My neck is feeling better, about 75%, still can’t look to the right all the way. But I have been soldiering through, stitching on Newcastle and Changing World. I finished the black border on CW, somehow I was one stitch off. It was easy to fix, just added one more stitch to the chevron. I looked and looked to see where the error was, but everything lines up, and all my chevrons are the correct number of Xs. I have made a bit of progress on the border of NB, most of the lower border lines are stitched and part of the right side. I have been sticking to my alternate days of stitching each project, and I’m happy with it.
I took last night off from cross stitching and knitted a section of the Wild Bees shawl. This shawl has been next to the stitching chair for the past few weeks, but gathering dust not stitches. The next shawl installment from Curious Handmade comes out Monday, I don’t think I’ll be done with it by then. I still want to work on the Bees for now, I really like the pattern and can see the “bees” in the pattern. The pattern is four sided which, for me, seems to make it easier not to loose my place. The way the pattern is written out, line by line, is helping, as I can do one repeat per side and know its counted/stitched correctly. Crescent shawls I have trouble with when I get the end and have extra/not enough stitches. Marker help, but when its an increase row, the markers move and well, I get mixed up and mis-stitches happen.
In a whirl of cleaning I tackled a cabinet the other night. It is a cabinet in my former sewing room, when it was down stairs. I hadn’t needed anything out of it and I figured, after four years, anything that was in there wasn’t useful. I grabbed a trash bag and started emptying it. It was mostly cut off pieces of battings, I will make some franken- battings out of those. There was some dried up glue and painting supplies, and some Christmas ribbons. A whole pile of children’s drawings and school projects from twenty years ago, I tried not to get lost in that nostalgia, and left it there. It’s safe and will get filed another time, I have three pretty boxes that I save my kids stuff in. I may or may not present it to them someday, but those little pieces of life still “mean” a lot to me.
I also found this sampler that I stitched in the 1970’s, that makes it vintage. I remember stitching this so vividly, how I enjoyed its simple colors and motifs. I was probably 12 or 13 at the time, I was into needlework then, especially crewel and embroidery. I didn’t know about counted cross stitch until the mid 80’s. I was thinking of cleaning it, but then I started thinking about the threads and how they may run. I think I will frame it “as-is” and enjoy the natural antique-y ness of the linen.
Be Kind.
Touch of Grey 