Dorothy Walpole

Since finishing the first band of Loara I've been stitching Dorothy.  Turns out I'm really enjoying seeing her grow.  I'm hoping to have the first page done tonight.

Loara Standish

You know how you can just dread things and start to build up how terrible they'll be in your head?  Well, Loara has kind of had that kind of effect on me since I first purchased the chart.  We'd worked up a silk conversion on the HDF BB.  I had her all kitted up and ready to go and I just couldn't make that leap to put silk to linen and start!

I finally started Loara on 1/1/13 and put a length of thread into her just to be able to say "I've started"  Last night since she's been sitting on the couch next to me since 1/1/13 and I finished part 2 of Iris, I pulled her out and put a couple of stitches into her.  But since I'm stitching on 50ct Kingston, I had a little bit of trouble seeing the threads and was too lazy to go out into the cold to the car and get my glasses out of my purse.

Tonight was a totally different story.  I put my glasses into my stitching bag before I left work so I would actually be able to see what I was doing and I have now completed the first row of Loara.

That is the entire first band.  Doesn't look like much, I know, but the Standish stitch has 7 passes of needle through linen in it so it takes a little bit to do.  But it's very pretty.

Snow, baby snow!

It's amazing how much stitching one I seem to get done when my DH isn't home.  Since he works most Sundays and today was a holiday so the kids didn't have school, I got two days to stitch with limited interruptions.  I need to win the lottery or something so that can happen more often!  I'm doubly glad I didn't have to go anywhere today since we got some snow and drivers in the city where I work don't seem to be able to remember how to drive on it.  So double yay!

With my abundance of stitching time, I managed to finish part 2 of Iris B that I'm stitching with Sticklounge.  I have made changes to the charted colors just because I didn't feel like ordering what I was missing opting to stitch from my stash instead.  The gold is the only major change.  It was charted as a darker gold color instead of the antique gold I'm using.  I'm still happy with the way it looks though.

A tale of two finishes!

  Last Monday, one of my kids stayed home sick from school.  So what is any self respecting stitcher to do when her child is sleeping?  Stitch!!  I finished page 23 Monday night.  Then there was that book that caught my attention and kept me from stitching a couple of days or I would have finished page 24 earlier.  Here's page 23.  I've personalized it with my name and the year started and finished.

I started building a doll bed for my niece in November.  Then Dad died so I really had no interest in it for a bit.  Friday, my MIL and SIL came to visit so finishing became a priority so I could send it back with them.  It was just a matter of screwing some things together, cutting and sewing some fabric to go around some foam and lots and lots of blanket stitch around some fleece.  I ended up with a fairly large piece after I cut the fleece for the bed, so I stitched around the larger piece to so Eden would have a blanket that matched her doll bed.    Here's the result.  Not too bad if I do say so myself!

 Once I finally had a chance to sit down with my stitching, I was not too far off from finishing 1900 ABC.  So just after midnight, I was able to take it off the q-snaps for the last time.

Yes, I actually had two finishes yesterday.

After a quick iron, here's the result.  I absolutely love how it turned out!

2 pages

Just two pages to go on 1900 ABC for a finish that's been two and a half years in the making.  I know it's a bit wrinkly, but after I take a picture of each page, I jam all that fabric back under my q-snap covers until I have to move the q-snap again.  It's not really worth ironing (since I really don't like to iron) after each page. Soon...

Three pages to go

I think I really need to iron this but I'm not going to do that till I'm done stitching!

Saturday night, I finished page 21 of 1900 ABC.  Just three pages to go and the pages get narrower as I move across the row!

2013 new starts

I started a couple of projects from my 2013 WIPocalypse list today.

First there's Loara Standish.  She's stitched on 50ct Kingston that I coffee dyed so the fabric count is probably higher than that.  The count is a little bit of a challenge to start, but once I figured out the Standish stitch, it wasn't too bad.  I'm stitching with a silk conversion that was done on the HDF BB a couple of years ago.

Then there's Dorothy Walpole.  The chart is from the Scarlet Letter.  I converted the DMC listed on the chart to HDF and I'm stitching on a piece of 36ct linen from a HDF grab bag.  The linen color looks like a coffee color.  It wasn't marked since it was in a grab bag.

Here's hoping you all had lots of time to stitch and there were lots of fun starts today.  I'm going to put these new ones away for now and go back to 1900 ABC.  I finished the first band of stitching on page 21 last night.  I'm hoping I can get another band done tonight and I just got part 2 of Iris in my e-mail a little bit ago.  

Decisions, decisions.  It could be worse!  ;)