Tuesday, August 30, 2016

Where the heck. . . .??

. . . have I been?

Well, the year plus absence would seem to warrant some wild and exciting story.  Not really.

In addition to a great big ol' stitching slump, DH and I completely lost our minds and contracted for a big house renovation, scheduled to start in August - September 2015. . . and take about four months.
Need I say that things did not turn out exactly that way?  Heading into September 2016 we're moving into MONTH 10 of our 4 month project. . . still with no real finish date.  Grumble grumble.

In any case, my stash was carefully packed away last July, and since construction began in November the house has been generously festooned with deep dust.  But I was determined to eventually start stitching again. . .. so I had a plan.

This spring, I signed up with The Essamplaire for an on-line course that began in June -- by which time our renovation (according to schedule 4 or 5) was SURE to be done.  I had wanted to take this class in person several years ago, so decided to go with it.  Just the thing, a brand new project -- no unpacking of stash required -- ready to start in June!  Wonderful!  Here's a photo of the piece.  Looks like fun, right!



Well, delay is my life these days, but in mid-August, enough construction work was done that dust could be kept at a reasonable level. . . and I actually started stitching.

The first step was to stitch the entire tree trunk -- using detached buttonhole in green and yellow silk to couch silver thread return.  As shown in the photo below, I have at least gotten a good start on this. . . although there is one big side branch to go.

Stitching that big branch got a little tedious, so I jumped ahead and stitched three of the leaves -- two in multi-color detached buttonhole, the third in multi-colored stem stitch - and one little acorn.  Here's what's done so far: