I just sent this piece off to my sister, who completed the Avon 39-mile walk for breast cancer in April. It's a Bent Creek design, stitched 2 over 2 on 28-count Wichelt Star Sapphire linen. The charted greens were a little too muted for me, so I selected my own from Gentle Arts Sampler Threads and also used the DMC variegated green (4035?) that has become my favorite all-purpose green.  I left off the white dots and buttons of the original--I thought it gave it too wintry a look. This sister is a green girl (as my mother would say; she remembered everyone's favorite color) and red birds are special to her.

The colors in the photo above are pretty accurate, but here's a view without the distortion:

I love the silver-painted wooden frame that the frame shop helped me pick out.

I entered two cross-stitched pieces in this year's Indiana State Fair. This one won an Honorable Mention in the small (less than 100 square inches) category:

Framed area is about 8" x 8", stitched over 2 on 28-count Cashel (I think?) Willow. Design by Lori Markoviz for La-di-da. Frame from local thrift shop, painted black. The quote's from Edgar Allan Poe's poem "The Raven," of course; I've had this hanging in my office for the past school year and decided on a whim to enter it.

And this one, I'm pleased to say, was awarded Second Prize in the intermediate (101 - 150 square inches) category:

The design area is about 9" x 12", stitched over 2 on Light Mocha Cashel. Design by Sandy Orton for Kooler Design Studio, published in The NeedleWorker, Summer 1998. (Obviously, unframed and unironed--I didn't get a picture of the professionally framed piece before I submitted it.) The verse is from the Book of Job, and I like it because it reminds me of how much we have to learn from creatures other than our human selves. 

June SAL Small

The joke's on me. I was trying to do this for April and it was just too much stitching to get done at such a busy time of year . . . also May! This is "Sweet May Flowers" from Threadwork Primitives, stitched on 28-count Cashel that I hand-dyed. I changed the verse to a line from T. S. Eliot's poem The Waste Land that I always really feel as the semester's coming to a close!

March 2016 Small SAL

A tiny contribution to the Stitching Lotus SAL, and a day late at that. I'm overwhelmed with papers and exams to grade; it's a busy time of year for teachers.  This is a 2" x 2" design on aida, stitched from the design provided by Concern Worldwide's Stitch for Syria project. Just a little show of solidarity in this rough world. You can join by going to their website at https://www.concern.net/en/stitch-syria-help-refugees-our-cross-stitch-challenge to download their chart at no cost.

 

February 2016 Small SAL

Ho ho ho! Not a February Valentine at all, but another tardy Christmas ornament. My February post to the stitching lotus SAL. I began this ornament in 2014 and it took Heather's deadline to get me to finish it. What is that???

From a Belgian Vervaco kit of three, 14-count (5.4 st/cm), 2 strands of floss. It arrived backed (a finished opening for stuffing) and with hanger, so a little dicey to stitch in places--which is probably exactly why I stopped after I did just a bit in the center. I'm pleased with it and now I want to do the other two--also Santas, one with a lantern on a staff and the other with a wrapped present, in the same colors.

January 2016 Small SAL

My January "small" posted to stitchinglotus.ca. I did this on a lime green 28-count linen and there's beading, a first for me! I got about 30 stitches into this in 2012, and it has been languishing ever since. So glad for a reason to finish this Christmas leftover! Design by monsterbubbles, featured in 2008 JCS Christmas Ornaments issue.

I Plan to Blog

I dwell in Possibility-
A fairer House than Prose-

I posted these lines by Emily Dickinson on a blog that I began in 2009 . . . and then never posted another thing. This is so like me. Sometimes. Other times, not. I begin this blog again intending to explore the appeal, the dark seductive appeal, of incompleteness and to celebrate projecting. I like to read and write and make things. Even more, sometimes, I like to plan to read and write and make things.

I plan to be back here in a week.