Glendon Place – On Beads and Needles

A Mid-Summer Update

Well, here in the Rain State, things are damp. The temps have been pretty nice, though this week, summer has finally shown up in force, with uber-humidity. For the months of May & June, we were well above average for rainfall, coming in at nearly double the average. Which is great for the garden, which is producing cucumbers at an alarming rate.

First Pick – July. I NEVER get peppers before fall, let alone 4 of the Cajun bells, which I really need when chili season starts…

In stitching news, I’ve been working through a few things since I last posted. First, when I left off in May, I was still working on Plum Pudding. I only worked a couple more days on it, got some beads in, and got to a stopping place.

Plum Pudding by Glendon Place – DD converted to Carrie’s silks, and the awful MH beads converted to Miyuki delicas. On 28ct Sprite, though my piece came decidedly GREY instead of purple – which works out with Carrie’s vibrant colors.

I put PP away and then decided to do a rotation on IC Anatolia – it seemed my start/finish of Green Damsel wasn’t enough Ink Circles, so Anatolia it was (though Growth Rings was yelling at me too – but I needed to re-do my Tacky Bob before I could work on another bead project). I did a couple of small bands all the way across, and then a couple of the bigger ones on the left; I LOVE these Carrie’s colors!

Ink Circles’ Anatolia – Carrie’s cottons on 32ct, I think…

Then I couldn’t stop the hollering any longer – Hummingbird Lace wanted to be worked on. It wanted to be worked on so much, I completed BOTH of the remaining over-1 hummers, and started the top left inner border! I probably could have kept going, but nothing else gets touched that way, so…

Châtelaine Hummingbird Lace – bottom hummer. On custom-dyed 28ct jobelan, using DMC, silks, metallics, delicas.

Left over-1 hummer, and the beginnings of the inner border.

You can see the weekly progress photos, which I took for the Chatelaine FB page weekend challenges, in the Flick album for this project here.

Wall cloud; since we are in a hole, we can’t usually see much in the way of cloud formations, since all we have sight of is the sky directly overhead of the street – but we had this parked over us one evening, just one of many storms we’ve had this summer.

I had an impulse start around the 4th of July, mainly because I don’t have any Halloween stuff going at the moment, which is WRONG. Tempting Tangles has a Halloween SAL going from her FB page/Etsy shop, and I signed up, picked a purple fabric out of the stash (28ct Wood Violet, which my friend Judy gave to me, because, you know, purple is ME) and got part 1 in:

The Great Cheshire Pumpkin SAL by Tempting Tangles; DMC on 28ct jobelan. I added the feather details to the owl, just because.

Part 2 is sitting here waiting on me, but I am busy trying to finish NC’s Faerie Winter Dream, which I am not really enjoying because of the mix of Caron Wildflowers w/DMC – some WF on its own, some mixed with DMC, and then DMC 2 strands, as well as single-strand Kreinik #4. I know the mix is for visual interest, but it just doesn’t provide consistent coverage that I like. Maybe if I had put it on a light fabric as it was charted, it wouldn’t be so noticeable, but because I have it on dark, the dark shows through more than I like. BUT, once I get all the beads on, it will be awesome. This is where I am as of last night:

Faerie Winter Dream by Nora Corbett, on a 28ct linen in Winter Solstice from Hand Dyed by Stephanie. A zillion beads to come, soon…

That’s the progress of things lately; I think I did more on SC Life’s a Journey, too, but didn’t dig it out to take a picture. Stitching has been a bit of a challenge lately because we’ve added a 4-legged terror to the household; Monkey was missing poor Bean, so we’ve been looking for a kitty for her, and instead of a new black kitty – which EVERYONE ELSE can find – we found:

Opie Cunningham Rife – a Manx of all things. And one of about 20 orange cats at the shelter.

It took 30 years, but I finally have a cat that pushes things off onto the floor. I wasn’t specifically looking for that trait.

If he grows into those feet, he’s going to be a MONSTER.

Until next time, happy Stitching! And wish me luck this cat doesn’t destroy anything too important, and learns how to stay OUT of the water bowl (my kitchen floor is ridiculously clean, thanks to mopping up a LOT).

Monsoon Season – an Update

I don’t know about where you are, but Holy Buckets, Batman! It has rained and rained here for over a week, inches a day! We needed it, I can’t complain, but WOW, can we spread it out a little bit? Needless to say, this was not a good week for my head 🙁 But the peppers should be happy, and the lantana should go crazy, now when the hummers are about to get into their migration preparations.

Last time I updated, I was working on Plum Pudding. Just like with Witches Wheel, the Mill Hill beads became a problem that I chose to solve by replacing with Delicas – the corner motif that is solidly stitched did NOT fit in the space provided with the MH, even though I tried to go through and pick consistent ones; I refuse to go through that again, so convert! It’s not a perfect conversion, but it works for me 🙂 This is where it was when I put it up:

Plum Pudding by Glendon Place, on 28ct PTP Sprite, using my conversion to Carrie's Silks & Miyuki delicas. — Plum Pudding by Glendon Place, on 28ct PTP Sprite, using my conversion to Carrie’s Silks & Miyuki delicas.

As I also mentioned last time, I also decided to give the Dragonflies a rest in the travel bag; By the Bay Summer Cove jumped right onto the QSnaps one Thursday night! It was nice to switch to a fabric I can actually SEE, and nice cool greens:

BtB Summer Cove, on 28ct Star Sapphire or Waterlily (don't ask me which) jobelan, using charted DMC. — BtB Summer Cove, on 28ct Star Sapphire or Waterlily (don’t ask me which) jobelan, using charted DMC.

2 weekends ago, when I got tired of fighting the beads on PP, I broke out my AAN Christmas Tree for a few hours, and got a decent bit done on the bottom half:

AAN's 2014 Christmas Tree, on 35ct Victorian Red, w/Gloriana silk, RG PTB, and 15/0 Mill Hills. — AAN’s 2014 Christmas Tree, on 35ct Victorian Red, w/Gloriana silk, RG PTB, and 15/0 Mill Hills.

The rest of that week, I can’t show yet – my local group is having a Halloween exchange, so I got my piece picked & stitched during that week, ready for finishing, as soon as I go fabric shopping 🙂 But I can show you what the Project Randomizer chose for my next 2 weeks:

ProjectRandomizer_pic11

I have a week done on L&U, but I’ll save that for next time – there’s not much there to see at the moment, what with Barometer Head and having stopped in a heavy confetti area last time (of course). But this week, the skies are supposed to clear, so hopefully I’m not all mush-brain every day by the time I get home. Until then, I will leave you with these:

And, lest I forget:

Premieres tonight on AMC :) — Premieres tonight on AMC 🙂

Oy, It’s HOT! An Update

Enough with the humidity already! It was a long July, and not enough thunderstorms, though we did have some that dropped buckets just in time. The kudzu is growing like mad, and so is the grass. As much as I dislike winter – especially like the one we had this year – I could use heat with less humidity – like FALL. I could just skip August altogether, now that I don’t have back-to-school to do (at least not this year while Kid the Younger figures out where he’s headed).

In stitching news, I have FINALLY completed the pink flower on my travel piece, Vickery’s Dragonflies! AND – have moved on to the blue-violet one, which has 333 and 3740 as two of its colors 🙂 It’s actually more purple than I thought it was going to be, which is never a bad thing. Here’s the progress after 1-2 IHOPs and the July PINS get together:

Dragonflies by Mike Vickory. DMC & various metallics on a Silkweaver solo. — Dragonflies by Mike Vickery. DMC & various metallics on a Silkweaver solo.

It’s a toss-up whether or not I put this down for a couple of weeks to work on something else – my By The Bay Cove series has been screaming at me, as have my Prairie Schooler Halloween charts. So you’ll just have to check back next time to see 🙂

As mentioned last time, Desert Mandala came up in the rotation after World Tree; I got to Part 4, the one with the RATTLESNAKE:

Chatelaine Desert Mandala. on 28ct Desert Sky from Silkweaver. The Beaded Rattlesnake from Part 4!

And then, the landscape panel that goes with:

Desert_7-26-15_Part4_Dtl_Landscape

And – the overall to date:

I was sad to put this one away – this part was so much fun! I think the road runner & over-1 butterflies are in Part 5? I forget now….

Putting that away meant that it was time to draw from the Project Randomizer – drum roll please:

Ahhh, one of the newbs! This is Pick 10 – over the halway mark, which is good, since it’s now AUGUST.

I haven’t run through ALL of the pre-Startapalooza pieces yet, but at some point, I got tired of throwing them all back in – so I went with it. And here is a week’s worth of progress so far (no beads yet – but they ARE coming by the end of this weekend):

GP Plum Pudding on 28ct PTP Sprite, using my conversion to Carrie's Silks :) Beads to come... — GP Plum Pudding on 28ct PTP Sprite, using my conversion to Carrie’s Silks 🙂 Beads to come…

And that’s the news for now. I have Plum Pudding out the rest of this week, and then we’ll see what Pick 11 is starting next week. Until my next update (which appears to have just entirely scrapped a schedule of any kind), Happy Stitching!