It's Been a While..

Hey everyone. I know, it's been almost 2 months since I've been here, I'm sorry about that. I didn't intend to be gone so long, it's been a busy summer.

You all know I got a new nephew in June that was born 8 weeks early. I've been helping my sister anytime she needs help, which was a lot in the beginning. She's getting used to things now, so my help isn't needed nearly as much. But I'm still at her house about once a week, which is a lot less than the 3-4 times a week that I was over there when they first came home. Greyson is doing great :) He's a healthy little boy that is now over 8 pounds. He still doesn't have that chubby look that new babies have, but he's definitely a cutey. He got our grandpa's big ears - I hope he grows into them soon. He got off his lung/heart monitor a couple of weeks ago. He only had one true alarm after they brought him home, so after being on it for 4 weeks (I think), the doctors decided it was time for him to be off it. This makes things much easier for my sister.

We also got fleas this summer. We've had animals since the first month we moved in together over 15 years ago, and this is the first time we've ever had fleas. I blame the fact that I'm still jobless and we let Pips' flea regime lag a bit this summer. It was a stupid thing to let slide, as now we have to spend the money to get rid of the things. Flea treatments and flea shampoo isn't cheap. So, this week, I'll be buying all the goodies and all the cats get a flee shampoo - I'm sure they'll just love it - NOT!

I have been getting some things done in the quilting/stitching front. Unfortunately, I don't know where DH put the camera cord, so I can't share pictures right now. I will post some as soon as he tells me where he put it.

I managed to get Kendrick's Big Boy Quilt finished this summer. I machine quilted it (first time for me). I can't say as I enjoy machine quilting - I had to force myself to sit down at the machine each day and do at least one line of stitching before I'd let myself do anything else. It eventually got finished - but I realize now that I am a hand quilter, through and through. I decided this quilt needed machine quilting, though, as it's going to a 2 year old - and it'll be through the washer/dryer more times than I care to imagine. At least it'll last a bit longer this way. I just need to get the label sewn on the back and get it delivered before any more time passes...

I also started work on a new project. I've designed a new layout for the Delft Tile Quilt that calls for 388 applique blocks - so I spent some time this summer getting all the muslin blocks cut out. I'm slowly cutting out the green fabrics that I will be appliqueing the muslin to. As well as getting the designs traced onto the muslin. I haven't actually started the applique yet, but it's getting there.

I also pulled out my tiny hexagon quilt. The quilt isn't tiny, the hexagons are. It's still at the stage where it's a good travel project, so I've been taking it with my when I go out and about this summer. Everywhere I go, I get people telling me I'm crazy for making it. But I love it and I'm sure I'll be working on it for a long time yet.

I also started Teresa Wentzler's Unicorn this past week. I had all the supplies kitted already, as well as having the fabric gridded. All I needed were working copies of the pattern and I was good to go. It's been going pretty quickly so far, but then again, I've been able to work on it about 8 hours a day for a week now. I guess anything would move fairly quickly with that much time put into it.

Ok, I think I'll wrap things up for this post. I promise pictures next time.

To Grid or Not To Grid - That Is The Question...

Oh brother, I'm paraphrasing Shakespeare - run for the hills!

Once I moved past my mourning period for Joyful Summer, I was able to focus on the Dragon for DH (you see - I made a deal with myself - no Dragon until I finished something. I picked my smallest WIP).

The first question I needed to address on a project this large, was whether I wanted to grid the fabric first or not. There are pros and cons to both gridding and not gridding. I suppose the largest con in my opinion is the huge amount of time it takes to do the gridding - only to take it all back out again. And yes, there are those that claim the time saved by using the gridding during the stitching process more than makes up for the time spent actually doing the gridding. I'm not sure I agree with them.

One can make the argument that gridding cuts down on counting errors. Anyone who has done cross-stitch for any amount of time will know that stitching errors are not a result of counting mistakes, but rather occur on their own time - for their own reasons. Running a line of thread through the fabric every 10 stitches won't stop the wanton glee a stitching error gets when it decides to rear it's ugly head.

Then there's the argument that gridding makes sure your design is centered on your fabric. This is true, and helpful if you want to start on the edge of the design. However, this argument doesn't hold water if you usually start in the center of the design. Being a center-starter myself, I don't tend to worry bout such things.

You can argue that gridding ensures you fairly quickly whether your fabric is large enough or not. However, being pretty adept at mathematics, I tend to trust my figures when working out fabric sizes.

So, after all this, how does it apply to the Dragon? Well, since this piece is a solid-stitch, I decided I wanted to start in a corner. I'm hoping to get all the background stitched first - leaving all the interesting bits for last - to spur me on.

So, I made the decision to grid the pages into my fabric. It won't take nearly as long, it will tell me pretty quickly if I have enough fabric or not and I'll know exactly where to start on the fabric for the corner.

And, after working on it all day Sunday, I got 5 lines in - of a 30 page pattern....yeah, this is going to take a while....what was my largest con to gridding again???

New Cross Stitch Piece

Something else I received for Christmas this year were gift certificates to a cross-stitch store I love to shop at. They are in the same town as my DH's family, so I try to coordinate visits with them so I can fit in a shopping trip, too. So, I had some money to spend and I knew exactly what I wanted to get with it.

You see, DH spotted this lovely piece a while ago, and asked if I would stitch it for him. Since he doesn't ask for this very often, I try to accomodate him when I can. Plus, it helped that I liked the piece, too :) However, I needed a piece of fabric large enough to stitch it - 28" X 39" to be exact! It also calls for something like 25 skeins of black (who would have thunk that, with all the green in the picture) - and I prefer Anchor black over DMC. So, with those 2 items, I figured I was pretty close to my gift certificate amount.

I put in my order and spoke with a very lovely woman named Linda. She was very patient with me and we got everything worked out. I then told her that if there was anything left on the gift certificates after shipping costs were included, to just throw something in the bag and surprise me. Well, apparently that threw her for a loop, because when I called to thank her for this:

A very lovely stitch picker (which I don't have any of yet!), I was told that she labored over what to put in as my surprise. I think she did a fantastic job of choosing! I absolutely love this store and will recommend it to everyone I know that stitches. It's House of Stitches in LaPorte, IN.

So, I spent some time going through my floss drawer pulling the threads for my new project. Could you believe that of all the floss you see below, I was still missing 37 different colors? Yeah, I know, crazy.

Now, my next decision will be to grid the fabric or not. This is a large piece and I don't want to spend a lot of time frogging mistakes, but I'm not a big fan of gridding, either. Hmm...decisions, decisions...