I only worked a half-day today since our office holiday party started at noon and I wasn’t going to attend. Just not wanting to be in a room with a big crowd of people for the afternoon who less than a week ago were likely visiting with all their “germy” friends and family from far and wide for Thanksgiving. Just wasn’t comfortable attendinge so I worked from home for the morning and this afternoon had a grocery order delivered and now to stitching (since I’ve dithered away most of the afternoon putzing with other stuff.)
Finally some FORWARD progress on The First Thanksgiving rather than all the BACKWARD progress.
I still need to finish the bunting at the top (and finish ripping out a bit). I had stitched the left side bunting that is all completed and then moved to that center section below the center red star before realizing that things were not center, symmetrical, etc. in the chart, which would drive me nuts. So I stitched in the red star, to center it above the center of the border around the date (which is MY center of chart) and had to take out both flag poles (one due to my own error) and restitch those. I had started the top right bunting working towards center and realized no that will be off so ripped that all back out to deal with making fit after I finish all the rest. I’ll save the flags and one bird that is missing in the area for later now that I have the border in below that area and know that the inset with the colony buildings will be centered. I counted and recounted and recounted so many times one night and can finally move on and have started the ship masts and buildings. There will be changes I need to make to other sections below that are not spaced symmetrically but I don’t have to worry about that until after I finish the buildings section and it will be easier to do as I work downward since I won’t have parts of two different sections in place like before to try to make work with each other. Hopefully things will move along a big more quickly now. I definitely won’t be passing this chart along for chart adoption because in my opinion it’s a mess and I have totally marked it all up with scribbles and arrows and notes to myself, but I am determined to press on since hopefully the worst is behind me. My plan at the moment is to stitch on this until the evening of December 5 when I will switch to my St. Nicholas Eve start, for which I still need to choose fabric and get the DMC on floss tags (or maybe I already did the floss – can’t remember). It’s a Prairie Schooler ornament and should be a quick stitch.
And in my search for something else, I found these most wonderful wooden ornament blanks. It’s amazing all the things you can find on Etsy when searching “wooden ornament blanks” or just “wooden blanks.” I haven’t located what I was looking for yet, but couldn’t resist these when I saw them.
Like the sleds I started stitching shortly after Christmas last year for gifts for this year, these may be my gifts for next Christmas. I thought the snowflake cutouts were so pretty and of course the first thing I thought was – wonder if I can mount a cross stitch piece in that middle section. There are different styles and different sizes so I’m doing some plotting and planning for additional ones I want to purchase after all the holiday mailing rush is done. And I also have some charts in mind for a couple of them.
And, the sleds were gifted to the bosses this week so they would have them early for decorating this year and they got rave reviews. When I told them they were stitched on paper, they thought I was even more magical than they already know I am. 🙂 They were the perfect gift.
Now to some stitching…..
Justquiltin with Denise Russart 