Runner Embroidery

Woohoo!  I've kept up with a daily post for a whole week now!  Which was not actually a New Year's resolution (that was to stop reading the news, because it only sent me into depressive cycles), but is still a good habit to keep up.

Here's the table runner I've started working on:

It's a WonderArt Creative Needlecrafts kit.  It did not come with the embroidery floss, and since dusty rose isn't really my color scheme, I pulled out a deep blue and a turquoise to embroider it in instead.  It's a poly/cotton fabric, and a really tight weave.

Here's as far as one working length of floss gets me.  The stamping is fairly light, so I have to have good light to work on it.

Snow and Scraps

We got another couple hours of snow yesterday afternoon, which left our lawn looking like this:

Sadly, it warmed up and rained overnight, so all the snow is gone again for a while.

Among other things, I pulled a couple of embroidery projects out of the bin yesterday and got them started.  Well, sort of started.  Started on the stamped runner; the counted cross stitch project I'm still gridding, ugh.  But here's a finished project, Scraps I!

It is 9.5" x 10.875". The free-motion quilting in the black border isn't the smoothest, but then I hadn't done FMQ in a while, so *shrug*.  The gray fabric behind it is the remnant I used for backing both this and Scraps II.

The Quilt Guild Meeting That Wasn't

Last night I went to the West Sound Quilters guild meeting.  Or at least I tried to!  It's now at a new location, so I left a little early, padding on time for figuring out parking and what door to go in, etcetera.  Which unfortunately was useless, because when I got there, the facility staff informed me and about four other cars of quilters that the meeting was cancelled and they were about to close up for the night.  When I got home, I checked my e-mail (as did a couple of the other ladies in the parking lot, finding nothing).  The notification e-mail was buried in my Promotions folder, and didn't include the name of the guild or anything.  Le sigh.

On the other hand, we had a bit of snow yesterday!  Half an inch at most, and it's now all melting away and won't be back for at least a week.  Still, a bit of a nice treat.  Here's my apple trees:

And here's one of the finished miniature quilts I was going to show off at guild last night:

Very simple quilting, and the black I used for the binding is the same as in the triangles.  I have now used up every scrap of that remnant save for a long skinny bit I've tossed in my bag for eventual string piecing.  It's 12" by 13.5".  The label calls it Scraps II (Scraps I to be shown tomorrow) and both are made up of scraps from the November meeting of Quilters By The Bay, which was a string piecing workshop.  Their meeting is next week, and I hope that one won't be cancelled too, as I'd like to join as a member!  (And show off these minis.)

The Embroidery of Night With Moon

Jazzy up at 5:15 this morning, which is at least improving in the right direction.  And it snowed a bit yesterday!  Just enough to speckle our roof, but from turning on the porch light just now and looking out the window, it looks like a little more fell overnight.  Time for extra careful driving!  I have errands to run after I take Jazzy to school, and quilt guild tonight.  For which I am trying to finish up the second of two mini quilts for show'n'tell.

But for blog show'n'tell, here's the project I mentioned yesterday, in which I ran out of brown with like one inch of straight stitching left: Bucilla 40743, Celestial Picture/Pillow!

This was another thrift store find, for $2 at 90% complete.  Which is frankly an insult to the amount of work someone put into this!  I still had a fair amount of topstitching to add to it, as well as that little moon on the bottom left, but there's a reason I put the "Unknown" stitcher before myself when I signed and dated it.  Next steps are to soak it with some mild detergent to get the oil of fingers off, then take it to be mounted, matted, and framed.  I'm thinking it might go in one of the boys' bedrooms?  I need to start putting art up on our walls.   We never had much up at Greenwood, but this is a much bigger house, and I feel the need to display tasteful geekery.

Pink Pinwheels

Up at 4am again.  Thank you, Jazzy.  But he took a long nap after burning his fingertips on the stove yesterday, and kept dozing off yesterday evening so I guess it's not a surprise that he's awake again now.

Ever since I was pregnant with Squiddle and thus spending a reasonably high amount of free time in doctors' offices, I've had a take-along hand embroidery project.  Actually a couple!  They're for whenever I'm in a waiting room (on the theory that as soon as I pull out something to do, someone will appear to interrupt that by taking me back into the office) or when I'm sitting and listening in a quilt guild meeting, needing something mindless to do with my hands.

My latest stamped embroidery project has been this:

It's from a Jack Dempsey Needle Art kit, and I probably picked it up at a thrift story or garage/estate sale or a quilt guild fundraiser, because while the kit was supposed to have six blocks, by the time it came to me it only had four.  They finish at 18" square, and have blue dotted lines where you're supposed to quilt, which will theoretically soak out afterwards.

And I just finished the last one yesterday!  I ran out of the pink with half of one "petal" left to go, so I had to buy a whole 'nother skein just for that.  Still, less annoying than the time I had to buy another skein with literally less than two inches of straight stitch left (more on that project tomorrow).  And after I got the extra pink embroidery floss, it took me less than ten minutes to finish the project.

I know I want to do a 2x2 setting for these blocks, on point, which will give me a ~50" square.  Add a border or two onto that and it'll be a decent-sized throw quilt.  I just have to find the right fabrics to go with the embroidery.  Ugh!  I'm trying not to buy fabric because I'm drowning in it, but I have the feeling that for this, I may have to.

And now I get to pick out a new take-along project from my stash of 'em!  Pillowcase, or table runner...?

Pitch Black and Raining

Ugh. Up at 4:45 with Jazzy this morning!  After getting up twice during the night because Squiddle has got whatever bug Wonderful Husband also developed yesterday.  Poor kid hasn't thrown up since he was an infant, so it was an unpleasant night for him.  Plus he'd had some black grapes as part of his dinner, so his vomit was dark pink, and I had to try and scrub it out of the gray carpet with some 409 and paper towels.  His bedding got tossed in the wash, and I'm hoping we did so promptly enough that the stains will come out.

On a slightly more pleasant note, I've finished two books so far this year!  The first was Tricks For Free, by Seanan McGuire, because somehow I'd read number nine of the InCryptid series before this one, which was number eight.  Now I've got some of the backstory that I was missing filled in.  Though Antimony is not my favorite member of the Price family to read; too much of a chip on her shoulder.  The other book (okay, manga, but it's just so beautiful!) I've finished was A Bride's Story, volume 11, by Kaoru Mori.  I wasn't really expecting to learn about colloidal photography, but it was an interesting diversion.  Overall, though, the story was kind of slow, so I'm looking forward to the next one.  Which just came out in Japan a month ago, so I guess I'll be waiting a while for the English version to arrive....

2020 Reappearance

A month later, I reappear!

Wonderful Husband and I took the boys to England for nearly four weeks over the holidays.  We spent the bulk of that time with his family in Southampton, but also hied up to Cambridge for a week over New Year's to visit our very dear friends Sergei and Morag and see/stay in the new third story of their house.  While we missed one of our traditional Christmas visit activities (riding on the Eastleigh miniature train), we did keep up with others (a post New Year's pantomime in Cambridge, this year Cinderella) and take a stab at making new ones (ten-pin bowling the day before leaving; I am horrible at bowling, and Wonderful Husband is awesome at it; nonetheless, a good time was had by all).  And I had the luxury of getting to see two movies in the theater while we were there: The Rise of Skywalker with Wonderful Husband and his father, and Frozen II with Squiddle and my mother-in-law.  Squiddle's first cinema experience!  I overall liked both films, but also have certain issues with each of them. *shrug*

And while we were in England, I got to give the Scrap Stars quilt to its intended recipients!  Despite my best efforts at obfuscation here on this blog, Sergei and Morag had guessed (or at least hoped) that it was for them, and it was!  Here's the finished object, with its matching pillowcases, displayed on my and Wonderful Husband's queen bed pre-departure (see the suitcase in the background):

And for the sake of the query: do you see dark circles first, or light stars?  Almost everyone's answer has been the circles, but I see the stars.  (And, huh, funnily enough to me now, one of the fifty-two dark fabrics in the quilt was from the first Frozen movie.  Sergei, Morag, a Where's Wally challenge for you: find the one square with a perfectly framed Elsa!)

Our return flight back out of Heathrow was delayed by two hours, but fortunately the airport has a children's play area, and equally fortunately my sister picked us up from the airport and drove us home.  It was raining relatively hard, and it had been a very long day.  Twenty-two hours, by the time we all tucked into bed!  And yet despite that, Jazzy woke at 4am this morning, so so did I, Squiddle wasn't abed much later, and Wonderful Husband got up around 5am.  I'm hoping we can beat the jetlag by Monday, since it's a school day!

Our lovely neighbor Marianne and her daughter Grace came over to feed our cat Sushi each day while we were gone, so he's healthy and wasn't too lonely, but unfortunately she's not as good at plants.  I think I can return all of them to health, but we'll see.  Good thing I gave them all a deep watering right before we left!