Finished! And Birthday #1

I finished the Nutcracker cross stitch!

My sister-in-law, who also does stitchery, shares my first initial.  So I imagine, some centuries down the line, our pieces in museum collections somewhere, getting conflated. :)

I have started on another piece, also Christmas themed, from the same magazine.  After it's done, I can put the magazine away.  And, putting on my Big Girl Panties, I've decided to level up my skills a notch and stitch it on even weave linen.  28-count linen translates to 14-count Aida, though, so it's essentially the same gauge and I'm using the same needle.  I'm 3/4 done with the outermost border, and haven't screwed it up so far.

And we had a birthday in our family this week!  Squiddle is now ten years old, and will be getting a kitten in a week or so, as soon as the rest of the kitten supplies he wanted have arrived.  But he's also very Pokemon obsessed, so I tried my best at decorating a cake for him.

He was so excited and said that a Pikachu cake was even better than the rainbow cake he had requested.  At which point I informed him that his cake was, in fact, both:

His cup, I think, ranneth over.

Catching Up

Whoop, I missed a week!  I'll excuse myself by saying we had visitors from overseas, my mother-in-law and sister-in-law.  (Hi, Mary!  Hi Kate!)  They flew home yesterday, so today has been stripping and remaking all four beds, and doing a good bit of laundry.

I did a little bit of quilting stuff while they were here - helped Mary get her next quilt basted, and worked on some blocks from the Gig Harbor guild's brown bag abandoned WIP challenge, as well as helping the pair of them go through my (too many) totes of fabric and take what they wanted.  I also submitted three quilts to be shown in the guild's show in October.  One is the rainbow bed quilt I made for Squiddle a couple years ago; the other two are my red hearts and teal windmills mini quilts.

And, I took Kate with to this month's meeting, where Marie Bostwick gave a very good talk about being an artist.  It still feels weird that someone whose books I have been reading for years now lives in the same town and belongs to the same guild I do.  I purchased Marie's newest book, asked her to sign one of the older ones, and also bought her first Cobbled Court book as a gift for Mary to read on the plane. 

And I maaaay have purchased some things off the Treasure Table.

A bag of dinosaur fabrics to become this year's Christmas quilt for a certain 6yo boy.

A selection of fabrics for various projects.

A few magazines, some oversized rick-rack, and two patterns.  The one on the right is in the lead to be this year's Christmas quilt for a certain 9yo boy.

There were two separate stacks of Disney princess squares (same size) so I grabbed those, and this purple that goes with...

...and then I went digging in my own boxes yesterday, unearthing these, which also go with.  (I think there is still one more Frozen-themed remnant out there somewhere, but I haven't found it yet.)  These will make 6yo Niecelet's Christmas quilt.

And, speaking of Christmas, I'm almost done on the Nutcracker cross-stitch!

I just need to finish the backstitching on the rightmost nutcracker, and then I get to worry about washing and pressing it, finding a frame, getting it laced, and purchasing a mat.

One More Done

I'm on a pause for a few other crafty projects that I really should be plugging away on.  But at least I have continued to work on the Nutcracker cross-stitch.  And last night I finished the Santa nutcracker and started in on the next soldier nutcracker....

Two more to go, and then this project will be done!

Misc. Stuffs

A few weeks ago we went waterfall hunting up the Olympic Peninsula and found two.  Ludlow Falls was less than impressive (though the walk through old growth forest was indeed very nice on a hot day), but Rocky Brook Falls is a new favorite!  Just enough scrabbling over boulders to keep Squiddle and Jazzy entertained, and their parents stretched.

Next time we'll bring swimsuits and be prepared to at least do wading in that lovely pool at the bottom. And there was a neat branch fence in the parking area:

Meantime, I have been working away at the cross-stitch project, and Santa nutcracker actually looks like a Santa now.

I have only the white to do (cuffs, beard and whiskers, hat bobble), and then the backstitching.  Maybe I'll have him done by next weekend?

The garden is beginning to produce cucumbers.  My raspberries are all done in for the year, but right on time the blackberry bushes are finally ripening.  We've found a new use for the McDonalds Halloween Happy Meal buckets we got last year, as the boys and I went and picked in the bushes in the far corner of the tract last night.  Well, Squiddle and I used our buckets.  Jazzy just conveyed the berries directly into his mouth. ^_^

Messes, Un-messes, and Progress

Ugh.  Yesterday I started cleaning up my work area in the workroom.  And, of course, in order to tidy, you first have to make a mess:

But!  On the bright side, I got a small ongoing project done.

At some point in the past I'd bought a small sack of 2" squares.  Many of which got sewn into my current project, on the right.  But finally I've finished getting them all neatly stacked, as you can see in the two containers.  Now what to make with the rest of them....

And, of course, I've been stitching along on my cross-stitch project whenever the boys are in their swimming or rock climbing classes.

The soldier nutcracker is done, and I'm now working on the Santa nutcracker.

Charity Quilt Top

I had guild meeting this week - and it's the one of the three guilds I'm in that I'm currently attending.  Kind of have to, since I'm Secretary.  The other two... well, one meets during the day, and the boys are on summer vacation, so that's currently out.  The other one I haven't been to in quite a while, as I can't take Squiddle to his vision therapy and make it to the meeting.  But at some point he'll be done with that, who knows when.

Anyhow!  I had undertaken to make two more blocks of this set, after the guild's last sew-in, and make them into a top.  But none of the blocks went together!  Since the Rainbow Scrap Challenge color of the month was red, I rifled through the bins of fabric I have for my guild's charity blocks, and pulled a few different reds.  And a cow print.  Sometimes, if nothing works together, you just have to go for a fabulous border, right?

The colors, I swear, were a bit richer in reality than they are in the photo.  But, regardless, scraps used up, top turned in, at some point it'll be a gender-neutral gift for some kid in the hospital or foster care.  Win!

That said, I am feeling a bit melancholy about not being at Costume College right now.  Though, as I understand it, there was a hotel workers strike going on last week, which I don't know if it's still continuing or if it's impacting the convention in any way.  I'm also getting hit with a bit of cognitive dissonance when I see pictures - the convention is at a new hotel this year, only the third since I started going.  The new hotel is quite close to LAX, which would make it very convenient for out-of-towners like me....  Maybe next year.  Hopefully Jazzy won't have Summer Boost school for reading improvement, if so.  Though at least that's done!  (Three weeks, getting him to school by 9 and picking up at noon, half an hour drive each way since, because of insufficient enrollment, the program at the local school was cancelled.  Not to mention afternoon swimming and rock climbing lessons for both boys.)

A Second Nutcracker Enters The Stage

 

Weekly update photo!  I've been working on this during my boys' swimming, rock climbing, and vision therapy sessions, as well as at other assorted times.  Most of which they don't have this coming week, so progress will be slower.  But all the backstitching on Herr Drosselmeyer is done.  Dark brown backstitching on top of black, by the way?  Is painful, tedious, and hard to see.  Bleh!