Week Twenty-Six, June 30, 2016

Sitting here in a hotel room in Louisville, KY, where even the bathroom light are less than 20W, there is only one flat surface in the room to put my laptop (a tint round table with legs in all the wrong places, and a large “leather” chair with no wheel that is too high of the table!), and no free breakfasts (so I’m drinking the in-room swill that passes for coffee). Oh, and it has a HUGE balcony (overlooking a parking lot and an airport runway) with NO FURNITURE on it! Needless to say, this blog post will likely be very short, as my back will not tolerate much more of this!

I did stitch this past week, a little at least. I am finished with color #6 and  a little more than halfway through color #7 (of 12):

Needless to say, there will be no cross stitch in this hotel room, because even though I did bring my portable Ott light, there is no place with a plug close enough to where I can sit and stitch that will allow me to place the light, so... But i do have my traveling needlepoint piece, “Palm Tree Elegance” with me and it will take center stage, at least until we depart the lovely Airport Hotel and Conference Center. (See Louisville, you say? Well, this place is in the middle of the most awful spaghetti junction of interstates you may ever have seen and Louisville proper is at least more than 10 miles from here. Can’t walk anywhere and I don’t drive my husband’s car so…)

See you all next week!

Week Twenty-Five, June 23, 2016

After making my WIPocalypse report for June, 2016, I decided to “force” myself to put in at least two hours every night until this report was due. And I was successful, completing color #5 (of 12) and a little more than 50% of color #6 by last night:

If I could keep up this pace, and it we weren’t traveling for the last weekend of June, I possibly could get “Roll Your Own” ready for framing and entry in the 2016 county fair. But I doubt my resolve, I really don’t want to make any mistakes (when I hurry, I often end up frogging as much as I stitch) and a road trip and hotel room are not suitable places for good progress on this BAP. So don’t expect good progress next week!

WIPocalypse 2016 - June 20 (and the first day of summer!)

This full moon, we are asked: “Do you find yourself more productive with stitching in summer or winter?” And I have to answer that there is probably no difference. I stitch at night for the most part, with my daylight-quality lamp, so longer days in summer don’t really make a difference amor the shorter days of winter. I stitch indoors so temperature is not an issue. There are different demands on my time and impacts on my mojo with each season: I really can’t stitch effectively when I’m suffering from a full-blown sinus headache (winter colds and summer allergies bring that on) or a nasty cough (winter colds again), winter holiday events take away from stitching time as do summer road trips, etc. But all in all, I think it balances out.

Last WIPocalypse, my goals were stated as: “to keep plugging away on “Return” and see how far I can get this summer”. Other activities on my agenda were:

• My vegetable garden - It is doing fairly well, considering the heat and lack of rain, which means daily soakings from the hose are in order. 
• My paper crafting is up-to-date -  although new challenges keep coming in weekly so that is a never-ending battle. 
• Reading - I’m stalled out on a new book on my iPad, but the upcoming road trip to Louisville may remedy that. 

As for “Roll Your Own”, last Wipocalypse, I had  the outline of “Return” just barely started, Now, that outline is complete as are three (of twelve) fill colors and the fourth color is roughly 75% complete:

Pretty good considering I probably only stitched two nights a week on average since the last WIPocalypse. 

Here is where the entire piece is today:

Given issues with my quilt guild website, I’m thinking of creating a new one on Weebly and I intend to put some of the hotel time in Louisville in on that, to say nothing of my traveling needlepoint piece. Still, that trip is only for six days (including travel time) so there is plenty of time left in the next reporting period to make some progress on “Return”. I’ve two charts on order - one for a late wedding gift for one niece and the other for a birth announcement for another (startitis is lurking in the corner) and since I don’t expect to get “Roll Your Own” ready of this year’s fair, I may just start one of those if it arrives before we leave. 

So we shall see in July just how far “Roll Your Own” has come! Can we say “Keep on keeping on!”?

Week Twenty-Four, June 16, 2016

Color # 2 is complete and color #3 is 25% done on “Return”! 

Progress is slow but sure - counting all these partial patterns is always an issue with me, and I always seem to miss one out and only find it one or two colors on. 

It's been too darned hot to stitch, especially for early June. I dread what July and August will be bringing if this continues...

Meanwhile, I so have a case of start-itis — even though I don’t have a pattern picked out that appeals to me. Maybe it’s not so much start-itis as “tired of all this blue and green”!  Road trip in two weeks and the needlepoint is back out, Maybe that will cure the issue…

Week Twenty-Three, June 9, 2016

I really didn’t feel like stitching this week but I forced myself to put in roughly two hours per night for three nights and got almost all of color #1 (of 12) into “Return”. 

It’s a very dark blue so it may be hard to see against the black outline, but there’s only one small line in a motif in the upper right corner to go (and a missed black stitch in the same corner ) and then I’ll be ready to move on with color #2!

Quilt Guild tonight and husband’s garden is on a tour on Saturday so there will be some interruptions to stitching…

Week Twenty-Two, June 2, 2016

Outline complete! I didn’t make it by the end of May like I had hoped, but it was all down to a massive frog that crept in while I wasn’t looking (the entire left side had to be redone due to a miscount!) which lost me a day. Still, now “Return” is ready for it’s color!

And here is the final layout:

Now, if only I can keep up the progress on this.