I signed up for Stitchonomy's 'Spring Garden Biscornu' stitchalong which started this week. The instructions strongly urged the use of Aida but I'm using some evenweave and am stitching 2 over 2. There are 21 colours in the legend. I'm substituting about half of them rather than buying new skeins for only a few stitches. Yesterday I got started on Days 1 and 2.
Because of all the changes in colours, this little bit of stitching took hours.
Also, there are supposed to be backstitched stems for all the flowers but the designer didn't provide colour keys for them. I took an educated guess for the white wing backstitching. Considering how adamant she was about the size of the fabric (much larger than I used), and using Aida (which I didn't), I'm surprised she didn't include complete stitching instructions. Update: I just received an email with the explanations for the backstitching colours.
All that being said, I think it will be a very cute biscornu when finished.
I had a look at a bunch of my UFOs/WIPs in preparation for my 4-day stitching blitz at the upcoming guild retreat. I realized I don't actually have that many cross-stitching projects on the go as I originally thought, I have several whitework projects which I abandoned for various reasons - a couple of which I may take to the retreat anyway.
I pulled out this Bees in the Greenhouse project and have done quite a bit on it this past week.
I miscounted the sizes of the squares many times and did a lot of unstitching but I'm on the right track now. I'm substituting several colours of flowers and bees to make them more to my liking. There is one major mistake that I may or may not fix as it would involve a lot of unpicking stitches. I could conceivably get all the stitching finished at the retreat now that I'm stitching at night whilst watching TV, thanks to my new 5.0 magnifying reading glasses that I got on Amazon. They eliminate my need to sit at a table and peer through the magnifier on my lamp.
Also in preparation for the retreat, I cut out all the little felt bits for the Garden Bowl Fillers. I had previously printed or traced the reversed designs onto freezer paper and ironed them onto the felt.
Speaking of watching TV at night; after getting hooked on 'The Pitt', I thought I'd go back and watch 'ER' on Netflix. I've been watching several episodes at night and just yesterday started season 2. Holy moley, back in the 90s, seasons were over 20 episodes long! And there are 15 seasons (1994 - 2009) for a total of 331 one-hour episodes! It catapulted Noah Wyle, George Clooney, and Juliana Margulies to fame. I do remember watching the Season 1 episode when a woman dies while giving birth under Dr. Greene's care. I even remember that I watched it at a friend's place in New Jersey before flying down to the Caribbean to board a Windjammer cruise ship (schooner) for March Break 1995. It's funny how my memory works sometimes.
I heard lots of wind while in bed last night or this morning. I was shocked to see 2" of snow on the ground when I rolled up the blind in my bedroom this morning. The wind has died down but it's still cold out there - minus 3C and minus 11C with the windchill. Scooter has gone out for a run. Brrr.
I got my taxes done yesterday and paid what I owed. I need to call a couple of places to tell them to take a higher percentage of withholding tax in the future. I hope to owe quite a bit less next year.
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