Flowers in a Window

It turns out that you can have a whole lot of fun with a free pattern, some thrifted aida, and a couple of skeins of ecru floss. 

The chart is Flowers in a Window by Stone Street Stitchworks and it's a free download.

Remember Ripe Apples?

One of my goals for the next few months is to tackle my pile of UFOs. The projects that I'm still actively working on are fine. So are the ones I started and then set aside for a while because there are only so many hours in a day. 

The ones I've set my sights on are the ones that I abandoned because something went wrong. With Ripe Apples, it was the basket and  the stitches I'd left unstitched. With so many similar shades of brown and green, it was the hedgehogs all over again. 

I know that I'll keep making mistakes, but maybe I can learn from them and not do the same dumb thing over and over. It's easier to do the confetti stitching if you don't leave random bits of it scattered here there and everywhere then have to compare your stitches to the chart and figure out what color they're supposed to be.

Those missing stitches on the apples that I saw as soon as I imported the pictures? Those are stitched white highlights that are supposed to be there. I double checked.

Bee Well

Sill here, still stitching, still doing a lot of reading, and still not managing to take pictures of finished projects to post them. That's why there was no mid-year totals post this year. Well, that and the fact that there weren't a lot of finishes by the end of June. 

I did  finish Bee Well, a free pattern by The Blackberry Rabbit. It would have been a quick stitch, but I had unexplainable trouble with the wings and wound up doing one of them three times. They're probably not perfect, and bees probably do have perfect wings, but I'm not going to lose sleep over it. 

And I'm swooning over this little pressed glass boot, which is the exact color of honey straight from the hive. A few weeks ago, I saw some similar shoes at Goodwill, but they were eight bucks each and I didn't like them quite that much.  I was sure I'd find one at an estate sale if I was patient...and I did. This one was a dollar. And it's the color of honey, so I love it more than the blue ones I saw at the thrift store.

Google tells me that they're by Fenton and apparently people collect them and, compared to etsy prices, the ones at the thrift store were cheap. But I'm not a collector so I'll just keep haunting the estate sales for pretty sparkly treasures.

I Stitched A Goose in a Dress

Or maybe she's a duck. If you'd asked me last year I'd have told you that the last thing on earth I wanted to stitch was a goose....but I'd never seen a goose like this one by Barbara Ana Designs.

Pattern: The Key by Barbara Ana Designs 

I love the patterns with animals in dresses, but this is the best dress ever, with its great colors and geometric details. I started her for Maynia and got a corner of the dress done before moving on to something else because it was the next day and time to switch. A while later, I did some more stitching on the dress, but I was missing one of the shades of floss that I needed and wasn't feeling all that motivated... Then two nights ago the stitching bug bit hard.

Over the course of two evenings I went from "part of the dress is done" to having it completely finished. How long do you think it will take me to finish the fox?

If you enjoy huge single color samplers (or think you might), head over to Long Dog Samplers and download Pandemic. It's free for the next couple of days and absolutely amazing. I've been debating which of their samplers I might want to tackle and I guess this is the one.  It's got birds and flowers and a ton of amazing detail and I'm just deluded enough to think that I might be able to stitch it.

Lobster Bouquet

I absolutely adore this little piece! 

The pattern is Lobster Bouquet, a free download from Ink Circles. The fabric is something I bought with a coupon at Hobby Lobby. The floss is DMC #304.

This was my eighth Stitch Maynia start for this year and I kept picking it up again until it was finished. It's so addictive just to do one more flower petal or swirl or lobster claw.

I've been wanting to tackle a single color project by Long Dog Samplers. I thought I'd enjoy it, but after stitching this, I'm thoroughly convinced!

I Apparently Don't Know How Bats Work -- But I Stitched One

I stitched a thing... 

The pattern is Self Isolating Bat, and it's a free download from Night Spirit Studio. (And I just saw while copying the URL that there's now a plague nurse -- imagine Florence Nightengale, with the beaked mask. I totally know what I'm starting tonight!)

I stole the fabric from a Dimensions kit to use for my bat, but that's okay because it had a big slub in the middle and I was going to have to replace it anyway. The full coverage project would have probably covered up the flaw, but I'm not doing that much work when it would be so inexpensive to replace it with a better piece of fabric and remove the risk entirely.

And apparently I don't know how bats work. Every single time I picked up this pattern I found myself holding it upside down.

Have you heard of #bewellandstitch? A whole bunch of designers have made up free patterns to keep out fingers and minds busy while we're self isolating. Keepsakes has a bunch listed on their facebook page, or you can  find a lot using the hashtag on instagram or googling. If there's a comprehensive list, I haven't found it yet. But I have found literally dozens of patterns to print and add to my plans.

House of Roses

I stitched a thing and it turns out that I absolutely love red aida. Or maybe it's just this hunk of red aida that I must've picked up at a thrift store or estate sale.  The pattern is House of Roses, a freebie I stumbled across and printed out with the plan that I'd start stitching it for Maynia. 

A week or two ago, I started seeing all of the Be Well and Stitch patterns and they motivated me to start something new and this was still on the printer because I don't print things often....

I started with a partial skein of  white floss left over from Camp Crystal Lake and when that ran out I pulled out a partial skein from the project bag where I'm still keeping the Emerald City SAL. Then I finally dug out a full skein.

Turns out you can make something pretty nifty with a piece of thrifted fabric and some leftover floss an a pattern you found online...

Finding the Yellow Brick Road

I started this socks at the beginning of September, back in 2018. They've been on my needles and in my project tracker ever since. Now and then I'd pick them up and struggle through another few rounds and remember how tedious they were, then I'd shove them back into their projects bag.

As of last night, they are DONE! And they fit, which is an extra bonus. (There's no reason they shouldn't have fit, but with as much trouble as these gave me I didn't have high hopes.)

The problem wasn't with the pattern, which is clear and well written enough. It wasn't with the techniques (although that decreasing five stitches into one at the base of each cable was fiddly and hard until something finally clicked for me halfway through the second sock and it made sense.) It might have been the yarn which, although it was a perfect colorway for this project, wasn't the highest quality stuff.

Most of it was my state of mind. I couldn't tell you exactly what made me avoid these socks.  Somewhere things went from pleasantly fiddly to downright hard.

I can't tell you how glad I am to have these finally done! There's another pair on my needles that have been just as obnoxious, but these were the more intimidating ones.

From Threadbare Sheets to Reusable Grocery Bags

Unpopular opinion -- I'm not a fan of the ban on plastic grocery bags. I'm all for reusing you own bags, but I think this new law is going to create a whole slew of new problems. And because I'm aggravated about that, I put off actually sewing some bags.

I've you've been reading my blog for more than a decade, this fabric might look familiar. It's identical to the thrifted sheet that I used to back Simple Pleasures back in 2009. Not long after I made the quilt, Alex found a set of queen sized sheets at the thrift shop. I called dibs on the fabric if she ever got bored with the sheets.

She never did get bored with them, but after a decade the fabric was pilled and unpleasant and she called and asked if I wanted the fitted sheet to make bags or something. I brought it home and it sat because I wasn't in a bag making mood.

Last night, I finally broke down and started the project. These aren't fancy bags. I didn't measure anything. I removed the elastic and corner seams and then tore the fabric in wide strips. The threadbare part in the very center of the sheet was folded over four times to make the handles. They're lined and sturdy and not the ugliest bags ever.

And I'm kind of sentimental about the fabric.

Pyramid of Skulls

I didn't know that Pyramid of Skulls was a famous painting by Cezanne, I just stumbled across the pattern when I was looking for still life cross stitch on Etsy and was drawn to the slightly creepy subject matter. And I'm so glad I did, because this is one off my favorite finishes and I'm about to start scouring thrift shops for an over the top ornate frame to display it in. 

Pattern: Pyramid of Skulls by The Art of Cross Stitch on Etsy 

Pretend that you can't see the two missing stitches. I checked and double checked and those appeared when I took pictures for the blog post. I'll have filled them in by the time you read this. At times, this project felt a bit too much like an eye exam, especially the pale skull in the center. It had Fs and Es and Ps and got a little rough on my eyes and nerves.

But it is DONE and it is GORGEOUS and I absolutely love this piece.

The Worst Pair of Socks Ever

I cast on for this pair of socks FIVE MONTHS AGO and I've been working on them fairly steadily the entire time. A normal pair of stockinette socks takes me two weeks or so if I do most of the  knitting at night while we watch television. 

What went so wrong with these? 

Part of it was my own schedule. I was doing more stitching than knitting in the  evenings. I also spent a lot of evenings actively avoiding these socks because the yarn, a skein of Mary Maxim Tropical Breeze in the Toes in the Sand colorway, was absolutely awful. Craft Warehouse had it on clearance a few years back and I picked up three skeins because cheap sock yarn is one of my weaknesses.

The first skein knit up into what I think of as the Hawaii Socks without much drama. The yarn tended to shred it I wasn't careful, but slowing down and watching my stitches just a bit took care of that problem.

This skein had loosely spun stretches and completely unspun stretches and stretches that were spun so tightly I might as well have been knitting with embroidery floss. Cutting the yarn would have messed up the gradient colors which are the only redeeming feature of this stuff.

You can see how uneven my stitches are....

A more reasonable knitter would have frogged the project and thrown away the yarn, but I'd spent money on it and time on the project and even though I have no moral problem with quitting something as not important as a pair of socks, I insisted on plowing through to the bitter end.

They may or may not fit. I don't know or care. What's important is that they are DONE and now I can move onto the other two pairs of socks that are antagonizing me.