Incoherent Scribblings

Ta Da! Here is “Kitty Cat Row” all finished! I finished it late Monday night, but wanted to wait until I had washed and ironed it to post the happy dance picture.

In case you were wondering, I made a couple of minor changes near the end: First I altered the last two kitties’ collars from bark to brethren blue (2nd to last kitty) and mulberry (last kitty). I did this for no other reason than I thought they looked cuter with more colorful collars than with dull greenish-brown ones. I also changed the last kitty to oatmeal instead of onyx because I already had an onyx kitty and thought an oatmeal one would look nice with the mulberry collar that I had planned.

Though this is not the first project I have stitched with overdyed floss, it is the first “large” one and I think I can now say that overdyed floss does have its charm if you can use enough of it to actually see the color variations.

And now, because it is Wednesday, it is time for the SBQ! This week’s question was once again suggested by Nancy and is:

Do you do anything special to your threads before putting them through your fabric to make them more manageable?

In a word, NOPE!

Every time I went to the quilt shop with my mom last year I would look at “Thread Heaven” and wonder if I should try some though…

As you can see, I worked some more on “Kitty Cat Row” today. I think it is safe to say that next time I post a picture of this piece it will be a happy dance.

In other stitchy news, I also worked on Outi’s belated birthday exchange piece today. I have now restitched everything I had to frog and made a little more progress to boot. Hopefully the rest of the piece will stitch up without any drama. I think I could very well finish this by Christmas but I will probably wait until after the first of the year to send it off to Finland nevertheless so the chances that it gets lost in the mail will be minimized. I hope you don’t mind waiting a wee bit longer Outi!

And finally, I wanted to mention that Bea’s robin made its way back to her in Spain this past week! She was part of The Robin’s Nest round robin that I organized almost a year a half ago that fell apart due to a number of bad circumstances. Three of the original participants of this robin stitched squares for Bea and the fourth was done by Dawn.

Dawn kindly offered to be a substitute stitcher if I needed one, so I took her up on the offer. She did a great job choosing a pattern for Bea’s “cutie” theme and I could tell from the translation I did of Bea’s page that she was very happy to finally see her robin in person after all this time.

Thanks for helping us out Dawn! I really appreciate it.

Tonight I passed the half way point on “Kitty Cat Row.” I am enjoying stitching this so much. It is fun and easy, but will look spectacular when finished. What more can you ask for in a cross stitch pattern?

In the spirit of my ten hour rotation though (I have reached 11 hours on KCR), I should put it aside and work on something else next time I get a chance to stitch. The question is, am I ready to tackle Outi’s belated birthday present again?

Last week after I admitted that I was no longer having fun stitching on “Above the Clouds,” I allowed myself to finally start “Kitty Cat Row” using the recommended overdyes and the suggested fabric.

Even though I have to remind myself that because I am using the overdyes I need to complete each stitch as I go, I am having a really good time stitching this and think it was just what I needed to prevent me from going into a stitching slump. I don’t know what December has in store for me, so I will refrain from predicting that I will finish it before the end of the month, but it is stitching up fast enough that it is a definite possibility.