Painfully Slow but Painstakingly Done

Let's not dwell on how long it's been since I last posted. Suffice to say, it's been far too long, but my life has been nothing if not tumultuous of late. I have made some progress on a couple of fronts.

What have I been focusing on most of late? From Molehill to Mountain has taken over the position of primacy. Since my ANG chapter is working on this as a bimonthly yearlong project, I've been attempting to keep abreast of what we're doing in class. Right now, I'm a month behind in getting something stitched for each segment. Here's where I am:

The sequence of group stitching is right to left, Blocks 1–3 in the book. Block 1, as you may recall, caused me no end of difficulty and negative-stitching experience. I think I've got my problem taken care of and should be able to proceed without additional frogging. I stitched the small green-and-yellow checkerboard in the upper right quadrant on Sunday after one or two false starts (to take a break from so much tone-on-tone stitching). I've been spending the most time on Block 2 in the center. If I can get through the last medium purple tone-on-tone triangles, the final three diamond shapes will be simple. I'm really loving the way this part looks, with the bit of metallic on top of the overdye. The tone-on-tone part is taking a while because my eyes have to be fresh to see it, even with my wonderful new Ikea clip-on light.

I'm trying to get enough stitched in these top three blocks so that I can make a decision on the border and sashing. There are three options provided in the book, all very different, with different color emphases. The choice depends on how I'm using my colors. So as you can see, I really need to stitch more on Block 3, which I will as soon as I finish Block 2. I think I've got enough of Block 1 completed to make the border/sashing choice.

If you're interested in doing this project and would like the benefit of a class, Scarlet Thread's extended the registration period for their FMTM cyberclass through tomorrow.

Before setting everything else aside to focus on FMTM, I had made a bit more progress on Flyways. I really need to get back to this because I'm very close to finishing it.

All that's required is finishing the top two diamond-shaped motifs (crescents only), then the triangular-shaped pieces to square the design off, finishing with the border. How hard can it be? Don't answer that question!

The last project I'm going to show you is more to shame myself into getting back to it. Can you guess what it is? I don't think I need to identify it.

All I have to do to finish the third square are seven triangular-shaped segments. Really, not that hard. We'll be having another group stitching session in January, so I should really try to finish this square up before then.

Kthxbai.