Catching up!

     Yikes! It's been a long time since I posted. Sorry about that. It's not that I've been lolling around, resting on my laurels (well, laurel). I've been busy with the online store, also trying to destash a bit (sadly not enough) on eBay, and sometimes having a life. I have been stitching a bit as well. Anyway, without further ado, here's what I've been up to.

     The Ro Pace workshop had its good points and its, well, not-so-good points. Good: Ro's introductory lecture about how she came up with the initial design for the class piece, Memories, was fascinating, especially when it came to how she made the design look totally different by simply using different colors. What started out as Tide Pool morphed into Bed of Pansies and Rose Garden, following one modification with two colorways, then Solar Flare with another modification using just two color families. I worked on Solar Flare and attended just the first day of the workshop. My progress was small, but based on the rest of the class, about average or maybe slightly better than average. But what I did that one day was all I needed to learn in order to complete the piece, as the whole design is a tessellation based on just one segment, or cell, that's rotated to create a four-cell tile that's part of a four-tile quadrant, and so on. Here's where I got, and I've gotten no further.

     What you see is two cells, which are actually the lower right corner of the piece. I just rotated the image to be perverse and satisfy my need to work from the top left corner outward. (I really did work on it in the proper orientation, otherwise I would have been totally confused.) I quickly decided that the best way to work this would be to rotate the chart rather than the canvas, as I would have spent more time moving the canvas around on the stand than actually stitching on it. Orienting the chart and canvas are major with this piece. I'm relatively pleased with what I did, though there are a couple of things I have to rip out because I found I didn't get a stitch quite right. One, the Diamond Jessica, is a stitch that I've done many times, but I just didn't remember the ending correctly and the diagram wasn't clear on that. I've since referred to a diagram and explanation by Michael Boren and now know what to do. The other is the Waffle stitch, which I blithely did, then discovered in a subsequent comment by Ro that I had done incorrectly. However, she didn't point it out to me at the time, when she came around to check on everyone's progress. I would have appreciated a closer look by her that would have led to the correction at that time, rather than when I was long past that point. Sigh.

     You may have noticed the basted outline. That was the prework, and shows the outline of one quadrant. If you click on the picture, it should go to a larger view, where you can see the outlines of the four tiles and, within each, the outlines of the four cells. I think I'll be removing the basted outlines once I finish each tile. I find them obtrusive in the red.

     Moving along to the Stitch of the Month mystery piece, I'm working away on the October stitch, and it's still October! I'm not sure I'll finish it before the end of the month, but at least I'm in the month. I'm enjoying this, even if it is a bit repetitive. It seems to be going quickly.

     The last catch-up bits are actually only tangentially related to stitching. Each of my stitching groups is anticipating the birth of a baby. In one, the Tuesday night group, one of our regular stitchers is having her first child, Isadora Rose, in December. I attended a joyful, exuberant shower a couple of weeks ago on a beautiful fall day.

The proud parents-to-be!
Yes, that's a walker. Samantha fractured her foot!

     There were three gifts made by members of the stitching group (that I can recall): a monogram, a bib, and two delightful stuffed animals.

     I didn't get pictures of the other two gifts, but aren't these adorable?

     The Thursday group has a grandmother-to-be, so we had a shower for her grandson because she'll be outfitting a nursery in her home. We took a break during our regular stitching day for the festivities and had a blast. Joan received some lovely things, among them some hand-knitted items for Little Bit.

Me and my good buddy Joan.

     That would be the cute little stuffed Eeyore modeling the baby cap knitted by Ferol and the booties knitted by Candy. So cute!

     We do have a good time and good friends in our stitching groups.

     Kthxbai.