Lenten Banner #2

Last Wednesday I spent the day at home because our dog was too ill to be left alone. During the times when he was asleep I finished the second Lenten banner. It was a good distraction - enough to occupy the mind but not requiring as much concentration as cross-stitch, which I certainly would have messed up. When my husband got home from work we took Shadow to the vet and let him go in peace. Definitely not a high point of our year, but the vet assured us that nothing more could have been done for him, so we take a little comfort in that.

Anyway, here is a photo of banner #2. Not sure when the other two will be done. We had a houseful of college students this past weekend, so I got no crafting done at all. I will have to get together with my cohort and get to work.

Lenten Banner #1

You may (or may not) have wondered why my cross-stitching has slowed so much. Here is a major reason. I've gotten together with another woman from my church to create four banners to hang along the sides of the sanctuary during Lent. When I proposed this, I thought, oh what fun! A few of us will get together for a couple of weekends and make banners. You know, the classic "sewing circle". It didn't quite turn out that way (I really should know better). There are just two of us, with occasional help from our daughters when they're available. She & I both work, so the only time we can get together is for a little while on Saturday afternoons. We cut out the banners, headers and crosses - all four banners will be identical that way. The girls got about half of the letters cut out to spell "Lent" at the top of each banner. Now in order to complete these before Lent is over, I've neglected cross-stitch and all but basic housework to spend my free time on the rest. Last night I completed the first one, just in time to hang for the first Sunday in Lent. I have some work done on the second and I hope it will go a little more quickly. My cohort is working on an idea for the third banner and we agreed on the pattern for the fourth. Meanwhile, here is a picture of the first banner. I want to mention that my oh-so-handy hubby cut the poles (I stained them) and added the chains for hanging.

Feb 2011 Update

Well, here is my first update for 2011. I didn't get much sewing done in January, not enough to warrant posting a picture. I was just starting to get back into sewing when my aunt died, and that knocked me off kilter for a while. It was hard to concentrate on anything. The one time I tried to work on WF I had to frog every line I stitched, so I quickly stopped. This past weekend, however, I finally got in a few good hours of sewing and am pleased enough with the progress to post a picture for you. I really love how the colors create the drapery of the fabric, and I'm excited to be nearly done with the light section. Next I get to the green band!

End of the year

Well, it's nearly the end of 2010 so this will probably be my last post for the year. Wow, hard to believe it's nearly 2011. How did we get this far? I remember when the world was worried about Y2K! Anyway, I always save a few vacation days so that I can take the week between Christmas and New Year's. Originally it was to be home when our daughter was on school break and too young to be by herself. Now it's so I can have time with her while she's home from college. Hubby had a long weekend but had to go back to work today. :(

So Meg and I are enjoying down time. Today except for shoveling, we did not leave the house at all, and I went back to bed for a couple of hours after hubby left at 5:15am. What luxury! In between taking care of dishes and laundry, she read and I stitched. Finally completed the backstitching on the section of Winter Fairy that I have done (p. 1 of 4). I have to order some Kreinik threads for the wing backstitching, as it is not available around here.

Here are two pictures. One is of WF as she is today. I'm excited to start page 2 tomorrow. The other picture is of Meg with the picture I stitched for her for Christmas. It says "Silly Socks are Toe-tally Awesome!". As you can see, Meg loves silly socks, and she was very pleased with her gift.

Happy New Year, everyone! I hope that 2011 will be a fantastic year for each of you.

I put all other sewing aside for the last couple of weeks so that I could make my gift tag for the annual office Secret Santa exchange. I do a tag every year; it's become a tradition. At first I did some complex paper tags, but then I changed to cross stitch on plastic canvas. The last couple of years I have added beading. I always make them double-sided so they can be hung as ornament. This year the tag is completely beaded. It looks very nice, but it's a lot of added work. Cross-stitch is zip-zip, but when you bead you have to pause at every cross to catch a bead on your needle. I lost one whole evening of stitching because I hit the bead container wrong and spent the rest of the evening painstakingly rescuing beads from the carpeting. Sheesh! Anyway, it's done now and I think it came out well. The person whose name I pulled this year has a 1 1/2 year old baby, so I thought this Santa tag would be nice.

End of November Already?!

We had a very nice Thanksgiving this year. Meg was home from school Tuesday night. We hosted Thanksgiving dinner (butternut squash soup, turkey, stuffin' muffins, mashed potatoes/sweet potatoes, California salad and Meg made cream puffs for dessert). We always have a good time when we get together with my brother's family, so the whole evening was fun. Even better was the rest of the weekend. Dennis had to work Friday, so Meg and I did a little bit of Black Friday shopping (NOT at 4am!) and got our hair cut. Saturday morning we all volunteered at our church food pantry for a few hours. Aside from that, we had Wednesday evening, Friday evening and almost all of Saturday as relaxing family time. It was so nice to look up from my sewing (it was so nice to have time to sew!) and see the two people I love most right there.

By dint of working really hard, I did manage to finish the first page of my Winter Fairy! That's 1/4 done! I'm very excited - many times I thought I'd never get this far. All the half stitches in her face and hair just about drove me crazy. When I got to her eyes I decided to change the drak grey of the pattern to a dark blue of about the same shade. Here's a picture of her. Isn't she pretty? She looks like she's stepping behind a wall right now. I debated on whether to do the other top page or the bottom righthand page. I really don't like working on her skirt (white; near-white; ultra pale blue; pale blue...) so I decided to do the bottom right page and get a lot of the skirt done and out of the way. Getting to the little bunny at her feet will be my reward.

If anyone does read this, I'd like your opinion. Do you think I should backstitch what I have done or wait until the whole picture is completed? Some backstitching I can't do yet because I don't have the special Kreinik thread. I need to order that online. I will definitely leave the beading till the end.

Happy November!

Assuming anyone reads this, I don't have any picture updates for you today. I have finished one piece and started on another but as they will be Christmas gifts and there's the possibility of the recipients reading this post (ha! now that will keep certain people wondering!) I can't post any details or pictures. Suffice it to say that I'm very pleased with the one that is done and am making good progress on the other. All that has cut into my stitching time on WF, though. I have gotten some work done on her, but will wait until I have more so that a picture will be worth posting. If all goes well, I will be done with the first page and started on the second by Thanksgiving.

Meanwhile, so that this isn't a total waste of your time, here are some things to celebrate this month. My comments are in brackets.
Weeks:
1-7 World Communications
4-10 Chemistry
5-9 “Dear Santa” Letter [write early - avoid the rush]
8-14 Pursuit of Happiness
11-17 Geography Awareness
11-17 Random Acts of Kindness [nice to do all year]
12-18 Shallow Persons Awareness [don't be one!]
18-25 Bible

Daily:
2 Plan Your Epitaph
3 Cliché [but not on your epitaph!]
3 Sandwich [try something new or revisit an old favorite]
8 Cook Something Bold and Pungent
11 Veterans Day [thank a Veteran]
13 World Kindness
14 Teddy Bear
15 America Recycles
17 Chocolate Celebration [I thought that was every day]
18 Mickey Mouse
20 Great American Smokeout [encourage someone - or yourself - to quit]
23 Buy Nothing
25 American Thanksgiving
26 Electronic Greetings [tell someone you’re thankful for them]
30 Stay Home Because You Are Well [now there’s a good way to end the month!]