Incoherent Scribblings

Two WIPs

Although my needles haven’t exactly been smoking lately, I have been stitching.

First up is my progress on “Fairy Flora.” I still enjoy working on her and every time I put a few hours into her I know that I am that much closer to finishing her. BUT… Every time I work on her I also know that I still have a long way to go.

As a matter of fact, according to my records, it won’t be long before I hit the 200 hour mark on her! That’s right… I said two hundred hours! I have never in my entire life put so many hours into a single cross stitch piece! I guess when I finally finish her I will know that I have earned the mark of a true Mirabilia stitcher.

These days when I am not working on Flo I am working on “The Bookshelf.” I find it to be a soothing stitch and with its minimal color changes, it will be done in no time. As of this evening it is 50% complete.

Tomorrow is my SAL day with Dawn. Since she is still waiting on her Kreiniks for “Harvest Witch” we have decided to go ahead and start our next SAL piece, “Summer’s Magic” by Dragon Dreams.

I am not exactly sure what fabric I am going to use for it, but I am leaning towards something in brown/tan to represent sand (the dragons are on the beach) and have three or four possibilities in my stash.

And finally, I want to wish all of the mothers out there a Happy Mother’s Day tomorrow. May you get breakfast in bed, flowers, a card, and plenty of time to yourself for stitching!

Booking Along

Such an appropriate post title: My weekend was all about books in one form or another!

First up, here is the progress that I made on “The Bookshelf” this weekend. I have now added the authors’ names. At first I thought it was odd that Oscar Wilde was a member of this group of female authors (well, if you know anything about Oscar Wilde, maybe not) but then I realized it was Wilder as in Laura Ingalls Wilder, not Oscar Wilde!

And because I am a stickler for accent marks over letters in words (perhaps it has something to do with the fact that my first name has one of those elusive babies) I added the umlaut symbols over Emily (or Charlotte or Anne) Brontë’s name.

I also read this weekend. I finished reading John le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold for my novel writing class. I must say that out of all the books we have read this semester I was most dissatisfied with this one. Although I did find the glimpse into East Germany in the late 50s/early 60s slightly interesting from a personal point of view, overall I guess spy novels just don’t do anything for me.

Of course, considering that May is nearly here, the semester is quickly coming to an end. This means that tomorrow I have to hand in a portfolio of everything I have written this semester. This includes 45 pages written towards my novel, 16 “elements,” and any other writings that we included in our journal. Next week we hand in our final assignment which includes 15 polished, revised pages that (more or less) comprise a chapter of our novel and a reworked copy of our midterm project: A proposal to a publisher.

When we began the semester Dr. B. warned us that by the end of the term we would be sick of looking at our novel and at this stage I whole heartedly agree! Although I hope to take my novel and turn it into my Master’s project (aka “thesis”), I am also ready to take a bit of a break from it. Right now I feel that the story and the characters are a bit stagnant.

I think I need a new perspective on the manuscript. I am not sure which will help me more though: A month’s break from it or a pitcher of margaritas!

A New LHN Start

Even before I was close to finishing either “Above the Clouds” or “Poet’s Heart” I knew the pieces that were going to fill their rotation spots when I was done. I planned on filling the spot vacated by Confetti with TW’s “Tapestry Cat” and “Poet’s Heart” with “The Bookshelf” by Little House Needleworks.

“Tapestry Cat” is my absolute favorite TW piece and I have been trying to start it for almost two years. In fact, I was so determined to start it that I bought a fat quarter for it shortly after I received the chart and I almost started it two or three times while I was still working on Confetti. However, given the problems I had with Confetti on different occasions, each time I sat down to kit up “Tapestry Cat” I decided that I better wait until I had finished one TW before starting another one.

Well, as we all know, I finally finished “Above the Clouds” a couple of months ago and although I wanted to jump into “Tapestry Cat” right away I thought I should make progress on some other pieces before I did so. I worked on Flo, finished “Poet’s Heart,” and then the other day I decided “Tapestry Cat’s” time had come.

I rummaged through my stash until I found the chart and the fabric. I was so excited that I danced around my dining/cat/craft room singing nonsense to myself as I washed the 28 count antique white Cashel linen and began to iron it in preparation for those long-awaited first stitches.

But then I remembered something.

I remembered using a chunk of the fabric here and there for a couple of smalls because “Tapestry Cat” didn’t need the entire fat quarter and suddenly I wasn’t sure whether or not I had enough fabric to start “Tapestry Cat” after all this time.

So I got out my tape measure and measured.

And then I started “The Bookshelf” by Little House Needleworks.

April SAT Results

I know that Dawn didn’t work on “Harvest Witch” this past weekend, but since it was SAT weekend and I was about a week behind, I did. Now, with the exception of a wee bit of backstitching, Dawn and I are basically at the same juncture concerning Harvey: We are just waiting for our Kreiniks to arrive so we can finish her!

Stitching Hermit

According to a couple of blog posts I have read today, apparently I wasn’t the only stitching hermit this weekend!

Yesterday I worked on “Fairy Flora” and after deciding to fudge instead of frog an error I discovered, she now has a wing!

I have to admit that the decision between fudging and frogging wasn’t the easiest to make. Fudging meant that I would leave the mistake and although no one else would probably ever know it was there (unless I broadcast it on my blog ) I would know… Was it a mistake that would haunt me for the rest of my days?

On the other hand, if I chose to frog I would have to rip out almost half the wing and all the nasty blending filament that went along with it. Since I didn’t foresee the blending filament being in any shape to reuse it once I had removed it, I also faced the distinct possibility that I would run out of BF before I finished Flo’s other wing.

After weighing the possibilities, I decided I could live with the knowledge that there is a slight imperfection in the wing so fudging won out over frogging.

* * * * *

Today was my “Harvest Witch” SAL with Dawn and I managed to finish the skirt and get started on the “harvest.” I probably could have gotten more “harvest” done, but I have found that stitching while watching Lost: Season 1 (Yes, I am behind the times… I am still trying to catch up from living abroad!) isn’t the easiest thing to do. Luckily, I was watching it on DVD so whenever I missed something because I was looking at my stitches instead I just backed up a few frames.

Anyway, I was reading Dawn’s post and she was saying that if her Kreiniks don’t arrive this week she won’t have much more to do on Harvey until they get here. To be honest, I kind of hope they don’t arrive, that way I can catch up with her next Sunday! hee hee

And speaking of the Kreiniks for Harvey… I ordered mine (along with a special order for a friend and the beads for “Spring Queen” and “In Cupid’s Garden”) today. Hopefully by the time they get here Dawn and I will have nothing more to do but use them to fill in the blanks.