A Couple of New Projects

When I'm not knitting new vestments for Daisy, I have been starting a new stitching project - Strawberry Thief - a William Morris design charted for cross stitch by Whoopicat on Etsy.

I'm only doing a portion of it - part of the bottom left quarter on navy 32ct linen. 

I'll have better photos tomorrow in good light. I really love the bright colours against the bright background. I will probably make a pillow or project bag out of this piece.

I also have become quite interested in doing a blackwork piece and found this Stitch Along (SAL) on the Steady Thread Blackwork SAL on Facebook. There are several options of layouts and I have selected the garden layout. Each week a botanical piece is released to stitch with blackwork in one of the spaces. Other layouts include squares, squares with a drop shadow, hexagons, and vases with flowers.  If you're interested click on the link above and click on 'Files' and download the various .pdfs and see if it appeals to you.

Every week for 49 weeks a little chart will be released. I'm already 11 weeks behind and I may or may not catch up with the group but it looks fun. I'm trying to decide what colours I'll use for the flowers. Hopefully lots of people will show their photos in progress and I can just copy what I like. I had the 16ct Aida in my stash and will do all the layout stitches first before starting to fill in the designs for weeks 1 - 11. 

I knit Daisy two cardigans yesterday with some lovely Jamieson's Shetland 2-ply yarn. I LOVE working with this yarn - it blooms so nicely when steamed and the stiches smooth right out. Again, when there's better light tomorrow, I'll show some pics.

Continuing Daisy's adventures from yesterday...

After Daisy and Curly arrived at her grandma's they had a lovely visit. Grandma had put out a sign that said 'No Wolves Allowed' so they knew they wouldn't be bothered by Big Bad ones or any other kind of wolf.

I got a few fiddly jobs done around home this morning. I replaced the innards of one of our toilets that was starting to go on the Fritz. I had installed a Korky in one of our other toilets recently so knew how to do it, reminding myself of the process by watching the YouTube video on the subject. It's REALLY easy to do and costs about a tenth of what it would cost a plumber to do it. 

The second fiddly job was to clean the ashes out of our fireplace. We've been enjoying a lot of cozy fires this winter, even though it hasn't really been cold for great lengths of time. I usually do it at the beginning of summer but this year, since we stayed home for the winter, there were a lot more fires so a lot more ashes.

The third fiddly job was to tighten the nut under the sink that holds our kitchen faucet in place. The faucet wiggles loose every once and a while so I have to crawl under there and tighten it up. After doing that several times over the past few years, I have it down to a science and it only takes me 5 minutes to do it. I know the exact flashlight and wrench I need to use. I have all our under-the-sink bottles in a tub that I just have to pull out and set aside. Then I climb under there on my back, reach up, tighten the nut, and I'm done. 

These jobs have been on my 'to do' list for a while so I'm glad I got off my butt to tackle them. I wanted to get them done before a Zoom chat I had scheduled for 11:30am. I also did some grocery shopping this afternoon. 

Now I'm going to sign off and start stitching the outline for my botanical blackwork piece.

Daisy and Curly

 DAISY AND CURLY

One fine day Daisy walked through the meadow and came upon her friend, Curly. He was sunning himself in his favourite basket.

"Hi, Daisy. It's almost spring! I'm so excited! Where are you going all dressed up?", asked Curly. 

"I'm heading deep into the forest", said Daisy. 

"May I go with you, Daisy?" asked Curly.

"Sure!", said Daisy. "Two's company". 

Curly said, "Hop in and let's go".

I wonder what adventures will befall them?

Easter Frock

Daisy is looking forward to Easter and wearing her new Easter frock.

Bamboo, alpaca, and wool/nylon blend yarns were used. 

She adores a dress with a picot hem, and loves her new eyelet shoes with the pearl buttons.

Just a bit of her tail is visible under the picot hem. Very sassy!

Tomorrow she's going to dress as a fairy tale character. Can you guess which one?

Humbug

I finished the humbug I started the other day. It stitched up quickly; it just took me a while to get the cord twisted, the stuffing in and the last end stitched.

I did end up using the silk floss for the cording. It's cool how one side of it was mostly purple and the other side mostly green. That was totally random.

The perfect beads were in my stash.

Filling in the outline with the overshot pattern is a very neat idea.

Any silhouette would work.

Sneak Peek

Yesterday I watched Teresa Kogut's latest FlossTube episode and was thrilled to see my latest piece I stitched for her in the opening photo series as a sneak peek.

It's a Hallowe'en themed Quaker sampler that I hope she plans to release in May - plenty of time to get it stitched for All Hallow's Eve.

I loved stitching it as it was primarily one colour with accents of another. It was actually quite a lot of stitching but was very fun. The photo doesn't do it justice as the fabric was more of a light burnt orange. I had a heck of a time photographing it when I was sending sneak peeks to Teresa. 

I may just have to stitch one for myself. I have some lovely fabric I bought at Judy's Stitchery Nook in Harlingen TX to stitch Teresa's 'Black and Jack'. I ended up not using the fabric for this project as I wanted 'Jack' to pop and instead used a dirty linen.

I still haven't FFOd Black & Jack.

I got one shoe made for Daisy and just have to sew up the second one and put buttons on them both. Plans are now being made to knit her a very 'spring-y' dress.

Stay tuned.

The Many Moods of Daisy

Last Friday, Daisy spent the day as a volunteer vaccinating eligible Ontarians. Skip was the one to suggest that she needed the gown as PPE. It turns out, Daisy trained as a nurse way back when and even speaks with a British accent. It's possible that she just fakes the accent.

After her stint at the vaccination clinic she kicked back and put on a new dress knit with a trellis design. She loves how the colour from the dress is picked up by her necklace. And the cap sleeves show off her attractive arms.

The next evening she attended a pre-Easter party in a lacy cocktail dress.

Daisy takes special care to coordinate her accessories. 

Then today, she attended a ballet class where she worked on the jeté,

and 4th position for her arms,

and legs - but not at the same time.

Daisy is always looking for new adventures. 

I'm sure there will be more.

A Bit of An Obsession

Since I knit the bunny the other day, I've been obsessed with making her clothes. It started out with the dress and hair bow that came with the pattern.

Then I knit her a capelet and a little dotty dress.

I embellished the capelet with a couple of HotFix 'jewels' and some 3mm satin ribbon for ties.

Then I knit a little pink dress and matching headband. The flower was a free pattern I had used previously to knit flowers for the top of a tea cozy.

And the capelet coordinates nicely. It's knit with some sparkly white mohair blend yarn I had in my stash.

Then I knit a little white eyelet dress.

I think she needs a purse and maybe some shoes. 

While on my chat yesterday, I finished stitching a humbug and got one of the ends sewn up. I forgot to get a photo when it was just a flat piece but Jean Farish offers the pattern for free on her website.

What's a humbug, you say? A humbug is a hard candy that is rolled out and cut into pieces with scissors. 

That term is sometimes used for other hard candies. But I digress...

Jen1 gave me this beautiful skein of hand-painted silk floss quite a while ago. It was perfect for this project.

I have the first end sewn up with beads every other stitch. I had the presence of mind to label beads I had leftover from previous projects and had no trouble selecting these Mill Hill Grasshopper beads for this project. (over-lit photos to follow)

I couldn't sew up the other end right away because I hadn't made the corded hanger. I'm still debating whether I'll use the silk thread or substitute DMC in one of the colours. 

These are the other two sides of the humbug ready to stitch up. The pattern allows for the stitcher's initials to be placed on either side of the side seam. 

One modification I made was to make the backstitching only 4 sts away from the design rather than 7 called-for in the pattern. The finished size will be 2 1/8" x 2 1/2".

Jean gives good instructions on how to stitch this 'overshot' pattern by going diagonally. She outlines that in this YouTube video starting about 8 minutes in.

I just realized I forgot to iron some interfacing on the back of the stitching before starting to sew it up. Oh well. It shouldn't make that much difference as the stuffing I'll use is white.

This is a great little project for using up scraps of floss, variegated floss, floss samples, etc. The hearts and the backstitched border could even be moved closer to make a proportionately smaller humbug. You could also easily design your own with whatever motif you choose.

If you like the overshot look, you could always design your own larger piece using the outline of the object and filling it in with the overshot pattern like she did in her Weather Vane Horse design back in 1982.