2014 - Staying Connected, Week Five

The coming two weeks are likely to be good times to stitch: more snow (somewhere around 6 inches) forecast for tonight and yet another storm hovering on the horizon for Sunday. We already had the showiest January on record for this neck of the woods, to say nothing of being at 10th place in snowiest winter season on record. I don't remember it ever being this cold, this snowy this "wintery" before in my life. Good stitching weather! I am trying to fit in annual medical appointments around all that snow and it is also tax time so I will have plenty to keep me occupied off the stitching front.  

This week, after completing the latest TAST stitches, I concentrated on the first "Roll Your Own" mandala this week, completing the outline on February 1 and starting the colors the same day. I have to say, I really liked the look of that outline on the chosen fabric (Iris Garden, 32ct Lugana, from Silkweaver) and was tempted to leave it without the filling color! 

After all, the fabric is gorgeous (OK, my husband HATES that fabric --- he says it looks like someone goofed and dropped bleach on it or something!) and the black really set it off... But I had no desire to stitch all in black for the next several months (it took at least a month to do that outline, and besides, the Elizabeth Almond SAL is blackwork so there will be MORE black to stitch!).  I was curious to see how the Tropical Seas colorway looked, so I began, one color at a time. Here is is with three colors complete and a fourth color one-quarter of the way through:

True, it obscures the fabric but it really does  complement the fabric as well. If I leave appropriate borders, I will get the best of both worlds, I think.

Two hours a night is about all I can handle in Roll Your Own --- I'm finding that 32ct a little hard to focus on and I'm trying to minimize frogging. So this will NOT be a fast piece to be stitched...

I didn't accomplish much else in the way of stitchery this week. I'm still waiting for the fabric for the Elizabeth Almond "Save a Stitch" SAL (three installments are already published!) and there is the Crazy Quilt Journal block and the Bead Journal February ATC/ornament to do, so it's not as though I don't have alternate projects to take the strain off my eyes. It's more like I lack sufficient motivation to take up another piece after those two eye-straining hours...