Flying Down to...

I'm headed south today to meet my sister and visit my mom.

On the first leg of my trip I finished this little candy cane with Planet Earth wools. Fabulous thread to stitch with. Nice and smooth for a wool.

I started it at Dulles and finished before my plane landed in Atlanta.

Now I am suffering from a weather delay and have picked up a slightly larger piece -  one of Anne Stradal's lighthouse ornaments. I have two with me. But am wondering how my black thread didn't make it into my bag. If this delay goes on too long, I may make significant progress.

Challenge Update

So here are two of my UFO challenge pieces. They need to be finished in March. I've got a month. Easy, peasy.

I just need to attach beads to the purple one -  that's Ruth Dilts' Mystic.

And the other one is Laura Perrin's Pacific Coast Collage. I've got some corners to stitch, some background to basket weave, and some beads to attach.

I've got two more pieces that I gave up on. I'll owe $10 to the Guild for those.

Three out of five - I'm good with that.

Bad

I have been deficient on the taking of photos. Again.

Two weeks ago I spent a huge part of my day refinishing a piece to enter in the Woodlawn Needlework Show. It was my guild challenge piece from 2012 and because I am a procrastinator, I didn't do proper finishing in 2012.

Basically I had pinned it to foam core and pinned ribbon around the edge. Trust me, that was a lot of pins to remove. My ultimate goal was a flat fold stand up. I located my finishing supplies and my instructions and then was nearly stymied by not having any orange fabric in my fabric stash.

Then I remembered my supplies for this year's challenge, which is the color orange. I had the perfect piece. But alas I am bad at following directions and by the time my husband got home, I had made an irreversible error. My only hope now was a patch job. Which I managed to do. By the time I finished I was pretty darn pleases with my work. But it would have been way easier to not make a mistake to begin with.

All this effort and I forgot to take a picture. Sigh.

I also finished a needlepoint piece that's gone off for finishing into a pillow. No photo there either.

Meanwhile I'm plugging away at two UFOs. Trying to finish 3 out of 5 in a UFO challenge.

Anyone see a challenge theme going on here in my needlework life? Apparently that's what I need to get motivated :-D

Fenway

Yeah! Got my Fenway canvas back from the finisher yesterday. She went with her instincts and used this wonderful old-fashioned red ticking fabric. I love it.

Now I can make a third flag for the 2013 championship. Smiles all around here!

Color, Color, Everywhere

 That's right. Color makes me happy. But it also causes me torment when I can't find the color I see in my mind. Especially at work. When you pull threads for someone who is about to embark on needlepoint canvas, you wish desperately for more colors than you have. Which is funny when you work in a shop with lots of full lines of thread. It seems like there is always a color that you want that you don't have. 

These days I'm in love with Pepper Pot silks. But they need to make more colors. Specifically I'd like purples. They don't have enough purples. 

Some people are fine with a color that is similar to what is painted on the canvs. But other people want the thread to match the paint perfectly. It's just not going to happen all the time. Those darn people with the paint have a unlimited number of colors to work with. Which we don't have in the thread world. Still it's a fun game to play. I'm learning.

 Huh. Last year this is where I stopped stitching on my Kimono in February. The last weekend in January this year, I added to more areas - 56 stitched, 74 to go. I'm making this piece my major push for this year. Needs to finished in December. I'll try to post an update once a month on this. Nag me if you would like to. Because this needs to get finished.

 Just some pink photos. 'Cause I love pink. Almost as much as purple. I wish I lived closer to this little one. 

And yes, my acquisitions continue to pile up. I've got my hands on a Northern Lights Santa. And I've got most of the threads and plenty of the beads. Now to go study Jane of Chilly Hollow's blog about stitching this piece. I'm going to use her ideas as my starting point and use some of my own. Yes, there aren't enough hours in my days. He's all blue and white and silvery. Pretty much reflects my heritage in old country. You would need a beard and robe like that to keep warm walking around in the deep, dark night.