Christmas Ornament SAL April Finish (and other stuff)

Settle in... I got stuff.

I finally have a finish to show! Cookies for everyone! This is my April choice for the Christmas Ornament SAL, from the 2002 issue of Just Cross Stitch Christmas Ornaments. (Click the badge in the right sidebar to check out the SAL, or the label at the end of this post to see my other finishes for this SAL.)

Doing the fringe on her scarf was fun. I just winged it, but I like how it turned out.

As you can see, I did a color conversion from green to a rosey pink. She's stitched with DMC in 3687, 3688, and 3803. Her scarf is DMC Coloris 4504, and I gave her white skates instead of black. I don't have the backing on her yet but I was getting a little desperate to show a finish!

I've had a couple of questions about the Rosemary fabric I showed in my last post, specifically, what shade of DMC it is closest to. Here it is with 523...

...and with 524...

...and with both. Unfortunately, this is one of those fabrics that is nearly impossible to photograph accurately (at least for me). I've found that some fabrics just don't show true in photographs; I have no idea why. Anyway, it is a grey-green, but more green than these photos show. I'd say it's smack in the middle of 523 and 524: not quite as green as 523, but not quite as grey as 524. Now check out the very next photo after this one...

Do you see that the Rosemary is slightly more green in this picture than in the one immediately above it? This is as close as I can get to its true color. Here's a tip: if you're having trouble getting a fabric or thread to photograph true, sometimes it helps to throw in other colors to give the camera more to work with in interpreting color. And now you're all wondering about that gorgeous lavender-blue fabric!

I picked this up at my LNS a few weeks ago. It's 28 ct. linen by a new-to-me and relatively new fabric dyer called Colour & Cotton. This is Pixie. Don't know what I'll do with it, but it's such a lovely color, and I'm not usually a fan of blue fabric.

I also just got some more Russian stash. Is this not the cutest bat you have ever seen in your life? (By the way, speaking of photographing fabric, the background fabric in this photo is the same as in the photo above. *shrugs helplessly*) I was smitten with that little face, and that little bowtie. Too, too adorable.

And some wee Russian dollies. Both of these kits are from this Etsy shop. From shipping to delivery was about two weeks, much faster than I expected.

Also from another Etsy shop, this beautiful fox mandala. I want to start this yesterday. I stitched a color block fox design a few years ago (picture in the right sidebar) and it was such a fun, relaxing stitch. This is a bit more detailed, but the same general idea: simple, well-defined sections of color. Very enjoyable to stitch.

And finally, very important news: I have a new friend. This is Mr. Bun. He visits our flower bed on warm days and rests in the cool dirt. He's a very relaxed bun, and doesn't seem to mind our comings and goings at all. There are bunnies everywhere here. But this one is ours.

So that's all the newsy stuff. Otherwise, it has been weird. Or more accurately, I have been weird. I was killing myself to pull this house together as quickly as possible after the move, and dreaming of the day when I could call it done (the move, the house, everything) and just plop down in my sewing room and stitch the summer away. But when I got to that point, I... couldn't? Couldn't stop. I would sit down in my sewing room, stare for a few minutes, then get up and go find something to do. I couldn't settle to anything. Mr. Wonderful says I have to slow down before I can stop, and I guess that's been the problem: full power to full stop. It didn't work. Kinda like stopping a battleship. It takes a while.

But I think I'm finally getting there. I've been puttering around in my sewing room a bit more, and in recent days have been bitten by the fall/Halloween stitching bug, which is strange. I love to stitch fall, but don't stitch much Halloween, so I don't know where that came from, but I'm going with it. I'm not a fan of the modern, adult-oriented Halloween, with all the body parts and gore and other stuff. I call my Halloween taste "spooky cute" (thus, that precious little bat I showed above). So I pulled a few things from my stash that I may incorporate into my summer stitching. We'll see.

And now, even while basking in the triumph of finishing a tiny ornament two months late, it's time to decide what to stitch next. I need to catch up on the Christmas Ornament SAL, but I'm feeling a little rebellious, so who knows? Stay tuned!

Stash Update and Summer Plans

Happy summer, y'all! Stumbled across a couple of sales and found some great goodies!

Top to bottom: R&R Iced Cappuccino, Rosemary (don't know the manufacturer), and Wichelt's Natural Brown Undyed, which is my go-to neutral. I was thrilled to find a scrap of the Rosemary. It's one of my very favorite greens (slightly obsessed with green fabric, for my new readers) and naturally it's been discontinued for years. Every once in a great while, somebody digs out a scrap from their stash and puts it up for sale, and I snap it up. It's like Christmas. It's a bit more green than this picture.

With Thy Needle and Thread goodies from the sale...

Plum Street Samplers Christmas Tea on sale. I considered buying this and stitching it up for my Christmas Open House last year (click on the Open House 2018 tab at the top of the page for tea madness!) but I was too pressed for time. 

The longhorn pin pillow is for my Texas smalls collection that you can see in my last post. The alphabet sampler is destined for a color conversion. I've never done an alphabet sampler but something about this one struck me. I just like it. So now it lives here.

And speaking of things I've never stitched before, this is my first Long Dog Samplers design. If you're a regular reader, you'll know this is gonna be in color! Prepare for a story: We have our library downstairs in this new house, and there's a wall that desperately needs needlework on it. I've got two pieces chosen for it, but I needed a third. The other two pieces are Twelve Days of Christmas and Antique Beasts and Birds. Both are my own color conversions I stitched on the Natural Brown Undyed linen I mentioned above, with Caron Wildflowers. I thought it would be cool to do a third piece on the same fabric, using the same threads, so I went looking for a design and found this one. I have a color scheme in mind, but y'all know what it's like trying to get the right colors online without being able to see them in person. It may take me a while to get what I want, but I hope to start on it this summer.

So in addition to (hopefully) starting Carrelage, catching up on the Christmas Ornament SAL, working on my Christmas Open House 2019 (!!!), finishing, and framing, I'm thinking of doing some vintage cooking and sharing the results. I've got a treasured collection of vintage cookbooks dating back to 1879 that I love to read like most people read a novel. The other day, I was pondering what kind of mischief I could get into this summer, and it occurred to me that I read these cookbooks as history books but have never tried any of the recipes. Then I thought, "Hey! That would be kinda fun for the ol' blog!" Some recipes adapt well to modern methods and ingredients, and some don't, so I'll have to choose carefully, but I think it would be neat to try a few and share them here.

As if all that wasn't enough, I also have my eye on a set of felt Christmas ornaments that I might make for my (pink!) sewing room Christmas tree. But we'll see. There's a saying in the military that no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy, which is 1,000% true. All of my lovely summer plans may be derailed by who-knows-what, but at least for now, I'm enjoying being able to make plans that don't involve moving. 

I hope y'all have a nice summer planned, and don't forget, you're warmly invited to drop in any time and see what I'm up to. Fingers crossed, I'll have a lot to share.