International Hermit and Stitch Weekend, February 20 - 22, 2015

I finally dug out some stitchery over the weekend and put in several hours embroidering and beading a crazy quilt block for the Crazy Quilt Journal Project 2015. I had originally intended the base block to be for January but, it took a turn and I made it into my February block (January will be started as soon as I acquire some foundation fabric!). Since it is reasonably heavily beaded, I also want to make this my Bead Journal Project entry for February. ( I was undecided on whether or not to do BJP this year, given time constraints, but decided that I would return to my dual entries like the ones I stitched in 2012. Might as well kill two birds with one stone and I do miss the beading!).

International Hermit and Stitch Weekend (IHSW), November 21 - 23

I have lots of things I could have stitched on this weekend, most pressing of which were "Save the Stitches (I'm WAY behind in outlining and have over 10 blocks to fill in) and RYO "Bride" (Stuck on color four). And the Bead Journal piece for November is kitted but not started. But...

the John Clayton "Golfer - Fairway" was ALMOST done and calling my name --- only his trousers and the backstitching were left as of Thursday night, so...

Now he's done (except for the framing) and I can move on!

Sunday night, I finished up color four in the RYO mandala "Bride":

That leaves the BJP piece for November and Save the Stitches. Do you think I'll have much stitching time with family coming for Thanksgiving (not only do I need to cook but the dining room table is buried under jigsaw puzzles and financial records!) and a football game on the weekend!?

International Hermit and Stitch Weekend, February 21 - 23, 2014

I started a new piece just for the weekend (and because I had finished my first  "Roll Your Own" mandala and wasn't ready to start on the second mandala of the series!). My new project is "Save the Stitches", a blackwork sampler SAL from Elizabeth Almond. This how far I got this weekend on parts 1, 2 and 3 for the SAL: the outline and 3.5 of16 fill patterns:

I changed out things a little from the pattern since I wasn't too keen on using DMC metallics and I don't have the colors called for in Kreinik. So... out came the same set of DMC colors I'm using for "Roll Your Own" - two blues (DMC 312 and 798)and a green (DMC 3850). You might be able to see the colors better here in this closeup:

I have to pick out some beads still but the beading will be the last thing I do on this.

Oh, and the last of the indoor Christmas decorations came down on Friday night (yes, I now, a full month and a half late... and the ornaments probably are in the wrong boxes and bins but it is done and back in the storage room!) and the tax booklet for our accountant was completed Sunday afternoon (and copied and FedExed out this morning). So , in all, a good weekend!

International Hermit & Stitch Weekend for December, 2012

Well, I promised that I would work on Michael Powell's "Home Sampler" and I did. Not having touched it since November 30, when it looked like this:

I think I made some good progress over the weekend, despite a spate of Christmas shopping with husband:

I doubt it will be done by the end of the year but soon after...

2012 - A Year of Challenges - Week Fifty

Well, aside from the finishes posted earlier this week (TAST, "Birds of a Feather" and Mittens & Mini-Socks "Sea and Sky"), I have no works in progress to show you... I haven't touched the Michael Powell "Home Sampler" since November 30 so it's on the agenda for this weekend's International Hermit and Stitch Weekend! Look for photos on Monday!

International Hermit & Stitch Weekend, November, 2012

As promised, I worked almost exclusively on "Birds of a Feather" and its border speciality stitches. In all 288 individual detached chain stitches (AKA Lazy Daisies):

Next step - metallic stitches in the border --- Just couldn't face that last night so I moved on to finish up a "tree" in the "Home" sampler: 

Doesn't look like a lot of progress on either piece but it was over seven hours of stitching. And over all, the stitch count for the week-long Stitchathon at Cross Stitch Crazy was 307 chain stitches and 2193 cross and half-cross stitches! Not bad considering how lousy I have felt all week!

2012 - A Year of Challenges - Week Forty-Six

In addition to week forty-six of Take a Stitch Tuesday (the checkered chain), I stitched on a new start this week --- a Michael Powell piece called "Home Sampler" (I had a case of startitis):

and a little on "Birds of a Feather" (Note the lazy daisy stitches on the left border and the red diamond eyelets on the rest of the border):

This weekend is International Hermit and Stitch Weekend for November and I plan on putting more tie into "Birds..." despite my dislike of lazy daisy stitches! But I haven't been feeling well all week so, we shall see on Monday if I make any real progress on either piece.

International Hermit & Stitch Weekend, October 19 - 21, 2012

I put in roughly 9 hours of stitching over the three days of ISHW and finished all the corner squares in the border of "Birds of a Feather" and started on the backstitching (the top right and right center blocks are all backstitched now)...  not that you can really see a difference between here:

and what I had reported on Saturday... or in this ridiculously small picture.

There were 12 detatched lazy daisies in each border block, as well as a couched grid-work held down by upright cross stitches in the center of each. In addition, I found several sections of gold braid cross-stitch I had missed out first time around in the rectangular blocks on the sides...

Overall, a good finish for the Cross Stitch Crazy Weeklong Stitchalong (3799 stitches in all, through the week) and ISHW.

International Hermit & Stitch Weekend - September 14 - 16, 2012

I put in a total of 2032 stitches in on "Birds of a Feather" this weekend and only have two more DMC colors to go before I have to start on metallics, speciality stitches and beads! So it was a good weekend!

International Hermit and Stitch Weekend - August 2012

I spent the entire weekend stitching on "Birds of a Feather" and managed to finish four of the eight pages of chart done in the dark blue (and this pattern is devouring skeins of floss at an alarming rate!).

Two counting errors, one of which I know how to fudge and the other, not so sure...but once this dark blue is in, then the rest will be fairly simple filling stitches.

This was also the August Stitchathon over at Cross Stitch Crazy and I got 2723 stitches done on "Birds of a Feather" between Monday the 13th and Sunday the 19th. Of course, I neglected other projects to get to this stitching goal --- TAST week 34 isn't done nor is the latest Color Through the Ages (yet to be kitted up) or the latest Mitten & Mini-Sock or the remaining 11 August sections for "Kimono - Revisited"! So this coming week will definitely be a catch-up week.

COMMENT from Multiply:  tashacat wrote on Aug 21 That's great progress. You made good use of your weekend.