Carol Harper's articles with the keyword: wrap up

The topic for this month's discussion is: "Which of your project finishes made you the most proud? The most relieved?" To be honest, I have no idea what the answer would be to either of these questions. I'm guessing it would have been one of the many BAPs through the years. Two that come to mind are the "Roll Your Own Mandala" series that I stitched on one BAPiece of fabric as a single project:  This was begun in February, 2014 and completed August, 2016. Since this took two years, it…

The end is in sight! I finished color 11 and am a little more than halfway through color twelve (the last color) in “Return”, the last of the nine mandalas in “Roll Your Own”! The only open areas are now the top two and the top motif on the left (the bottom motif on the left is partly finished.) which appear to be the very palest blue. The floss color is almost exactly the same color as the fabric background! I didn’t make my start of the year goal to finish in time to enter in the count…

As I said last week, I haven’t been stitching much of late. I partly blame the heat — my room isn’t as cool as much as the rest of the house and it’s been darned uncomfortable holding that yard+ of heavy fabric to stitch on. Also, my stitching mojo is pretty week — has been for a year — and any interruption (a trip to Michigan to see a historic home on Wednesday, guests for dinner and the evening on Saturday - although we did watch a great movie “Spotlight”) tends to put me further off my stitch…

It’s hot here in NW Ohio. VERY hot. And all the rain seems to be bypassing us. I suppose I should be grateful since most of that rain comes equipped with high winds and hail but, still, the humidity should at least spawn a thunderstorm or two, don’t you think? It’s been too darned hot to stitch, especially on “Roll Your Own” with all that spare fabric, so I really didn’t get in a lot of stitching this past week. I’m only about halfway through color #9 (of 12) in “Return”: I did get the c…

Sitting here in a hotel room in Louisville, KY, where even the bathroom light are less than 20W, there is only one flat surface in the room to put my laptop (a tint round table with legs in all the wrong places, and a large “leather” chair with no wheel that is too high of the table!), and no free breakfasts (so I’m drinking the in-room swill that passes for coffee). Oh, and it has a HUGE balcony (overlooking a parking lot and an airport runway) with NO FURNITURE on it! Needless to say, this blo…

This full moon, we are asked: “Do you find yourself more productive with stitching in summer or winter?” And I have to answer that there is probably no difference. I stitch at night for the most part, with my daylight-quality lamp, so longer days in summer don’t really make a difference amor the shorter days of winter. I stitch indoors so temperature is not an issue. There are different demands on my time and impacts on my mojo with each season: I really can’t stitch effectively when I’m sufferi…

Two more nights of stitching after the WIPocalypse check-in and here is where the outline for “Return” is now. One page of six (top left corner) complete and parts of pages 2 and 3 (top center and right). A lot of Ripping (I always seem to miscount somewhere along the way) but not too much, so long as I don’t push the stitching to the last two strands from a six-strand-length (that is when my eyes start to rebel and I miss holes, etc.). I still don’t expect to make the deadline for regi…

Strange as it may seem, even with four days totally messed up by colonoscopy prep and procedure (my tummy was not happy with either - I know, too much information), I did manage to finish “Rematch”! Here is what ”Roll Your Own” looks like now with only one mandala left! Only one more doctor’s appointment (on the 31st) and some hassle with insurance over my sprained ankle (you don’t want to know what I think of insurance companies right now) so I should be able to make some decent pr…

I did manage to put in two days of stitching (and ripping, sadly) on “Rematch”, the eighth of the nine mandalas in the Roll Your Own set. The outline on this one is really giving me fits but it is almost done and the color would move along much faster (I live in hope!). Here is how the mandala looks today: and how the entire series looks so far: Quilt guild tonight which will mess with stitching. But the taxes are done and hated in to the accountant, the laundry is caught up and…

Not a whole lot to report today, given that I already showed major progress in the WIPocalypse post yesterday. But… I did finish the first color in the inner border! It was blended (two different yarns) and I hate blended stitching (can’t use the loop start, for example so there are all those ends to weave in; and inevitably, the two strands of yarn are different lengths so I feel I’m wasting yarn when I have to cut off that extra length…)but I managed to get through it. Sorry the picture is…

I know - I'm late. I forgot that Monday was the full moon. The topic for this full moon was” If you have any of your pieces on display in your home which attracts the most plaudits?” Well, at present there are only two pieces “on display” (if you don’t count needlepoint pillows, that is): one is in the half-bath and never seems to be noticed while the other is in the “breakfast” part of the kitchen and, I think, has been noticed once, not exactly attracting plaudits but. It is a piece call…

Last Thursday was taken up by quilt guild and the this past weekend was pretty much taken up with paper crafting classes in Michigan, but I did take my travel bag with me and stitched a little on "Palm Tree Elegance" on Friday evening, which was last touched in June when we were in Atlanta!The leopard spot border now has it's second color half done! Then, Monday and Tuesday were taken up by catching up on sleep, visiting the dentist, the optometrist, the grocery store and the gas station…

Put in one evening of stitching after International Hermit and Stitch Weekend pt 2, and got one more color done in "Cindy": Nothing else to report on except late autumn weather in August. Weird! This was one of the wettest summers on record, and one of the coolest, I suspect (only two days at 90 or over, and low 50-degree nights are pretty unusual too!). Bad weather for vegetable gardening, but the daylilies loved it!

We had our first thunderstorm of teh season this morning, early, which woke me up in time to get to the public radio telephone volunteer on time (I had mis-set my alarm clock after a power outage earlier in the week) . And other signs of spring are crocuses in bloom: I managed to keep to my plan of 2 days per project in rotation. The first two days this week were spent in planning out and assembling the basic block for my April Crazy Quilt Journal and Bead Journal Project entries:…

I had all sorts of plans for this weekend but they were disrupted when my routine was highjacked by a dinner engagement with husband's daylily friends from Columbus. That meant a 2 hour drive to, and another 2 hour drive from --- we haven't driven that far for dinner since we lived in car-centric Northern California! And it pretty much wiped out Sunday evening! So all I managed ot stitch this weekend was a part of Block 12 in "Save the Stitches" - five of seven fill patterns, but without colo…

The whole week conspired to keep me away from stitchery. Following my "Well Woman" exam on Tuesday last (where I found I had a mild tendency towards dementia! AAACK!), there was the appointment with our new accountant on Wednesday (where we finalized taxes) and a quilt guild meeting on Thursday night (which ran unusually long), there was a mammogram on Friday at an obscenely early hour (no results yet which is probably good news). And then the taxes reared their ugly head again! Yesterday, w…

What with holiday prep, the 18th challenge for the Compendium of Curiosities 3 Challenge , and the fleeting nature of my stitching mojo, I didn't get much stitching in this weekend, although I did at least get my November Bead Journal Project piece started. Here's Snowy, the Owl, with a leaf theme: He's roughly 1/3 complete and it should be able to get him done before Christmas is I plug away at him. Then it will be on to the Christmasy Owl and the year will be complete!

Not a lot to report since the International Hermit and Stitch Weekend check-in and stitch # 124 of TAST. I did get another quilt block assembled --- this one for the "Seed Bead Botany" online beading class: Other than that, in my project bag are: a Bead Journal Project atc/ornament to be finished, stitches to be put into the third RYO mandala ("Bride""), outlines for the latest "Save the Stitches" SAL blocks (##14 and 15) and fill stitches for those plus blocks 10 - 13. two new TAST…