WIPocalypse for August's "Blue Moon"!

What did I do this past "moon"? 

Well, there were 

• the Take a Stitch Tuesday stitches: Cast On stitch, Pekinese Stitch, Linked Double Chain and sheaf stitch. The completed TAST "page" for August is:

• The August Stash Buster from Janet Perry 
• The August Mittens & Mini-Socks form Janet Perry --- both a mitten and a sock 
• The August Color Through the Ages from Janet Perry 
• the August parts for "Kimono - Revisited":

• The August Color Palette Challenge/Crazy Quilt Journal/Bead Journal Project block
• and quite a bit on "Birds of a Feather":

Basically caught up, but tomorrow there will e more Kimono sections, Tuesday will bring another TAST, and there are certainly Mittens & Mini-socks, Color through the Ages twinchies and stash busters waiting n the wings as well.

I'm already collecting charts and ideas for next year's fair theme (Kitchens and cookery) sand hope to start kitting up a few of those soon (and other entry candidates) soon. Meanwhile, my craft space is crying out for a little heavy-duty clean-up and organize time.

From now on... my new blog home(s) are:

"Carol Stitches" on Weebly - http://210920746822434353.weebly.com/index.html where you can subscribe so I can see if there are any comments and where the photos are BIG, easily seen and unlimited!

Alternatively, you can try "Carol Stitches" on mirrored on ipernity  - http://www.ipernity.com/blog/carolstitches  where the albums are more like Multiply (I'm not totally caught up there, however nor am I going to try to catch up on blog posts --- they start in mid-August) but the photos are tiny in the blog posts and there is no follow-me capability.I am now a paid member there as well, so my photos are all visible... and will remain so as long as I am paid up (they have unlimited storage but unless one is a paid member, only the most recent 1000 photos are visible. I don't have near that many yet but...).

And finally, reluctant as I am to pay for an account, it might be safer so there is a third "mirror" at BlogSpot... also called  "Carol Stitches" (I mean, how imaginative can I get?) at http://carolstitches.blogspot.co where I have finally deciphered how to set up a follow me account but pictures, since they get loaded into Picasa, may eventually start fading away since I am not sure I want to pay for their premium... Also, I haven't yet caught up with blog post transfers here and may never unless Multiply supplies an export specifically for Blogger.

There will be no more blog posts or album downloads made here... I'm only keepin gte site active until a) they provide an export tool (looking HIGHLY unlikely), b) shut me down on December 1 and/or 3) I get all my stuff transferred to both ipernity and Blogspot...

2102 - A Year of Challenges, Week 34: Take a Stitch Tuesday and Color Through the Ages

Catching up on "smalls"!

Take a Stitch Tuesday, Week 34, was the "Linked Double Chain". I did it as both a straight line and a meander, using perle cotton:

Color Through The Ages, Lesson 6, was "Colors of the Amish" and took the form of a log cabin quilt block:

Yeah, I know --- it doesn't look a lot like a log cabin to me either --- I tried to stick to the colors the Amish around here wear --- purples and blue, and sadly, in my stash, they aren't different enough to really show the log cabin effect. Anyway, I used DMC floss throughout: 301 for the border; 666 for the corners and the centers of each log cabin block; 824, 825 and 826 for the blues; and 794, 793 and 792 for the purples.

Perhaps it if weren't on a twinchie and each "log" were more than one row thick, it might show up better, but I think I need to check my color choices on swatches before setting stitches in the final piece (it's too darned hard to rip out a mistake on this canvas with floss).

Two completions yesterday

In the Janet Perry Mittens & Mini-Socks bargello "club", I finished the "Japanese Maple" set for August. 

On 18 ct canvas, I used DMC Variegate 106 for the "Japanese Maple" strip and DMC987 for the background. DMC 500 is the cuff.

As is my wont, I misread the directions and, thinking the background Ms. Perry stitched on her model was in a variegated, I searched my stash in vain for a green variegated or overdyed in a particular shade of gray green and failed miserably. It wasn't until I was stitching the cuff that I realized she used two shades of green in the background. Oops!

So maybe mine isn't a Japanese maple but the sugar maple in our backyard that invariably has one branch go bright orange red in the fall weeks before the rest of the tree changes color...

Take a Stitch Tuesday - Week 33 (a week late)

The stitch for week 33 was Pekinese Stitch and I realized that I had used it before but didn't know that was what it was called! Check out those swirls, and the border of the rusty-colored circle bottom right:

Anyway, here is what I stitched out last night using GAST for the backstich and perle cotton for the loops:

Don't forget --- I'm cross-posting at Weebly and Blogspot and will be until I get one or the other site up and running or this site goes down.

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.

International Hermit and Stitch Weekend - August 2012

See also http://210920746822434353.weebly.com/1/post/2012/08/international-hermit-and-stitch-weekend-august-2012.html or http://carolstitches.blogspot.com/2012/08/international-hermit-and-stitch-weekend.html for the same post...

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.