Faithful April

I'll be joining Justine@Justine's Cross Stitch for Faithful April

Justine used to work on just one project at a time but we serial starters have converted her to a multiple WIP lifestyle and now she's trying to bring her dozen WIP's down to a more palatable number by dedicating all her stitchy time in April to just one project. She'll be working on the Cut Through Rocket by Bothy Threads.

I think this is a brilliant idea, and although I usually lose interest in a project after about two weeks, I'm going to give it a shot.

I have three projects that I keep going back to... the hard part is to pick just one! I would dearly love to finish one of these three this year. Dare I aspire to finish two this year???

Fall Fairy by Dimensions

The Castle by Teresa Wentzler

Curiosity by Janlynn

I think I'm going to go with Curiosity by Janlynn. Its approximately half done, and therefore should be the easiest to finish. If I can get through a couple hundred stitches a night (haha, unlikely) I could theoretically finish this in a month.

Also in April, I'd like to finish a quilt top I've started and make a couple pairs of linen pants and shirts for Ragnaok.

Game. On.

Crafting Attention Deficit Disorder

I've been suffering from CADD (Crafting Attention Deficit Disorder) today. 

It all started yesterday during my work's town hall meeting. I spent the hour and a half meeting doodling in a notebook, coming up with ideas to modify my current garb to look a little cooler. 

So I came home full of ideas today and set up my dress form.

As you can see, the corset that I bought to go with this dress doesn't really work out so well. Oh gee, I guess I'll just have to make myself a new dress, so that I have something to wear with my corset. Shucks. ;)

Then I was distracted by the patches I am attempting to embroider. We've been through three iterations so far. 

I think the last one looks the best but I am considering a slightly different shape to better accommodate the dragon. 

While those were stitching out, I finished up the last few of the blankets for DollsforAlzheimers.

I have a full box now, at least sixteen of these doll sized blankets, so I'll ship them out soon. I was able to reduce my fleece stash from one overflowing bin to about half of a bin.

There are eight pieces of fleece still in here, but I have plans to make crochet edged blankets out of them. The yarn that I have set aside to use is in the bottom of the bin.

But wait, that's not all.

I started to lay out this quilt to be sandwiched. The patches are still stitching away here. They take a while.  

I realized that I needed to iron the backing fabric and piece it together to get a large enough back. But my ironing board is still in my car from making surcoats and sword covers last Saturday.

So I had to clean up my sewing room a bit, or I wouldn't be able to fit the ironing board back where it belongs. 

And that's when I came across these, in one of those "oh, shiny!" moments. These are cut offs from a quilt I've already  put together. 

I have a GREAT idea for what to do with these - a strip quilt!

To finish up a long story, my ironing board is still in my car.

I guess I'd better go get it, I'm going to need it to work on my strip pieced quilt.

WIP Wednesday

I spent a day at the courthouse today. This is my view from the Juror Room window. 

It wasn't all bad - I was permitted to take a crochet hook into the courthouse (knitting needles not allowed through, FYI), and spent about an hour and a half on my shawl. That is until I ran out of yarn and realized I had forgotten to pack an extra skein.

I'm not quite sure why the left slide has so much slope to it, I'll have to investigate a bit and make sure I'm putting enough stitches in that side. It's possible that blocking will fix the problem.

Anyhow, the rest of the day was frittered away with kindle books, crossword puzzles, Sudoku, window shopping on my favorite crafty websites, and an attempt at cross stitch which failed when I figured out that the small kit I had didn't include the needle like it was supposed to. Note: Small scissors NOT allowed, nail clippers are. I think, however, that I will pick up those completely encased Clover or DMC brand thread cutters for the future. They are pendants with little slots for cutting thread.

They started sending Jurors home before lunch but I was one of the lucky few who got to stay until the end of the day. None of us even made it into the courtroom, sadly. As long as they're going to keep us all day, it might as well be interesting!

So my plans for tonight include sorting out how to embroider the patches with the Akron Dragon.

My first test patch - As you can see, this needs a little bit of finessing.

 And working on this oldie but goodie - The Castle by Teresa Wentzler.

What are you doing for WIP Wednesday?

Slow Sunday Stitching

 After a weekend that felt as busy as my work week? Boy do I need some down time.

This past week I was only able to play around with a few things.

I tested out embroidering leather on my embroidery machine. I'm very happy with how it turned out and am cautiously looking forward to playing with the red leather that I picked up at Badon Hill last year.

 I finished another skein of this scarf. This now totals three skeins of yarn and I'd like to do three more to get it to a good length.

And finally, I slow stitched this crochet edge fleece blanket. I really like how the rainbow yarn came out. It's just a small blanket using some leftover fleece, but its one more thing out of my stash and ready for someone to use.

I had a very busy weekend with an all-day sword-smithing event yesterday, during which I sewed 25 sword covers and added bias tape to a Dagorhir member's surcoat. Today we had church and a birthday party for a friend's one year old son, who was obviously worn out by the end of it but was a trooper and I think he had fun.

I just got home a few minutes ago and I only have a couple hours to relax before I have to go to bed. If I'm not too tired to stitch after a hot shower, I'm going to attempt to work on this Life if Beautiful block next. I'm having a little trouble deciding what colors to make the other two butterflies.

How was your weekend?

One Monthly Goal Finish

I "finished" this blue and white scarf, by which I mean that I discovered that the double layer of yarn hurt my hands to work with, as it is quite stiff. I finished the row I was working on and called it done.

The funny thing is that when I went to photograph it, it is stiff enough that it folded into this awareness ribbon shape. Out of curiosity, I looked up a list of awareness ribbons to see if this scarf would mean anything.

I came to the conclusion that I have my choice of meaning, based on the blue and white ribbons. So this scarf is a combination of blue for human trafficking awareness and white for ending violence against women. Seems appropriate. Now that's decided, I've retired this scarf to the donation box.

I have put Library Kittens away for the time being. I far surpassed my goal of 700 stitches last week.

At the beginning of last week

I'm close - oh so close - to the halfway mark for this project, and it still needs a decent amount of back stitching.

Last but not least, here are the finished blocks for the quilt I am working on, meeting my One Monthly Goal. I've decided go ahead and cut some more Dresden plate blades. I think this quilt needs to be bigger and I have a large stack of 6 inch squares to use up.

On a different topic, I've lately been looking around at the craft supplies I have and wondering how long I could go without buying new projects. Not self control wise, but how long would my supply of happy things to do actually last me? I'm predicting it might be years really. I'm thinking of trying an experiment. I can work on anything, with no limitations on what I'm allowed to work on except that there can be no purchases. Eventually I'll have to cave and buy more quilt batting, and garb supplies wouldn't count since I don't stockpile those.

It's nothing I'm committed to yet, just this curiosity that I have bumping around my brain right now.