Yup. Stitching fun little Halloween designs when I'm supposed to be working on WIPs. I'm not even going to try to make an excuse for myself. Except that I had this luscious Picture This Plus fabric that my cousin sent me just languishing in my stash. Except that I had found this excellent freebie from The Dusty Rabbit blog. Except that fall is coming and it's my favorite time of year...
Never mind. The last time I posted about neglecting my WIPs in favor of quick Halloween stitches, y'all enabled me dreadfully and contributed to my delinquency! So I know that even if I feel I have to make excuses to myself, I don't have to make them to y'all. Yay! Stitchers understand. Stitchers are the best.
So this is stitched on 32 ct. Solar from PTP, which is absolutely eye-popping in person and is perfect for monochromatic black designs. It's also hard to get a photograph to do it justice. I carried this piece all over the house, trying different light. This is the best I could do. It's a little fuzzy but the color is pretty close.
Now I really have to get back to my WIPs. No, really. Really.
I have been in a fog all summer. The first half of our summer was filled with "Mr. Wonderful Finishing Graduate School" stuff, and the second half of our summer has been filled with "Recovering From Two Years of Graduate School" stuff. Mr. Wonderful graduated at the end of July and both of us have been incoherent since then. I've gotten very little stitching done. I was really hoping to finish Snowfire Christmas by the end of the summer, but frankly, I haven't had the wits for it. Happily, even if I don't have the wits to stitch, I always have the wits to shop.
So, since my stitching posts have been sadly lacking, I decided to gather up all the stuff I've acquired during the summer and show y'all that. Remember... this isn't one shopping spree... it's been spread out over the whooooole summer. By the way, I like to see posts like this on other stitchers' blogs because sometimes I find out about stuff I didn't even know I needed! Okay, let's dig through my loot.
First, fabric. I'm not big on purple fabric, but this piece (Weeks Peoria Purple) just called to me. It's for a Halloween project (see the little buttons that go with it?). And yes, in case you're wondering, I am hoarding polka dot fabric.
More Fabric Flair fabric (top to bottom): Dried Petal, Sunshine, Aqua, Provence. Aren't those pretty, soft colors?
A couple of charts... I am in love with that Blackberry Lane snowman design!
A bunch of finishing supplies. First, Halloween. Did you even know there was such a thing as glow-in-the-dark pins?! How perfect would those be for a Halloween finish?
Christmas finishing stuff. Yes, those are ridiculously adorable fox buttons!
Miscellaneous goodies. I have the perfect finish in mind for that "Off with her head!" charm (I bet y'all can guess which one it is).
That red bug is a Needle Beetle. It has a lighted needle threader and a thread cutter built in. Here's mine, with the light on. If you look closely, you can see the needle threader sticking out (it retracts and the light goes off). So. Cute.
It's back-to-school time, and I'm always on the look-out for stuff that can be put to stitchy use. Here's a little pencil bag that happens to be the perfect size to hold a 6" q-snap and supplies. This will be great to keep "loaded" to throw in a bag for travel. I think it was $1.
And finally... my finishing basket. As y'all can see, I am waaaay behind. I desperately need to have a finishing/framing weekend... week?
Whew. That was a lot of stuff, wasn't it? Hope you saw something you like that you might want to hunt for. Let me know if there's anything you want to know more about and I'll try to help you find it.
I can tell that summer is winding down and fall is on the way, which usually super-charges me. Hopefully I'll be more productive in the coming weeks.
Happy Stitching!
I finally got to the fox!
We haven't had enough Tiger Lily lately, have we? Here she is yesterday, keeping me company while I worked on Woodland Sampler (on her Woodland blanket, appropriately enough).
Yep, I'm back to working on my long-term projects. I did a little work on Woodland Sampler yesterday and hope to get another block done this weekend. I also charted out our names for Snowfire Christmas (wedding sampler conversion). Boy, was that tedious! I'm using a beautiful alphabet, but it's large so I'll be stitching it over one. I still have to chart out our wedding date, but the names were enough for one session! I realized after getting our names charted that stitching those two bands over one (names and date) is going to take me forever, so it's not likely I'll be finished with this sampler by the end of the summer as I'd hoped. Oh well.
Here's my last "fling" project: a couple of little stitching mermaids. These are from Autumn Stitches by Sue Hillis.
Back to Woodland Sampler...
First of all, I have to thank all of you who commented on my last post and encouraged me to keep stitching whatever I wanted. Y'all are as bad as I am! You know I'm supposed to be working on other stuff, but there y'all are, urging me to continue being bad. I took your advice and stitched up a quick little Christmas ornament that has been in my stash for a few years. This was a freebie from my LNS from Summer House Stitche Workes. I searched for it to see if it's still available, but I couldn't find it. If you'd really like to stitch it, perhaps you could try contacting the designer.
Right now I'm working on another small summer design, and then I need to get back to my "real" projects. I've been doing fairly well keeping up with them all year, and if I get too far off track I'll have a tough time getting back. If you're new to my blog, you can check out the labels on the right for Advent Animals, Snowfire Christmas, and Woodland Sampler and see the projects I'm talking about.
I guess when you're working diligently on long-term projects or series, every now and then you have to have a little fling with something completely different. Thanks for the encouragement and the compliments on Simply Boo.
Happy Stitching!
