Long weekend progress mishmash

So the great state of North Carolina gives its gubmint employees Good Friday, but as we're all non-religious about it, they call it "Spring Holiday."   It's an improvement from when I was a gubmint employee with the great state of Texas, whose governor would call for Good Friday to be a holiday sometime around 11AM that Friday.  That was always terribly annoying, because as a bench monkey, all of my experiments took hours upon hours, and by the time they're started, you're trapped at work, governor decree or no.  So at least we get to plan ahead around here.

Friday's plans were:  To work like a madwoman on my TV/liquor cabinet.

Actuality was me cross stitching, watching TV, and generally doing nothing.    Which then put me a day behind, so I was totally going to make up for it on Saturday, only I didn't.  But I did cut some glass and drop things off at the E-recycling center and the thrift store.

Sunday I went to friends' house to help unload a kit Cobra and inventory all of the parts (wheee!), and I tried to frantically work on my TV, only now I'm behind, especially considering we're throwing a huge party on Saturday to celebrate our birthdays (otherhalf and I have a birthdays 2 weeks apart and we're both turning a "milestone" this year).   I may just have to get around to finishing it on Sunday, because I don't want to rush the project.

But in any event, I finished WWCKD, and I finished the inner ring/planets for Zodiac Mystery (which is officially being put up until April):

And I cut a bunch of glass for fun (with my Dremel - Either I'm an idiot or I can't follow directions, but the fire cutting/scoring firing/etc. methods all ended up with nothing to be proud of and lots of cracked glass) - now I have (more) candle holders and vases!   And a new ort container, but I will wait to debut that until the next TUSAL:

I tried using the "fire" cutting method on this one and ended up with a mostly shattered bottle, which is why I cut this one so low, but I love these painted bottles!  And now I have a candle holder :)

OH brings me pretty flowers from the market, and now they have pretty vases - I love the Bombay Sapphire bottle, but I don't drink gin (anymore), so I bought two empty bottles for about $5 on ebay ;)

And the Easter Puppy came to the house...

On a Roll!

With this irritating cold, I've been such a bum, just binge-watching Netflix and stitching.

I finished another RoundRobin piece, which means once I stop by the PO tonight, I'll finally be down to one in my possession!  YAY!  And I know what I want to stitch on the last one, I just need to chart it out.  I'm going to give myself a week or two before I get back to that one (unless the next one gets mailed to me, in which case I'll have to hurry again ;) )

I did a band from Esther's Waves by Northern Expressions.  I picked a band I liked, and I chose colors from fibres in my collection.

I used a Needle Necessities I originally acquired for a custom piece I did (of my uncle's artwork), Sassy Brass (by Crescent Colours), and Bark (WDW).

I love how it came out - it looks SO MUCH like Tiger's Eye, which is my favorite semi-precious gemstone.  I kind of hated to give the Round Robin back, because I loved it that much.

Here's my band (colors are a bit off, it was late when I took the picture):

Here's the whole piece:

And here's Mona, "helping" me.

I also stitched on Thanksgiving Fairy while hanging out with some friends while watching the SuperBowl (poor Panthers, oh well).

Throwba... Oh wait, I have a "finish!"

I've been neglecting this blog again, but then again, I've been neglecting a lot.  I blame it on the nice weather.  There are so many things that can get done outside right now.

But I finally(!) finished the next installment of the RR I'm working on.   I've said before that I'm one of the stalled spots, but it looks like I will un-jam, soon!

I already have charted out my next bit for the next RR (I was actually halfway done with it when I realized how much I hated the colors - oops!).

In the meantime, I finished Lynne's RR - she included books with blackwork and Assissi designs to choose from if we were "stuck", and I found something PERFECT, but the shop owner/designer was "on vacation" (on Etsy), and as long as I procrastinated, they still haven't come back, so I went back to the googling-board and found and adorable Blackwork Wine Bottle piece by Cotton Season on Etsy.

The cobalt blue is ThreadGatherer's SNC Texas BlueBonnet... because Texas, and it's the color of the local meadery's bottles (I tend to mead it up much more in the winter, when I warm up their Spiced Apple and chase away the chills from me bones).

The green is Bejeweled from Crescent Colours, and has a lot of variation to it.  It reminds me of the prettier green bottles that some of the red wines (my usual go to) come in.

The red is Vikki Clayton Dragon's Blood, so that it actually looks like the red wine that lives in that green bottle.

And the aqua is DMC (3766? Gah, it's written somewhere) because I didn't have an overdye/silk/whatever that was the right color to represent Vinho Verde, which is the bulk of the white wines I drink.

Because the pattern was a little tall, I chopped off the stem of the glass and everything at that level.  I actually was super happy with that idea, because I use stemless wineglasses at home, so it continues to be more "me."  I added another row just to keep the relative dimensions right.    I shortened the necks of the bottles (except the Vinho's) to also help keep the proportions straight.

Blackwork Design by CottonSeason Finished 08-26-2015

I have a hard time with blackwork, for some reason, and I spent a lot of time frogging.  Once I could figure out a good pattern (like working the green in vertical rows, or working the circles in rows in the blue bottle), I did a lot better, but it did take me a bit to get rolling.  I'm very happy with the outcome, though :)

And of course, when I went looking for this pattern in Etsy, I run across an adorable Blackwork pattern of wine glasses I think I need.  Hah!

And just for fun, I'm throwing some pictures in of what I'm really working on right now - the Murphy bed I want to put in my lady cave.   Essentially, I will be building the bed & the cabinet as separate pieces, taking them back apart (well, some of it anyway) and staining it, putting the components back together, and then assembling the two pieces together in place.   So far I'm *almost* done with the bed.  I have to put the panels on the bottom of the bedframe (the panels will face you when the bed is closed) and then start staining that.   While those are staining/drying/whatevering, I'll assemble the cabinet (The part that the bedframe folds into) so I can stain that.   With the limited space of a one car garage, I'm trying to do this in serial so that I'm not bumping into myself constantly.

This is my set up before I really get started.
I cheated and had the lumber place cut my wood for me ;)

My requisite "I work better when lubricated with alcohol"
Though, really, I was too hot and busy to actually drink anything.

The frame all done.  It just needs the plywood/veneer face panels put on.

And Mona being ladylike... just because.

First update o' the new year!

So, like any insane stitcher, I spent the new year holiday stitching (mostly).

What's really funny is that we've got a weird work schedule going on right now.   Last week, we worked Monday, Tuesday and Friday (Christmas Eve and Christmas day we had skeleton crews, which didn't include me as I wasn't on the rotation for those days).   Then we had the weekend, and this week we have another Monday/Tuesday/Friday work week.  Except that I was on the rotation for New Year's Eve (Wednesday).   I work the holiday like I do any weekend I'm working (again, we have skeleton crews for the weekend which we rotate).

So I worked Monday, Tuesday, and half day Wednesday.   So Wednesday felt like the weekend to me.   And I didn't work yesterday, so today feels like Monday.  Only it's Friday, so I only have to last 8 hours.

So happy Monday, Friday, New Year!  (hah)

This was what I worked on for New Year's Eve.    It's another Zelda piece, so I definitely have a gaming theme going on.    I'm doing it as a gift for a friend, and I'm doing it in all Petite Treasure Braids.   Unfortunately, though I calculated out the stitch count and I know it should fit on a fat quarter, it looks like this fat quarter is too skinny to finish it off (oops, should have measured the fabric).   I'm currently thinking of how to rectify it without just starting over.  (again, it's from SpriteStitch)

Please excuse the dog hair.  White heavy shedding dog (that likes to sit with me while stitching) + black fabric = fail.   Plus, a little bird told me he found her using this as a pillow (/lesigh)

The count so far?  2 cards of PTB for the triangle.
There should be two more triangles.

And here's the progress I made on the Stained Glass Piece:

I was going to do the black and then color everything in... but then I remembered how much I hate moving my qsnaps around (I'm just really lazy), so I thought I would do the black of a motif/area and color it in... and then I discovered that even though I have approximately 3 bazillion skeins of DMC, I managed to not have three of the colors for that little medallion.   I don't even know how that happened.  Thankfully Michaels is next to my park and ride lot.

At FIRST I was really unhappy with the coverage, but when I hold it out, it's fine (forest/trees).   But then I read Leonore's genius idea to do the black as full x's, since that part of the design isn't actually the stained glass and I'm giving it some serious thought.    Though when I look at it like this, I'm fairly happy with it.   I think I might fill in the rest of that corner and then make my final decision.

I'm occasionally having to pick out a stitch here or there, because I've been working on linen/evenweaves for so long, I just automatically stitch over two and skip a hole now and again.

Spurred by the fact that I knew there was a lot of black involved, and I'm tired of buying black floss (I'm looking at you, Ferret Knot), I bought a 500gm cone of black DMC.   The 100gm cones come in a lot of colors, but as far as I can tell, I can only get the 500gm cones in a few (black, white, red).  But I really just needed it for the black anyway, so I Primed it.

And, finally, I did decide to go ahead and start on the CloudsFactory Zodiac mystery piece.    I got not just January's part, but the whole frame as well, and I like getting that all stitched (if anything, just to make sure I've got my stuff centered right on my fabric), and I'm not saying that I had to frog, but if I didn't have to frog, I'd have 6 of the 12 circles done instead of 3.   And I did decide to throw all of the satin floss out.  I was so unhappy just a few stitches in, I decided to switch to regular floss. I'll get that pic eventually.

But here, have a picture of Mona, the shedding white-haired wonder, hard at work on New Years Day.

Oh, AND I had fun updating the blog.  More pages and things ready to roll for 2015!