Reading Not Stitching

Sad to say there was no time for stitching this week.  I had a business trip to Atlanta most of the week - at least it was warm there (it was only in the high 40s here in Chicago - brrr).  I rarely take stitching with me when I travel on business, as I always think I will have the opportunity to stitch but I've learned that it just never happens.  I did start reading The Story of Edgar Sawtelle on my Kindle, and so far I'm enjoying it.  When I got home, I picked up a book that my friend Amy recommended - The School of Essential Ingredients.

I loved this book - it's about a cooking class taught by a restaurant owner and how the act of cooking with others affects all of their lives.  It's worth it for the descriptions of the food alone, but I also really enjoyed the story.  It's a fast read (I started it late last night and finished it by noon today) and it's thoroughly enjoyable if you like to cook or eat.

Maria and Richmond WIP Photos

First of all, Happy Mother's Day to my mom who is my best stitching friend, and who is much more prolific than I am, at least these days!  Although I wasn't with her today, we spent some time last weekend picking out frames for our latest masterpieces and I know she's spending her day stitching today.

We finally had a sunny day so that I could take some progress pictures of Maria Antoni and the Richmond sampler.  I haven't made as much progress as I would like but I did finally finish the lower right section on Maria today. Here's a picture of the entire piece (as you can see, I'm skipping around because I want to leave the majority of the satin stitch for last).

Here is a closeup of the lower right portion, finally complete.

 The long-armed cross/reversible cross seems to be taking forever - I've ripped out more on this piece than on anything in a long time!  It does look nice when it's done, however, especially on the back where it's all vertical lines.

I haven't done much on Richmond, but I am about halfway done with the top border.  I worked on it last night while I watched It's Complicated - what a great movie!  I still have one more flower to go, two baskets and the rest of the queen stitches in the border to go.

Here is a closer shot of the portion that's complete, and then a close-up of the basket.

I love how this piece is turning out - of course the next part is the dreaded over-one verse.  I can't wait until I get through that and can start the house and all the fun stuff below!

Milestones

OK, I realize that it's been quite a while since I posted here.  Work keeps me busy as always, so not a lot of time for stitching but I am making some progress on Maria Antoni and the Richmond Sampler.  And, I finally took Elizabeth Yeagers in to be framed last weekend when I was up in Madison.  It was hard to choose a frame but I think she'll look good when she's done!

This week is a week of milestones.  Over the weekend we went to Madison to celebrate my Dad's 80th birthday and had a lovely time.  The weather couldn't have been nicer and we took Dad out for a nice dinner on Saturday and then met my brother and his wife for breakfast and a walk through the Arboretum to see the lilacs on Sunday.  All of the flowering trees are at their peak (at least 2 weeks early!) which made for a nice drive through the Wisconsin countryside on the way up and back. 

Today is our 8th wedding anniversary.  Andy sent me some beautiful flowers and we're going out to dinner on Friday night to celebrate.  It doesn't seem like eight years since we walked down the aisle - how time flies! 

Maybe tomorrow I'll actually get out the camera and post some progress pics of Maria and Richmond!

Necessities

Today finally brought the UPS man with the new scroll rods that I need for the Richmond sampler.  I've been waiting for these for a month and last week I was convinced that they were in my neighbor's garage...crazy, I know, but I got a notice saying they would be shipped and when I saw the UPS guy dropping off a long, skinny box across the street and my neighbor tossing it in the corner of the garage without even looking at it, well, you know how it is.  A watched package is never delivered.  Thankfully I finally got a tracking number and realized that they had not even been shipped at that point, saving me from making a total fool of myself by going over and asking to see the package in the corner of their garage.  That was probably golf clubs, lol.

At any rate, now I can pick up again on Richmond, which I haven't touched for several weeks.  I was stitching in hand but it's huge and I don't enjoy stitching in hand.  I have not done any of the queen stitches because my tension isn't right unless my fabric is taut, so I broke down and ordered the new 30" scrolls.  Here you can see how long they are!

Here's my progress on Richmond so far - I have almost all of the flowers done across the top, but I have not finished the baskets since they are done in queen stitch.  Those will be next, along with filling in the queen stitch in the border (first I have to get it on the scroll bars, which I always find challenging with a piece this large).

Last, a close-up of some of the flowers.  This is a beautiful piece and now I am going to be switching back and forth between working on this and Maria. 

Progress

As promised, I did take a few pictures of Maria today. I still can't seem to get the color quite right but you'll get the idea. First, here is the vine I was working on yesterday - you can see that while the leaves are a more blue-green color, they are not really any lighter than the vine, and they should be. Fortunately Margriet has come to my rescue and is sending me some of the lighter color.   Next is the spray of flowers that took me so long to do.  It's done in a reversible cross variation that only leaves vertical lines on the back.  There were a lot of color changes but if it was regular cross I'd be carrying the thread on the back and it wouldn't have taken nearly as long.  The reversible cross is denser on the front because you've got two passes on one of the legs, so I was able to "travel" by running my thread under on the front, but it was still time-consuming.   Here are pictures of the front and the back. 

Here's a picture of my entire progress so far - still a long way to go!

Roadblocks

These days it seems like I hit some kind of roadblock with every project I pick up.  Today it's Maria - although I have been making very slow progress, last night I finished the spray of flowers I was working on and moved on to some more satin stitch, which goes much faster.  However, I realized after stitching the vine that the silk that was in my kit that should be used for the leaves is much too dark.  For the online class Margriet is using a different color (one shade lighter) and it looks totally different from what I have.  I was going to just use what I have but I looked at the chart more carefully and there are several places that this color is used where it's next to other very light greens - the darker shade that I have just won't look right in those spots.  So, now I'm on a hunt for some 3422 - hopefully Margriet will have some that she can send me.  That didn't stop my progress, however, I just moved on to another area of the sampler.  If it's sunny I'll try and take another progress photo tomorrow and post it.

The basketball/stitching plan worked only slightly better this weekend - Friday's game was too close for me to actually stitch during the game and today I did stitch but the game was a total blowout.  Although the Badgers won't be playing, next weekend should have some interesting matchups.   They don't call it March Madness for nothing!

Basketball and Stitching

Well, I had high hopes for this weekend on both the basketball and stitching fronts, however I fear that disappointment in one led to lack of progress in the other.  I was all set for a lot of stitching this weekend while watching the Big Ten Conference Tournament.  However, the Basketball Badgers were somewhat of a disappointment on Friday, losing to Illinois (I hate losing to Illinois!).   Once that was over there went my stitching/watching plans, as it was hard to muster up too much interest in the other games.   So, we spent Saturday running errands in the rain and putting together our new bookcases for the library (finally, enough room for my needlework books!).  Sunday I went to the Lake Michigan Sampler Guild meeting where we had a very interesting talk on framing by one of the LNS owners.  I enjoyed hearing what she had to say and got a tiny bit of stitching in at the same time.  Progress on Maria is one step forward, two steps back - I'm working on the reversible cross portions and I feel like I am ripping more than I'm stitching, but it's coming along slowly.

Since last weekend didn't work out, I'm going to try the basketball/stitching thing again this weekend.  Wisconsin is playing in the NCAA tournament on Friday afternoon, so I'm taking the afternoon off and I'm planning on stitching and watching.  Assuming they get by Wofford (never heard of them until this fall when we played them in football and I'm hoping they aren't any better in basketball), that means another game to watch on Sunday.  Let's hope this plan works out better on both fronts this time!