New Stitching

The deadline for this years SAQA Auction piece is about a month away and I've finally made a decision about what to make this year. I've had a piece that I started last November to demonstrate how my Embellisher worked needle felting fabric to fabric. I used some of the leftover sari silk ribbon from a previous daily project, wove it together and then needle felted it to some raw silk.

It's the right size (12"x12"), so now I'm adding stitches to it.

Weekly Stitching updates
Signs of Life: The five universal shapes Week #17

In my thread stash there were two skeins of Cosmo Seasons variegated floss that are working perfectly for the background.

The lighter one will be used on the square, triangle and spiral. The darker one on the circle and cross. I'm just hoping there's enough of the lighter one. I bought these when I was traveling and have not been able to find any locally. I usually don't use floss, I tend to prefer pearl cotton, but these were just the right colors.

2017 daily Stitching days #111 -116

The part that I have completely stitched is 10 " wide x about 6", more than half of the 10"x10" piece.
I'm finding that I'm spending more time stitching on this than I did doing two daily 4" squares. With the squares I had a daily starting and stopping point, I did the square and was done. With this I just start and keep going until I don't feel like stitching anymore.

Tulips, kittens, yarn and some stitching

We have had a wet cool spring and the tulips are loving it. I have taken a bunch of tulip pictures, they make me happy. I'll share just a few of them.

The resident feral cat that we have not been able to catch and have neutered, just had four kittens. Last year we adopted the two that she had, this year we will be looking for homes. They are almost a week old. Mama had stepped away from them to eat so I snapped a quick picture.

Five years ago on my birthday my wonderful husband surprised me with a huge pile of yarn. I had just been knitting for about a year and the yarn shop where I learned was going out of business. He knew that I was able to get a pair of socks out of one skein of yarn, so he went around the store and picked up about fifteen different skeins. I'm on the last skein of sock yarn, but have several skeins of worsted weight yarn left. None are the same, but I've pulled out the variegated ones. I did this because a pattern for a cardigan sweater caught my eye and I have enough yarn in stock to make it. It will definitely be one of a kind. This is the yarn selection.

I do plan on finishing the pair of socks and the top down seamless pullover sweater I'm currently knitting before I start on this one, but I'm ready!

I was able to spend some time with my very creative friends Lisa Flowers Ross and Kathleen Probst last Friday and to my surprise they both wrote really nice blog posts about my weekly and daily projects. I, on the other hand took only one picture and it was of the tree that was in full white bloom outside Kathleen's studio window and it was snowing.

Weekly stitching
Signs of Life: the five universal shapes

The current group of five will include appliqué along with stitching, all five will be on one piece of grey fabric. The shapes will be appliquéd using rust dyed fabric.

Week #16

This group is going to be much less time consuming than the last one - no french knots!

2017 Daily stitching, days#103-110

I worked on the background this week.

I'll be linking up to "Off the Wall Friday" and "Slow Sunday Stitching"

Getting back to normal

It's been a week since my last blog post and I think I'm finally getting over the jet lag. I was surprised at how much it took out of me and I've gotten very little done so this is a short post.

Weekly Stitching
Signs of Life: The five universal shapes week #15 and the final side of week #14

Weeks 11-15

I've fused the piece to green wool felt.

The next five weeks are also going to be done on one piece of fabric, I'm using a grey that has been used for several other projects and a piece of rust and tea dyed fabric.

The grey was the alternate blocks in the 365 red circles daily stitching done four years ago. The grey is actually fabric from some drapes that a friend bought at a yard sale and gave to me.

2017 Daily Stitching days 96-102

This next week I hope to find some time to play with the brushes that came home with me from China.

I'll be linking up to "Off the Wall Friday" and "Slow Sunday Stitching" later this week.

I'm back!

I have been traveling for the past 3+ weeks, first a two day drive to Phoenix to visit family and meet our great grandson for the first time. Here he is with great grandpa.

I celebrated my birthday while there, we went to the Desert Botanical gardens, one of my favorite places. It was free on my birthday!!, actually the second Tuesday of every month is free admission, but we didn't know that going in.

Then we left Phoenix and drove to Las Vegas so that my husband could bowl in the National Tournament. I was there to cheer him on for his first day of bowling, but the second day I hopped a shuttle to the airport and flew to SeaTac in Washington. My daughter picked me up there and I spent the weekend at her place. On Monday we went back to SeaTac to board a flight to Beijing China. Here we are getting ready to board. The group consisted of our guide Ashleigh, my daughter Tina, granddaughter Kayla, son in law Jack and me. A nice small group. Ashleigh has a shop in Tacoma, WA called the Purple Peacock and does small group shopping tours. She combines the tours with her buying trips for the store.

We spent most of our time in Beijing hitting all the must see spots. We had local guides for most of the tour while Ashleigh did her buying. Our shopping days were lead by her and she had great insights on what to get where. We as a group are not shoppers so she tailored it to our desires.
I took hundreds of photos; palaces, temples, trees, old walls, doors, stone walkways, even a few with people in them. Below is a sample of our eight days in Beijing.

We opted to go to the less touristy spot at the Great Wall, it was fabulous, but omg! a very steep climb  up and then back down.

Next we rolled out of bed at 4am to fly to Xian. This is where the Terra cotta warriors are, plus more temples, pagodas, museums, and an ancient city wall.

We spent 2 days in Xian and then made the long journey home. It was a wonderful trip, seeing and spending time in a culture very different from mine, spending time with family members, eating fabulous food and just stepping away from my normal life.

For the first time in five years I did not do daily stitching everyday. I did some on the 2017 piece and almost got three weeklies done, but many days were stitch free.

2017 Daily Stitching
I did a few random areas, I brought limited thread with me.

Weekly Stitching, Signs of Life:The five universal shapes

As you can see the equidistant cross isn't quite done, but it will get there.

Now if I could just power through the jet lag I'd feel much better. My ice maker in the fridge was a solid block, so I tore off a piece of fabric and did a quick ice dye to try and get back to creating.