Smelling the Roses

Greetings! I just got back from a hot sticky walk. Sundays are a bad time to walk in suburbia; everyone is getting ready for the work week, and the smell of dryer sheets is in the air. Sheesh! It is an incentive to walk farther up the road where you can smell more natural things: honeysuckle; mud in the puddles left by last night's thunderstorm; and a nice, ripe deer carcass being picked apart by turkey buzzards. All the same, the walk is over, and now I can stitch!

I did more eyelets on Dorothy this week, but nothing much to look at there. I also worked on Liz Easdon, finishing the foliage on the big tree (there is another tree just like it to the right of the house), and starting the bricks and windows on the house. Love the green in the bricks!


I've always wanted to stitch this Mary Beale piece, and I picked it up for a reasonable price from an Etsy shop called the Pampered Stitcher. Thanks to Maude and Mozart, who recommended it!


So of course I started it. I'm stitching it on 40 count Lakeside buttercream using the called-for DMC colors. There are about 30 colors of thread in this smallish design! I am not planning to finish it as a wreath. I will finish it as a framed picture and either leave the center circle blank or fill it in with a monogram.


I also started Jane Tindall yesterday. I'm stitching it on 40 count Lakeside tundra, also using DMC. You may have seen my photo of Teresa's finished Jane on the In Stitches Shop blog. I took a look, took some photos, and immediately went to kit it up. I had owned the chart since it came out, but until I saw it IRL, hadn't felt compelled to stitch it.


Pink: I'm just sitting in my hay box, all by myself, because someone is stitching and has no time for me....

Happy week ahead!

Zigzag

Dorothy is zigzagging right along, as you can see. The flamestitched band is time-consuming (each straight stitch is one thread wide and four threads long), but it's a nice little break from the eyelets. So much fun, and a great way to pass the day out of the heat.


Heeeeeere's Elvis! (On the outside, looking in, while I cleaned the rabbits' tile floor. Note the chewed woodwork, by those who who have been inside, looking out.)

Happy rest of the week!

The Missing Sunday Post

It's already Wednesday! It has been hot and sticky here--temps in the 90s already--so I've been getting up early to get in my exercise. Then I come back to the house and work on my so-far fruitless job search, which feels a lot like casting pebbles into a dark well--pebbles that are not going to come flying back up with a dollar bill tied to them. I have found that stitching helps manage my anxiety; as you can see from my stitching pics, I have been extra-anxious lately, and consequently I have gotten quite a lot done. I am hoping that one day in the future, safely re-ensconsed in corporate America, I will look at the walls full of samplers I completed and fondly reminisce about the stomach-clenching angst that drove them.

Progress on Dorothy Walpole. I'm actually enjoying the eyelets, and I've started the flame-stitched band, which is swoon-worthy. And yes, Daffycat, "blefs" seems to be a word.


I reacquainted myself with Christinia Cathcart. I did it to take a break from the eyelets. Hah! These eyelets are twice as much work! Of course, it did make the work on Dorothy seem easy when I went back to it. Christinia's eyelets call for a "ray" on each of 16 threads in a 4x4 square, whereas Dorothy's call only for 8 rays in a 4x4 square.


Here's a shot of the section I've been working on. I'd like to finish to the right-hand edge this week.


And here's a shot of most of the sampler. It is really bright, although Dorothy is no slouch in the brightness department either.


Peaches: "A blefsing on the rest of your week."