitched on 28-count Queen Anne's lace Jobelan (it's tannish not blue) with Gentle Art Sampler Threads and Mill Hill beads.

I finished part 4 of Mary's Sampler from Plum Street Samplers this morning.  It is stitched on an unknown color of 40-count linen with the recommended DMC conversion. 

As I mentioned in my last post, Mirabilia's Santa's Magic was added to the rotation.  I don't remember the last time this one was on the frame, but given where my "before" photo was in the archive, it was probably a year ago.  This is stitched on 32-count opalescent Ametrine from Silkweaver using DMC, Kreinik metallics and Mill Hill beads (I may try to convert them to Delicas as I really don't care for the way Mill Hill's sit on the fabric).  Here's where it was when I left off last year:

And here's where I left off today:

The fabric color is fairly accurate in the photo but the sparkle from the fabric is not quite as obvious in real life.  Most definitely not "normal" Santa colors but I think that's why I am so attracted to it.

I think for the rest of the year, I am going to change my rotation.  I was switching out projects each weekend, but I think a "screaming" rotation sounds like good way to finish out the year - no stress, no pressure, just stitch what I feel like.  I have started thinking about my stitching plan for next year already but don't have anything firm yet.

Late on Everything

I haven't fallen off the face of the earth, but I did take a slight vacation from blogging and to a lesser extent stitching.  As the days start to get shorter, I feel myself having the need to start getting everything ready for winter although that need is not as necessary as it was when I lived in New Hampshire as we don't have much of a winter here in central Virginia (of course now that I've said that...)  A sure sign that the season is changing is the number of young that are being brought into the bird feeders now.  I've seen two cardinals and a wren coming in with their parents, along with the crows and finches and last evening a mother raccoon and two cubs.  I'm not as excited about the raccoon family, but the sighting explains the amount of feed we're going through.  Another sure sign is the hummingbird invasion has started.  I counted as best as I could with the things whizzing around 15 of them the other day. They are so busy chasing each other away from the feeders that I doubt they have time to feed.

So what have I missed since my last post?  Well, first IHSW but I can't go back and participate so will have to give that one a miss.

Then I missed posting my TUSAL, now that one I can show you:

Not a lot new in there, but the color mix is very pretty.

Next I missed the August WIPocalypse.  Another one I can fix.  I know you're very surprised to see this one aren't you?  67 done, 32 to go.

And one I haven't missed!  My August ornament:

This is Strawberry Delight Ornament by Tink Boord-Dill Needlework.  It's done on a 28-count Lambswool with DMC.  It is definitely more of a springtime pattern, but I like the colors.  Glad it's number came up for the ornament rotation.  I haven't run the random number generator to see which ornament/small is up next.

IHSW, Ornament Check-In, WIPocalypse, and a Win

My only stitching goal this year was to keep up with the postings for all the SALs that I joined, I was keeping up just fine until this month.  Lots of life got in the way of just about everything not work related this month. I hope April's posting schedule is not indicitive of the rest of the year.

I am also way behind on my blog reading and commenting.  Please don't give up on me, I am trying to catch up on my reading, at least, and hopefully will be caught up by the end of this weekend.  I may not comment, but I am reading!!

So first up is my International Hermit and Stitch Weekend progress.  I worked on Kayann's Kreations' Elegant Doily.  Once again I stitched lots and lots of eyelets and while it's hard to see, there was definite progress:

Before:

And after:

I finished the eyelets around the diamond on the left and the row above the cut-out heart.  I have finally finished doing the pulled work around the prematurely cut sections so the stitching is going much faster as I don't have to worry about pulling too hard and pulling out the cut ends.

Next up is my April ornament check-in.  All of my ornaments can be seen in the 2013 Ornament tab above, but here is my April finish:

It is Cardinal Winter from Little House Needleworks' 2011 Ornament Series.  The word "tweet" didn't do too much for me, so I stitched a few more snowflakes instead.  I'm not thrilled with the spacing, so will probably add a couple more. 

April's WIPocalypse can be seen in the very imaginatively named "April WIPocalypse" tab above. There is not as much to show this month, but every stitch done is a stitch closer to a finish.

And last but definitely not least, Thank You, Julie!!!!  Julie the Red Couch Stitcher had a fabric give-away and I won this beautiful piece of 40-count Witch's Brew Newcastle linen from Silkweaver's.  It arrived in today's mail and I love it.  Here's the photo from Julie's blog the one I took, as usual, is bad:

I have a couple of ideas for projects on this but will have to think long and hard before starting one as frogging on 40-count is not fun!!  Thank you again, Julie.

Spring has definitely sprung here in central Virginia.  Our cherry tree was completely covered in blooms this year, it looked like a huge cone of pink cotton candy! The dogwoods are in full bloom, the hummingbirds are back and I have mowed the lawn for the first time with all the onions in the yard it smelled like I was mowing a salad actually some of the things I was mowing did look like greens that I had in a salad recently...

I am starting my new ornament today, a freebie from Waxing Moon designs called Summer Sparrow.  No, it's not a Christmas ornament but I'm stretching "ornament" to cover everything in my box of smalls which includes lots of things.  My stitch for next week is 99 from Ink Circles.

Two Finishes in a Month!!

I put the last bead onto The Drawn Thread's Summer into Autumn early yesterday afternoon.  There are one or two things I would change if I were to stitch this again, but I am very pleased with how it  turned out.  No close up photos, sorry, my camera doesn't like to take close up shots.

Summer into Autumn
The Drawn Thread
Materials as kitted

I was so excited to reduce my WIP list from 24 to 23 and ready to add another one to the active stitching list that I didn't wait for the now vacant slot to come up in the rotation and did a quick random number pull and went off in search of the newest member of the list Special Delivery by Just Nan, only to find that it wasn't a WIP at all.  There was not a stitch in the fabric. If thinking about stitching something makes it a WIP than I don't DARE count how many I have!!  What to do?  As I am trying to reduce my WIP list, I wrapped it all back up and put it in the smalls/ornament box for someday.  It then dawned on me that my WIP list had gone down one with no effort at all on my part.  With my stitching spirit buoyed by that thought, another random number generation brought up Elegant Doily by Kayann's Kreations to fill the now vacant spot.  Off I went into the WIP box to pull it back from the edge of the blackhole it was falling into  show it the light of day after ten or so years  and find the threads.  In the process of finding the doily, I discovered two more WIPs that weren't on my original list!!  Talk about crashing a mood, I went from 22 back to 24 WIPs in the span of less than 20 minutes!  And this one is a doosie!  Don't let the term doily fool you as it did me the darn thing is a table runner or a doily for a giant.  This isn't a great photo, but to get an idea of the size, it is spread across a double sized bed.  Probably not the best choice for a first hardanger piece was it?
I also noticed that the entire round of blanket stitches had discolore, this will have a date with a wash and perhaps some bleach when it's finished.  Without further discussion, here is the newest member of the active WIP list for 2013:

This will go on the frame in a month of so, on the frame for this week is a much more managably-sized 99 by Ink Circles Designs.

What was I thinking?

I knew that I would be slammed with Christmas preparations and running after The Hubs, so I am not sure what made me think that signing up for the IHSW was a good idea.  While I finished all the cards, wrapping and baking, I did not put one stitch into anything.  I did pull the fabric and threads for a biscornu for the in-laws and should have that finished before next Christmas.  While I finished making the cards and got them all signed and into envelopes, I only mailed out about half of them - my address list is on my computer at work who thought that keeping the most current copy there was such a good idea??!!?!? and we had major connectivity issues all day long.  I think I'm just going to tell folks that I'm NOT late for 2012, I'm very early for 2013!

Thank you all again for the good wishes for The Hubs.  His recovery is, unfortunately, not going smoothly-  partially due to not following doctor's orders, and partially due to drug interactions/reactions which are causing some very strange behaviours yes I am an American English speaker, but that spelling somehow makes more sense to me, sort of like catalogue rather than catalog.  

As I mentioned in a previous post Melissa at Measi's Musings is hosting WIPocalypse 2013.  Sign ups are open here.  Just fun SAL.  She's added monthly themes for 2013.  I'm not sure how well I will be keeping up with the themes but I will give it a try.