Update From Wrinkledy McWrinklerson and Froggy McFroggerson

Other wise known as my February WIPocalypse Update:



First up Wrinkledy McWrinklerson a.k.a. Sarah Elizabeth Brooke:

Sarah Elizabeth Brooke

The Scarlett House

36ct light examplar linen

DMC, Crescent Colours

You can find out more about Sarah Elizabeth at: The Scarlett House

Tanya has some exciting things in the works. So check her blog out often!

If you know me you know that I obsess over finding samplers with family names and Sarah fit my criteria, Sarah Elizabeth was my sainted great grandmother's name and Brooke, without the "e" and add an "s" for Brooks is my other great grandmother's maiden name so I thought it was pretty cool that both great grandmothers were represented in the name of this sampler. I also love the red house and the verse and it's just an all around perfect sampler.

I thought I would be showing you a finished SEB today but that so did not happen as you can see. I think the only thing I accomplished was completing some of the grass. I'm a sad panda. But there's always February and of course my March update so stay tuned!

Now Froggy McFroggerson a.k.a. Prairie Schooler's February:

February

Prairie Schooler

32ct lambswool

DMC

I had to frog the roof of this house not once but twice because I stitched the same exact mistake twice. I don't know what was going on with me at the time but focus and that counting thing were definitely issues. All is frogged and will be restitched in the next couple of days. I hope to finish this before the end of the month, but we'll just have to see about that.

Which brings us to Berthe DuPont. Berthe is pretty darn beautiful in my very humble opinion. She is a free chart, there are 23 parts and she can be found here:

Abécédaire Berthe Dupont 1913 -1 Trésors de boites à couture

I believe the chart is available to purchase from her boutique if you don't want to search the site looking for all the parts. I converted the DMC to Vikki Clayton Silks. I love her silks.

Berthe DuPont

Tresors

40ct Creme Brulee linen from Hand Dyed Fibers
HDF silk

Now to my very slow WIP, it's a triptyche from Heaven and Earth Designs the part that you see is Dark Waters with the top most part being a teeny tiny bit of the center panel(just water and sky). The design can be viewed here:

Bright Skies [FENECH9211] - $14.25 : Heaven And Earth Designs, cross stitch, c

Dark Waters [FENECH9210] - $14.25 : Heaven And Earth Designs, cross stitch, cr

and if you really have to see the center panel just do a search for Dark Waters and the center panel will pop up, it's just more water and sky. I have loved this since I first saw the artwork. It's going to be pretty freakin' awesome when I finish it when I'm, oh, 89.

Bright Skies, Dark Waters

Heaven and Earth Designs

22ct antique white hardanger

DMC, 2x1, full cross

And I have another Heaven and Earth Design started, this is Red Silk Mermaid. I had been planning on doing my bedroom over with a red and white color palette, I started this back in 2007. My bedroom is still not red and white, it's still modern American clutter covered in cat and dog hair. But one day it will be a room de romance. Maybe.

You can see the completed piece here:

QS Red Silk Mermaid [KUIK15523QS] - $6.75 : Heaven And Earth Designs, cross st

When I started this piece my fellow HAED stitchers were just starting to embrace the tent stitch for these insanely large projects in that hopes that they might actually move from slow works in progress to finished projects. So I thought Red here would be a good test stitch for me to see how I feel about tenting. At first, way back when, I didn't really care for the tenting. It felt wrong. Now, after picking this piece back up and working on her here and there for the last week or so, I kind of like working over 1 on the 28ct fabric. I know, it's insane, right? I keep having dreams where my beloved little X comes and flogs me with floss because it feels I have betrayed it. But I have to say I never thought I'd ever be a person that looked forward to working over 1 on 28ct. And I do. I'm loving this process, I'm getting more and more comfortable with it as each stitching session passes. I will still do some of my HAED in full crosses but I think the ones without so much detail will definitely be tented.

I get asked all the time why do you want to stitch HAED, why not just buy the art, and really, what drew me to cross stitch all those many years ago was the fact that my dad could draw anything and my poor hangman didn't even make it to the noose my drawing is so bad. I saw cross stitch as a way to create art on fabric. Sure it's someone else's art that I'm recreating but I still love that process.

And at the same time I discovered cross stitch as art, I also was obsessed with Laura Ingalls Wilder and in The Long Winter she writes about Laura cross stitching. Laura Ingalls Wilder cross stitched! How very cool that information was for this 11 year old. So stitching art is something I'm not going to give up and I do believe that a HAED and reproduction sampler can happily reside in the same house. Like my hero Tim Gunn says, "Make it work!" and I plan to!

Red Silk Mermaid

Heaven and Earth Designs

28ct tea dyed Monaco

DMC, 2x1, tent

For more information about the WIPocalypse check it out here:

Measi's Musings » Blog Archive » 2012 WIPocalypse

This next project is sad yet joyful. Last year I lost a sweet stitching friend named Chelsea. Chelsea was one of the most amazing people I have ever met. She had waited a long time for a heart and double lung transplant and eventually it was her turn. She thrived, she married her long time love, she taught kids how to swim, she crammed as much life into every single day of her life that she could. In July, due to complications, she died. It was unexpected as she had been doing so well and every single day I miss my sweet friend. When I get down, when I start feeling sorry for myself I ask myself what would Chelsea do and you know what? Chelsea would grab life by the horns and make it good! So I am trying very hard to live by that. Life is short, cram as much life into every single day that you can.

Some friends got together to make Chelsea's mom a memorial quilt. The artwork is from Hannah Disney and is titled Chelsea's Gift.

Here's a link to the art on HAED website:

Chelseas Gift - In Memory of Chelsea - Proceeds to Family [LYNN1472] - $11.25

I'm pretty sure my square is the very bottom right corner. This is my project so far and it's not as much as I would like but I'm getting more comfortable with tenting and feel less like I'm going to make a mess of my square.

Chelsea's Gift

Heaven and Earth Designs

25ct lugana

DMC, 2x1, tent

Me and the spousal unit at the beach a month or so ago.












A Kitten Darkly(Yep, I'm lame, named her Darkly from A Scanner Darkly)

This was taken in back in the autumn as you can tell.

My attempt at bokeh. The lights are supposed to be heart shaped. I need to get a 50mm lens. It's on my list!

Anyone loving Project Runway All Stars like me? I want Austin Scarlet to win. I've loved him since season 1 and thought he was robbed.

I don't enjoy 24 Hour Catwalk. I can take it or leave it.

Revenge(ABC Wednesday nights)! My favorite show. Downton Abbey(PBS Sunday Nights)! Also my favorite show!

Also enjoying Grimm(Fridays on NBC) and Once Upon a Time(Sundays on ABC).

And people, new episodes of The Walking Dead start this Sunday(on AMC) check it out on Netflix if you haven't watched it and then we discuss all the zombie craziness!

Please Game of Thrones start back soon! I think it returns in April. (HBO Sunday Nights).

I just started listening to The Final Empire: Mistborn Book 1. The book starts out, the evil overlord has won. I thought that sounded interesting and so far I'm enjoying the first hour of the 25 hours. I have several friends that love this series.

I'm reading The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley(hope I got the author's name correct). It's a nice cozy mystery and exactly what I needed after wrapping up Stephen King's 11-22-63. I loved that book. I will be honest, I do believe Mr. King got caught up in his world building. I think he loved late 50s early 60s and certain parts of the America that used to be. I felt like I was there, but I really, really wanted him to get to Oswald and take care of business, and there's this feeling of impending doom and I wanted it to get it over with already! I was pretty tense listening to this story. It dragged but that dragging was so very important. I didn't give up on my characters. Over all it sucked me in, maybe for ten hours too many but never the less, the ending, that final scene was worth every dragging moment of the story. Really and truly it was.

So that's my life and stitching update for the moment.

Thanks for stopping by and reading my ramblings!

Cool Waves and Dark Waters

I've had a productive day or two. I managed to finish crocheting an afghan started many months ago. Just in time to welcome in Summer. DOH! I also pulled out a HAED project, Dark Waters. I'm actually stitching a triptyche of art, but started with the bottom piece, Dark Waters, an ocean of mermaids, there's a center which is just water and sky and the top piece is a sky full of angels. Not a lot of progress on Dark Waters, I'm trying to fill in areas of confetti which is wonderful for the detail of the piece but doesn't really show much for several hours of stitching. But I love this art and it's going to be freakin' awesome when completed. If it's ever completed that is.

Here's my Cool Waves throw stitched with the same exact colors as in the magazine because I'm unimaginative that way, actually I love these colors and I had them all right here in the stash so I went with what worked. Please ignore where Pineapple the cat has clawed up my wicker. She's evil. This pattern is from a Crochet Today special issue, Quick and Easy Gifts. The yarn is good old Red Heart.

I have more afghans planned, some using the exact colors from the magazines because I'm trying to deplete the Red Heart stash and mostly because I happen to like the colors the original design was created with. I suck at the color thing, when I attempt my own interpretation it's usually catastrophic, at least to whom ever is unfortunate enough to gaze upon it.

This is my current progress on Dark Waters. I love the detail in the fish to her left. That makes the confetti stitching so worth it. Yes, my fabric is dirty and believe me, over the next ten years of stitching on this I suspect it will get even more dirty. Such is the life of a slow work in progress.

Have you seen Tanya's new designs? Head over to The Scarlett House and show her the love! They are wonderful!

Hope everyone is able to spend many hours with the little X this weekend! Especially the Americans who have a long weekend, that's 24 extra stitching hours!

What are your stitching plans?

Thanks Y'all!

Thank you for all the notes and emails about my dad. They were all appreciated more than you know.



If you read my friend Sharon's Blog this little biscornu will look familiar. I went to my mailbox one day last week and found the frogs. I am deeply in love with these guys. They have beads on their toes. Frogs with bling. Sharon ROCKS! I am so honored to be the recipient of these guys. Thanks Sharon--for so many things but most of all for being my friend.



Here's the back:

It's overcast here, of course I post no pictures for ages and the first day we get rain I decide it's the perfect time for a photo shoot. The spousal unit is probably correct that I really don't need a Hasselblad camera. I'm kind of obsessing over one right now. Ashton Kutchner humping Nikon has really put me off wanting a D80 Nikon now. I know I'm weird.

Some stitching has been going on:

Above you see part of page 10 and part of page 11 of HAED Dark Waters based on the artwork of Selena Fenech. And below you see how the table looked right behind the stitching. Crystal will not move and she hisses when you try to move her yourself. I left her alone and just propped the Q-snaps on the cat. Whatever works right?

Chick With No Skilz

That would be me. I thought zigzaging around some wave borders for my Just Beachy quilt would be easy. Wrong. Even going S-L-O-W I messed it up in some spots. I need a little bit more control and some practice.

My library has started getting in books on Playaway. They are so freakin' cool. It's the convenience of an iPod without spending time loading the material on the computer and then loading it up on the iPod. I price checked these on Amazon and they are only a little more than a book on CD.

Haven't had a picture of my guys on here lately. Here they are at the hotel where my SILS were staying a few weeks ago. The youngest is refusing to cut his hair. I'm letting it go. Picking my battles. He keeps it clean so we'll see how long he can suffer with the Fabio look.

BTW-I conducted a taste test, McD's iced coffees vs. Burger King. If a Starbucks Frappe is no longer in the budget go with the Mocha Joe at Burger King. The McD's are awful. JMHO of course. But the Mocha Joe has a really rich taste and I've tried several at McD's different times of the day, different McD's and they all taste watery and why don't they have a mocha flavor? Vanilla, Hazelnut and Coffee are the choices around here. Don't they know people love mocha?