Happy Spring!

Spring is in the air.  The trees are showing new growth and it is starting to warm up. 

Of course I live in Los Angeles, so most trees stayed green through the winter and there was a week of 80 degree weather in January, and it was in the 70s for the last couple.  Spring is a relative term.  

My husband and son are spending this fine first day of spring at a travel show dreaming of places to visit.  I am spending this very rainy first day of spring

finishing a book in peace, picking up some food for dinner, watching a movie on Netflix, eating some amazingly wonderful cheeses and bread

and looking forward to some cross stitching this afternoon.  This is what I am working on...

This is where I am so far...

Not too bad, if I do say so.  It is lots of fun to do and can't wait to see the finished product.  Today is a very good day.  ::smile::

Happiness is sometimes just being finished...

I finally finished my Droids For Sale piece on the weekend!  You can't see my happy dance, but please trust me when I tell you that I am doing it.  I cannot tell you how tired I was of it.  That is the intrinsic problem with stitching a piece that I have not chosen - it is just not as much fun.  I am just thankful that my son went with this design rather than Spider Man.  Droids was boring with many colors.  It would have been a total snooze-fest with only three!

I was a stitching maniac all last week.  All I wanted to do was stitch so that I would be that much closer to being done with this sucker!  I didn't find this terribly enjoyable to do, but it does look good finished!

finished with wrinkles

ironed and wrapped on canvas - here in earthquake
country I don't like to put glass on my son's walls

Now on to a much more fun project!  I am doing the sausage dog from CrossStitcher issue 235 from February.

My husband has absolutely forbidden me from making it into a set of pillows as suggested and since it is his couch too, I feel that I *should* respect his opinion even if it is wrong.

So I will take these ingredients

Aida 14 - pewter
(my local shop didn't have the right color of evenweave)
DMC threads
navy crafters felt
green with pink polka-dots ribbon

and turn them into this

We will see how that goes.  It is a bit more complicated than I am used to, but as long as it is just straight stitches on my machine, I should be fine.

And finally I got a happy piece of news this morning from Sadie over at Stitching up a Storm.  I won her  Spring Chart Giveaway!  I almost never win things so when I do I am very excited.  I am off to buy a lottery ticket to capitalize on my good luck!

Tedium

I am making good progress in Droids for Sale.  I've been working on it for a month now and am ready for it to be done.  It is a very tedious piece with wide expanses of brown.  The droids and Jawas are very detailed with many colors in them.  I spend much of my time stitching the background by planning what I will do next.  I still haven't decided, but I do know one thing: It will NOT have any brown in it.

I don't prefer large, intricate designs.  I need to see progress.  I need to see a finished product every few weeks.  Otherwise I will get bored and discouraged and the piece will go unfinished.  And I hate starting a new project if I have one that is still unfinished.  If that happens, I know that it will never get done.  I am contemplating doing a quick, one day piece that will be a nice interlude, but then think that I should just stay on track and stitch through the boredom so that it will be done and I can move on for good.  ::sigh::

However, it is exciting to see it develop and I know that it will look great on my son's wall!

Current Work

Droids for Sale

pattern by Joy Egan

DMC threads

I am so bad at noting what fabric I am buying so I cannot give any insight into that.  I believe it is 28 count, and I am stitching over 2.  My son is so excited to watch it develop and can't wait until it is done!