Northern Lights Conversion

Here's my latest little finish: a "Northern Lights conversion" of this charming winter scene from the February 2020 issue of Just Cross Stitch magazine. I knew I wanted an aurora effect, but I didn't know if there was a fabric available that would suit me, so I hunted around. I settled on PTP Monster Mash and happily, I got a piece that was usable for this project. Well, half of it was. The other half of the fabric had too much purple in it for the look I wanted. Hand-dyed fabric is a bit of a gamble at the best of times, and if you're wanting a specific effect in addition to color, good luck. My piece just happened to work. I know it's weird, but I love it.

As I often do, I not only changed colors to suit the fabric, I also did some editing. I left off the little bushes, and the birds, and the snowflakes. I wanted the fabric to do all the work so I just sort of streamlined the design. If you check out the "color conversions" tab at the top of the page, you'll notice that I am always "purple-izing" designs. (I know "empurple" is a word and "purple-ize" is not a word, but I like purple-ize better and now it's a word.) I think it's because blue is such a popular color--except with me--and it's easy to visualize blue-to-purple conversions. Anyway, here are my changes (all DMC):

B5200-->Blanc; 3822-->3821; 598-->28; 3810-->29; 164-->3364; 988-->3363;

987-->3362; 644-->3790; 642 & 640-->4145

Speaking of winter and winter stitching, it poured snow yesterday. It's been incredibly cold here lately (negative double-digit lows at night, negative daytime highs, 30-below wind chill), and when it's that cold, the snow is fine and dry like sand and sparkles like diamonds. But yesterday it was warm (30!) and the snow was chunky and fluffy and made everything look like it was coated in frosting. 

Last winter was underwhelming but this one is making up for it. We have had so much snow. The snow bank in our yard from clearing the driveway is so high Tiger Lily can't see the street from her window. In spite of what it looks like outside, I'm kicking off spring on March 1st! Who's with me?!

Bonus:

Aurora Webcam!  If the Northern Lights aren't visible when you check, try again later or on a different night. You'll eventually catch them. So enchanting.

Freezing Fog

 

Ever seen freezing fog (rime ice)? I hadn't, until we moved to the frozen tundra. Pretty neat.

Stay cozy!

Speaking of the North Pole...

 

My latest finish! This is the project I gave y'all a little peek of a while back in this post. There's a link for the fabric in that post (Whitewashed Board by Fabric Flair) and the design is available in this shop. I stitched mine with GAST Carriage Black (2 skeins), GAST Bayberry, and CC Cherry Cobbler (2 skeins, just to be safe).

Speaking of the North Pole, we had quite the winter storm yesterday. Here's Tiger Lily the night before. You can see we still had a few patches of snow left over from last week's mini blizzard.

I think we ended up with 7-8 inches, but we were tucked away nice and cozy with plenty of snacks and stitching to play with. Well, I was stitching. Mr. Wonderful was shoveling and Tiger Lily was snuggled down in her favorite hidey hole in my closet.

Long time readers will know what week this is at my house: Stitchy Planning Week! I think I may extend it to "Stitchy Planning Fortnight" because, frankly, I could use an extra week of playing in my stash, ya know? 

What a year.

Happy Stitching, y'all!

What is this nonsense?

Y'all, it is nearly May. May. Our first winter on the Great Plains was rather underwhelming, which was a welcome change for the locals since last year was brutal. We had some intense cold, but very little snow. Until yesterday. I think we got 7 or 8 inches. Just look at this ridiculousness.

Anyway, I got Snowflakes and Scissors framed (link to freebie and stitching info in this post). Very appropriate for a lovely spring... snowstorm.

Meanwhile, here is a tiny bun:

I'm stitching spring, spring, spring right now and gradually working through the finishing/framing pile. Oddly enough (for me), I'm looking forward to summer. I'm not a summer person in any way; I look at it as the preparation period for the best season of all, autumn. But I think this year I'm looking forward to it because, psychologically if not practically, it stands for a turning point. This has been such a difficult spring, and while I don't think the challenges will be over by the summer, I hope and pray we will have returned to some level of normalcy. It won't be like the old normal, but perhaps it will be familiar enough to relieve some of the stress so many are feeling. We're all waiting for the same thing, a vaccine, but that will be a while. Having some normal activity and familiar routines will help with the wait. I'm also looking forward to the summer for another (stitchy) reason, and I'll have a post about that in a few days.

Hang in there, y'all, and Happy Stitching!

Snowflakes & Scissors

I've had this pretty little freebie in my stash for some time and finally got it stitched. I think it turned out so pretty. It's from the old Patrick's Woods blog. I wanted to share it here so I hunted high and low for it on the interwebs and finally found it here. I stitched it on 28 ct. Natural Brown Undyed linen (a favorite neutral) using DMC B5200, Weeks Pelican Gray, and CC Wild Berries. I also added a few micro mini buttons to the scissors.

Also, I have cake.

I usually bake from scratch but I am not a food snob. A box of cake mix is a good thing to have tucked away in the pantry for cake emergencies. Since there are only two of us to eat cake, I divide the mix in half and bake a small cake in an 8" square pan. Depending on the brand of cake mix you use, you may need to adjust the amounts of water, oil, and eggs, but here's the math for halving a cake mix:

Half of a 15.25 oz. Cake Mix

1 1/4 c. + 3 Tablespoons + 1 tsp. cake mix
1/2 c. water
1/4 c. oil
2 eggs

Bake at 350 for about 30 minutes. 
*Do use an entire container of frosting on your wee cake. You're welcome.
*Do use sprinkles. It's very important.
*Seal up the remainder of the mix nice and tight and write the date you opened it on the box. 

Back to stitching! Thanks so much for all the kind words and encouragement about Russian Hunt. It's coming along nicely. I'm also about to start another longish project that I'll work on throughout the year, but it's not nearly as large or involved as Russian Hunt. More about that soon.

Happy Stitching!

Forest Tale

 Another winter finish! Isn't this a lovely and unique little design? This is called Forest Tale and it's available in this Etsy shop along with lots of other wee bottles with all kinds of things in them--something for everyone. I stitched mine on 28 ct. Cornflower Blue Jobelan and it finished up at 1 1/4" wide by 3 3/4" high. I stayed pretty close to the recommended colors, except that I did tone the greens down a bit, and instead of black for the backstitching, I used DMC 938 for the fox and cork, and DMC 04 for the bottle. I wanted a softer look than the black created.

Here's a tip for stitching on really small, odd-sized scraps of fabric. I try to be frugal with my fabric usage and I save even the smallest scraps. Since I stitch a lot of small things, they're always coming in handy. I have a couple of strong preferences about the way I stitch that I never depart from:

1: I never stitch in-hand. I like my fabric nice and taut. For me, having the fabric taut is key to making pretty stitches that lie smoothly, and to getting backstitching to lie where I want it. I also really dislike handling my fabric that much. I iron my fabric before I put it on the q-snaps, and I don't wash finished projects. Which leads me to my next "never"...

2: I never place q-snap clamps or hoops over any of my stitches. I like to have the entire design fit within the q-snap or hoop. This way, when I take the finished project off the q-snaps, it's ready to finish or frame. No washing or ironing required.

Now, on an oddly-shaped, very small scrap of fabric like this, it's hard to accommodate those preferences. The fabric is too small to fit normally in a 6" q-snap (the smallest). The design is too large to fit "un-smooshed" into a 3" hoop. The fabric is too narrow to be grasped properly all the way around by a 4" hoop so it can't be held taut. Whatever to do? 

This:

I always use strips of white felt (with glitter, thank you very much) under my q-snap clamps to keep my fabric as taut as possible. It also helps to grasp smaller pieces of fabric. Turned corner to corner and clamped with felt, this scrap of fabric is held tightly enough, even along the edges that aren't under the clamps. I figured this out some time ago but never remembered to share. It's not especially clever, it's just one of those things that you don't think about until you've run into a scrap of fabric that just won't cooperate. So there's a little tip for the 3 or 4 of you out there who share my particular combination of likes and dislikes!

One of these days, I'll tell y'all about my reaction to watching a video of someone stitching in-hand using the sewing method. I had to avert my eyes! *snort*

Stay cozy and Happy Stitching, all (no matter how you stitch)!

Winter Train

We are in deep winter here on the Great Plains and I am really enjoying my winter stitching. When I saw this design--Christmas Train by The Posy Collection--I was captivated! The image of a steam train rushing through a winter night is so evocative and this little kit captures it perfectly. I stitched it with most of the included DMC, but swapped out the red for GAST Buckeye Scarlet and the greens for GAST Otter Creek and Weeks Blue Spruce. I also used the new Zweigart 32 ct. Basalt Splash I showed in my last post (kit and fabric available at 123 Stitch). 

Since I wanted a winter design I could display for several months, I left off the wreath on the front of the train and the star and french knots on the tree. And about that tree: I got the subtle, piney look by using the mismatched method I described in this post. (I confess to never following the "cross each stitch as you go when using variegated threads" rule and I often mismatch the strands if I'm stitching something with a lot of texture like trees or fur.) I love this little design. I think I may frame it, which is not something I usually do for ornament-sized designs. 

Tiger Lily has had a lot of snow to watch lately. Her favorite window is in Mr. Wonderful's office upstairs overlooking the back yard where it's nice and quiet, but I did manage to get a shot of her looking out a downstairs front window. She doesn't do it often because she doesn't like cars, and snowplows are particularly scary! This is a moment of bravery!

BONUS CONTENT: Mr. Bun says, "Hi." He still visits every day unless the weather is especially bad. Shows up in the morning and goes home about dusk. We chat every morning when I come downstairs. This morning when I took his picture I told him he was about to be world-famous. 

A Snowy Weekend

We had our first heavy snowfall over the weekend and it couldn't have been nicer. Just enough snow (7 inches) to make everything pretty and quiet, not enough to cause any trouble.

A little pre-storm baking on Friday.

It started snowing lightly on Saturday afternoon. The texture of the snow was exactly like the pretend snow you can buy for craft projects. It was very dry and very sparkly.

It snowed all Saturday night and all day Sunday.

Saturday morning before the snow started, Mr. Wonderful took me to my LNS. I'm almost finished kitting up all my projects for my Moving Mini Stash (see my previous post) but I needed a few more things. It was bittersweet. I'll probably only be able to visit there one more time before we move--hopefully for Market Day--and I'm going to miss them. Having a LNS is such a blessing. Anyway, as I mentioned last time, I joined a SAL (click on the badge in the right sidebar). I'm working on pink and green Christmas ornaments for my pink tree for my pink and green sewing room! I needed a range of pinks to choose from and chose these. Aren't they pretty? From left to right: GAST Briar Rose, CC Wild Berries, CC Clay Pot, CC Jakey Brown, CC Little House Brown. 

I love green threads (and fabric) so I already have a range of greens to choose from, but I added a couple, along with some sparkly pinks and some touches of lavender.

Stocked up on some of my favorite traditional Christmas greens and reds, since all my Mini Stash projects are Christmas. Here is one of my favorite color combos: GAST Bayberry and GAST Pomegranate.

So that was my weekend. A trip to my LNS and a winter storm. Pretty great. And of course this morning we have the usual gorgeous post-storm "blue morning." Look at that sky!

Last week's moving prep was the entry way, guest bath, laundry area, and coat closet. This week, it's the kitchen. I'm hoping I'll get a little time later in the week to do some finishing. I've finished my January SAL project and I'm halfway through February, plus I've got our 2018 Christmas ornaments that need finishing. Busy week ahead. 

Thanks to everyone for all the kind comments about taking time to stitch while getting ready to move, and even joining a SAL. Y'all understand that stitching is what keeps a lot of us on an even keel! Have a great week, everybody!