It's So Cold!

 Currently here in KC, it is -5 degrees and snowing. The high for today is 0, maybe. I don't think it's been this cold here in my lifetime, although I could be wrong. It doesn't feel like it though. I had to replace my car battery last week, and I'm hoping the new one will be ok. At least my apartment is fairly warm, and the pipes haven't frozen, thank goodness!

I didn't have the best stitchy week, but I think I had a minor cold for a while. Just a couple days of bleh and drippy nose and being very tired, but I think I'm better now. My weekly projects did suffer a bit, but I managed a little progress.

I'm still working on Ann Barson everyday. I'm not sick of her yet, but I wish I could hurry up and finish her. I did get in a page finish though, so just one more page to go:

I debated about stitching that bit of border in gold or to keep it white, but I thought, since I've stitched all of Ann's other "mistakes," I'd keep it consistent. It is a bit quirky, and I think I like it. She really did struggle with that central basket though. It's not at all symmetrical, and because it's on the page divide, I actually had to frog twice to restitch it as charted. I do wonder how Ann would feel about me restitching her mistakes. Would you cringe if someone meticulously reproduced your errors? Or would you feel vindicated, because it's just a cool hobby we do for fun? And it still looks nice. :)

Beth ended up a bit neglected this week, as I just couldn't rouse myself to stitch in the evenings. I'm blaming my cold for that. But I did get three sessions with her, and managed to stitch in the year and her age:

That green box is quite enormous. I've still got the outer color to do along the top, and then I'll let myself stitch her name. I'm kind of daunted by that, as it makes it officially hers somehow. I suppose it's been a long journey with this one, and I'm grateful to Ms. Oliver for letting me share it with her.

I spent the weekend with one of my full coverage beauties, Secluded Blue. I'm actually doing the WipGo challenge of Facebook, and her number was drawn this month, which made me very happy. I spent 5 hours working on her and managed 700 stitches:

My WipGo board is a mix of yearly goals and indulgences -- those projects that I love but might not pick up without prompting because they aren't my priority. I don't know if I'll make all my bingo's, but I'm really glad to have an excuse to spend time with my non focus pieces.

I guess that's all for now. I need to pull a few more colors for my Temperature Library, since I wasn't expecting another polar vortex. I hope you are all much warmer than I am, wherever you are. Happy stitching!

Feeling Adrift

Well, it finally happened. About two weeks ago I think I lost track of the days. I had planned to do an update, but then suddenly it was Wednesday? And now another week has gone by. *sigh*

Hello everyone! Hope you are all keeping well. I am still off work, and it's been long enough that I'm really enjoying my days. I'm still kitting things up and organizing my stash a bit, but I've also begun knitting again and I did a bit of quilting today. To those who are still working, I do hope you are finding ways to relax stay sane. :)

My stitching was a bit erratic at the beginning of May, mostly because I didn't know if I'd be returning to work and I was starting to stress out a little. But I did start another HAED, rather on impulse, but also because I have so many that I love and want to play with. So this is Secluded Blue, art by Annie Stegg, stitched 1x1 on 25ct Mushroom Lugana:

I managed 1400 stitches on the first page. I really love Annie's work and felt it was a crime not to have anything of hers on my needles. I also want to start Atargatis, named after the mythical first mermaid, but that one has a lot of black and I didn't want to stitch such dark colors when I'm stressed. But I love the brown and blue combination in Secluded Blue (even though there's still a lot of black at the moment) so this is making me pretty happy. I also wanted to try stitching in diagonal blocks since it looks like a lot of fun, but I don't think it meshes with my way of stitching. I start all of my threads on the front, and I just can't figure out how to keep them all organized and out of the way, so I'll probably go back to columns. Of course, I don't have any firm plans for this one. She'll just pop up in rotation every now and then.

I also managed two more columns on Ginger Nova, so I'm getting into some color changes:

I'm hoping to finish off two more columns this year, since that will complete page 2. :)

Part 5 of the Wonders of Space sal was released on the 15th, and it was a really quick stitch:

Looks a little creepy, doesn't it? That is an infrared image of a supermassive black hole. The bright parts represent the super heated material the black hole is "eating". Neat, huh?

Of course, the last week has been dominated by my last new start, Ann Dale 1827 by Shakespeare's Peddler, which I started May 10th. I'd been looking forward to this one all year so I worked on her a lot, starting in the bottom right corner:

I decided to stitch this with the called for silks -- mostly NPI with 2 Gloriana and a Belle Soie -- on 40ct Saltmarsh Green by R&R Reproductions. I don't get to stitch with silks often, but I really love the NPI, which might have motivated me to keep stitching. There is one color used for the leaves in the border that doesn't show up well on this fabric, so I started using another Belle Soie silk called Lily Pad instead. It was in my stash and matches the NPI very well, but has a darker variegation to it that tends toward green. If I had the resources, I might've swapped out the golds for greener colors, but I'm not good at color swapping, and it's really hard to do it from online shopping. Still, I think it'll look great.

I haven't been able to find any pictures of the full finished sampler online, but I did find this one on Kitten Stitcher's website:

This is A Part of Ann Dale, which is it's own separate chart and only has the bottom scene. But these are the same colors, so it gives a pretty good representation of what I'm working toward. A lot of the colors seem pale, but when I stitched the line of white that frames the grass and the tree, I felt like I was stitching sunlight, and that made me smile. The only warning I will give if anyone else decides to stitch this is that the designer left in all of Ann's mistakes, so be careful. The strawberry vine isn't even, and the hills on the grass aren't symmetrical, so just be aware. Still, it's a great chart. My goal is to finish this in May 2027, so it'll be like an anniversary. :)

Well, this is why I need to update more often. Lots of rambling. Hope you enjoyed the pictures at least. Until next time!