Category Archives: Gratitude

2017 Year of WIPs Challenge results

I think I did rather well in my challenge. Below are the finishes I had, and the last photo is my slow-growing family room Sampler Wall.


Hello to the middle of December

They say time flies when you’re having fun, and right now, except for one tiny glitch, I can say that’s true.

I have been very productive with needle and thread, both at the sewing machine and in hand.

Yesterday was one of my twice-monthly sew-togethers with my local group and I worked mainly on my Bonnie Hunter Step 3 4-patches.

Here’s my progress photos to date.
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Part 1: 221/221
Part 2: 100/100
Part 3: 10/168

Today should see the finish of my purple 4-patches.

When I’m caught up on my Parts, I am cutting/preparing for the Midnight Flight class I’m taking next month. There is a class info sheet that tells us how much to bring to class (instead of enough for a whole quilt) so I’ve been pulling fabrics and cutting. I am taking more than I need so I can hopefully swap some with other attendees. I have my constant red cut, and changed the orange to a yellow. I’m also not including any purple and using blues only. I think I may be buying a couple of 1/4 cuts before then as I’d like a little more royal to go with my navy.
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As to my stitching, I know I said in my last post that I was going to do a separate post about my Year of WIPs Challenge status, but I think instead of spending more time on this computer writing a post, I’ll just do a photo update in my dedicated tab up top. I am still loving the 10 hour rotation with the focus being on Houses of Hawk Run Hollow. I am now spending less time stitching than before, but I knew that was going to happen so chose the number of WIPs accordingly. So far I think I made great choices. The bit success right now is that I finished And They Sinned. Woohoo!

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She’s a big girl! That countertop is 5 feet long 😀 If you click on the picture, it’ll turn right side up, but it was hard to get it to focus because of the size.

The glitch I first mentioned is my HarleyQuinn had to have surgery this past Monday to remove a large hematoma from a back leg. She has 3 layers of stitches (because her skin is so thin) and the layer I can see I counted 7. While she was under the doctor went ahead and removed 7 other places and all but one of those just required 1 stitch (the other one required 2). So now we’re nursing her. Pain pills, anti inflamatory/pain pill, liquid antibiotics every 12 hours. No overactiveness, which means carrying her up and down the stairs. In other words spoiling her more than usual, which is a lot already.

This picture is of her staring at me the night before because she’s starving (she’s always starving, just ask her).
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and here she is all snuggled up between dad’s legs after we brought her home. She was drunker than Cooter Brown, and we worry she’ll flop herself off the sofa.
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Today she’s back to her sassy self, and is more work to keep her from dancing and prancing. She’ll have to have 24/7 babysitting until the stitches are removed. We do have a care-collar for her, but if we keep her with us she shouldn’t have to wear it. Fortunately Mister is out of school, and neither of us have any plans to be anywhere together that can’t be cancelled or rescheduled for a later date.

Year of WIPs Challenge

And we’re off!  I did get brave and created a YouTube photo video.

Here’s what I settled on for stitching, along with the progress photo as of Sep 30.  Click to see full photo.

Scarlet Letter – Gratitude

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Mirabilia – Fairy Moon

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Examplar Dames – And They Sinned

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Carriage House Samplings – Houses of Hawk Run Hollow

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Mirabilia – Garden Verses

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Goode Huswife – Book of Spells

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Blue Ribbon Designs – An Expression of Gratitude

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Plum Street – Hurt Not the Earth

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Scarlett House – Coverlet Candle Mat

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Little House Needleworks – Needleworker

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This was actually my plane project for last week’s trip since it’s on 30 ct.

Mill Hill – Log Cabin Quilt

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This was my first project to work on. I finished 10 hours last night.  Love how it’s turning out but ended up having to unstitch  about 2 hours worth because of mixing up the blues.  Blah!

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For now I’ll focus on Houses of Hawk Run Hollow and stitch it every 4th project.  I’ll be creating a tab at the top to track progress.

Now I need to figure out what I want to stitch on next!

My quilting buddies are returning starting this week and I’m looking forward to returning to sewing with them.  I’ll decide on my quilt/sewing WIPs once I figure out how often I’ll be sewing.

WIP Challenge 2016-2017

I did something that has caused me to dig through this:

I know if I start digging through here I will soon have 50 WIPs.

My BFF mentioned a few days ago that she was going to participate in a WIP Challenge, where you finished 12 or so WIPs.  I didn’t fully understand how it would work since it was starting October 1, plus I have some huge WIPs and know I can’t stitch 12 of them in a year (on top of the sewing I want to get done) so I sort of filed it away in the back of my mind.

I was watching her latest flosstube and she brought it up again so I went hunting for more information and became intrigued.  I think it’s completely doable!  The gist is you stitch 10-15 WIPs by the end of December 2017.  The boss lady of the challenge states that as long as they have 1 stitch in them come October 1, 2016, they’re WIPs.

I wanted to divide my 10 items by older WIPs and newer WIPs, so my list looks like this right now:

  1. Scarlet Letter – Gratitude
  2. Mirabilia – Fairy Moon
  3. Examplar Dames – And They Sinned
  4. Carriage House Samplings – Houses of Hawk Run Hollow
  5. Goode Huswife – Book of Spells
  6. Blue Ribbon Designs – Expressions of Gratitude
  7. Plum Street – Hurt Not the Earth
  8. Scarlett House – Coverlet Candle Mat
  9. LHN – Needleworker
  10. Mill Hill – Log Cabin

Houses of Hawk Run Hollow and And They Sinned are my two largest WIPs.  I had already decided to go back to rotating through 4-5 projects at a time, and now I’m trying to decide if I want to go back to stitching in 10 hour increments on a design and then switching out or stitch for a week on something and switch out on Monday.  Either way I intend to focus on Houses or ATS.  So my weekly rotation may look like this:

  • Oct 1-2 Book of Spells
  • Oct 3-9 HOHRH
  • Oct 10-16 Needleworker
  • Oct 17-23 Expressions of Gratitude
  • Oct 24-30 Book of Spells
  • Oct 31-Nov 6 HOHRH
  • Nov 7-13 Coverlet Candle Mat
  • Nov 14-20 Gratitude
  • Nov 21-27 Fair Moon
  • Nov 28-Dec 4 And They Sinned
  • Dec 5-11 HOHRH
  • and so on until HOHRH is finished, then move ATS into that spot

Now that I have it written out this may be the better way to go.  If I decide to do the time version it’ll be something like

10 hours HOHRH
10 hours Book of Spells
10 hours Needleworker
10 hours Expressions of Gratitude
10 hours HOHRH
10 hours Coverlet Mandle Mat
etc…..

We’ve been paired off with another member of the group and required to send monthly post cards as a way to encourage and get to know each other.  I’m also excited about this as I’ve been sort of considering writing to someone once a month as a way to communicate.

Now I just need to figure in some quilting/sewing time and pull a couple of large WIPs and small WIPs and do my own quilting/sewing challenge during that time too.

And, I need to get this all down in my journal by September 30.

 

Gratitude

Since I switched from full crosses to Continental stitch I am really loving Scarlet Letter’s Gratitude.

Here is my first progress photo.  I have completely stitched the little lady on the right, but I obviously took this photo prior to that.  I can only work on her for a short period of time due to the stitch count so I have been saving her for stitch-in at Attic.  I have yet to decide whether or not she’ll be coming to Las Vegas with me next week (squeeeee!  Vegas!!!!  Sorry 😉 )

Scarlet Letter "Gratitude"Over 1 on 40 count

Scarlet Letter “Gratitude”
Over 1 on 40 count

I bought the majority of required DMC for Berlin Woolwork Sampler yesterday.  The store was out of a couple of colors.  Hoping to cut and serge my fabric today/tomorrow and start organizing all that floss.

If any stitching happens today, before I head to Attic for tonight’s open stitch, it will be on Fairy Moon.  It’s very hard to not keep stitching on And They Sinned.  I am really loving that piece.

More Gratitude

I ended up restitching what I frogged, plus more, on Gratitude yesterday.  The magnifier did help, however, I frogged it out again.  It just looks like awful knots because the fiber is so thick. I was ready to “frisbee” that project across the room after frogging it a second time!  I immediately started working on Fairy Moon while we caught up on Arrow on the DVR and made great progress on it.

I had a nail appointment this morning and drove over to Attic afterward to get some new silks for Gratitude but Jean talked me into doing tent stitch with the silks I have instead of full crosses with new silks.  Now I’m trying to decide if I want to stitch on Gratitude or Fairy Moon tonight.

I don’t know how much I’ll be blogging for the next week or so.  My parents are leaving from Louisiana tomorrow morning and heading this way for a week.  I have no idea what we’ll be doing while they’re here!  😆

Happy Holidays!

A belated Merry Christmas to all those who believe in, and celebrate, Christmas.  Actually Merry Christmas to everyone 😉  My Christmas celebration was a day early as Son and Girlfriend flew in on Sunday morning and had to fly out again Christmas night.  I cooked and we opened gifts on Monday and spent Christmas day sitting around talking and being as lazy as we could be with the thought of “we have a plane to catch” in the back of our mind.  Needless to say it went by way too fast.

I was blessed though!  Mister bought me a beautiful bracelet with charms that represent my Bandit (beautiful blue and white swirls), Harley Quinn (black spotted bling), and stitching (a frog prince 😉 ).  He couldn’t find one that represented Jasper at the time he purchased the other two so he’ll be looking for that one next.  In addition to their presence, DS and Girlfriend gave me a delicious box of chocolates and a gift card to help enable  my hobbies.  DS and Girlfriend also talked the whole weekend about getting married.  She bought him a Klingon dictionary and they were also joking around about memorizing wedding vows in Klingon.  All the marriage talk made my heart go pitter patter.  They’ve been a couple for 6 years.

As planned, I started Scarlet Letter’s Gratitude yesterday and worked on it while listening to A Christmas Carol and DS and GF talking.  I absolutely adore the 1938 black and white version and recorded it while we were sleeping Christmas Eve.  I really need to get a copy for my collection as I could watch it more than just during Christmas.  I saved what I recorded and will be stitching to it again this afternoon while the house is quiet.

Anyway, after about an hour I had to put Gratitude aside.  It’s full crosses over 1 on 40 count and I’m definitely going to be stitching this one under a magnifier.  Wearing my readers didn’t help much!  LOL  Looks like I’ll be doing some stitching space rearranging later today to see if I can get my stitching table close enough for my small magnifier.  If not I’ll have to figure out where to stitch on it, or maybe just keep it as my Attic stitching piece.

I got so caught up in decorating the house and getting ready for Son and GF to get here that I slacked off on updating my blog and working on more of my 2013 crafting plans.  They are many, but small, if that makes sense 😉  I’ll finish them up and get them posted by the weekend as my parents are driving in and due to arrive on Saturday.  This will be the first time they’ve visited me in more than 11 years.

Yep, I did it!

I have obligated myself to a stitch-along 😀

Nicola’s Scarlet Letter Year

I have chosen Gratitude as my first SL piece.  I have 3 other Scarlet Letter designs in my stash and will chose the next one once Gratitude is finished.  If you’re interested in joining in click on the graphic above and it will take you to the rules. (Link repaired! Sorry about that.)

Mary Wigham is home from the framers and on the wall.

In non-stitchy news, smalls tweaks to the abode still occur.  We are in the process of installing the stairwell pendant, and dining room chandelier.  A longer ladder is required.  The 17 foot one Mister bought is not long enough to keep me from having palpitations when he’s trying to do these things.  Last night, he had a few palpitations, too.  Thus the decision (naturally).

I’ve also started decorating for Christmas.  For the first time in our 31 years of marriage I am “allowing” colored lights on our tree!  LOL  This means a new purchase.  We’ve been twice and still don’t have enough!  Once more trip should do it.

Pictures of the new lighting and decorations will be shared later, when all the sawdust and shredded paper has been finally dealt with.

😀

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