On Beads and Needles

Wait, What? How’s 2023 Over?

Where did this year go? How have I not updated for 52 weeks? This year has been a complete blur. After the longest winter we’ve had since moving here 30 years ago – it was 69 on the First Day of Summer here, when it’s usually 90+ – to a summer of storms and straight-line winds with downed trees, to a mild fall with no hurricanes, and little rain, it’s been a bit unusual. The joro spider invasion was tamed a bit with the harsh winter – the only bonus of having it that cold that long. The garden was semi-productive, but I’m not sure we got as much as the tree rats did. To be honest, I don’t know how much I will bother with it next year; I don’t much enjoy the level of effort/product ratio. The herb garden is probably my best gardening effort, to the point it all came inside for the winter, so I can harvest fresh rosemary and thyme all winter long.

2023 was a rough year at the vet; after a major surgery and a couple of months, we lost our best kitty, Monkey Do. She was such a good little micro kitty, though she could be mean as a snake when she wanted to be – Salem did NOT like her anymore than he likes Opie. But she definitely became a snuggle cat somewhere along the line, after ignoring us for many years; we miss her walking on us and getting comfortable right on our femoral artery and heating us to boiling point. Rest well, Gravity Cat. And then, a few months later, we made the decision to take Auggie in for his last visit, too – the Cushing’s took its toll on him, to the point his legs were starting to give out on getting him up and down the steps. Those last several months were so hard with him, with the accidents, the destruction he did in his quest for food and water, driven by his disease; but now that he’s gone, the silence is deafening. As much as we miss Sis, Auggie is a thousand times more, I guess because he was just the center of attention every day for 16 years. We think about looking for another – and then we regain our senses.

As for the stitching, there was a lot, the Finishitis was still in full force the first half of the year. When I last updated, I was working on the 3rd piece from Long Dog’s Foursome Reel, which I finished in January – only 1 more smaller piece to go, and this set of designs are done and ready for framing; since I’ve used the same materials for all 4, I’d like to frame in the same molding, but the tiny over-1 miniature may make that hard – we’ll see if #4 ever gets done (since it’s not been started).

#3 on 28ct Shadowbrook from Silkweaver, using Gloriana silks.

And after that was done, I had a quick impulse start-finish; on reddit, someone had posted a completed piece based on Harry Potter, of Snape and Harry and a textbook page on Occlumency. I had to have it – and several others. It’s from a Russian designer & site – was a little hesitant to create the necessary account, but I read reviews for Boosty, and by all accounts, it’s as legit as any other platform for artists flogging their wares, so I signed up, downloaded this and others, and worked on this every moment until it was done. The backstitching in this is extremely intense, but oh so worth it! That illuminated O and the brain diagram – yoiks!

I have 3 others kitted and just downloaded another newly released a few weeks ago; they are all DMC and I have them on plain 28ct antique white lugana – Dumbledore & Fawkes will likely be next. They are all almost the exact same size, so I should be able to frame the same, maybe just change mat colors if they get matted. Watch this space…

After that piece, I needed a break from black and backstitching, so, since Finishitis was still going, I broke out my beaded Growth Rings, and finished that, too. The last half went way faster than the first half did, I guess because I was tired of it languishing. Fun piece, I really enjoyed playing with my beads for this, and am looking for the next thing to convert, though I have a few ideas percolating for doing Tracy’s Garden Stars partially in beads – that biggest motif just kind of screams shiny emerald beads to me, always has since the day she released it.

Ink Circles Growth Rings, on 28ct white jobelan and DB0982V and DB0986M and miles of Nymo thread.

I decided it was time to work on 1 of 2 Chats that haven’t had a rotation since I determined to work through all of them before allowing myself to start another – Mushroom & Fern. I got all the points around the center done and started one of the 8 trees, but put it aside to work on the next piece, below, and just never came back to it like I had planned. What I did took 5 weeks, I think, so that’s a good rotation, I think – and I found my new favorite delica bead, 0027.

Mushroom & Fern Mandala – 28ct Antique Copper jobelan, silks, metallics, and lots of beads.

I was drawn to a new Barbara Ana release, Wildflowers. I took a break from Mushroom because I HAD to; the cat is not black, but dark navy blue. I have a few more of these Barbara Ana’s in my String Theory box, too – normally I don’t do whimsy, but I really like these…

On 32ct Vintage Country Mocha lugana, framed in a HL off-the-shelf.

When I decided I wasn’t going to go back to Mushroom & Fern, I chose to work on a piece I had inherited from my friend Liz – if between us we don’t have almost the entire Glendon Place catalog up to just a few years ago, I’d be surprised. She had Whooligan’s Hangout started, and when she passed away last year, this was in the things her family let our local group go through and claim as we would. So I finished Whooligan’s Hangout, and framed it, and had it hanging on my wall this fall. Thank you, Liz – know that you are missed!

Whooligan’s Hangout by Cheryl Granda of Glendon Place; on the called for (discontinued) Fabric Flair linen w/DMC.

That just barely scratched the Halloween itch that resulted, so it was time to break out some charts from the Way Back – my friend Lisa destashed a copy of The Primitive Needle’s Witches Hollow, so I got the needed WDW threads I didn’t already have (again, Thanks Liz for a good pile of WDW in surprise, Halloween colors), and started Witches Hollow, on 40ct Sandstone – slick freaking Wichelt linen, ugh – but with it being Wichelt, the threads are thin/the holes are big, so 40ct wasn’t too hard to work on (I’d need a 1/2 of 36ct to fit this, so went to 40, which fits length almost perfectly). I got through about 1/3 of it – the chart is hard to see, it’s printed very small, 410 stitches long and 200 wide, but only on 6 pages, and it didn’t copy well at all for my working copy, so I’m referring to the original and online photos a LOT, which kind of made it slow going. I tried scanning it at the highest resolution my scanner has – no help. So I got as far as I could before I needed to give it a rest – it will be one of those in-small-doses WIPs, I guess.

Witches Hollow by The Primitive Needle – WDW & GAST threads on 40ct Sandstone.

I love her use of color and simple shapes; she is still missed, though, fortunately, I’ve still got a couple of charts in the stash to do. There was another on ebay that I almost bid on, but glad I didn’t, as it ended up going for $80 or so; I have way too much stuff in just the Halloween drawer alone to spend that much, even on Lisa’s designs. I wish her family would have continued distributing her designs, though I can understand why they chose not to.

I didn’t hit my Halloween ceiling yet, so I broke out two PN smalls, By the Light of the Moon, and Moon Witch (which was a freebie that can still be found in the usual online places if interested); I managed to find a piece of PTP Heritage at String Theory, so picked that up from Jackie, and got the two smalls done, and framed shortly thereafter in basic black frames (putting UV glass in frames got expensive this year):

By the Light of the Moon by The Primitive Needle

That mostly fixed me for Halloween, though I did have to stash a few charts from Autumn Lane, as well as Kathy Barrick and Tiny Modernist; I got the Autumn Lanes because I have also stashed some gorgeous fabrics from BeStitchMe (Friday Night Fight Night wins) and my Mystic Fabrics FOTM Club from String Theory, and needed a couple of charts to go with 🙂

And then Carriage House Samplings released a couple of charts that I managed to ignore. Until I couldn’t anymore. I have all these great orange fabrics, right, so it was fate that Twisted Pumpkin came out. I have the companion, Stardust, in my box at String Theory, so it’ll go on the other side of this BeStitchMe Pumpkin Patch fabric:

I cannot get a good pic of this fabric – it is not this washed out.

That was it. Except then, I needed to do an ornie for Halloween, because I hadn’t gotten around to doing any MH kits this year, despite there being at least a dozen sitting here, waiting on me. I sent this to my Nebraska kids – now they need a Halloween Tree for me to slowly fill up for them 🙂

While I was framing things, I decided to get my Chatelaine Pumpkin Halloween-y Mandala up on the wall, but wanted to play around with some hand cut matting; it’s small, so thought I could fit it in one of the basic black square frames Hobby Lobby now stocks; started with an 8″, decided that was too tight, went back and got a 12″, which just so happens to fit 12″x12″ scrapbook paper exactly. So I played around with colors and shapes and measurements and geometry, and came up with my own one-of-a-kind matting for Pumpkin – sorry for the bad picture, I didn’t even think to take a picture without the glass in the frame until well after I’d assembled it for the 3rd-4th time.

On 30ct WDW Purple Rain, using called for fibers – added a few additional Swarovskis, because, why not?

Along with all of this stitching, I also managed to keep up with 2 blackwork SALs – the Peppermint Purple and Steady Thread 2023 SALs, like last year’s block a week releases. I picked the most complicated border, I think, for the PP piece, and did it in only 2 colors – Vikki Clayton black for the border, and then my purple Dinky Dyes mystery hank from Market a few years ago for the fills, on 28ct Star Sapphire jobelan – I think it turned out exceptionally cool. For the Steady Thread piece, I decided to do 3D hexes, so the leafy border is a bit ad lib all around to accommodate the added size. The leafy border and hexes are Thread Gatherer and Vikki Clayton silks, respectively, and then all the botanical fills are Carrie’s Threads in purples and greens, on 32ct white jobelan.

And then, because I’ve become a SAL sucker, I caved for the Fiberlicious/Bella Filippina mermaids of the Seasons SAL. I have gotten behind because I had to stop to work on Christmas gifts, but hope to catch up here the first of the year. Here are the first 2 parts, Spring and Summer, completed, and then where I stopped on Part 3, Autumn – on the recommended Fiberlicious 28ct linen using the called for DMC & Kreinik, though I converted all of the MH 11/0s to delicas.

This blue is more accurate than the other pic, but it’s actually darker than shown.

And then it was time for the Christmas carpal tunnel season – between stitching and insanity at work in spreadsheet hell 9 hours a day, I’ve got serious wonkiness in my right wrist that I am trying to sort out with a wrist support and ibuprofen – getting old ain’t for wimps. So, first, ornaments for my sisters and the Nebraska kids:

Then the bookmark for the San Diego kid, he of the Stephen King fandom:

And lastly, for Christmas, Woodcarver’s Santas is my current WIP that I am trying to finish – don’t think it’s going to be done before New Year’s as I had hoped, but it’ll be close. One of my friends on MeWe had completed this last year/year before, and I scoured ebay and found a copy of this, pages from an unknown magazine (back in the old days when they didn’t know they needed to mark most pages w/issue info; people would seriously break up a magazine to sell individual pages? Who knew?) – this was designed by Jane Chandler, who I’ve never heard of, but am glad I was able to find this. On 28ct khaki/sage jobelan, using DMC and Diamante (my add), and there will be bead snowflakes at the end.

Crappy photo – the sparkle from the Diamante is pretty subtle, in the right light, which this is not.

That’s the stitching madness for this so quick year. It took me all afternoon to pull all of this together – I used to write stuff down frequently so I wouldn’t have to remember the whens and whats, but who has time for that these days? I reallllyyyy need to start using one of the many stitching diaries I have…

For 2024, I am NOT participating in the Peppermint Purple or Steady Thread SALs – they weren’t much commitment week to week, but they were distracting, and I feel like my regular rotation suffered as a result. So I have snoozed those pages so I can avoid the temptation. I do have 1 commitment for the new year – Noah’s Sub WILL get done, hopefully prior to May, when our first GRANDCHILD will arrive! The Nebraska kids are expecting on May 4th! I’ll be tripping to Omaha a couple of times during 2024 – will I see white stuff on the ground? Who knows? Meanwhile, Mom-to-be has been baking up a storm for customers in her area – I am actually okay that they are all the way in NE, or I’d be over there all the time to see what she’s got going on in the kitchen 🙂

Work will continue to be tumultuous, I am sure – we are transitioning so many things right now, with our merger with Inmarsat in the UK (PLEASE let me visit the London office for anything – I need to return to my old stomping grounds near Ipswich! And take DH to a Chelsea game, preferably when they are getting beat by my Liverpool Reds or Newcastle), and multiple system modernization efforts that we are in the middle of. I feel like the coming year is going to be a make-or-break for this country, and feel a little more optimistic that sanity is slowly returning – so slowly, but better than not at all. The question is, are we too late, are we too far down the progressive rabbit hole, to make it back to safe footing? I don’t want to live in a 3rd world country, but we are well on our way – at least, us plebes are, the elites won’t ever be affected by these progressive/Marxist policies, will they? Not sure why we have to keep learning the lessons over and over, other than, we’ve effectively erased all of that learning from the so-called curriculum, to our detriment. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to… what, deny it ever happened? Yup. Damn shame we’ve become ignorant by choice. Oh well, I guess all I can do from here is hang on for the ride and try to direct my energies in as positive a direction as possible, while the idiocy surrounds us and maybe starts to eat its own. Pray for Peace, Plan for Shit in the Fan, and Stitch On!

Countdown to 2023

Here we are, hours from the end of 2022. I’d like to say I’ll miss it, but to be honest, I don’t think I will – it’s been a lot like 2020 Part 3. It was a weird year for weather – the garden was pretty much a bust, as it either would not rain, or would not stop raining, nothing in between. No rain can be fixed with a hose, but too much rain at once, can’t really do much about that. We’ll try again next year. I did have a cactus go all gang busters, though, having 6 blooms in total over the course of a couple of weeks.

Shortly after my last post, I traveled to Arlington, Virginia, to Arlington National Cemetery, where my uncle, Col. Nevin R Williams, was laid to rest amongst his soldiers. A sobering stillness that I don’t have words for.

The Air Force Memorial as seen from the car – a few months before our 75th Anniversary in September. Guy in Cherry Picker bonus.

My stitching group lost our friend Liz, whose penchant for large projects and the fat halves they required made her an inspiration to all who knew her. She will be missed.

The World Cup has come and gone again, and was a happy surprise to see the US National Team make it out of the Group Stage, led by Christian Pulisic, who is on DH’s beloved Chelsea Premier League team. There were a lot of upsets, but in the end, I think the best team won – congrats to Messi & Argentina! And while having it in Qatar was highly questionable, I am glad there weren’t any international incidents of a global variety. We will see the World here in Atlanta in 4 years – way better than the Olympics! Though I do wonder how much it’s going to cost to put real grass in the Benz – we can’t play a World Cup on turf, that’s just wrong. Since the games will be played all over N America, I’ll be curious to see what we get here.

In stitching news, after my last update, I broke out Tuscany Town Mandala and got another set of buildings done, a big Tree corner, and actually completed the outer border, too – man this thing is huge all the way out to that outer corner! The Towers of San Gimignano were a landmark I wasn’t that familiar with, so have added some reading to my To Be Read pile from the Medici era.

Chatelaine’s Tuscany Town Mandala, on 28ct Water Lily jobelan, using silks, DMC, RG metallics, and lots of beads. I guess this is about 85-90% done at this point?

After I put that away, I got out TW’s English Garden Sampler, and worked it until it was done, including the cutwork border. All things considered, it went pretty quickly. I love these peacocks – the pictures really don’t do it justice, especially with the ton of pearl colored beads that cover the borders. I am still surprised at how big it is – is Peacock Tapestry just ginormous then? I have that one, too, but have never even thought about kitting it up – let me plow through more of the Dragons before I worry about that Peacock piece!

TW’s English Garden Sampler – Done with all called for threads on 28ct evenweave, all Mill Hill beads converted to Miyuki delicas. Chart RAK’ds to me from T McGoogin.

And because it’s been a TW/Dragon kind of year, I broke out a quickie for the holiday break, a modified TW Sun Dragon; it was modified to flip the dragon’s direction, and a border was added. I am pretty sure this is the last TW I bought from Patterns Online right before she pulled all of her dragons, and I think the mod was from one of my old Yahoo groups – I didn’t take very good notes on it, so am not 100% sure now (who knew Yahoo groups AND TW Dragons would become a thing of the past so quickly?). I was also modifying Stretch, to flip him and do him in other colors, but I can’t find that work now 🙁 Fortunately, the dragon on The Fortunate Traveler is a flipped Stretch, so really, all I’d need to do is the color conversion. Some day. In my free time.

A modified version of TW’s Sun Dragon, on 28ct Raw linen, using called for colors. I also tweaked the rays of the sun to use both of the dragon’s metallics, just because.

I also managed to keep up with both of my modern blackwork Stitch Alongs, and have completed both. The Steady Thread, I opted for no additional border – it just felt done, any more would have been too much.

The Steady Thread 2022 SAL Garden Layout, on 32ct jobelan, using several brands of silks.

The Peppermint Purple SAL just got done this week, when block 51 was released, and I just improvised a simple border on it on the fly – none of the published ones really grabbed me. LOVED using my Threadworx threads – fun to play with nearly 60 different colors!

Peppermint Purple 2022 SAL – Layout 4 – on 32ct jobelan, using Threadworx threads, and a black HDF silk for the border.

And because I’m a sucker, I am prepping for the 2023 SALs from both; this year, PURPLE will feature heavily (huge surprise). As for the Jurassic Park SAL, well, let’s just say that didn’t quite materialize the way I had hoped, so it’s in time out. I bought a Jeannette Crews 32 Dinosaurs chart to improvise a finish, got one of the dinos done, and put it away. Again, normally I do NOT spend $$ or energy on a design I haven’t seen the final result – sometimes I have to learn the lesson again.

I also finished one of my Mini Masterpieces, The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dali, one of my favorite artists – this chart by Teeny Weeny XS on Etsy (though I also have several from XS Obsession, who have a pretty extensive catalog of the Masterpieces – I have several Van Gogh’s to go). A fun little piece, good for conference call stitching, though I ended up not having many non-participatory calls, so ended up finishing it up this week.

Persistence of Memory, on 28ct evenweave.

I did a few Christmas ornaments, two for my sisters, and then finally got around to the Grinch freebies from Brooke’s Books. Not as many as I did last year, but still a lot, as quickly as I did them. The sheep was cool – he was all Smyrna stitches for the ecru. I forgot to take good pictures of the sheep & sleigh before they were wrapped & shipped, so no pics of the finish-finish – but you get the idea.

If I hadn’t impulse-started the Sun Dragon, I would have another finish, Long Dog’s Foursome Reel, #3, which I am working on now – it should be my first finish for 2023. And then I just have 1 more to do in that set, and all 4 are done, in the same color scheme, using Gloriana Elizabethan Green as the main color, all on different counts of Silkweaver’s Shadowbrook fabric.

1/2 on 28ct – normally I use 2 strands on 28, but that was just too heavy here, so I restarted it using 1 strand. 3 of 4 in the Foursome Reel set.

That’s the news for the end of the year. I am looking forward to getting my Big Kid back to the States this coming year, as he PCSs to San Diego in the spring. Little Kid also has a move coming up in the summer, and right now, is looking like out Nebraska way – who knew the Navy operated in landlocked NE? We’ll see if that changes between now & then… We may also try to fit in a trip to Spain before Big Kid comes back – short time period to try to jam that in, but maybe. Other than that, no specific plans for the new year, other than to please let it be better than the last few years have been! Happy Stitching!

The Year of the SAL – a Mid-Year Update

Look at me, updating less than 6 months since the last one! The benefit of taking a few days off of work is having time (or being sure to make time) to put a post together. I still have no idea how I used to do this every week, though I had less to update on with that frequency, of course. I miss the old Multiply site days – that platform was so photo friendly.

Here we are at the beginning of summer; we had a good spring this year, though winter was a long time going. We seem to be having a much dryer year this year, which was excellent for iris season, but not so excellent for garden season 🙁 We got 1 1/2 days of rain after nothing for 5 weeks, and are on another no-rain forecast right now. Don’t even want to see the next water bill.

The last update ended with my New Year’s (early) start on my Sweet Garden of Elizabeth I Mandala; I completed the center portrait area, including a pile of itty bitty seed pearls, which I had to add using one of those very long, very sharp beading needles, because the holes were so small. I poked myself with that needle more times than I care to count 🙁 And, as luck would have it, around the time I finished this rotation on it, Ela (Martina’s daughter) released a compilation of directions from those who stitched it. The updated file to does say the background to the portrait center is Queen stitches, but I couldn’t make them work, so mine are all diamond eyelets, the wide ends facing each other – it would be appropriate to have this one be Queens, but I couldn’t make them fit and not look like complete crap, so diamond eyelets it is, which actually look like what is on the chart.

After I put Elizabeth away, I was really feeling my Long Dogs yelling at me, so I broke out Pandemic and worked on it for a few weeks, getting progress both to the right and below. Page 1 is complete, and a large part of 2 is also done, as well as some on the next row of pages. I feel really slow at this one, not sure why. But it felt good to get any progress on it. If only I could get a good photo of this fabric – it’s so much richer than any photo can show. Fall Flame from Fiberlicious – such a wonderful color.

I had to get back on FB in order to have the resources for working on Elizabeth – I didn’t miss FB the year I was off, all the hatred and division and screaming and yelling – no one needs that. So when I did get back on, I culled out a lot of pages, just to keep the crap to a minimum. But, despite my best intentions, I ended up adding several pages – because apparently I have become a complete sucker for SALs this year, especially blackwork ones! Because I didn’t learn my lesson with Book of Ink Circles that I was just able to keep up with back in the days when I had half the WIPs I have now? WTH? So yeah, umm, the blackwork bug bit me hard, I’d been seeing WIPs from Peppermint Purple on another SM site I’m on, and when the 2022 freebie started, I jumped right in – it was the perfect excuse to play with all of the Threadworx threads I’ve been collecting the last couple of years. When done, there will be a rainbow shift in colors from top right to bottom left.

Peppermint Purple 2022 SAL – Layout 4, on 28ct lugana, through week 21

And then, I got sucked into The Steady Thread‘s 2022 SAL, too – I figured it was fairly easy to keep up with the PP one, 30-45 minutes a week, what’s one more small commitment? And this one would give me a chance to play with the silk collection, as I’m using Gloriana, Thread Gatherer, Dinky Dyes, and Carrie’s in it, on the same white lugana the PP piece is on (I must be out of my mind to have so many pieces on white here in the House of Too Many Animals).

Steady Thread 2022 SAL – Garden Layout through Week 22

And when that wasn’t enough, Save The Stitches from Elizabeth Almond started screaming at me, so I broke it out and blew through a bunch of blocks, getting through Block 8 to 2/5 completed! This was definitely not suitable as a travel piece, that’s why it stagnated; I can’t talk & blackwork, theses diaper patterns don’t play nicely with distraction. So when I put it on the floor stand and focused on it, it went much quicker! I can’t believe there are still beads to go back and add later – plenty of time to keep trying to decide what beads to use – a single color, an iris to match the multi-colored Mosaic Threadworx, or different colors like the GG Rainbow Blending Filament also being used?

And no, that’s still not all – really went all in this year, I guess… So then I think I was on reddit and heard about a Jurassic Park inspired SAL – who doesn’t like Jurassic Park? Craftizilla on Etsy & FB and Dyeing for Sass put together this SAL, and had some kits for sale on Etsy; I impulse-bought the basic kit, which was pretty cool, and came with an acceptance letter like I was interning at the Park, signed by none other than John Hammond! They put so much thought into these kits – crazy! And fortunately, they are only releasing 1 part a month, so I think I’ll be able to keep up with it, too 🙂 The fabric is 28ct evenweave (they only offered this and various aidas – I hope they expand their evenweaves and try to appeal to those of us that don’t use aida anymore).

I have also finished the Ink Circles Elemental Dragons set with Fire, and even got Fire framed. I reallllyyyy dislike this Wichelt fabric – stiff, slick, no grip in my QSnap. I did continue to audition color schemes, even taking a leap and ordering a piece of fabric from Silkweaver, which only took 1 phone call to shake loose – except when it got here, it was quite awful 🙁 It was supposed to be the same as the piece of linen I had used for Fire Flower years ago, but I guess Silkweaver only does Wexford linen for 32ct now, and wow, do I not like it – it dyes crappy and it’s itchy 🙁 The new piece of Inferno on the Wexford is watermelon colored – definitely NOT fire colored 🙁 So I went back to this Riviera Gold Wichelt. I can’t get a good picture of this, either, and the framed piece looks a bit crooked, but it’s just the design – I measured it, it’s level top & bottom, but the right side looks tilted down in a photo, but not in real life; that pointy tale in the corner is giving me an optical illusion, I guess..

I framed a couple of older pieces when I did Fire, and finished the Sugar Skull ornie that was a WIP at the last update. 2 of my Shakespeare pieces are now in search of a wall, and Verde is waiting for Halloween.

My current WIP is an art-to-XS conversion I made at Threadbare of a stripped cover art for the novel Dune. I was a bit hesitant to try this, but read an article by Lord Libidan (who has some good information, but also some incorrect information, and doesn’t really cater to more experienced stitchers) regarding various conversion sites, and gave this one a try. Threadbare allows quite a bit of tweaking, and so far, I am very happy with the result (though this is purposely loose in detail). Also a first, I am working this on 22ct lambswool hardanger, using 3 strands in half/tent stitch, rather than full cross. WOW is this ever so much faster! If only I could figure out how to do a SQ this way! 4 strands on 20ct, 2 & 2? Maybe! Jeez, L&U would be done by now if I’d tried this then! From now on, this is how full coverage w/no blended threads will be done – thanks for the inspiration, Nancy!

Artwork from one of the covers, all text stripped.

Where I am as of 6/1/22 – 2 pages complete, plus a good bit of Page 3.

That’s the stitching news. Hopefully I will not crack under the pressure of keeping up with these SALs 🙂 Fortunately, work has entered a quiet phase, as our current PLM is on maintenance mode as it & ERP are in the process of modernization (ERP first), so at the moment, I’m not being forced to work 10-12 hour days. I will be picking up more involvement in my current group, Corporate Quality Analytics, to assist the Quality group with transitioning to the nextgen systems, as soon as we figure out what that is going to look like. It’s nice to have some quiet time, I think the last few years have earned me a bit of breathing room before the next fire drill starts.

In the mean time, there is the garden – of which we now have 2, thanks to DH building me an herb garden for the deck – and praying for more rain (yes, I said it) and less wildlife. There is also the lake, if we can afford to put gas in either boat. The way things are going, the garden better produce, it may be a serious fallback with the economy tanking and supply chain sucking even worse. What a world we live in now – division and chaos are the order of the day, as they try desperately to set up their New World Order. Well, I don’t think it will happen without a fight, which is what they’ve been trying to preempt for years. Hopefully we’ve woken up. Let’s Go Brandon! FJB.

Dill on top – need something else up there, haven’t decided on what yet; then we have mint, oregano, and cilantro, then thyme, rosemary, and purple basil. The giant oregano was from the other garden, came back from last year and took over its bed – buckets will keep them from taking over space, AND so much easier to get to; not trekking down the hill and back up for a sprig.

Until next time, Happy Stitching!