Week Twelve, March 26, 2015

After the conclusion of International Hermit and Stitch Weekend  http://210920746822434353.weebly.com/my-stitchery-journal/international-hermit-and-stitch-weekend-march-20-22, where I accomplished very little, I got back into the stitching groove Monday night and finished my March Crazy Quilt Journal Project/Bead Journal Project block:

March came in like a lion with another snowstorm with significant accumulation (the top left) but, in mid month a sudden thaw occurred where all the snow disappeared and green shoots were found in teh garden (lower right. Unfortunately, the thaw was short-lived as snow reappeared on the 23rd and the 26th, (and more is forecast for the next weekend) so there is still snow (lace) on the ground where the daffodils and daylilies dared to make an appearance!

Girls' Night Out interfered with stitching on Tuesday, but on Wednesday, "Marcia", the first of the "Spawn" of Roll Your Own, came out of the project bag and the first two colors were put in (well, color two is only about 2/4 done):

It's looking pretty dark right now but that is just a result of how I choose when and which colors I  stitch (or at least I hope so. If not, this surely is going to look strange with the much brighter large mandalas). 

International Hermit and Stitch Weekend - March 20 - 22

I had all sorts of plans for this weekend but they were disrupted when my routine was highjacked by a dinner engagement with husband's daylily friends from Columbus. That meant a 2 hour drive to, and another 2 hour drive from --- we haven't driven that far for dinner since we lived in car-centric Northern California! And it pretty much wiped out Sunday evening!

So all I managed ot stitch this weekend was a part of Block 12 in "Save the Stitches" - five of seven fill patterns, but without color:

Sadly, if I had just managed those last two patterns *and* the color, I would be half-way through this piece! Oh well, here's hoping I "recover" from this setback and get stitching in force this week!

Week Eleven, March 19, 2015

The whole week conspired to keep me away from stitchery. Following my "Well Woman" exam on Tuesday last (where I found I had a mild tendency towards dementia! AAACK!), there was the appointment with our new accountant on Wednesday (where we finalized taxes) and a quilt guild meeting on Thursday night (which ran unusually long), there was a mammogram on Friday at an obscenely early hour (no results yet which is probably good news). 

And then the taxes reared their ugly head again! Yesterday, we both got notices that the State was checking to see if we were who we said we were on our taxes! So I had to spend a ridiculous time on hold waiting for a live person (if you can call government employees "live persons") so I could respond to two letters saying they were checking our identity security for our state tax returns (their web site records don't match out copies of submitted returns and therefore would not enter us into the system to take the "quiz" online).

Then, to really ruin my Friday, I opened up my laptop, only to find that Firefox had, somehow, been closed, losing ALL my windows (and therefore all my regularly visited web sites) which meant I had to reconstruct them from memory. Given my memory (after all, I AM a senior citizen of three score and ten plus years and my memory isn't what it used to be for details like that!), both of these functions did not do my mood any good.

And it distracted me from my primary purpose this morning, which is to report in on stitchery progress. Lo!, there was progress! I kept to my goal and stitched two days each on ongoing projects and have pictures to prove it!

First of all is the March Crazy Quilt Journal/Bead Journal Project piece, which I assembled on Friday and stitched on Wednesday night! 

Beads to follow.

Then there was "Save the Stitches" where "Block 11" was completed!

Next up, Block 12...

And finally, there is the Roll Your Own mandala piece, where the outline for "Marcia" (Part 1 of "Spawn") was completed and locations of the outlines for "Jan" and for "Cindy" were identified and the outlines were started... 

Color next for "Marcia", I think, and the completion of the "Jan" and "Cindy" outlines will wait until I get that center block done.

I think I'll keep up the nights nights each project and see how far it takes me. Here's hoping this next week is a lot less frustrating!

Week Ten, March 12, 2015

In this week, my plan was to get some of the filling stitches into "Save the Stitches" and I did manage that - all of Block 10 is now complete: 

And I started the outline for the first of the three "Spawn" in the Roll Your Own" mandalas. Marcia is centered directly under "Reloaded: (I decided to start with "Marcia" because 'she" was the largest of the three "Spawn"). The outline is now a little more than half done:

I also planned out the March Crazy Quilt Journal/Bead Journal block and selected fabrics in "March Colors": purple, aqua, black and white (with a touch of green). No stitching on it yet...

Quilt Guild pot luck is tonight so I won't be able to get back to work tonight but, after my mammogram on Friday (the last of 6 medical appointments in this first two weeks of March! AAARGH!) and a necessary shop for grocery pantry supplies (out pantry is so bare of basics that it looks like we will starve in the next few weeks unless I get out there and work the supermarket aisles), I should have a clear road ahead this weekend... I think, at least for a while, I will continue on this informal rotation of two nights on "Marcia", two nights on "Save the Stitches" and two nights on the CQJ/BJP piece...

Meanwhile, we are in the middle of a thaw --- that time of year when the melting snow is filthy grey, the ground beneath is so saturated the corn fields look like shallow lakes, the river is partially thawed and there is nothing but brown visible in the landscape. Here's hoping, however, that this thaw is not a false spring and warmer days are ahead...

WIPocalypse 2015, March 5 - The Worm Moon (and the smallest full moon of 2015)

This month's topic is: "If money – and time – were not limiters, what projects would be on your stitching bucket list?"

Well, I'm not really sure how to answer this. I subscribe to a number of stitchery magazines and have a HUGE stash of charts (some kitted, most not) as well as a slowly diminishing stash of fabric (I really need to replace some of the linens) and floss. I know that my taste has changed over the last four decades of stitchery and most of those charts will never be stitched (although I have issues with getting rid of them... is hoarding part of crafting? I suspect so) but I have a huge library to draw on should I wish to splurge. In this instance, time is the limiting factor! But the project I would LOVE to tackle is one of Michael Powell's series of village scenes, be it Tuscany or Venice or rural England (or even the newest French one)...

If money were no object, however, I would really stock up on fabric, floss, embellishments and the like. These are the "consumables" in this craft and I do go through them like water. There was a time when money was no object here but no more and I have to be very selective, especially when it comes to the more pricey hand-dyed and overdyed fabrics and flosses.

So...

Last month, I set the following goal: to get "...my mojo back and will have stitchery to report progress on!" Well, I think I did accomplish that!

I stitched, and completed:

• Crazy QuiltJournal Project/Bead Journal Project pieces for January and February 
• "Bride", the third Roll Your Own mandala designed by Tracy Horner

In the coming "moon", I hope to start at least one of the three "Spawn" in the Roll Your Own series, start on the fill for some of the "Save the Stitches" by Elizabeth Almond (she has a new SAL starting this month and a smaller chart  in the latest "Just Cross Stitch" magazine and I am already getting start-itis) and complete the March entry into my combined Crazy Quilt Journal Project/Bead Journal Project for 2015.

Week Nine, March 5, 2015

Well, finally stitching again, and it seems that one of the primary causes of my losing my stitching mojo (the lack of stitching time availalble on our cruise to the South Pacific, not the nasty cold I caught coming home) is still in my mind. Notice the color scheme of Tropical Seas which seems to carry throughout this week's completions!

"Bride", the third mandala in the Roll Your Own series designed by Tracey Horner, is now complete!

I stitched it in the Tropical Seas color palette on Silkweaver's Iris Garden (32 ct Jobelin), next to it's predecessors, "Roll Your Own" and "Reloaded":

Now, onto the next installment, "Spawn"!

I also stitched on my January Crazy Quilt Journal/Bead Journal Project piece:

It represents our two week cruise in French Polynesia, where the blue of the sky and water and the colorful tropical reef fish were the major influence on my life in January.... So I tried to portray a Polynesian atoll in beads and stitchery. I did the seaweeds in floss (although there was very little in the way of living seaweed in the lagoons where we were, there were a lot on the ocean sides of reefs) and the corals in seed beads. Mother of pearl buttons became the fish (we saw similar fish when there) and a strip of ivory gimp, studded with white, blue and turquoise seed beads represent the horizon (waves crashing over the reef, or the raised surface of a motu - aka one of the islands of raised reef which make up the atoll which surrounds a lagoon and separates it from the ocean proper). 

Next up, March. And some stitching on "Save the Stitches" and maybe even start the outline for one of the "Spawn". We shall see.