Category: needlepoint

Yesterday I kept Liam home sick. I hated to call in to work since it’s only my second week, and he probably technically could have gone to daycare because his temperature was low-grade, but his breathing has been very labored, wheezy, & crackly, he is coughing a lot, and not eating much. My mama gut told me he needed me to hold him so that’s what I did. I didn’t take him to the doctor because I’m pretty sure he has bronchiolitis (usually caused by RSV), which Meredith had around this same age and there isn’t anything they can do for it. Anyway, today my lovely mother-in-law is watching him for me so I can get back to work and hopefully they come to realize that I really am very dependable!

So yesterday while I was home and holding my baby I did a lot of stitching and made some progress on this winter sampler!

I love it. Did I mention it’s my first time stitching on linen and using hand-dyed floss? Loving both. I mostly stitched yesterday since I can do that with a baby in my lap, but I did manage to finish another row on my quilt. Now I have ten! Four more to go!

Let’s be honest though, this is my real work in progress:

I’ve still got a few kinks to work out, but I think he’s coming along nicely, don’t you? :)

Remember when I started this autumn sampler back in September and I thought I would complete it on time in a five-week period? Haaaa. Well, that’s okay because it’ll get done in time for next autumn. I’ve been working on it almost every day so far so I’m making good progress. The frames were a bit tedious so now that they’re done I can get to the fun part.

I still haven’t been released to drive yet (hopefully tomorrow!) so I’ve been getting kind of depressed every afternoon. I think it’s a combination of running out of pain meds, hormones, and cabin fever. It’s been very restful to laze on the couch all day, but I think I need to get up and be a little more productive to boost my mood. Starting today I’m going to try to move on to some other things on my to-do list, like writing thank-you notes, starting work on my holiday minibook, and maybe doing some housework here and there. But I’m still going to try and complete a couple squares on this sampler every day as well.

Are you working on anything crafty lately? If you’ve had a maternity leave, how did you spend it?

Since it takes me awhile to complete a crafty project due to my lack of spare time, most of mine are in a state of progress. I’m usually constantly working on something though, so I want to start sharing more of things in an unfinished state. Here is what I’m currently working on:

This is a Victorian flower found in an issue of Cross Stitcher magazine. I’ve been working on it for close to a year, only because it keeps getting put on hold. But I just have the bottom right part to finish now, and I don’t think it will take too much longer. Here is a close up:

I’m looking forward to getting this done and framed, and eventually hung up in our bedroom.

I also want to share with you how I am organizing my cross stitch projects now. Before this I just threw everything in a bag, and I had my floss in all different states – some new skeins, some wrapped on a bobbin. It was fine, but it got a little messy and hard to find things. For Christmas my mom gave me the DMC Stitchbow travel bag, extra binder inserts, and lots of floss holders. I’m in love with it.

Inside it has a large pocket where I store my pattern or book that I’m working from (seen on the right, above) and the threads that I’m using for the project get loaded straight onto the floss holders and into the binder inserts. It’s way less work than winding a bobbin and it keeps the thread in better shape, too.

There are also more pockets inside where I store floss that I had previously wound on bobbins, plus a small spot where I keep my scissors and the floss I’m working with at the moment. There is a felt strip attached where you can store extra needles, too.

I think this is an awesome way to store projects and I have already ordered the mini version for smaller ones. It works great for me because I try hard to only work on one thing at a time and I use almost exclusively DMC floss. I think it would still work well for other brands of floss too, or even to use a project card stored in a pocket and remove the binder inserts (which is what I plan to do when I work on this project, for example). Originally I thought I would be able to store all my floss in here, but it’s rather too small for that and it would take too much rearranging of the pockets to keep in order.

Anyway, I hope this was interesting to one or two of you! :)