LaDDa: Watchful Eye

On the way home from an appointment, I visited Yankee Cross Stitch up in North Hampton, NH.  I wanted to walk among the models, see finished projects.  Get inspired.

In a back corner cubby was a LaDDa design.  An old one.   One I had in my stash...the model looked nothing like the chart cover.  The chart cover was dark & murky.  It made me wonder why I bought it...not much wondering: I must have loved the bones of the design.

Yankee's rendition was brighter, clearer, happier.  That was the version I went home to create (with a few changes both intentional and unintentional - the unintentional being the miscounts that I can kept to avoid redoing).

I can never get the cloth color right in my photos: the cloth is yellower than pictured.  I used a mystery stash cloth of 36 count.  I used the chart listed GAST except that I ramped up the red.  I also used beads for the isolated stitches in the border and the few around the heart.

The chart original was done on BOAF Meadowlark which is a great fabric  which I have in my stash but it was not the look I was seeking in this piece.

There you have it.  My first start of the year and finished within a month.

Bent Creek Reindeer Sampler

This came kitted in a small vinyl pouch.  I remember picking it up at a Cross Stitch Festival in the late 1990s.  I miss those festivals.

Anyway, I probably started it soon after.  It was during one of my Over 1 phases.  It did not hold my attention or patience long enough to finish it at that time...but finally TA DA!

Bent Creek: Reindeer Sampler

The cloth color is a greeny-brownish Khaki colored 28 ct. not the grayish neutral pictured here.  It came with a little cardinal button which I didn't use here due to scale but I no doubt I will use it on something else.

I should have put something beside this for scale because it is tiny: something like 1 3/4 inches by 2 3/4.

It is done!  Time to move on to something else.

2015 Goals: not unlike 2013...2014 was a lost year

2013...15 Goals

More Wip killing!
1.  12/12: 12 wip finishes in 12 months (or more)
Doing good thus far.  I believe I have 2.  One was a decade old Bent Creek: Reindeer Sampler (over 1) finished in January? or Dec 2014 (close enough).
The other was a new start in January: LaDDa's Watchful Eye.  Finished in February.  
 
2.  Keep new starts to a minimum: finish any new starts within the same year (except for any SALs)
The LaDDa: started in Jan, finished in Feb.
I started the Heartstrings: Sparrow sampler in Dec...so I cheated.  The SAL for this one just started but I never finish with the pack and of course, this one is very big.
 
3.  Get reacquaintedwith my wips: stitch on at least 1 wip by every designer I have already started.   Back in 2013 I learned that this doesn't work because  I have way too many wips.  Now I hope to find a way to keep a current handful worked on a regular basis towards completions.   

The really good news is that by now the drive to work the wips is so much stronger than wanting to start anything...though I have started more these past 6 months than I did in the year prior (3 pieces).  The good news is that I have about a half dozen finishes in the last 6 months.  I know, bad me, I have not blogged about them (yet).

Specific Goals:
1.  Tony Minieri Stars for a New Millenium: stay on track.  HAHAHAHAHAHAHA  um, sure, the track is gone.  Maybe I can at least pick this up and finish 1 more square this year.  That would put me on a new track to finish this sometime in 2021.
2.  Pieces of 8: only 5 3 octagons left: finish this.
3.  Blackbird Designs: Xmas Garden: finish this.  Not finished but not a priority. 
4.  SB:Sheep, my NY tradition: start & finish a small sheep piece. I worked NY so I didn't have time for the tradition but I did take out the old BC Reindeer and finished that that week.  1 old wip finished NY week could easily become a new tradition.
5.  Permission to start 1 really good sized piece during 2015 (then try to not start anymore big pieces).  Sparrow started last Dec fits this bill.  Unfortunately there is a huge blackwork piece screaming for a start.

Organization:
1.  Put my stash room back together - the annual organization & clean up.
2.  Round up my NP canvases.  Catalog them.
3.  Organize my frame stash.  At this point I will be happy if I could put together all the wips whose threads have scattered to places unknown.  There is nothing like wanting to settle in with a piece only to discover some necessary component missing.  AAAAARGH.

Eileen Bennett: Miniature Historical Samplers

Among the many things I have been doing this summer has included finishing the following:

Eileen Bennett

Eileen Bennett's Mini Historical Samplers which was a chart which included 4 or 5 small samplers giving a taste of assorted sampler periods.   

There was a time in my project starting life inwhich I hated small pieces.  I would combine smaller pieces into larger ones.   I have since trended towards small pieces - for they are much easier to frame with ready made frames, alas I have so very many starts from older times to finish up.

This old experiment was also a silk test.  It included Hand Dyed Fibers before HDF founded their website shopping.  The silks were as experimental in nature as was my compilation and motif mixing of EB's wonderful patterns.

This project was at least 10 years in the stitching, if not older but it is finished!  One more down, too many more to go.

Bennett & Hillside Samplings

Eileen Bennett: Trinity Sampler

Eileen Bennett's Trinity

Finished! Finally, after all these years.  I  left in the old expected to have finished date of 2002.   

In a hundred years when someone might be wondering what the scraps of thread might mean on this old cloth, 11 years will mean little.

This is a small finish, but it is a finish.  My finish for February.

 Hillside Samplings: Peace on Earth 2000

 An ornament released in 2000, started in 2000, finished in 2013 because I couldn't deal with over 1 on 40 in a full cross.

But this, much tinier finish than Trinity, is also finally finished.  Tiny as it is, it still counts as my March finish.  Hopefully, not my only March finish at least it will keep me 3 for 3 on my 12 finishes for 12 month goal.

Teresa Wentzler & Eileen Bennett

 Teresa Wentzler:  Above the Clouds

 TW made a recent announcement about her old pattern publisher allowing her to make her older patterns available digitally via Patterns OnLine.  In some cases, she is converting her older hand drawn charts into computer generated symbols and updating previously confusing backstitch line charts.  Major happy dancing about that announcement.  It made me go through my TW wips.  It made me want to stitch them!

ABC is what I picked up.  When I put this down - however long ago I do not remember - there was barely one wing mostly done.   I am learning to focus because I stayed with this project for most of January.  

TW Above the Clouds

I have about 1/4 of the pattern left to go: it's all the rocks and the part of the tail.  It was finally the rocks which drove me to another project.  

I can't believe I got that much done on this!  

Of course it might stay this way for years, now.


I finally got rocked out and looked for something different in my WIP stash.

Eileen Bennett  Trinity Sampler

Another long napping wip was the Trinity.  It was started with an SAL back in 2006.  I know that because I stitched in the date at the top.  I must have had I had high hopes of finishing it.  It is not that big.  But it is with 2 strands of cotton in most places.  The shredding of the floss is getting to me.  It was not as noticeable with the TW piece because I work with shorter lengths due to the blending and confetti and do not frog - who is going to notice 1 misplaced little confetti stitch?

A band sampler is something else.    The lengths are not that much longer with this piece but I have had to do more frogging.  The problem is not the pattern, but the color notations for the pattern. I hate DMC floss.

The pattern symbols differ from the color numbers in the text notes which are also different from the picture of the sampler which is why there was frogging.  It makes me wish I had stuck with the SAL.   
 I have gotten a few more bands finished.  There are not too many to go.  I hope to finish this this month.

I have not decided what to do with the original 2006 date.  Leave it and add 2013?  I am leaning that way.

Shepherd's Bush & Ann Bowers (sort of, mostly)

Shepherd's Bush Home (sheep)

Without the 'Home'.   This was my New Year's Day stitching.

Shepherd's Bush Home

 I did not backstitch in the Home above  the sheep.  My house does not look like that.  I added some minor textured stitching and some beads in place of single flower stitches.  

It's the photo which is crooked, not the stitching.  

Ann Bowers (an adaptation)

Sort of.   The kit I ordered way way back when was for 35 count. I received 40ct but I started it anyway.  I stopped after I got a couple of inches down.  It was just too intense, too tight for my tastes.  I put it away for 10 years (more or less).  10 years napping time for my WIPS seems to be average for me.

I picked it back up when reading about all the other Ann Bowers stitchers starting across the web this year.   I changed the cloth to 35 ct of the same color from the same manufacturer, restarted and really got into it.  Close up pics will follow as I get further along.

Ann Bowers, many changes

The basic template is from The Exemplarery's pattern of Ann Bowers, the motif shapes and general order of the bands.   A couple of the alphabets will be, too (with the scandalous unperiod addition of the historically missing letters J and U.)  

I know the historical reasons for the omissions.   I am not stitching this to the period inwhich it was originally made.  There are and will be other changes: the alphabet used in the verses, the verses themselves.   The verse I added in place of one of the alphabets is from a later period than the original sampler stitcher's life.

I do not stitch reproductions.  I fall in love with enough elements in old patterns to make it worthwhile for me to purchase them then I do what I want with the materials when I stitch them.  Sometimes  I am close to the original patterns.  In this case, not as much, especially on the inner alphabets and spacing of motifs.

In this particular case,  I widened the piece by a couple of stitches inorder to make the corners work more to my tastes.    I shortened the piece by a few stitches in order to make the bottom corners more to my taste.  It does not matter to the fit of the interior elements because I am not using all of the alphabets in the original, nor the verses as they are currently charted.  I would have liked to have used the alphabet used in the original charted verses but I was even more eager to get the verse I used actually stitched before I changed my mind.

 I am still thinking about how to use elements from the original verses but this is where I rest  my progress and move on to something completely different.   

I think a TW wip is up for some work next.    TW has gotten permission to go digital with many of her older patterns!  Time to celebrate by actually stitching on some of those patterns which I have already started.  I have many to choose from.  

I used to be a wanton starting slut.   My ways have changed. I have found a different path!  I still don't finish much but I am focusing on working my already starteds.  Eventually there will be a period of finishings and much rejoicing will be in the land!

  (Well, not the land of vendors as I have not been buying anything near what I used to for quite a while now.)