I've been busy... very busy

Happy Wednesday --  How's your week going?

I've been Little Miss Productive.  I don't know how that has come to pass, but I'm not complaining.

Last weekend I dropped two things off at the shop for the framer --

That's an adjustment of a Wit and Whimsey pattern. I did it in Belle Soie, Waterlilies, and a silver Kreinik).  It was how I celebrated St. Patrick's Day.   Luckily we had that perfect green frame.

Then our friend Beatrix --

A close up of the frame -- which I am completely in love with.

I made a last addition to the piece--

I added the "RG" initials for Grandma Rose -- my friend's grandmother who has been so kind as to adopt me.  She's quite a woman, our Grandma Rose, still jumping rope every day at 96.  Bless her!

I finished another needlepoint this week.  Sorry, the picture hasn't happened this week.  And I hope to have another one done by the weekend.  Apparently I am on a roll.  Cross your fingers that I keep it up.  I'm not certain where the sudden fervor comes from.  I wish I could moderate it.  I planted myself on my bed and stitched all day Sunday.  Such a great way to spend the day, but I have to say that bed-sitting is not stitching optimal----I'm still nursing a bruised tailbone.  I really do need to leave Chez Hovel for someplace a chair will fit.   Oh, ok.  I have 4 chairs -- 3 are dining room types and are covered with dust, books, and sundries.  The 4th is my grandmother's rocking chair and it's coated in clothes.

In place of my needlepoint pics, allow me to share this amazing Sew Much Fun piece that my friend got back from the finisher's this weekend--

Isn't he adorable?  

Best wishes for a wonderful Wednesday.

Would it be blasphemy?

It's Monday morning -- anyone  disagree with a little rearrangement of the week?--
"... on the Seventh Day he rested.
And on the Day Following he stitched to his heart's content."

Yes, dearies, I did not want to be going to work this morning.  But the Lord did prove it was not my day to hang around stitching and whining about day-time television because as my commuter bus curved one boring corner, there was a rainbow.   Yes, a Monday morning rainbow.  I perked right up.

Remember last weekend.  No, not the one we just had, but the one before?  Well, The Country Club (aka my needlepoint stitch group) was scheduled to have Ruth Birthday Fest 2012, but everyone in the Club save me was sickly.  Gratefully, they did not share any of their germs with me, but they did make it a lovely day.  I mean check it out --

Cake AND chips.  What more could a girl want?   Ohhhh, that's right!  STASH!!!!!!!   I got that too.

They gave me the Lani canvas I had been coveting.  They would like you to know that they mostly gave it to me because they love me, but they also did it for themselves-- it hung in direct eye sight of the stitching are and they all find it creepy. Since they gave it to me they figure they don't have to look at it any more.

Also they gave me a little A'Tuin--

For the less Pratchett-y of us, that's a turtle needle magnet.

Gotta run--I have corned beef and cabbage to heat!

hugs and happy stitching!

Beatrix and birthdays

Hello World -- Guess what?   I celebrated another anniversary of my 32nd birthday yesterday.  It was a lovely day.   I had thoughts of being productive, if only in a self-indulgent way..... they did not come to pass.  I lunched with buddies.  I dined with different buddies.  Other than that the most strenuous (and stupid) thing I did was decide to go pattern hunting.

You see I deserved to go pattern hunting because.......   BEATRIX IS DONE!!!!!  DONE.  DONE.  DONE. Hee heee.

Can you believe it?  I can't.  Especially since I think it took 6-10 months for me to get passed the head of the first beaded bird in the central "token" motif.

For the record she's done in 4 shades of DMC and a Vikki Clayon overdyed silk with 3 colors of beads (from a powwow so I can't tell you what they might be in official color terms) on cream linen.  I decided to put my ladies' initials in in the varied tones already used in the sampler.  So here's mom--

and the grandmothers--

Aunts Anna Lou and Mary

and Great Aunt Kayte--

-- my apologies to Aunt Kayte --- I owe her a better picture.

All the other initials are all the 2nd 3rd, and 4th great grandmothers I know, as well as a single representative of 5th through 9th generations.

As for birthdays.... I can prove I had fun --
I went to PaleyFest-- TWICE --

and 

Jealous?

How about now?

For the Record, Castle was wonderful, but Bones was the very best Paley event I've ever attended.  Hey, Booth doesn't bring just any ole crowd donuts.

Besides public events happiness comes with family festivals--

Just imagine putting all that chocolate (which is exactly as rich and decadent as it looks) in those little people.

Aside from celebrating with chocolate-enhanced squirrels, I will be partying with a new stitching start.  Tonight begins Mouse's Spring Sampler --

Now I just have to figure out what thread to use where.   Such fun!  you know I think the new start is more exciting than a finish.  What do you think -- what makes you more energized -- starting or finishing?

Here's to you having as grand a day as I have had.

Yee haw!

Beatrix Potter is all done but the shouting... errrr... initials (and some beading)--

This little corner came in last --

I've decided to turn this into an honorarium for the ladies of my family tree so I spent one evening with my family tree software collecting initials, one evening with graph paper testing alphabets, and finally another evening putting all the initials unto my working copy of the pattern.  As it stands I'm able to get my mom, my grandmothers, my aunts, and my 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 9th generation great grandmothers (well, at least the ones I have knowledge of).   Now the big question is whether the initials ought to be in one color or multiple colors -- at the moment I'm leaning to putting them in in the varied colors I've been stitching the piece with.  Thoughts?  Opinions?

And to follow up the joy of the last motif, I even finished my Tudor rose ornie--

It's on an overdyed jobelan from Wichelt called Raspberry Lite.  I did some messing about with the colors and stitches, but I'm rather pleased with it nonetheless.  One down -- 6 million ornies to go.  lol

I volunteered at the shop this weekend to mixed results.  We had a series of grumpy customers.  I'm willing to accept people's moods and confusions, but sometimes you can tell it's all a front.  We had a person come it to pick up a finished piece who started the conversation with she was "here to see" her piece and that she'd never even been called with a quote on the finishing costs.  Well, finishing for her particular type of item is pretty much always the same.  It was, of course, far too much for her, and maybe this wasn't right, and that was off, and maybe it was too dressy, or maybe it was not dressy enough.  Oh dear Lord save me from people posturing for discounts..... especially when they are wearing several large diamond rings, designers duds, and spend more having their hair done than I spend on food in a month.  

Aside from the troublesome types, I made progress on Ladies Day --

I thought I'd never finish the grey robe!  the bulk of it is Waterlilies, and there's a highlight stitch of a gunmetal Kreinik.  I do have to go back in and couch in a line around the sleeve to delineate it from the body of the robe, but that can wait until I enjoy a little purple stitching on The LAST lady!   hee  heee

I also got to check out the recently back from the finisher penguin from Sew Much Fun.  The shop's teacher did it.  I'd like to do it, but it bugs me.  Because of all the color on it's front it doesn't look very penguin-ish to me.  What do you think?

I wonder if I lightened up the bands on the stomach if it would work.  Whatcha think?

Go have yourself a beautiful day!

Happy March!

Well folks, we've made it through another leap year and into another March.  A fine month if I do say so myself.  Here's hoping your March will treat you well.

I've been cleaning.  Maybe it's Spring.  Maybe it's a fear of what might be developing sentience in the corner of Chez Hovel or under the bed.  Anyway, I wonder why it is that cleaning leads inevitably to chaos.  I worked in a pair of kitchen cabinets and on the kitchen table and somehow that spread boxes and piles and bags (and dust) throughout the hovel.  I got somewhere.  I suppose I'm satisfied with what I did, but now I have spare boxes and piles (and a certain amount of dust) in new parts of my life.  Sigh.

I didn't even get to the fun part of cleaning -- the stash sort.  Oh come on, you know you do it.  Stash accumulates where it ought not be and we all tackle it with great joy.  If you leave it grow long enough, putting it away is a bit like shopping for it all over again.  Well, it is for me.  I get that whole stash-shopping joy all over again.    Anyway, this spring cleaning thusfar has afforded me no such joy.

On thing awaiting "organizing" in the stash pile is a new acquisition of mine --

Yup.  I got a new canvas.  Hee heee.  Technically, it's not mine since I got it for a friend.  Stash that's destined to become a present isn't really stash, right?  (ahhh, rationalization -- my middle name)
Here it is with the first round of its thread pull --

The velvets are for the pig, the non-sparklies (floss, Bermalana, and Mandarin Floss) are for the bulk of the dresses, and the sparklies (Flair, Sparkel Rays, Neon Rays Plus, Fyre Werks, and Silk Lame) are for all the little decorations on the dresses.  I'm quite looking forward to getting going on this.  Do you suppose that despite its size I can complete it this year?  I'll take all good wishes... I think I'll need them.

Possibly I can also rationalize starting the farm-girls-go-to-the-festival piece by proving that I finished something --

Yup, after at least a year, my little moose ornament is done..... courtesy of my buddy, Jenn, who finished putting the slated gobelin in the moose.--- it's her own fault.  She knows I can't see the gobelin and yet she convinced me it was the "perfect" stitch.  Do you have those?  Not friends that lead you astray, but stitches that quite simply escape you?  Mine's that danged gobelin.

I've even made some progress on my Prairie Moon piece --

I'm actually kind of surprised how much I'm enjoying working on this.  It's in what I think of as Jerimiah Junction colors and I'm generally not the biggest fan of those.  And ya'll know ho w I feel about fiddly color changes--- and every blasted building and decoration is in another color in this one.

But just to show that I can't control myself even with plenty of things underway and a really cool pending new start barely cool in its shopping bag -- I've also started an xs piece called Welcome to the Nuthouse by Waxing Moon.  I have had it for years and kept getting thrown off by the threads.  It is charted for Sampler Threads and in between when the model was stitched and when I went to start it the colors had changed so much that I didn't fancy them so I was on a semi-occasional hunt for replacement colors.   Finally I've found a mix I rather like.  Sorry though, it's not even worth showing a pic since I have made it a grand total of maybe 30 stitches in so far.

To add insult to injury on the stash/startitis/need to clean front, I also recently acquired other stash too--

These canvases come with matching blown glass ornaments--- if you are calculating that means I have twice as much stuff to find a place for the the Hovel.  I plan on having great glittering fun with them nonetheless

I have to admit that the above items are from a probably 3 weeks ago.  I kept losing the pictures.  More recently I also picked up some xs I'd been eyeing --

I'd been thinking about doing something in honor of my great Aunt Kayte, and this is just perfect.  She and Uncle Leo had a white house the backyard of which was focused around a walkway lined with giant camellia trees (they seemed giant to me at the time -- I suppose they were about 7 or 8 feet tall).  I know since this is Peony Hill that they aren't camellias, but I won't tell if you won't.

ttfn-- gotta run -- but I wish you well on cleaning or stitching or whatever excitement you have planned -- go March!