The Wood County Fair!

I'm going to blow my horn here as all four of the pieces I entered won blues. Of course, I don't know how many were the only entries in their category... I won't know that until the newspaper prints final fair results in several weeks. But meanwhile, I am quite happy with the outcome as the prize money will mean I broke even with my entry fee! 

Framed Sampler in the cross stitch on 32-ct fabric:

Framed picture in needlepoint:

Speciality stitching, counted thread:

and Fair Theme ("Love is in the Air" --- needed to be red or pink, a flower or love-theme), framed picture:

2014 - Staying Connected, Week Thirty

Got sidetracked a lot this week.

First, Saturday was taken up with taking my four stitched pieces to the fair reception and checking them in for the judging, supposed to take place Saturday and Sunday afternoons. So, on opening day (Monday), naturally, I went to see how I did. Would you believe - the building was closed to the public for JUDGING! I was/am furious - that visit cost me my free ticket of entry! Haven't been back since... Quilt Day is Thursday and I volunteered to help set up (and it is also Senior Day, so I get in free). I will see if I can find my stuff then...

Meanwhile, the beading mood didn't strike so I spent a lot of time in my crafting space stitching together six blocks from the 2013 Crazy Quilt Journal Project Challenge. Here are the blocks form July through December:

Six to go and then borders, batting and backing...

I finally got out the beads on Sunday and Tuesday nights and made some progress on my July Bead Journal Project piece:

That Snowy Owl who never went home? Now he thinks he's an eagle, a very patriotic one at that! 

Now I need to come up with an idea for August...

The rest of the time, it was catch-up with the Create 2014 classes I took at the end of May - I got 12 cards that had been started but not finished completed as well as a Tim Holtz folio. Only one more piece to go and that will wrap that class up with a nice big ribbon! Pics of these pieces are on my stamping blog...

It's been a cool summer (Monday night/Tuesday morning broke a record for low temperatures!) --- cool enough to afflict half of my tomatoes with verticillum wilt but not wet enough to make the other half happy. Meanwhile, Husband has been busy replacing trees we lost last winter in the super cold. Tuesday, a crabapple took the place of the standard cottoneaster... and now the displaced hostas, daylilies and astilbe need to be replanted! Even perennial gardens require constant upkeep!

Take a Stitch Tuesday - Stitches 122 - & 123

Stitch #122 is the Chained Bar (on the left in the photo below) while stitch #123 is the Woven Chained Bar (on the right). 

I really like this one --- if I didn't hate stitching with metallics, I could see the chain stitch in gold over a ribbon or even a fuzzy yarn. But I do hate stitching with metallics so I stopped with perle cotton!

2014 - Staying Connected, Week Twenty-nine

but... I haven't done any stitching since I reported in on Sunday about International Hermit & Stitch Weekend. 

I did do some papercrafting, entering challenge #7 of the Compendium of Curiosities 3 Challenge and clearing the decks of six unfinished cards from May 30 and the Create 2014 event, and have posted them on my Carol Stamps blog.

Otherwise, it's been a mad whirlwind of appointments, catching up with plumbers, building inspectors (we needed a permit to install a hot water heat!), hair cutters, pharmacists, etc. Hopefully, this weekend will bring some stitching time because I am WAY behind!

International Hermit and Stitch Weekend, July 18 - 20.

The quilt guild "Christmas in July" brunch (rescheduled form the snowed-out annual December brunch) pretty much messed up Saturday as an all-day stitching day. In addition, Saturday was the day that the 7th Compendium of Curiosities 3 Challenge was issued and I really HAD to look into my supplies to see if I had the necessary stash to work with, to say nothing of an idea to work from. Still. I did manage to catch up a little on my stitchery "obligations"...

Usually, I try to stitch on the Elizabeth Almond "Save the Stitches" SAL, where I am about two months behind, but I am also behind on Take a Stitch Tuesday (four stitches worth) and the July Bead Journal Project atc/ornament. SO this weekend, I tried to spread my time among the three projects...

So, on Friday, I started on TAST. The stitches to be stitched are/were:

#118 - Beaded Buttonhole Stitch

#119 - Woven Trellis Stitch

##120 - 121 - Double Herringbone (top)  and Twisted Lattice (bottom) Stitches

I also did some seam treatments on my partially assembled 6 blocks for the Crazy Quilt Journal Project Challenge - a large lazy daisy on the intersection of the four pink corners of blocks on the left (I also repaired the lazy daisy that had come free in the same location) and an extension of the yellow stem stitch and French Knot flowers on the green, blue and yellow intersection on the right. 

I decided against adding anything to the teal pieces on the far right.

On Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon, I started the beading on my July Bead Journal Project atc/ornament. As you can see, my every-other-month Snowy Owl is wrapping himself in patriotic colors for July:

Sunday night was dedicated to the Elizabeth Almond "Save the Stitches" SAL, where I managed to complete the outlines for blocks 12 and 13 (Now I have blocks 11 - 14 to stitch with blackwork fill stitches!):

Not as productive a weekend as I had hoped (it felt more like a rotation than dedicated stitchery and I'm finding I'm not as productive on rotations), but, overall, not a bad IHSW!

2014 - Staying Connected, Week Twenty-eight

Still catching up from our road trip - and from four hours (and $65 consultation fees with dlink's subcontractor) on Sunday on the office floor, in the corner, with a flashlight and a telephone with a rapidly fading battery, trying to get our modem/router to work after being 24 hours offline with Roadrunner. I did finally get all the magazines read (or at least skimmed), all the bills paid (of course, more have rolled in), all the laundry done (but not folded or put away), and the internet working (no thanks to either Roadrunner or dlink --- it was husband's IT friend Cory that figured out what was wrong and he had it in less than 15 minutes!). But all that meant little time for stitchery.

During the week, I prepped my July Bead Journal Project atc/ornament (sketch, bead selection, etc) and did a fabric selection for the July Crazy quilt Journal Project block. I also stitched together the January-through-June blocks for this year to determine just what additional work needs doing:

There is one Lazy daisy that has come undone and one intersection of blocks that is out of alignment and calling for beads or stitchery or something (Note the two blue arrows). A buttonhole wheel slipped a bit in the upper left block as well (but it is fixed now). I also want to extend the yellow stem stitching from the top right block into the top middle block, maybe right down to that little arrow and beyond. Decisions, decisions! But that will be later. Meanwhile, Monday night, I did some stitching and completed the July block!

WIPocalypse, July 12, 2014 (the Super/Blue Moon)

This month's theme question is "Do you start your holiday stitching this early?  If so, what do you hope to accomplish this year?"

In the past, I have done holiday ornaments (I can decorate two Christmas trees with the ornaments I have made in the last decade or two),  and I have made two or three gifts (for people that I KNOW will appreciate the theme and the work that went into producing the item) in that same time period, but, as a rule,  I don't do holiday stitchery. I don't stitch well to schedule and I have few people on my gift list that I feel would appreciate a handmade gift. 

So what do I hope to accomplish this year? Maybe a dozen beaded ornaments (which have as their primary purpose meeting the monthly goals of the Bead Journal Project Challenge). Other than that, nothing holiday related at all!

Since last Wipocalypse  my stitchery  included:

• The Tracy Horner RYO mandala SAL, where I have started the outline for "Bride" 
• The Elizabeth Almond "Save the Stitches" SAL, where I have outlined blocks 10 and 11 
• Take a Stitch Tuesday - Beaded Vandyke and Bullion Vandyke 
• June Crazy Quilt Block Project Challenge - completed
• June Bead Journal Project atc/ornament - completed

I also took my traveling needlepoint project, "Palm Tree Elegance" on our road trip and managed to get in a scant number of stitches. 
And I purchased a small kit "Biltmore" to pass the time on bus tours which also has a few stitches (one page of four, one color) done.

I had two completions from earlier this year framed and entered them along with two form late 2013 in the upcoming county fair. 

Still a WIP and fast approaching UDO status is the Funk and Weber hemstitching class which has been totally ignored.

So, for this next month, my to-do list includes

• The Tracy Horner RYO mandala SAL -  the outline for "Bride"
• The Elizabeth Almond "Save the Stitches" SAL - the fill stitches in blocks 10 and 11, ( blocks 12 and 13 are printed out and need to be outlined and filled as well)
• Take a Stitch Tuesday - Stitches 117 through 120 are now printed but not stitches, and there will surely be more coming 
• July Crazy Quilt Block Project Challenge - gridded and fabrics chosen. I am also sewing together the Jan through June blocks and investigating further seam treatments on assembled rows...
• June Bead Journal Project atc/ornament - sketched and beads chosen

"Palm Tree Elegance" is back in the traveling bag. "Biltmore" MAY come out but I need to identify some of the threads before I proceed.

The Funk & Weber class on hemstitching MAY get tackled so I can have it done (or at least as much as it will be done) before the August class on bookmarks starts...

Traveling plays havoc with my stitchery and 9 states in 14 days has resulted in a backlog of household chores demanding immediate attention, to say nothing of exhaustion taking the edge off my stitching mojo. Another road trip is coming up in August so I really need to buckle down and catch up on something --- if not my stitchery, then my rest! we shall see how I fare next month!

2014 - Staying Connected, Week Twenty-Seven

Since last Wednesday, we drove --- a LOT! And did a lot of sightseeing as well. On Thursday, after the film and cyclorama at the visitor's center, we had a two-hour guided driving tour of the Gettysburg National Military Park.

 On Friday, we went blueberry picking at Frog Eye Farm (Charlie picked six pounds and when we got home, we froze six quarts!). 

Saturday was a LONG drive home through Maryland, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio, fighting our car's version of Siri all the way (she had totally different ideas of the route we should have taken but we beat her version home by an hour, so we won! LOL).

Besides all that touring in the past week, it was the usual clean-up chores upon arriving home: unpacking (and the laundry that goes with that), sorting two weeks of newspapers and mail (and trying to catch up with the news, bills and magazines that go with that chore), doing the grocery shopping, picking up my framed needlework and entering them in the fair:

along with two other pieces framed last December:

picking beans and cucumbers from my garden:

(and buying replacement plants for the now-spent bush bean plants - next generation will be strawberries!), making return calls to the five valid calls on our answering machine (there were 36 actual calls, 31 of which were dead air from the ubiquitous unknown caller!) and setting up appointments with the plumber, the building inspector and my hair cutter! A logistics nightmare when I am still exhausted from the trip but it's done!

And not a single stitch!

2014 - Staying Connected, Week Twenty-Six

A busy week, but not for stitching! After last Wednesday's report from Georgetown, South Carolina, we headed north to Asheville, NC for the American Hemerocalis Society national convention. First day was spent touring the Billtmore Estate:

where I bought a little "souvenir" kid to stitch while I waited for the other 300+ people to finish with the gardens and the winery tour:

This pretty much wiped out the day. Next day was a bus tour of three gardens, all daylilies, although one had chickens:

and one had the daylily named for my husband:

The next day was another three garden bus tour but I opted out and this is when I manage to get in some stitchery.

Then, on Sunday, t was a drive north of Dublin Virginia (near where some old friends from grad school were living and we did a lot of driving on the Blue ridge Parkway but I forgot yo take my camera0), followed the next day by another drive to Harper's Ferry, West Virginia.

After recovering from the drive, it was an evening drive to Antietam National Battlefield.

July 1 saw us headed in to the District of Columbia for a walk through the Dumbarton Oaks gardens (hotter than blazes, by the way):

followed by a limeade and mango sorbet at Tom Sweet's in Georgetown (to rehydrate) and then a dusk walk through the WW II Memorial:

and the FDR Memorial (where my camera's memory card filled up... plan ahead, right?):

Today was more walking , but in air conditioned comfort in the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center of the Air & Space Museum (at Dulles Airport):

Tomorrow, it's a guided tour of the Gettysburg National Battlefield! and on July 4, fireworks in Leesburg, VA (We had planned to see fireworks at Antietam but it turns out they have scheduled theirs for July 5! And while the fireworks on the Mall in DC are tempting we are leaving on Saturday for the long long drive back to NW Ohio...). When home, it will be time to pick up some needlework at the framers and rush to get it and two other entries in the fair before the deadline midweek! Add to that the fact that our first CSA pickup is scheduled for the 8th, and the laundry buildup on this two-week road trip will be calling my name, I expect very little more stitching before next Wednesday. 

And already, there are three TAST stitches and one more RYO Mandala in my inbox to download and stitch, to say nothing of the July Crazy Quilt Journal Block (at least it's is planned out, although fabric choices still need to be made) and the July Bead Journal ATC/ornament (I have an idea but nothing more) to be done, I doubt the traveling needlepoint or the Biltmore souvenir will get any more work done, to say nothing of Save the Stitches and "Bride" of Roll Your Own... 

Falling behinder and behinder!!!