I’ve been stitch­ing away late­ly, and while I can’t talk about my most recent project yet, I did add my most recent two fin­ish­es to my long-neglect­ed Fin­ished Works page today. The first piece is a for-no-rea­son one, the sec­ond a baby gift which was also my first coop­er­a­tive project (and a big suc­cess).

I’m cur­rent­ly work­ing on a Moth­er’s Day gift (why yes, I’m late get­ting it fin­ished), the hymn “ ‘Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus.”

What are you work­ing on?

Plinky asked, “What new hob­by would you like to try out?”

Camille Sil­ver­man — warp and weft

I would love to try weav­ing. I mean the great big loom sort of weav­ing, done with hand­made fibers — maybe even with fibers I spun myself. The entire idea of weav­ing has always been so very attrac­tive to me, and I adore all man­ner of fibers. The idea of hav­ing anoth­er way to play with col­ors and tex­tures that would lead to big tapes­tries or rugs is so entic­ing that if I knew any­one with a loom they’d prob­a­bly find it impos­si­ble to get rid of me.

Bar­ring a big loom, I’d take even a lap loom, just some­thing to get me going on it. I went to town mak­ing those pothold­ers back in Girl Scouts!

Plinky asked, “If you were going to open up a shop, what would you sell? Food? Cloth­ing? Books?”

Book­store (IBC)

Books and needle­work items! My for­mer part­ner and I used to dream about open­ing a com­bi­na­tion book/stitching/gaming/coffee shop.

Of course, inde­pen­dent book­stores are near­ly dead, and even Bor­ders is dead now thanks to Ama­zon.

Lit­tle needle­work shops have almost total­ly dis­ap­peared, because they can’t com­pete with the prices Michael’s and Joann Crafts can offer, or pro­vide the same range of prod­ucts that inter­net shops can pro­vide.

I’d need a part­ner to run the gam­ing side, and I doubt there’s a whole lot of prof­it for that. The one gam­ing shop I ever vis­it­ed reg­u­lar­ly was The War­room in Nor­cross, and it is long gone. The peo­ple who ran that place cer­tain­ly seemed to know what they were doing.

Cof­fee shops have to com­pete with Star­bucks, but that part was less for itself than as an adjunct to the rest. They only seem to have any hope of suc­cess if they have some kind of spe­cial draw, like live music (which I love any­way)

We talked about com­bin­ing our pas­sions know­ing that any one of those things would­n’t stand alone, and think­ing that per­haps they could make it in com­bi­na­tion.

We knew it was a dream, though — just a dream, noth­ing more. It would take a lot of cap­i­tal to even start such a thing, much less keep it going. Then there was the lit­tle mat­ter of me being 1) dis­abled, and not up to work­ing even a part-time job, much less putting in the hours it takes to mak­ing a go of a small busi­ness; and 2) an intro­vert who does­n’t deal with a lot of peo­ple well.

It’s good to have dreams, though.

1) Time with my daugh­ter
2) Deli­cious din­ner with Katie and some love­ly peo­ple
3) Stitch­ing time!

Look! TWO posts in ONE day! Maybe I’m final­ly crawl­ing out of my pit of depres­sion.

My very help­ful child dis­ap­proved of how I was treat­ing my small stitch­ing project, so she sweet­ly put it in a huge Ziplock bag and “put it away.”

I have absolute­ly no idea where “away” might be, but it isn’t in my stitch­ing bag, or near my reclin­er, or in the area where I’ve been sit­ting in the liv­ing room. Now she says she did­n’t put it any­where. Buh?

And we stopped at Michael’s yes­ter­day to get the DMC I need­ed for it!¹

I also got the fab­ric for two big­ger pieces, though, so I can start one of those. Tech­ni­cal­ly, I know that I have the fab­ric for Deep Peace around here some­where, but I could­n’t find it, so I got a new piece. Now the orig­i­nal fab­ric will, of course, make itself known.

Small­er, less involved projects are bet­ter to do while in com­pa­ny, though. And it’s date night. The girl is, her­self, out on a date, so I can’t even shang­hai her into help­ing find the small project. Grump. She found sup­plies for a cou­ple of dif­fer­ent art projects while we were at Michael’s, too, so I expect heavy art­ing from her short­ly.

We picked up din­ner for the three of us at Lit­tle Azio’s on the way home, which was as deli­cious as usu­al. That was a love­ly way to end a tir­ing, but reward­ing, day.

I hate com­ing up with titles. Can you tell?

Hap­py New Year to all of you. I hope to see more of you in per­son this year!

I’m still not feel­ing well at all, so I haven’t been online much. Despite that, my wrists have been aching as if I were work­ing again. How does that hap­pen?

Our Yule was qui­et­ly pleas­ant. I hope your win­ter hol­i­day was as good.

I did final­ly fin­ish stitch­ing the Fairy Tale Sam­pler for Sam. It did­n’t take that much stitch­ing (so it can’t be blamed for the wrist pain), but I did have to re-pur­chase some Mill Hill beads. That gave me an excuse (like I need­ed it) to talk to Susan of Nease’s Needle­work, which is always love­ly. But now it’s fin­ished!

My cam­era bat­tery won’t recharge any­more, so I’ll have to con­vince the girl to take a pho­to of the piece for me.

I think I’m final­ly ready to do Deep Peace. It’s a gor­geous piece, and some peo­ple I love dear­ly got all the sup­plies for it as a gift for me a few years back. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, we broke up right after that, and every time I start­ed to work on it, I cried. I think there’s been enough time now that I can focus on the hap­py mem­o­ries instead of the hard stuff.

I think I need to start a small­er project, too, that I can car­ry around with me. Com­plex projects don’t lend them­selves to pro­duc­tiv­i­ty while doing any­thing else, any­way. Sam tends to get me so inter­est­ed in gam­ing that I can’t get much stitch­ing done. Mul­ti-per­son games are bet­ter for needle­work, because I stitch while the focus is on some­one else.

I’m not real­ly into New Year’s Res­o­lu­tions, and if I made them seri­ous­ly, I’d be more like­ly to do so at Samhain than the end of January/beginning of Decem­ber. Still, I’ve been real­iz­ing how much I’ve missed needle­work. My eyes are still giv­ing me trou­ble, but I got out an old, portable magnifier/travel light and that helps. I think it may be worth­while to check into a mag­ni­fi­er attach­ment for my Ott Lite (after get­ting new glass­es). I’m going to try stitch­ing more reg­u­lar­ly, and I’d real­ly like to learn needle­point and knit­ting and/or cro­chet­ing. I think I can man­age the needle­point on my own, but not the yarn stuff. Hope­ful­ly I can find some­one local who is will­ing to teach me. Appar­ent­ly there’s a group meet­ing at a local library that may be a pos­si­bil­i­ty.

I thought my DMC was get­ting too old for use or some­thing, because it kept fray­ing apart while I was stitch­ing. I final­ly real­ized (after buy­ing 3 new skeins of black floss) that I’d been using those nee­dles that does­n’t require thread­ing (which I love), and that they stress the floss (and the floss slips out eas­i­ly). I switched back to a reg­u­lar tapes­try nee­dle and presto! the prob­lem was gone. I can’t find those no-thread nee­dles any­where online, so I guess oth­er folks fig­ured that out far more quick­ly than I did! I have a two-sided nee­dle that came with a mag­a­zine or some such, but I don’t know that I can quite fig­ure out how to use it.

Sam and I are stay­ing in this evening, avoid­ing all the obnox­ious drunks in favor of our own cel­e­bra­tion. The girl is here, too, because her beau is in Europe with his fam­i­ly and most of her oth­er friends are also out of town (some­thing about a Flam­ing Lips con­cert?).

After get­ting caught up with all the shows I enjoy, I went look­ing for some­thing else to view. I enjoy Bones, but I find the sizist com­ments (and plots) high­ly offen­sive. I tried to watch the first episode of The Men­tal­ist online, but it keeps tim­ing out. Sam got the first disc of The Tudors from Net­flix, and it’s inter­est­ing at times. I tend to get annoyed with the lib­er­ties they’ve tak­en with his­to­ry, though.

I’m quite late with the cur­rent Stitch­ing Blog­ger’s Ques­tion, which is:
If you had to choose, would you rather spend mon­ey on overdyed floss
or hand-dyed fab­ric?

Overdyed floss, cer­tain­ly. I’ve only pur­chased one piece of hand-dyed fab­ric, and nobody is like­ly to go, “Oh, wow!” about the effect in the fin­ished piece (although I’m hap­py, because I could­n’t find any oth­er fab­ric that was exact­ly right). I seri­ous­ly doubt that any­one but anoth­er devot­ed stitch­er would ever know that the fab­ric is hand-dyed.

The overdyed floss­es I’ve used, though, fre­quent­ly lead to incred­i­ble effects that are appar­ent to any­one who views the pieces. They’re usu­al­ly a joy to work with, as well.

The Stitch­ing Blog­gers Ques­tion of the Week (real­ly last week) is:

How do you bal­ance your stitch­ing time with your oth­er oblig­a­tions
such as work, house­hold chores, etc.?

That isn’t real­ly an issue for me, as I haven’t been stitch­ing late­ly. I real­ly need to go buy some floss so I can get past a stum­bling block on my most active cur­rent project.

Oth­er than that, the only times I’ve ever real­ly stitched have been when I did­n’t “need” to do some­thing else, and usu­al­ly when I’ve been mul­ti­task­ing. It’s rare that I’m not gam­ing or oth­er­wise engaged while stitch­ing.

The Stitch­ing Blog­gers Ques­tion of the Week:
Do you cur­rent­ly sub­scribe to any stitch­ing pub­li­ca­tions or have you in the past? (Either in print or online) If so, which ones?

I don’t sub­scribe to any at the moment, and I rarely buy them off the rack. I have hun­dreds of them in my stash, and I keep mean­ing to go through and just keep the designs I’m still plan­ning to stitch, but I nev­er get around to doing it! I stopped buy­ing them because I real­ized that I haven’t ever stitched one sin­gle pat­tern in any of those hun­dreds of mag­a­zines.

This week’s Stitch­ing Blog­gers Ques­tion of the Week:

For sea­soned stitch­ers: Define a stitch­ing term or acronym for new
stitch­ers.

Gah. I don’t play in the needle­work news­group any more, so I don’t think in acronyms. Rail­road­ing is the only term that I can think of that was­n’t obvi­ous or explained in a pat­tern’s instruc­tions. There’s a decent expla­na­tion here, and an arti­cle with good pho­tos here.