UFOs and a Few Finishes!

It's fall. Officially. There's a chill in the air, the leaves are turning, I got out my fall jacket and fall/winter hats. It's definitely fall now.

So I've been trying to get a handle on all my needlework, both needlepoint and cross-stitch. Yes, cross-stitch. I have projects in a variety of stages. Charted needlepoint, waiting to be kitted up; charted needlepoint that's all kitted up, waiting to be started; hand-painted canvases, newly acquired and awaiting threads; hand-painted canvases with their threads gathered, just begging to be stitched; and cross-stitch, just one, in progress.

Then there are the WIPs that have now become UFOs. Not too many, but enough.

That's Laura Perin's Stained Glass Windows (I decided to do just a 4 x 4 section and still couldn't stick with it) on the left.

Next to it is Carolyn Mitchell's Mystique, a beautiful symmetrical geometric design. And that's just the problem. It's based on the quadrant system. One of my friends had this to say about that kind of charted design: "There! You finished one section! Did you like it? Now you get to stitch it three more times." Not that there's anything wrong with that. I can handle it on a small scale. It's just the really big ones that I can't seem to complete.

To the right of that is the 2013 ANG Stitch of the Month, which I had all good intentions of finishing as we worked on it at my local guild meetings. I didn't even get through the first three-month segment, giving up after finishing one side of the border.

At the far right is Jim Wurth's Prelude to Peace, what you could call a BAP (or a big-a$$ project). Beautiful as it is, this one just couldn't hold my interest.

On the left in the front is a Ewe & Eye painted canvas piece that I saved from my brick-and-mortar store. I really do like the design. I've stitched a few portions, but I'm just not feeling it. So this one is destined to remain as it is.

Finally, you see a mystery from Blue Dogwood, CAThedral. I actually do like this, but I tried to do it with threads from my own stash, using colors that were close or might work as well and adding in other purchased ones as necessary. I created a monster! It just got too hard to figure out which thread I was going to use for each segment as they came out. I gave up.

These have now been taken off their stretcher bars, packed up, and stored in my guest room, where I keep all my needlework. My guild's going to have a swap in February, and these will be offered up there. If no one wants them, then the threads will all be incorporated with my stash (I say that like it's organized), the canvases discarded, and the chart packs filed.

I have been doing a lot of stitching, and I've finished stitching a few things.

This is a Sundance Designs canvas, Chili Peppers. I bought this for my brick-and-mortar store and started stitching it as a model. It languished with just the peppers stitched till this spring (summer?), when I finally figured out how to stitch the background and border. Ta-da!

This is my modified Halloween Treat by Marilyn Owen. I'm really happy with how it turned out. It's now awaiting finishing.

I went to the ANG Seminar in Chicago at the end of August and took a class with Orna Willis, Color Inspiration. What a wonderful concept for a class and what a challenge for me! Orna sent each student a pair of photos (you see the one I chose on the right above) from which to choose as the inspiration for the color story to be stitched. Each student received a unique pair. So I was the only one who had this as well as its companion. Suffice to say, this is so far out of my comfort zone color-wise that I finished the first day quite disheartened and feeling that I'd made a huge mistake. Everything came together the next morning, though; and by the end of the third day, I felt confident that I'd eventually finish it. Amazingly, I was so motivated that I finished it up within the next month. I even finally learned how to do French knots!

This is Little Red Barn, and I can't remember who the designer is. It's a little painted canvas I picked up at my LNS to stitch for a good friend who has a horse and loves all things related to horses. I whipped it up in about a day, then put it in a Sudberry coaster. I had a lot of fun stitching this little piece. I'm hoping that silly white fleck was on top of the glass and not trapped beneath it. Sigh.

So that's what I've been up to. My needlework organization project continues. I'll try to post an update when I've made more progress with it sometime next week. In the meantime, I'm going to take a class with Laura Taylor at Bedecked & Beadazzled in Timonium, MD, this weekend. I can't wait! We'll be stitching Ruth Schmuff's Flower Collage.

I'm really looking forward to learning some new stitches and techniques and working with new materials.

Kthxbai.