Christmas Birds

Taking a bit of a break from my Sea Turtle piece, I started Christmas Birds from the Winter/Christmas 2020 issue of Punch Needle and Primitive Stitcher Magazine.

It was designed by Eszter Marjanovic of SubRosaDesign .

I've had a link to her blog on my webpage for years and love her designs.

I did the Jean Farish trick and created some cross stitches along the warp (parallel to selvages) and weft to see what thread count I had. This was a large piece of linen I got at the Old Tattered Flag over  year ago and it was unmarked.

The warp is 17 sts over 2 or 34 ct.

The weft was also 34 ct.

The pattern called for 36ct and the design would fit in a 5" x 7" frame. Since this fabric has a slightly smaller stitch count, it would exceed the open area of the frame so I altered the pattern, eliminating some stitches on each side.and moving the borders in a bit.  Now it will fit into a standard frame.

I am using WDW Bright Leaf and the DMC equivalents for the other 3 colours. I am very partial to these colours and somewhat primitive designs. It would make a really nice flatfold.

I have made a bit more progress on my scrappy socks and am on the home stretch of the gusset decreases. The jog in the striping when I change colours is buried in the purl column of the ribbing.

It's taking a while because there are a LOT of stitches going around the sock at this stage. I'm using stocking stitch for the foot of the sock.

As I've mentioned before, I tend to wear my socks out on the bottom of the heel so continued the Eye of Partridge pattern in that area. The stranding across the slipped stitches provides extra fabric so the heels will wear longer.

Yesterday, Skip and I had to go into The Big City for an appointment. Normally we would avail ourselves of our excellent commuter train system but in times of COVID, we're reluctant to mingle with others - especially with these nasty variants developing. So we drove into the city. Traffic is much reduced with so many people working from home so it was pretty stress-free.

Again, because of COVID, I was unable to go into the appointment with Skip so I found a place to park on the street (Green P) and entertained myself while I waited for him to be done. I played with my phone a bit, then started listening to an audiobook ('Olive Again' by Elizabeth Strout) which had been recommended to me by one of my stitching friends. I also got a bit of knitting done on my second camo sock even though my hands were cold. It was -9ºC yesterday or 9ºF.

It's a basic K3, P2 ribbed pattern. Here's the finished first sock.

I did the same Eye-of-Partridge-on-the-sole of the heel thing on this one, too.

Schools are back to in-class learning and next Tuesday our region will open up a bit. Stores can open with limited capacity. I have a couple of things I need done in a store for which curbside pickup won't work so that will afford me the chance to knock a couple of things off my 'to do' list.