M starting putting his training bike together yesterday. At first, after working for 3 hours on it, he thought his shifter was broken. I found this out when he came in the house and announced that he was going to have to get a part-time job to replace it. I know nothing about the prices of individual bike parts. I do know that he’s spent close to $9,000 on his official race bike. I can only image what they would cost if he wasn’t building them himself. When he starts talking about it I tell him I don’t want to know. Anyway, he disappeared back into the garage and came back awhile later to tell me that he thinks he has figured out what was wrong and now he could use 17 of the 18 gears. His words “crises averted.” Ummm, okay.
I finished up my 10 hours on Haiku yesterday. He’s starting to look like a chubby chickadee! He’s a lot of fun to stitch, but I’m thinking of moving up to stitch on the cherry blossoms next time around. Here’s my before and after pictures:
Haiku - 1/7/12
Haiku - 1/9/12
This means that I’ve worked on 3 of my WIPocalypse projects in this reporting period 😀
Next up is Harmony by Serendipity Designs. I knew there were about 10 stitches in it, and I thought it was older than Peacock Tapestry. When I got everything out there were a couple of surprises. I originally started it November 23, 1997, making it almost 2 years older than Peacock Tapestry. I also discovered that I only cut the fabric to give it 1 1/2 inch margins on each side.
The design is 3 charts stitched together on one piece of fabric and because I’ve cut the fabric so close I don’t want to take any chances on stitching in the wrong place. I’m also thinking I need to start at the bottom and stitch my way up since the bottom portion stitches all the way across the width of the fabric. So, I have pulled out what I already stitched, serged and ironed the fabric, and now I’m gridding it. The gridding will probably take up my whole 10 hours since it’s almost 50″ long. After I finish gridding, I’ll have to sew on some muslin so I can get it in my QSnaps. Twice during the gridding I’ve thought of taking it out of my current rotation, but that would accomplish nothing but my picking it back up at a later date; and, I really still love the design; and, I really want to get my old WIPs finished, so I’m plugging along. Working on it is progress, right?
I’m leaving for a long stitching weekend in Vegas tomorrow. I’m definitely taking Hannah Beeby and Harmony, if don’t finish out it’s rotation time today. I’ll have to decide tomorrow morning what else to take.
