Slow, slow, slow

Would like to just sleep the day away. I want to be my cat today. I could just pretend to be him??? A little nap. Roll over. More sleep. Get a drink. Nothing new in the food dish. Find a sunny spot. Take a bath. Another nap. Play with a wine cork. Lick a spot on the floor. Streeeeetch. Run up the stairs. Meow. Run down the stairs. Meow. Curl up in basket and sleep on head. Stand up. Streeeeeetch. Turn around. Curl up on other side in basket. Ah the good life.

What I'm Doing

What I'm doing that may prevent me from stitching:

sewing a sleeve for a curtain rod on the back of an Afghani rug that DH brought back from the Middle East in 1998.

I've got about 12 inches attached, it's about 44 inches wide and I need to handsew on the both the top and bottom. It's killing my hand. Not to mention the darn thing is heavy. I think I'll try working on it on a table later. It's so hard to push that needle through the tightly woven wool.

JCS Ornament Issue '07

Okay. I retract yesterday's comment about pages numbers for the photos on the direction pages. I see them now. For some of them. Not for all of them. One year they used bold type for the photo page number. Those of us who are getting older appreciate that. I like being able to flip back and forth quickly without a lot of hunting around.

I'd give this issue a C+. My initial reaction was that there were only two must stitch these ornies. Monsterbubbles' Eiffel Tower and Jemini Designs' Woodlands Woodpecker.

Starting on page 10, the first page of designs - all kind of red and green with the majority showing stockings. Boring, boring, boring. The sampler goddess in me likes the Hands to Work sampler style design, but not enough to stitch it. The flat ornament finishing instructions that are used to finish the bellpulls from the Sweetheart Tree and Julia Lucas Designs are extremely generic. And not useful if you follow them literally. Thistle Threads is still flogging their Tokens and Trifles perforated paper shapes, but couldn't she have designed something pretty instead of a tartan plaid with that lime green color? Props to Legacy Designs for using a different technique - darning stitch, but I'd have used a darker green than GAST Grape Leaf.

Page 12 - Red and Green. M Designs - wait isn't that a third version of a no-bake cookie? Noel in the Tree - it's different, but not for me. Nordic Needle , I kind of like this one. Colors work. Moss Creek's Goodwill Horse. Is this the only designer who got a whole two pages? I like it. It's different in a good way. Everything else on this page is boring.

Page 14 - Brittercup's Poinsettia - now she's doing for flora what she's done for fauna. Good job. But someone should have stopped her story about there being no Santa. Scrooge. The Workbasket's Christmas House - cute and an interesting finishing technique with the felt. Homespun Elegance - it's trying to appeal to sampler goddess but the addition of charms makes it a no-no. Crowns and reindeer? What was she thinking? La-D-Da's Yule Flower. Simple, but elegant. Would make a lovely necklace. But could we have photographed this piece stitched on dark fabric against something light? I missed it entirely the first 3 times I looked through this magazine.

Page 16 - The Santa Page. Can I just run away screaming? Let's see. Santa has things growing out of his head. Looks like he's carrying a bag of plum pudding. Is making scary eyes at Rudolph. Has a big, big nose. Is wearing nerd glasses. I'll admit to sort of liking Twisted Oaks Santa in the Moon. But that's simply my love of red talking. Missing the number 9, but I think we can figure it out.

Page 18 - On to the trees. Umm. Erica Michael's Quiet Night is pretty. There are two number 5s because they put in two pieces from Follow the Leader. But didn't put them together in the photograph. What a dumb idea.

Page 20 - Shepherd's Bush Printworks. "their sweet baby kept?" Kept what? the English major in me is cringing. What were they trying to say here? And a broccoli recipe for Christmas? Come on. Get real. Cross Eyed Cricket - "Keeping Watch" Mitten.
What does a mitten have to do with the shepherds keeping watch? It's a pretty mitten. Why spoil it with buttons? Forget-Me-Not in Stitches. Good execution. Love seeing the nun stitch. Country Cottage Needleworks - boring, but okay. I think I have a huge problem though with her chosen version of Luke 2:14 - "and on earth peace among men with whom He is pleased." I may come back to this another day. Little by Little Merry and Bright - another design that would benefit from being photographed against a lighter background.

Page 22 - Yeah for Monsterbubbles. Not afraid to show us something non-traditional. Love it. Boo for Charlotte's Web My Mum's Doll - because she's scaring me. Poor Imaginating - the design is one page and the floss guide is on the next page. Bad layout design, people.

page 24 - I'd being stitch both the woodpecker and the cardinal. The Stitchworks' Penguin is cute if you're into Happy Feet.

page 26 - for the most part - the angel pages. Wee Works' Golden Angel. Ugh. Token and Trifles mixed with a scrapbooking angel head and wings. It looks wrong. Charlotte's Collectibles' Hope Angel. How very precious moments. How pink. How sick.
Midsummer Night Designs' Christmas Angel - if I was going to stitch an angel, it would be this one. Prairie Moon's Joy - someone did a great finishing job. The Sunflower Seed - the name of this design is A Star, A Star not Christmas Poinsettia. Are there no copy editors working on this issue? Gentle Pursuit Designs - another one whose graph and stitch guide got separated. Also finishing instruction page numbers are wrong. And there are no real directions for how they attached the ribbon.

page 28 - Were these two pages designed for people who veered away from red and green? I love the Little House's Snow Bunnies. The Victorian Sampler gets 2+ pages. Nice to see something challenging.


So what's missing here? Not a single design for Chanukah or Kwanzaa or Festivus. I, personally, think this says something.

Next year please hire a copy editor. Please?

JCS Ornament Issue '07

I've had the issue for nearly one week now. My first comment would be - I don't know how you managed to make this mistake again, but if you're looking at a chart, there is no page number there so you can quickly reference the picture. They've made this mistake before and then corrected it with a subsequent issue. Can't believe they let it slip again.

Will comment on the designs tonight or tomorrow. I'll do it before reading any blogs as I've haven't read a review yet and you'll get my unfiltered opinion.

Dead Battery

Need to recharge the camera battery otherwise I'd have a progress picture. I brought home a spare piece of fabric a few weeks ago from the shop. Owner had started something on it and didn't like how it was turning out. She'd picked out her stitches and was trying to decide on a different fiber when we realized instead of trying to stitch in red, she should stitch in white on a red fabric. I picked out a design that would fit on this piece of fabric - whose name escapes me. Something Potato? I'll ask on Thursday. But the shop was missing 2 of the 4 fibers so I changed the colors.

It's Keslynn's Celestial which can be seen here: http://keslyns.com/images/large/celestaillg.jpg

The original is stitched on canvas. And my colors are more towards turquoise.
Waterlilies "Peacock"
Crescent Colours "Bunny Honey"
Soy Lustre "Shadows"
and a gold Petit Treasure Braid

This is the first time I've used a Soy Lustre and it's very nice. Subtle shading and it has a good feel and great coverage.

RIP, Robert Jordan

Thank you for the wonderful world of the Wheel of Time. You'll be sorely missed.

Still Here

Just haven't been online much in the past few days. Real life interferes sometimes. Which is a good thing.

I'm off to play with my sewing machine. Wish me luck. The poor baby is probably going to be tempermental - been a long time since it had a check-up.

Priscilla Progress pic

 

Okay. Sorry I didn't get to post this yesterday. But this is where I'm at right now. Working on the leaves at her feet. And then I'll start working on the left wing. She's kinda lopsided this way, isn't she?

A One Winged Wonder

I've finished one wing on Priscilla. And to see if my decision to stitch her wings in blocks instead of just straight across made any difference, I did the backstitching last night. I should know better than to ask the man how it looks. He spent the rest of the night making up compliments after I took offense at his original comment. (I didn't know she was going to be green. Not quite what I was looking for. Good thing I don't need his validation.)

My verdict: it would have been stripy if I had stitched straight across. It accidentally is stripy in some places because of how the colors fell. But I think it was worth the extra time. My fault for choosing to replace my skein with one that had more variation.

Hmmm. Now I'm wondering if I can end another paragraph with a v---tion word. I could choose something easy like vacation? Okay. So like I just typed something as someting and when I do that I hear a certain French Canadian voice in my head. Ah Collette. She sure can talk a blue streak. Let's see, how about vindication? I got sidetracked but haven't totally forgotten what I was doing. But it kind of has to come naturally so I could type sort of stream of consciousness for a bit and see what happens. I could ask if DS has had his last vacination? I could wonder about that vibration? I could ask for an evaluation? Now this is just plain wrong. Maybe I've wondered far enough off the stitching path. Look I am in violation!

The end.

Color Comments on Crescent fibers

Um. What can I say about this? I don't want to sound like I'm complaining because I'm not. But. Her fibers have some wild variations. We've all noticed it at my LNS especially when hanging new fibers. If you compare new to what's already on the rack there are obvious differences. I know overdyeds are supposed to have variations. But. There have been some that are so different you wouldn't think they were the meant to be the same color at all.

I've got a friend who is stitching the Halloween Fairy, too. Her Dandelion Stem green looked nothing like mine. I liked hers better because there was more variation. So I checked the Dandelion Stem in the store. Two older skeins which looked nothing like the newer skeins, which looked nothing like my skein which had come with the kit.

Now. I've got to say that from the first time I stitched with Crescent Colours early this year, I fell in love. The coverage is great. Makes GAST and Weeks look wimpy. And the silks. Wow. I had the pleasure last Thursday of checking off an invoice of her Belle Soie silks. So soft. So pretty. So scrumptious.