Janet Haigh Pratt 1883

You know I had to start something new after finishing off my weekend patriotic stitch, right? 🙂

Janet Haigh Pratt 1883 was sitting on the top of the stack having recently arrived so I wound the floss and got it on floss tags and pulled some fabric and I was off.

Such a sweet little stitch – stitched area will be about 6.5″.  I started across the top line but one strand is enough to do the two letters that are the same color but there’s thread left over so I hop down to a border that uses the same color on my needle or the next letters in the row below that use that color until I finish off the strand.  That’s why I’m working down as I work across.  I think this will be a quick one to stitch but tomorrow is the start of Summer Cross Stitch Camp so tomorrow night I plan to start on my little ornament.

In Full Glory Stitching Finished – 5-30-22

When I picked this stitch for my patriotic stitch for this weekend, I had set a goal for myself to start and finish it by tonight.   If I had not met that goal – no big deal – but sometimes I like to set some goals to see if things will take as long to stitch as I think and of course it all depends on what other stuff I get up to during that time period so you never know.

This time I met the goal.  I just put the final stitches in a little while ago.  My next goal will be to have it fully finished so it can be displayed by the 4th of July.  I left out one star because it made it too crowded for me and only used one of the called-for colors. I also backstitched my eagle’s head so it was more distinctive.  It was an easy and fun stitch.

 

I think I will be finishing it on wood blank.  It’s 1″ wide so will stand up on its own on a shelf or table etc. unless I find something else to use.

Hmmm now what will I stitch on for the rest of tonight?

6×4 in, unfinished wood rectangles for crafts 4-pack – Amazon

Pick a number between 1 and 20….

Well no – not you – I have already  picked a number between 1 and 20 (I’m my own little random number generator in this case)  and whoever leaves comment number (whatever I have picked) will be receiving the DMC Color chart and two plastic retangular embroidery hoops.  I like these hoops but they are a bit larger than I like to use – the pink is 12″ wide and the green is 10″.  I do use the two smaller ones of this set regularly, and  sometimes its nice to have a rectangular hoop rather than a round one since most charts are not round so you don’t have to move your hoop as much. The DMC color chart is just a color card book – not the version that has  actual floss swatches in it.    I have since gotten a DMC color chart with the actual threads in  so am going to pass the old one along.  I just folded out a couple sections – there are many more – to show you what it looked like inside.  It’s still a great reference if you are trying to swap out colors to see what the called-for DMC really is or if you are just planning your own color conversion from fancy floss to DMC.

So unlike other Flash Adoptions, there is no ‘name of a chart’ to include in your comment but all the other FCA rules apply.  If you DO NOT want to be eligible, please DO NOT leave a comment on this blog post.  And please only leave a comment if you intend to use these all these items yourself.  Thank you.

Edited to add — just to clarify, you do not need to leave a number in your comment.   I have picked a number, your comments show up in date/time order, so I will simply count the comments in that order until I get to the number I have chosen and whoever left that comment will be the recipient.

6-4-22 – FLASH ADOPTION IS CONCLUDED.  Congratulations Jill, you are the lucky recipient. I have emailed you.  🙂

Happy Memorial Day

Happy Memorial Day  – a day to remember all who have served to protect our country and gave their life doing so.  I can remember being in the elementary school and high school band and on Memorial Day we would hop on the bus to travel to the cemetery of each of the little towns that made up our school district to play at programs held at each one of them.   I also remember that many of those Memorial Days were a bit too hot to want to be standing out there in our wool band uniforms playing – today would be no exception  to that as heat and humidity continue to rise.  I hated those wool uniforms but they did come in handy when marching at fall football games – just not so good for the summer parades.

Anyway – here is where I left off last night on my Memorial weekend stitch.   A bit more red on the house, a bit more roof and chimneys and then there’s  just some stars to add in.  Unless I get sidetracked I should get this finished later today.

Fun Deliveries

Yes my new Firestick arrived, plugged it in, connected it to my Amazon account and in minutes I was back in business.  Now I can spend the evening catching up on Flosstubes and some other new programs I wanted to watch.  So that was fun delivery #1 (which also included new filter pads for my vacuum – not so fun but necessary).  And I just remembered I had grabbed the mail on the way back from breakfast and it was still in my bag.   In there was  the kit I had pre-ordered earlier this month which arrived probably a week ago but I hadn’t been out to the mailboxes this week yet since it had rained pretty much all week.

Here is Janet Haig Pratt 1883 from Heartstring Samplery.   Just a sweet little sampler.

There were several kit options available and I chose the chart and flosses option (since I’m not a linen stitcher).  Here’s the rest of what came in the kit – it just uses four flosses, there’s a little black ring to hang your floss drops on tied in that bundle where under the floss is a postcard showing the original sampler. Ther are also four gorgeous floss drop cards with vintage stitching stuff on them.    I

I may pull fabric so I can start on this one soon.  I plan to use 18 court and the finished stitched area will be approx. 6.5″ (it’s one stitch longer than wide so not a perfect square) and I do have a square frame that I think might be a good match for this as it has some green in it that might look good. Time will tell.

And that rain that we got earlier today – it was short lived but the sun is back out and it has made it so humid and steamy outside so the start of several hot and steamy days has begun.

Sunday May 29, 2022 Ramblings

First, a photo of the hill/woods outside my door.  It’s hard to believe that three weeks ago I took this photo when the leaves had finally just popped out on some little shrubs/small trees outside my door on the hill but the mature trees had no leaves yet. Only the hearty weeds/natives had started to appear on as the ground cover, and the vines on the fence next to the “condemned” birdhouse are bare.  (The bird house with the hole in the roof, tilted, etc., is stuck in the chain link fence and I cannot get it out.  I have seen birds around it so someone may have taken up residence so I will wait till fall to take a hammer to it to see if I can get it loose).  Anyway, last fall the owners of that land on the other side of the fence trimmed out several trees that were leaning precariously towards the apartment building so this year there was lots more sun getting to the ground cover as you can see by all the shrubs and scrub trees etc in the second photo.

This photo I took today – you can’t see much of the hill, let alone the crest of it since it’s all lushly filled in. And the birdhouse is being camouflaged by the vines on the fence.  All that rain has been good for something I guess.  And yes -it’s blooming season for those stinky purple flowers so I haven’t been able to open my door on the nice days because of my allergies to those flowers. Luckily they won’t last long.

Had breakfast out with a friend and now, after doing a bit of laundry, I will see what I can get up to.  I do have a couple items that are ready to be framed, but we shall see.  I’m actually not feeling real ambitious since I could not sleep last night.  But I may (or may not) get to some baking – I’ve been hungry for quiche again and there happens to be asparagus and diced ham in the fridge and asparagus quiche is my favorite.  And I keep threatening to make some banana bread – those random bananas scattered in my freezer need to get used so may do that tomorrow since I need to go take some butter out of the freezer for that.  But all that rambling aside, here’s where I left off on my patriotic stitch last night.

The eagle’s head shows up a bit better in person but I may go in an back stitch it later.  Eagle, flag, flower / flower pot done and started on door to house.  I’m hoping to get this finished today.

Last night I also pulled the flosses and found the fabric for my Cross Stitch Camp project for the June Challenge.  (Remember you can find all the info for summer Cross Stitch Camp at ColoradoCrossstitcher website or in her last flosstube.)  So for the June Challenge of a holiday-themed project, I have finally (yes not changing my mind again) decided to stitch Winter Bird by SubRosa.  I changed three of the colors from the called-for since I didn’t have them but the colors are similar.   I’ll be stitching it on 20 ct Peppercorn by Colour and Cotton which will make the stitching area about 5.125″ x 4.25″.  Got the floss on Camp floss drops, grabbed a project bag and I’m all set to start this on June 1.

And my Three Things Sampler chart and floss arrived.  I’ll be stitching this along with Judy starting on New Year’s Eve Eve (NYE is on a Saturday – why wait till Saturday when you can start it Friday night to kick off the New Year’s weekend).  We’d love to have you stitch along with us on it if anyone is interested.

Eventually I will get the DMC on floss drops but I’ll be using called-for colors, stitching on 20 ct Colour and Cotton in the color Salt Rock which is a very pretty pale gray that I think all the colors will show up nicely on.  The stitched area would be 13.125″ x 18″ if I stitch the whole thing.  I do plan to remove a section or two or three or maybe move into a different order.  This chart lends itself to stitching only certain areas so there’s all kinds of possibilities.  I know there’s one section I don’t particularly care for  and will decide on the other two as I go along.  But this has all gone into a project bag for now.  I do plan to make an enlarged working copy of the pages so that the symbols are easier to read at some point.

Also, if you have previously gotten this chart at some point but not yet stitched it, my copy of the chart came with an errata page for the top border called “Correction to top border” with just the top border reprinted on it.  Not sure when the correction was made as it doesn’t have a date.  It says “alternate upright flowers are worked in 926 and 927”.  On the original chart border the symbols are wrong for the alternating upright flowers – they are charted as all the blue flowers using the darker colors but if you look at the chart photo, two of them use lighter shades of blue so even if you don’t have the corrected chart, you can just substitute 926 and 927 for the darker colors in those two flowers by looking at the chart image for placement.

Okay enough rambling from me for now.  The sunshine of this morning – well that’s a thing of the past.  It’s raining and thundering now – so much for that sunny photo of the woods I took this morning.

When good technology goes bad….

My whole night was thrown off last night – suddenly my Firestick for my TV stopped working.  Occasionally it just needs a reboot of the wifi modem.  Did that many many times, rebooted my Spectrum box many times.  Phone was working (if internet was totally out my land line wouldn’t work), computer was working so wifi was up.  Did all the troubleshooting I could find online (which was all the stuff I had previously done) to no avail.  I finally gave up on it last night but realized how dependent I had become on the Firestick since I don’t have cable or satellite or things like that.  I don’t watch regular tv anymore expect for the news/weather; I mostly stream movies, Acorn and Britbox shows and watch Flosstube on my tv.  I finally started watching some old favorite movies on the DVD but all that messing around, waiting for things to boot back up, checking on line, etc. wasted a whole lot of stitching time! 🙂

This morning I thought maybe there was something with the tv itself so I plugged the Firestick into the tv in my sewing room and it did the same thing. So, a new Firestick has been ordered and will arrive tomorrow.  I can watch all the stuff I normally watch thru my Amazon Prime but watching on a lap top compared to the tv is just not fun.   In the grand scheme of things – this is all not a big deal but it was annoying to have my Friday nite stitching and flosstube interrupted.

Anyway, as I had said, I was planning to start a patriotic stitch this weekend and decided to stitch In Full Glory from the Blackbird Designs book Sweet Land of Liberty.  

When I went to pull the flosses, I decided I didn’t like several of them that were used or I didn’t have them.  So I think I only ended up pulling one called for thread and I’m using it to stitch a different section.  So I would have been much farther along if I hadn’t been messing with the Firestick for so long but here’s what I got done last night.   I got the border finished and the strawberries done, and a bit of a start on the flower pot.

It’s going to end up smaller than called for since the called for fabric was 30 count linen  (finished size on that was 5-3/8″ x 6-3/8″) and I’m using 18 count aida so the stitched area of mine will be about 3.5″ x 4.5″.   I may have found a new favorite green to add to my favorite greens’ list – The border/strawberry vines are stitched in WDW Moss which has some lovely shading in it and is more green than some of the frequently called for greens that look more like dried herb sort of greens (more tan). For the rest of the colors I’ve got a mix of WDW (Jaybird and Confederate Gray), CC (Shabby Sheep and Blacksmith Blue), and GA (Old Red Paint and Wood Trail).  The fabric is a scrap of 18 count I had left over from another project – not sure of the color name but its a ToDyeForFabricNMore aida and a bit darker, great mottling than the sunny day (yes we finally have sunshine tho rain expected later today) photo taking is showing.

And, I have some wooden blocks (rectangles about 1″ wide”) that I think this will fit on the front of so it can just stand up on its own.

So on to some chores and possibly a bit of baking.

Miss Bingley’s Library progress 5-27-22

I have made some good progress stitching on this chart this week.  Filled i all the windowpanes, finished the large expanse of roof and finished a lot of white on the house.   Last night I finally switched to stitching the words since I was tired of stitching white.

You may remember I’m rearranging the last two lines of text so it does not split the word “excellent” onto two lines.  I still have more white to stitch on the house.

But, Memorial Day weekend snuck up on me. I realized about Wednesday that hey, I don’t have to work on Monday.  So according to my list of planned starts, I had planned to do a patriotic start this weekend.  So I’m off to go peruse the charts to see what I want to start tonight so I can get the floss and fabric pulled and get to work on it after dinner.

The Perfect Frame

Today I received the most perfect frame for my Mighty Oak stitch.  I thought it might look good but when I saw it in person it is absolutely the most perfect frame to set off that stitch if I do say so myself – and I do! 🙂   I am just so pleased with it I will have to get to framing it in the not-too-distant future.

Saturday May 21, 2022

One of these days I just know we will see sunshine.  It’s a gloomy looking day and must be nearly 60 degrees.  Of course, since I started taking the bus finally again this week on the 3 days I work at the office, it rained all three but one of those days did hold off until after I had gotten on the bus.  The days I worked at home – no rain. 🙂  I just wandered out to take out the garbage and go get the mail and while it’s very overcast, it actually is a nice day outside since the humidity of yesterday is gone.

Also, having to catch the bus, which has had schedule changes since COVID so my express route doesn’t run anymore, means I have to get up earlier three days a week than I have had to get up in over two years!   So last night I did not do my usual stay up to the wee hours of the morning stitching because I was tired!  I need to get used to having to get up early again and actually earlier than when I used to ride the bus.  But I did get some  progress on Peahen Bird last night before finally putting it down (and maybe dozing off earlier in the evening for a short bit) 🙂

Here’s where I was before I picked it up last night.

And here’s where I left off last night.  Made it all the way to the right corner of the border and got more stitched on the center bird.  The border isn’t difficult, I just need to make sure to count it correctly.

And as I’ve said before – I love the flosses.  Here’s a close up (and in the close up I noticed I have one stitch missing off that backstitched area on top of the big bird’s head so will have to fix that.

The flosses form Owl Forest Embroidery are fun.   The pink flowers – that is all one  floss so you never know when the pink or more peachy will appear as you are stitching but I love how those flowers look.   The rest of that flower motif stem/leaves which range from tan to dark green is all one color floss too as are the other motifs I have stitched in the tan/green color.  You can also see in the big bird’s head where I have started to fill it in that around the eye there is more peachy fill in and below it it’s more pink – that’s the same floss color that was used in the flowers  that the bird body gets filled in with.

Before I forget – Elaine, Ellen and Peggy – things have been crazy busy at work and I have not yet mailed the FCA items you won.  They have finally all made it to the office tho so next week I’ll get them mailed out.  After I left the office yesterday I thought DANG! I forgot again.

I’ve been going through some of my charts figuring out which I may want to start next, figuring out if I have all the gifts from now to end of year planned out and/or in the works, any special starts I want to work on  — basically planning my stitching path (and you know there may be wobbles, meanderings and enablings in that path) for the rest of the year.  But more on that later.