So much to stitch, so little time

I've been stitching a lot, but the results seem meager. Monday morning I spent some time at the car dealer getting the oil changed in my car and a tire fixed, the perfect opportunity to stitch in public! Nobody cared. I did get a bit more done on my SOTM. Maybe I'll have this month's stitch done before April's is posted. No photo of this till I'm done with the March stitching.

I finally feel like I've made progress on Stars. The top outer square is almost completely restitched, and I'm much happier with the way it looks. You can actually see the bottom-layer thread this time. I finished stitching the center element of Marilyn Monroe and will attempt the parallelograms again, this time with three strands of Splendor. After talking with Donna, I'm considering going ahead with stitching the rest of the border after I finish up Marilyn. The sides have to be stitched from the bottom up, though, which I'm not looking forward to because of all the counting and recounting to get to the point of beginning to stitch. Then again, I could stitch the sashing, then the border, which is what the instructions wanted me to do first anyway. We'll see. I hate having to resort to following the instructions after the fact. That implies that I was wrong, and I just hate being wrong.

kthxbai.

Belated Progress on Stars

It's been over a week since the first stitching meeting of the Stars stitch along group. I've been waiting for some of the stitchers to send me photos of their progress, and waiting for me to take some of mine. My progress is almost negative but not quite. I ripped out most of the top left outside corner stitching because I wasn't happy with the way it looked and still have more to rip. Sigh. On the 28th, I got started on the first block, Marilyn Monroe. The stitches are probably a little advanced for this remedial stitcher, so I haven't gotten that far. Part of what I stitched then and since then will be kept, but two areas have to come out.

You can see the remains of the outer corner. I found it harder to rip out than expected. Why is that? I'll try to remove the last remnants tonight just to eliminate the reminder that I had to do it. The stitching on the Marilyn quilt block is in its bottom right quadrant and is going painfully slow.

I'm not happy with the way the diamond area stitched in purple looks. I can see the white canvas in places, and I thought it wasn't supposed to show. Maybe I'll hold off ripping this out until I've stitched the areas surrounding it. The other area I'm not happy with is the purple parallelogram to the right of this section. I used the two strands Tony specified, but it's not covering nearly as well as it should. I have already ripped out the same stitch that ran perpendicular to this one and below the square area because I found a mistake. Something tells me this is going to be a long, arduous stitching experience for me.

On to the progress of some of my fellow stitchers. You can keep up with Donna, who's making up her own overdye and colorway, on her blog, needleworker not in paradise. Here are some of the other colorways being stitched.

This is JoAnn's Jelly Bean. She started at the bottom because we were still waiting for the JL Walsh silk and wool to come in and the botton left block was the first logical place to start that didn't call for that thread. She also found it easier to work that area. This is project isn't called a BAP for nothing. I think this is going to be stunning.

A note about the JL Walsh silk and wool. When I called the dyer to check on the status, I learned that she would no longer be dying this particular thread. Her supplier has raised her minimum to such an outrageous sum that she simply can't afford to do it anymore, which is sad because it is a lovely fiber. She'll still be dying her silks, just not the silk and wool. But I digress.

Dawn chose the Morning Garden colorway, substituting an overdye that was close to the now-discontinued Morning Garden and following the rest of the colors and threads as specified. (The name of her color escapes me right now; I'll get back to you on that.) As you can see, she's almost done with Marilyn. I hate her almost as much as I hate JoAnn. Hahahahahaha.

Ferol is doing the Granite colorway. I find it wonderfully surprising because if you look at the skein of Granite, you don't readily see all the beautiful colors that you can pull from it that make this colorway so stunning. Ferol also is stitching the border differently. I like that.

You may have noticed that with four stitchers, you have four different approaches to preparing the canvas and starting the stitching.

So that's what I have so far. There are five other people, two of whom are doing my colorway, Peacock, with the rest doing Tony's original Plum Honey colorway.

kthxbai,

Time Flies

I've been working so diligently for the past week or so that I didn't notice February was on its way out until it was gone. Not that I will miss it and its more than two feet of snow. I was delighted to see that a few crocuses had burst forth as soon as a patch of ground was exposed to the sun once again. If you look real close, you'll see the little purple flowers. Click on the picture to get a larger view.

And now my yard is full of crocuses, which unfortunately are still waiting for the sun to come back out so they can open. It was a glorious display on Sunday, and I wish I had thought to take a picture. It seems like a bumper crop this year. One of the Stars stitching group members came in and announced that my yard made her feel great.

A very optimistic camellia bud is trying to open. It's tucked back in a corner of the house, so the only way I can see it is through the window. It's been like this for over a week.

What's kept me so busy? I thought you'd never ask. I've been loading up my eBay store with inventory from Scarlet Thread the brick-and-mortar store that I won't be carrying in Scarlet Thread the Web store. Patterns, kits, painted canvas, crewel, fabric, and soon threads. Lots of scanning. Lots more to be done, but I intend to keep at it until everything has been listed at least once. At the rate I'm going that may take months. Yikes!

I put a link at the top of the page here. Stop by if you're curious. [End of shameless self-promotion]

kthxbai.