A Desperate Plea for Spring!

For the record, I am OVER winter. Since I last posted, we’ve had snow in various forms several times, with or without ice; the entire month of January, we had below freezing temps – which doesn’t sound that bad, until you consider houses here aren’t really built with sustained low temps in mind (you know, NO INSULATION), and we had all faucets dripping constantly for at least 2 weeks when we were in the teens or lower, to keeps pipes from freezing. Since then, it has warmed up a bit, off and on, but the sun has not shown its face but a handful of days. Today is one of those days, and I will take it! We might actually have the sun – and a dry-out – for a few days in a row! Just enough to get the pollen up into the INSANELY HIGH numbers, I’m sure. I doubt winter is gone, but as Bradford Pear trees are already losing their blooms to new green leaves, as are the cherry trees, hopefully we’re done with the worst of it (knocking on wood). I really hope all my new irises don’t bloom while we are on our 25th anniversary cruise to Mexico in a few weeks 🙁 And for all my friends & family north of here – I hope the flood waters recede and the damage is easily dealt with.

BEFORE I forget yet again, I never posted my finish of Faerie Winter Dream way back last SUMMER. I posted last July that I was working towards having her done, and I did indeed finish her – I just completely forgot to take pictures or anything, maybe because I was so freaking glad to be done with her! That said, the beads were, of course, my favorite part. I was going to get her framed and hung for Christmas, but work ratcheted up and I just didn’t have the time or energy – maybe she’ll be up this next year 🙂 Here she is:

So, now that I got that out of the way, I can move on to more recent things 🙂 When I left off in December, I was working on SQ Waterlilies for a bit; I didn’t get a lot of progress, I think I only worked on it for 4-5 days, but any progress is good progress, right?

I had a New Year’s start; despite having started Winter Watergarden when Martina passed, I had already known I was going to start Japanese Zen Moss Garden on 1/1, bringing my Chat WIPs up to 7. Yes, I now have 7 going, though in my defense, SVG is pretty darn close to done 🙂 Here’s where I stopped on Japanese Zen, which came in 3 or 4 parts, not 12, so trying to find a stopping point is not as easy as usual:

Because I felt a bit guilty for having started another Chat, I then kind of felt a need to FINISH some things, so when I put Moss away, it was on to low-hanging fruit in the WIP pile. First – a quick finish to Field of Sunflowers by From Nancy’s Needle – all projects should be this easy to finish in a week 🙂 Much quicker on the floor stand, of course, than a couple of hours a month in the travel bag – since we stopped our weekly stitch-ins at IHOP, my travel bag has been collecting dust, so time to finish this:

And because the dust was already off the travel bag, I also needed to finish the Stoney Creek Life’s a Journey series, since, you know, SC charts are kind of a slog from time to time, with their zillion color changes 🙂 And this one has lots of charms and buttons, too, so that was fun – but I am glad it’s done finally:

And lastly, the last thing I had even close to being done – Celtic Banner by MLI. This is one of the very first things I saw on the internet all those years ago, when Yahoo groups were new and there was no such thing as Amazon, and only Nordic Needle & Hershnerr’s were really doing much in the way of supplying the world with needlework supplies via the mail; I finally picked this chart up at one of Atlanta’s long-gone needlework shops in 2005-2006, I think, from who us locals called the Crazy Bird Lady. I made some changes to this – I put it on 36ct linen in Days Gone By from Silkweaver, rather than the at-the-time $100 cut of Glenshee; I also changes the Caron Watercolors for Waterlilies silk – because why not? 🙂 And here, many years later, it’s done:

And… that’s likely the sum total of finishes for the year, except those small  impulse starts that seem to jump out at me from time to time. I am going to try to squeeze in a couple of pieces for a great nephew & great niece this year, and you just never know when a mini Chat will seem like the thing to do. I am not entirely sure what I will work on for travel projects – I have 4-5 things in the bag at the moment, and will impulse-choose one tomorrow at our February PINS (last week was too busy due to a huge conference at a nearby church, so we bumped it up to this weekend) – check back next time to see what I end up choosing, because it could literally be anything!

Since I finished an ELTWIP, and an almost-ELTWIP, I rewarded myself with a start on Halloween at Hawk Run Hollow, which I think will actually move along pretty well, since it’s easy to break it down into small parts. I have this on a piece of Vicki Clayton 36ct – I think it’s a Zebra Dove shade, which I picked up off her Etsy a year ago or so, IIRC. It’s a good neutral for this, let those Halloween colors, muted like most HRH, pop. Here’s the central cauldron so far, with 5 days progress so far:

 

I started this last Sunday, while I was watching the B season premiere of The Walking Dead, and crying as we watched Carl die of his walker bite. Of all the people who’ve died on this show, this one bothers me the most. Partly because it kind of ruins the original story line of a man and his son, but too, Chandler Riggs, who plays Carl, realllyyyy reminds me of Little Kid – their eyes are so similar, and when LK let his hair get out of control, it was a lot like Carl’s was the last few seasons. I am still sad when I see something about it online; I was, too, with Glenn, who was another favorite of mine, but this one’s worse for some reason. Since by all accounts Riggs was blindsided by this, I hope he lands another long-term gig and we see him stretch his acting and/or musical wings. We watched him grow up and I will miss him almost like one of my own. RIP Carl Grimes, good luck Chandler Riggs.

 

Until next time, Happy Stitching, and THINK SPRING!