Week Twenty, May 21, 2015

Finally, the cold (disease --- I won't swear to the weather yet!)  appears to be gone (knock on wood) and I started stitching again! 

First of all, I stitched a memory block for a quilt our online cross-stitching group is making for the family of a dear stitching friend who passed away from cancer. I show pictures in my last post, about the International Hermit and Stitch Weekend. 

And then I picked up my long-neglected Crazy Quilt Journal/Bead Journal block which I had made for April and reassigned it to May (I'll do a new block for April when I put together on for June and hopefully, will be back on track by July!)!  I got in a lot of seam treatments and started beading and got this far...

I'm calling it "May Flowers" - not very original but easier to stitch than three days at a rubber stamping convention! The yellow silk is from an embroidered scrap given me by an online friend and I continued the leaves out into neighboring scraps to show tress leafing out in our garden. The row of little red flowers along the green lace are meant to be tulips, while the blue-green leaves along the whipped zig-zag chain stitch above the tulips are the leaves of hostas growing almost before our eyes! eaves. And the beading below the green lace are meant to be roots of the daylilies only just beginning to show their leaves. There is more beading to come and then this block will be finished! YAY!

I'll finish with a few of the flowers now growing in husband's garden - the first clematis of the year, some azaleas, and some tree peonies!

International Hermit and Stitch Weekend - May 15 - 17, 2015

I did it! I stitched! Not a lot but I finally felt up to stitchery. The nasty cold is gone! Yay!

And what I stitched was necessary... an embroidered quilt block for a memory quilt for a dear friend who passed away a few weeks ago from a particularly nasty cancer. Her favorite color was purple and she was very fond of daffodils so I tried my best to satisfy both. 

Although my flowers are the right color, they aren't daffs but I hope they suffice.

Stitched on MCG Textiles 32 ct Pewter linen using DMC floss, based on a design from Mary Corbett's Stitched Sampler Alphabet...

I was going to work on crazy quilt/bead journal blocks but I couldn't find my crazy quilt stencils! AAACK! Nothing like a fruitless search for a tool to put me off a project. I have two sets, but, having searched all the likely locations (and several unlikely ones), I have concluded that both have gone walkabout! So I ordered a third set, a sure guarantee that the other two will show their shiny little template selves as soon as the new ones arrive!

But at least I can focus on needlework now, so the coming months should be a little more rewarding than the last six weeks!

Weeks Eighteen (May 7, 2015) and Eighteen (May 14, 2105)

Two more weeks with no stitchery to report. I'm finally over the cold although I still seem to be tired all the time. So... 

This past week has been a test of my "cure". First, on May 3, my husband and I took a day trip tp Detroit to visit our dear friends (and former colleagues) who now live in west Virginia but who have a son, daughter-in-law and grandchild who live in the absolute center of Detroit city! Talk about an organized day! Coffee at Astro, brunch down the street, The Hetry Ford Musuem, the Detroit Institute of Art (to see the Diego Rivera murals), pie at She Pie, and a walk around the Ana Scripps Whitman Conservatory on Belle Isle! Needless to say, this was testing my ability to keep going without falling asleep or coughing myself silly. I made it, but just barely! 

Then, On May 6 - 9, it was Novi, Michigan with my Girls' Night Out buddies at the Great Lakes Megameet., where we walked and shopped and ate and walked and shopped some more. Broke my budget for some time to come and my legs were exhausted but the cough seems to be gone and I am now able to make it through the day without a nap for the first time in over a month! Hooray! 

Came home to this beautiful sight--- all in one day of sun and warmth (which immediately left the area the next day and has yet to return):

I have hopes to get in some stitching this weekend. Perhaps International Hermit and Stitch Weekend this weekend will encourage me to get to work. I hope so. It's hard to motivate when one has been totally away form a craft for so long...

I have one quilt journal/bead journal block waiting, originally intended for April, but I think it may be reassigned to another month and I will start again for April this weekend, and also get one assembled for May (adn even June?) as well. I also have fabric and floss pulled and a free embroidery pattern selected for a memorial quilt for a dear friend who died recently. I hope to get the pattern transferred this weekend and maybe even some stitching done on that as well. 

WIPocalypse 2015 - The Full Flower Moon (or the Full Corn Moon or the Milk Moon if you prefer!) May 4, 2015

So far, no topic has been posted for this month so I will proceed to my progress, such as it was(NOT)...

A pretty sad month to report on as I was ill for most of it and I can't focus on stitchery when coughing and with a nasty headache and fever. In fact, I only worked on one piece since the last WIPocalypse.

At quilt guild in April, a friend loaned me a copy of the pattern her EGA group in Naples, FL is using for their charity giving and I told her I' do a couple for her to send along with her own. It is a sampler to be framed and given to recipients of Habitat for Humanity homes. I managed to get in two before the nasty illness felled me. I will give them to her at our next meeting next week.

There was a little stitching done on my goals (outline "Jan" for the roll Your Own Mandala piece, do some fill on the "Save the Stitches" and work on my Quilt Journal Project/Bead Journal Project piece for April. I got part of the outline done, finished up block 13 on "Save the Stitches" and assembled a basic block for the April Quilt Journal/Bead Jounralpiece. 

And that's it... nothing ore. I'm woefully behind on all my goals, I will never get wither one of the BAPs ready for the fair this year and I now have to accept that I will somehow have to catch up on my quilt journal/bead journal piece. Also, I have committed to a quilt block for a memorial quilt a group of stitchers are doing for a dear friend who recently passed away after a five-year struggle against cancer. 

Not a happy situation and I can't predict how successful I will be at any of this as I am still pretty much out of stitching action with whatever that illness is... Besides, there is a stamping convention at the end of this week and a road trip in early June for Husband's National Daylily Conference which will interfere with all of this, to say nothing of the probability that all this traveling will knock me back in the recovery cycle. Keep your fingers crossed for me, please?

International Hermit and Stitch Weekend, April 17 - 19 (andWeeks Sixteen, April 23, 2015 and Seventeen, April 30, 2015)

Perhaps you can tell from the title, but two weeks have passed and I still have that sinus infection and nasty recurring cough. Not something I can stitch with. So I missed IHSW altogether (I was at my sickest then) and didn't get in a single stitch during all of weeks Sixteen and Seventeen of this year. So sad...

So, to pass the time, some photos of my husband's garden! The daffs are past their prime but the tulips are in full bloom:

the Rhodies are blooming by the lake:

and the dogwood and redbud trees are just starting to blossom:

High temps for the first week of May are all supposed to be in the seventies! Spring --- maybe even summer --- is definitely here!

No, to get my stitching mojo back. Hmmm, how long will this cough and general malaise last, do you think?