A Report on Little Projects

This post will include finishes, a start, an old WIP, stash, and the bunny story!

First off - I finished 'The Great Light' on 7-17-15:

It came out really pretty!  I did do the tiny french knots in the scripture reference in the wrong holes - they were supposed to be in the middle of the squares.  I fixed it, but the holes they were in are kinda big now.  Usually washing will fix that, though, and this one is gonna need a bath since it went to work with me :D  The only thing I really don't like about it is that the cross on the steeple is off center.  That's the way it's charted, but I may redo it.

That makes 4 out of 7 of Bucilla's 'Christmas Promises' kits done.  Here are the three I have left in my stash:

'Emmanuel', 'Guardian Angels', and 'Peace'.  I will probably do either 'Emmanuel' or 'Guardian Angels' next, since they are similar, and then work 'Peace' in between them.  I won't be starting one yet, though.  I pulled out a Crazy January start - I think from 2013! - to work on next.  It is 'Three Kings' from the 1988 Gloria and Pat freebie pattern leaflet.

I only have the head of the King in green done so far.

And now for a Bunny Story!  I said in an earlier post that the Bunnies were another CJ start, and I had gotten this far:

Originally, I had intended to do just two bunnies, a pinky-white one and a brown one, and give them to my sister, who is a rabbit lover.

Then, this Easter, I made these cakes - remember?

One went to my oldest nephew, whose family was staying with my Mum and Dad.  Everybody ate some of it, but when they got up the next day and looked for the rest - the cake was there, and the candy was there, but the bunny peeps were mysteriously gone.

I also had about thirty bunny peeps left over, and my sister, who doesn't like carrot cake, had asked that I save them for her.  She loves peeps!

Well, they also mysteriously vanished.  Turns out, my Mum has discovered that SHE loves peeps, too.  This is the first year she ever ate any.  The ones at my house had gotten a tiny bit stale, and she says she likes them even better that way.

Weird mother - and this is a lady who will take the food off her own plate to give to someone who wants it - but she was absolutely, 100% unapologetic about eating all the peeps!

So here's how I finished up the bunnies, and the trim I bought for making them into a cushion, a cube, or a flatfold - haven't decided which:

And they will be presented to my Mum on her birthday :D  She will LOVE this and laugh like a lunatic!

Lastly, a start.  I have three nephews - 12, 6, and 2 - and they all are obsessed with Lego!  So I bought this alphabet on etsy:

And I have started the first of three names to be stitched in Lego blocks :D  There is a truckload of backstitch in these and I will be doing it as I go along :D  I'm stitching it on white 18 count.

So, two 'purse' projects done and two more to take their place.  Yay!

And now, I go back to my regular rotation, because I don't have any double shifts for at least the next two weeks (I hope).

Wufei, and a Silly Dilemma

So, the 10th's project change meant I picked up my pattern of Chang WuFei.  I think I haven't worked on him since... March?  I think.

Anyway, I barely got anything done.  :C   I had a double shift on the 10th, the 13th and the 14th, and so he was sadly neglected.  Here he was then - I neglected to take a wide shot:

And here he is now:

And here is something I wasted about a half hour on - I made a copy of his pattern (I created the original myself, in PCStitch) and then used a green floss color to block out everything I had already stitched because I was having trouble, for some reason, working out what was his sleeve and what was his torso.  The only bit I forgot was the edge of yellow that outlines his other shoulder.  Anyway, here is a green alien head XD

And the regular pattern picture for comparison:

The reason I wanted to know is that I've made myself a small goal on this, and won't mind a bit if I don't make it - I want to get his torso done by the end of the year.  Then I'll just have his arm, wristband, and hand left.  I'm not pushing for a finish with him - I've got too many Christmas Prezzie ideas.

Now to kinda change the subject - I have a rotation dilemma.  Normally I would pick a new big project to work on today, but I have already pulled a double shift on one job and have to go to my other job for a few hours this evening.  I have doubles tomorrow and Friday, and a single shift on Saturday, then about four hours on my other job, again, on Sunday. (bleh, I want a vacation!)  So anything I pick is not going to get much love.

On the other hand, I finished up the last full-stitch color on 'The Great Light':

Cream - it's only on the path.  I've already started backstitching and finished off the church and part of the words at work today.  This gave me a bit of inspiration - what I was thinking of doing was taking a break from my rotation and trying to polish off this and the bunnies, and maybe another small project.  What do you guys think?

And then on the 20th I would pick up a big project again.

A New Kind of Kit, A Lot Less Progress

So, I have a new start!

With almost no progress.

I enjoyed it, but we had my father's birthday on the 6th and then I had three days of double shifts at work.  So I had very little time and I pretty much just came home and went to bed.  So sad, right? lol!

But I found a new kind of kit and I wanted to try it even though I knew I'd only have a little time.

Have you guys seen the printed kits from China?  They look really cool!

Here's my first one:

Now, this is a huge one but at the same time it is very simple and easy.  They are all on 11 count aida, and use water-soluble ink to put the pattern directly on the aida.  You can just look at the symbols and you don't have to count and yet your stitches look normal and not those weird things on the plain fabric of a normal 'stamped' kit.  When you're done, you soak the fabric in plain water and all the symbol-ink lifts off, leaving no trace on your thread, and yes, I've seen video and it does work!

The reason I call this one easy is that the background is printed on in permanent ink, and you only have to stitch little pieces.  I normally would not like this, but I saw this picture in the first Chinese restaurant I went to with my dad when I was a very little girl, so when I saw the kit, I wanted it!  I could have got it in what they call 'full embroidery', which means you do the background and all, but I knew it would lose detail and I love those thin waterfalls.  So I chose a partial stitch for my first go.
(If you are looking at these kits, this kind is called '3D'.  Some of the ones with plain or white backgrounds are also called '3D' so study your pictures carefully!)

It came with really nice thread - very, very soft and shiny!  It's not DMC but they give DMC reference numbers and they MATCH, which is a nice change :D

Yep, the key is printed on the fabric, too.  Some of them also come with a pattern you can use as a reference check.  This one does.  So far, I haven't needed it.

It's huge - it is four feet long.

For size reference, I put a finished project on it.  The stitched area on that one is 5x7.  Unfortunately, I couldn't get right over it so it still looks smaller than it is.

Anyhow, all you stitch on this one is the words, the flying cranes, the bird and the flower beneath it, the big pink flower, the boat, the pink-flowered branch, the two big cranes beneath it and the rock/bank they are standing on.

All I got done was the first two words, most of the third, part of the fourth, a lot of the first red-crowned crane and a little of the second.  I will admit the fabric is pretty stiff and my fingers got a little sore when I was pushing the needle through.  I switched to a smaller needle and solved that bit.  But I wish I had gotten more done.  Ah, well.  What I did do was pretty fun!

Do you like my needle minder?  My postmaster knows I like to collect stamps, so when she was tossing out the old display magnets, she gave me this one :D  I turned it in to a needle minder.

I had no idea what the kanji on the project meant - first I looked at a translator and got 'long life' but I knew that wasn't right.  These pictures usually say something good, yes, but also that sort of relates to the picture subject.  So I asked on a site I go to where I know several of the people speak other languages, and one lady said it formally says 'Your wealth/money source overflows' and colloquially says 'Profits Pouring'.  Makes a lot more sense :D

I have a few more of this type of kit - all of them are BIG and they are a lot more detailed than this one.  This one is a little pixellated but I don't mind.  I will show the others off in a Stashy Saturday post!

I did get the next color of Great Light done - light purple.  There was only a little bit.  Only the cream on the path to go as far as full stitches, and I got a good bit of that done but no pic yet!  I started a bit of the backstitch, too.  This one and the bunnies should be done soon.  That's good 'cause I need to start Christmas prezzies!!!

Back on the 10th with another project, but not a new start!!!  LOL!!!

More Snappers!

Happy Fourth, to those who are celebrating :D

I chose to work on my Bent Creek Snappers again, starting on the 30th.  Was a little busy so not quite as much done as I would have liked!  Here's where the project was:

I finished off April Glooms:

Then did May Blooms - both are in the pic because I also did more border to the left:

And finished up here, rather wrinkly:

So not too bad, I guess.  That suitcase in June is a monster, compared to the other blocks.  It's over 1,000 stitches.  But I'll conquer it next time - it may be the only block I get done, but I'll get it!

I have to pull at least three double shifts in the next few days so I am going to pick something really easy, next.  It may be another new start.  I dunno.

Oh, and here's a pic of the Darkest Green that I had already stitched up on 'Great Light'.

I'll be back at least by the 10th with another post!  Hope everyone's having a great stitching week :D :D :D

Acquainted With the Night (this post is long!!!)

When I was a kid, I loved to read.  Still do, but back then I wanted to read everything, and now I'm sort of set in my reading tastes and don't venture beyond too often.  Kind of sad.  Anyway, my Da is a big-time reader, too, and he used to spend hours reading Louis L'amour westerns.  He wouldn't let me read them until I was twelve, which just made me more desperate to get my hands on them, haha!  They are very 'clean' as far as westerns go - no actual sex, but plenty of violence.  Not as graphic as most, but it's there.

But - the romance of those books!  And I don't mean the love story, even though there is plenty of that! (They're like romance books for men, I swear!)  The believable hero, an ordinary man doing extraordinary things - the family bonds - the beautifully described, sweeping scenery - the musical, poetic rhythm to the way that man wrote... eh, I was ruined.  Totally wanted to marry a cowboy.

Here's an excerpt from one of my favorites, 'Bendigo Shafter', from the first chapter, when the wagons going west stopped to build a town :

My father had been a Bible-reading man and named his sons from the Book.  Four of our brothers had gone the way of flesh, and of the boys only we two remained.  Cain, a wedded man with two children, and I, Bendigo Shafter, eighteen and a man with hands to work.

Our sister was with us.  Lorna was a pretty sixteen, named for a cousin in Wales.

'You will build for the Widow Maken', Cain said to me.  'Her Bud is a man for his twelve years, but young for the lifting of logs and the notching.'

So I went up the hill through the frost of the morning, pausing when I reached the bench where their cabin would stand.  A fair place it was, with a cold spring spilling its water down to the meadow where our oxen and horses grazed upon the brown grass of autumn.  Tall pines, sentinel straight, made a park of the bench, and upon the steep slope behind there was a good stand of timber.  The view from the bench was a fine one, and I stood to look upon it, filling myself with the quiet morning and the beauty of the long valley below the Beaver Rim.

'You have an eye for beauty, Mr. Shafter,' Ruth Macken said to me, and I kept my eyes from her, feeling the flush and the heat climbing my neck as it forever did with a pretty woman spoke to me.  It is a good thing in a man.

'It works a magic,' I said, 'to look upon distance.'



So about two weeks ago, I was cruising along on eBay, and saw a kit I had never seen before.  Nearly fell off my chair.  It was an elderly kit, and only one other person bid on it.  Even with shipping, I got it for less than $5.

I love it.  It is supposedly for my Da's Christmas prezzie but... but this may be the first thing I ever stitch twice.  I love it.  It's my old Louis L'amour daydreams come to life again.

I am less in love with the reality of the kit itself.

I realized it said 8 x 24, but I didn't really think about that until I had the fabric out.  That's not a small project, lol!!!  And no fault of the seller, because it had never been opened, but there was a small brown spot on the fabric.  So I washed it, and it lightened.  So I washed it again - no scrubbing, just a good soak in soapy water.  When I went to iron it, I could barely see the spot - but it turned out it wasn't so much a spot as a flaw - the threads broke.

I panicked, like a twit - even started sewing it together before I smacked myself and went to get a big 30 x 36 piece of white Aida out and cut myself a new piece.  I'll cut up the old one for smaller projects - it's fine beyond that one flaw.

When I measured it out, I found that it was only big enough to give me one inch all the way around, anyway - so I cut a much bigger piece with healthy margins.

Then I really looked at the chart and thought, 'Um - that's tiny.'  Really tiny - the whole long thing is on a two-page folded sheet.  I took it to work and enlarged it 200% to get it normal sized.  Then I realized that this kit is so old that the chart is hand-drawn (ugh, so hard to read the symbols!) and has no grid lines.  So I'm drawing those on as I go.  I'm spoiled to grid lines XD

Then this:

That's the floss.  There is a color/symbol list, with no instructions of how to sort the floss beyond 'sort the floss'.  No number of strands.  Just take your best shot, I guess.  It wouldn't be so bad if they weren't mostly shades of blue, grey, and blue-grey.  It's not always easy to tell which they mean to be Lt Blue and which is Lt Blue Grey.

They did have DMC floss numbers listed, with a note that they did not use DMC floss but these were close matches.  So I got my floss card out.

About three colors actually matched the numbers.  It was almost no help.  Also, there were two bundles of floss - each had the exact same colors in the exact same number of strands.  There is a total of three (3) stitches of red in this pattern, yet I got two strands of red floss.  I'm thinking that they maybe accidentally put two floss bundles in the kit.  This I do not mind, but it didn't help with the sorting.

It's way too late to make this long story short, but I persevered, had a bit of a ponder on how the new way kits are done has me totally spoiled rotten (sorted floss!  patterns with grid lines!  perfectly printed symbols!) and then I got down to business.

And I'm right back in love.

That's my five days of progress.   Not too bad, I guess.  That one row of blue at the bottom has reached where the horse's leg will be.  I figured it up at about 17% done, then realized I wasn't counting the horse's shadow (it's all solid stitching, there is no half-stitch in this kit)  and cut it down to 15% done.   So yay, anyway.  But this one is going to need to be worked on once a month, like Unspoken.  But that's as far as I'm limiting myself on projects - I refuse to let anything else get put on the must-work-on list.

So next - maybe my Snappers?  I haven't decided.

Oh, and here's a bit of progress on my 'purse' kits - I finished the blue bunny and started the next - he's green.

And I got two colors done on 'Great Light'.  Actually, three colors, but I forgot to take a picture of the last one.

Gold:

And about ten stitches of Dark Taupe:

And I've done the Darkest Green but I'll have a pic of that later.  Two colors and the backstitching to go on this one.

The Turtle Trot

I've barely done anything for my Turtle Trot this month - we have ten projects and post about them on the tenth of each month, and you can sign up HERE

I've been really lazy this time around but I did do a little bit.  Let's see - I worked on The Great Light a little, got some colors done!

As it was:

As it is:

I am most of the way through the next color, too.  But I'll wait until it's done for a picture.

And I worked on Lovers during IHSW

As they were:

As they are:

I worked on Yarr, but I have no picture of the progress as it wasn't much.  The same can be said for Fred and Wufei (you can see these projects on my 2015 SAL page, at the top).  The others I didn't work on at all, except for Unspoken:

As he was:

As he is:

I mostly spent this month crocheting, and then the new project for the A-Z challenge during the last ten days.  I'll have to get some pics and post a crochet update!

Two More

Two more colors done on 'Great Light'

Red - hardly any stitches:

And another shade of green:

Lol - big difference in Day and Nighttime pictures!  This one is in my purse now instead of the stockings so it's getting random bits of love when I have to sit and wait somewhere :D  I thought there were nine colors left, but I was wrong, there are only four or five.  So maybe this will be done soon.

On Sunday, I Went Crazy

Before I get started on the insanity, here's a wee bit of progress - I got another color done on 'Great Light'.

Before:

After:

I have already started the next color.  There are either nine or ten to go.

On Sunday, I took the invitation, from my Mum, to go shopping at Wal-Mart.  This is, as I've said before, an hour-long trip (each way, so two hours driving, total) and we don't go that often because of that.  We wait until the trip is worth it.

Well, we both needed some groceries that the little Mom-and-Pop stores around here didn't have, and I wanted yarn and she wanted herbs and vitamins, so away we went.

There's also a discount store called 'Roses' near there, and we stopped in because they usually have well-made but cheap shoes.  I got a cute little red pair, and a couple t-shirts, then found something they never had there before.

A bin of yarn.

Red Heart yarn, not the regular kind but the odd kind.  These came home with  me, with some vague ideas about cowls:

At Wal-Mart, I dithered in the yarn aisle for a while - they were sold out of half the Red Heart, which was annoying, as I needed more of the 'Latte' color for the 'Tree of Love' afghan I want to start and they didn't have any. :C  Just my luck!   But I wanted to try and pick the color or colors for my big version of Rings of Change.

Mum asked what was taking so long, so I told her I still hadn't decided if I wanted to do it a solid color or if I wanted to do one in ocean-colors.  She looked at my tentative selections and said something I truly wasn't expecting from my no-nonsense, frugal mother.

What she said resulted in us going to yet another store - Magic Mart (is that a chain anywhere away from here?  There are about four of them that I know of but not sure about elsewhere?)  They have a dinky selection of Red Heart there, and I was able to get a little more yarn.  Enough for this:

That's about half what I need for my striped Rings of Change - Aran, Buff, Macaw and Turqua, bought at Wal-Mart, and two skeins of Blue at Magic Mart 'cause it was sold out at Wal-Mart.

And then this:

Four more skeins of Turqua, but not for my striped version because... my MUM thinks I should do both!  A solid and a striped one!  And it was very, very easy to talk me into it, haha!  As in, she didn't have to talk at all, I said 'okay!' and tossed the yarn into the buggy.

So then I dithered over which to start first, and the advice I got was 'Just do them both at the same time'.

O_o

Right, then!

One solid color Rings of Change, started (up to row 8)

And one striped Rings of Change, also to row 8, and through the first color sequence:

I'm going to be sick and tired of Turqua in about a week, I bet.

After talking about nothing but afghans for half the trip home, I had to pull out a stashed project and make a decision.  The reason I was waffling between a solid Rings and a striped one is because I've wanted to do a big, solid, bright colored afghan for my living room for a while now.  This is where my trip to Insanity went completely sideways into Cloud-Cuckoo-Land.

With this:

'This' is a lovely afghan I wanted to make all in one color - it is not Turqua but is the old Red Heart Lt Teal.  When I started it, I calculated the yardage wrong.  The issue is that I would need 16 more ounces than what I have - and that color is discontinued. Despite haunting eBay. etsy and various crochet message boards for over a year, I haven't managed to get what I need.  So a few months ago I ordered some Aruba Sea, which is a close but not quite match and thought I would do it in stripes - one skein of Lt Teal, then Aruba Sea, then Lt Teal again and so on until it was done.

This is Aruba Sea, the Lt Teal, and Turqua in a row, so you can see the difference.

Aruba Sea almost matches.  So very close.  And yet if I did the last two or three skeins with it, the change would have been glaringly obvious.

But then, I dithered.  I do that a lot.  Over if I should keep going in the Lt Teal and just hope for the best - that I would find some more of my yarn before I needed it, or go ahead with the stripes.  I just wanted that solid color afghan so much and yet I wasn't willing to order more Aruba Sea and let all that Lt Teal wait for another, smaller afghan. (Because I'm nuts, I guess.  But the Aruba Sea didn't appeal to me the same way the Lt Teal did; not for a solid afghan.)

After Sunday, and the fact that there will be a solid-color afghan in my living room, I decided the stripes are good enough and probably will be very pretty.  But that adds another big blue afghan to my list.  It will look like this when done:

Only, you know, teal-blue.

If that isn't enough for you, I'm also trying to finish this:

That's the January square for the Moogly afghan, and once I get this done, may I never do another quadruple treble in all my life!  Also I dislike the Jacob's Ladder.  The sideways rows, at least.  Oh, how hard it was to make that first one look neat!  I cheated with the instructions 'cause I hated the way it came out at first.  I'd be further along if I hadn't had to pull the row I'm on out twice - after getting halfway through the second quadruple-treble row that comes after it.  I just can't seem to count this row properly!

If you notice, it's in blues.  I decided to do it as a stash-buster, but all in colors you would find in the ocean; blues and blue-greens and blue-purples and some teal and dark teal... and... and some bits of flotsam and jetsam here and there. The squares will be 12 inches each, and I'm going to add other squares to make a good-sized throw.

So that's four big blue afghans.  In progress.

My favorite color, by the way, is green.  I've definitely gone round the bend... because I don't feel the slightest bit dismayed by all this.  Every time I look at the piles of blue yarn in my house, I get a little giddy - with utter delight.  I've lost it!

PS: All of these afghans will be done with the same size hook, so I also bought the first of these:

A nice ergonomic hook so maybe my arm won't fall off!