Works in Progress

I always have sev­er­al projects in progress. These are some of my WIPs. I gave up stitch­ing in favor of knit­ting for a few years, so these have lan­guished. I was hav­ing trou­ble see­ing well enough to stitch, but now my vision has changed to the point where I can see the details fine if I just take off my bifo­cals. I can’t see any­thing else at that point, but I can see my stitching! 

I’m fin­ish­ing anoth­er two sets of hot­plates like the ones I made for my par­ents in 2004. I used the “Tid­ings of Joy” pat­terns from the Leisure Arts book Some­thing for Every Sea­son.
	I feel in love with Deep Peace from For­get-Me-Nots in Stitch­es the first time I saw it. Three dear peo­ple sur­prised me with the mate­ri­als for it as a birth­day present. It’s a joy to work on.
I’m sure I’ll fin­ish the Tri-Puz­zle from Y‑Knot Designs by Deb Davis. I don’t know when, but I’ll fin­ish it. It’s very small, so it should­n’t take too long.
	A Witch­es Stitch­es pat­tern, What’s Your Sign, Baby? for Rhi­an­na Nix­ie, who was born in April 2002. I’m afraid I’ve pro­cras­ti­nat­ed real­ly bad­ly about fin­ish­ing this one, but I’m doing it! Real­ly! See?
This light­house was begun for my first hus­band, Scott. We divorced in 1987, and it’s been fold­ed in var­i­ous draw­ers and box­es since then (hence that crease, and I don’t know if it’ll come out). Yes, I’ve still got the book. It was a Pat & Glo­ria design. I’d just about decid­ed to dump it when Sam said that he liked it, so I sup­pose I will fin­ish it after all.
	I fell in love with one of Vick­ey Brick­le-Mack­y’s designs, the Celtic Bless­ings Sam­pler II, when I met her at a local fair. I’m doing it on a pink­ish linen (I think Zweigart calls it “apple blos­som”) rather than the mossy green she calls for in the design, which I like more with the col­ors in the threads. The design uses a lot of the Caron Wild­flow­ers line, as well as DMC’s flower thread. The shad­ing you get with them real­ly makes the design much more than it looks like on paper! That’s my excuse for includ­ing the close-up of the detail in the let­ter­ing. As you can see from the pic­ture on the left, I’ve got­ten most of the let­ter­ing and a lit­tle of the top bor­der done. The fin­ished piece will have a lot more bor­der on top and bottom.
	I start­ed Heart of Ros­es from Coun­try Cross-Stitch for my sis­ter back when it was suit­able for the house she shared with her first hus­band, and it isn’t her style now. Or any­one’s that I’m close to, now that I think about it. It isn’t ter­ri­bly far along, so I might rip out the stitch­es I’ve done and use that huge piece of fab­ric for some­thing else—unless some­one I know wants to take it on for them­selves, of course.

I have oth­er WIPs, but I don’t have pho­tos of them at the moment. I’m try­ing to work through all of them as part of my declut­ter­ing project, though, so hope­ful­ly I’ll be able to add them to the Fin­ished Projects page before too long. Here’s a bit about most of them, I think. 

• A long time ago I start­ed stitch­ing a sim­ple bal­le­ri­na piece designed to fit on a switch­plate from Fond Mem­o­ries for Katie. It does­n’t hon­est­ly fit her style now — she’s much more of a goth chick than a tra­di­tion­al girly-girl. It might suit my danc­ing grand­daugh­ter, though!
• I have one silk gauze piece in progress. I need to get a pic­ture of it.
• Final­ly, I have two dif­fer­ent series of Yule orna­ments in progress. One is all kit­tens, the oth­er is polar bears.