Life returns to normal

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday. I definitely did. My biggest regret is that I couldn't go up north to my grandmother's for boxing day to see her open the ornament I made her as I had to work the next day, but I did hear all about it. :) She loved it! She insists on keeping it out year round and has hung it in her china cabinet. Of course I didn't take any pictures of it, but it's the same one that was published in November's Gift of Stitching. Yep, I stitched it twice.

And I gave my brother his Growth Rings. He LOVED it. He spent about an hour studying it and all the different patterns in it. I'm really happy he liked it so much, I never expected that a stitched gift to a guy would go over so well! Then again, he's a decorator/landscape architect, so he's into artistic things.

I finally got some down time to just relax and stitch over New Year's and have been switching projects frequently. It's not that I'm not enjoying each project, I just want to stitch them ALL for some reason. I've logged a lot of stitching hours this past week!

After my ornament finish, I worked on Rose for a couple of days - will likely get back to her shortly. She's due out in Nashville in February, so I suppose I should really. She's stitched on 40ct Lakeside Magnolia with Belle Soie Rosebud and Collard Greens. I find stitching her is very relaxing - the colours are very serene. I've never been a pink person, but this pink is awesome really. 

I then decided on New Year's that I deserved a new start. I've been kitting up designs with stuff I have in my stash, and it was KILLING me not to start at least one of them so I did. :) I ended up starting Long Dog's Rosemarkie. I went with Gloriana Ultraviolet and Purple Night Sky for this one and found that Sassy's 40ct Orchid Petals was the perfect match for them. This one was really hard to put away, but I was getting a little "purpled-out". :) I made some changes to the design as you can probably tell, to satisfy my OCD nature about symmetry.

And I spent a few hours on Ink Circles Turkish Delight. Unfortunately it doesn't get worked on as often as it should, but the threads I'm using for it knot and tangle really badly, no matter what I do. I don't know if it's the 55ct linen which is a pretty tight weave obviously or the HDF threads, but after about 3 hours I was swearing lots so I put it away again. I did get a little done. I figure if I keep putting in a few hours each month, it'll get finished eventually!

And finally of late I've been working on Wiehenburg's Patchwork Serenity. Loving every second of this one. The threads are a little bit fussy, being filament silks, but not annoying so. They're so very glossy and pretty, and again I find the colours very soothing. I'm re-designing as I stitch, since there are quite a few motifs that aren't symmetrical. I'm not sure if they were charting errors or just done that way so the motifs would fit better, but since the motifs overlap anyway I figured I would "fix" them to my liking.

Two days off work now so I plan to get lots of stitching time in. :) Hopefully I can keep focused on Rose and stop daydreaming about Serenity!