Hot Summer Sunday

I've taken up Whale Hunting again; it's so hot here that stitching on something that looks like Maine is sort of refreshing. The project's better than 1/2 done now, and I'm at the left-hand margin. There are 12 charts total to this, and I've completed a bit more than six of them, although some of the remaining charts have just a small area to work. I'd really like to finish this up, as other than a Christmas design earlier this year and the Neighborhood RR design I did, I haven't completed anything.

And I've made a little progress on Leslie's Neighborhood RR. Those of you who guessed Just Nan is the designer were right. The design is called "Winterhaven," and it's hard to extract just the house and leave behind all the lovely surrounding design and embellishments.


Here's my newest project. I've been collecting house designs, thanks to the RR project, but I couldn't bear not to start this myself. What I have done so far doesn't photograph well on the light-colored hand-dyed linen I chose; hopefully as I get to a darker part of the design, I can show it to you. In the meantime, my LNS was out of the dark brick-colored variegated floss, so I went to ABC stitch's online site to buy some and yikes--found another perfect project by Victoria Sampler, called Harbour Village. The brick house sampler is a Chessie and Me design. The fun thing about it is that it is all specialty stitches. The bricks are done in "brick stitch" which is amazingly realistic and something I'll have to use on future projects.

I mean, really. How can you resist? (Photo borrowed from ABC Stitch.) I love ABC Stitch, by the way. Anytime I've ever ordered anything from them, it has shown up quickly, in my mailbox six states away, always within a few days. And if my two LNS's don't have it--whatever it is--I've been able to get it from ABC Stitch.

I start a vacation in two weeks, which I'm excited about. We are having most of the floors replaced in our house (all the yucky white carpet comes out and is being replaced by hardwood and tile, surfaces that stand up to the messes of six cats a lot better than the white carpet has), and someone has to stay home while the workers are doing their thing, so I'm hoping to get lots of stitching/sewing/ knitting/gardening time in.