A Little Chipmunk, Just in Time for Spring

I finished this little darling late last night.  Adorable is the word that immediately jumps to mind.

I took stock of this project and realized that it has taken me 2 months to get only 4 panels done.  That's it!  I'm pretty shocked by that realization.  I'm going to try to up my stride a bit and see if I can shake a leg on this.  I don't want this to be a 6 month project. I still have my dragon laying on the sideline and I'm itching to get stuck back into that.

Next up is an adorable skunk.  He's lots of patches of one color so he should be pretty quick.  Hopefully I have something to show off in a week or so.

Anyway, for your viewing pleasure, I offer you a little Chipmunk, just in time for spring....

~Rai Rai

No Updates, But a Question for You All

I'm just sitting at my computer, enjoying my first full day off in 10 days, and I was having a peruse through the blogs that I am following and I noticed now all of us have a certain "style" of stitching.

For example, I am neurotic about always starting at the top left hand side of the piece I am working on.   I've noticed many stitchers prefer to start at the bottom and work up.  I've also noticed there are stitchers who start in the exact middle and then work outwards.

Which are you, and why?

For me, it makes the most practical sense to start at the left and work across and down. This way I can see the pattern take shape, almost as though it were coming off of a printer.

So, talk to me! Where do you usually start in a pattern, and why?

(Oh, and I should have an adorable chipmunk to show off in a day or so)

~Rai Rai

Oh, and since there were no photo's in this post, I thought I'd leave you with this...

Panel 3 Is Complete

Behold, my little squirrel.  Just look at those adorable little eyes!

Next up is a chipmunk.  I find the browns are the least favorite colors for me to work with, and I found that this little guy dragged a little.  Now that he is done, I think he's cute as a button, but it just felt like such a chore to sit and stitch this particular panel, for some reason.

Tonight I resolved to finish it, and I stubbornly sat there until the last stitch was in.

Unfortunately, I believe the chipmunk is more of the same colors, but after that, it will be on to the brighter colors I prefer to stitch with.

I don't think I'll even get to him until the weekend, but I hope he is a fast stitch.

Fingers crossed.

~Rai Rai

March TUSAL

It's that time again to show off my odds and ends, otherwise known as the monthly TUSAL.

For those of you who don't know what the TUSAL is, you can click HERE to go to the original source.  On many blogs, I've seen that clever little TUSAL .gif and link, but I cannot seem to upload it onto my blog.  Does any of you fellow bloggers have any tips for uploading here? 

In any case, here is my March TUSAL.

My friend Kari, who is one of the girls who I stitch with on Sunday afternoons, was surprised when she saw my TUSAL glass. She thought it was just a little water glass until she saw it in real life when she came to clip Ruin's claws.  She made me promise to take a photo of it next to something so you could get a sense of the size of it.  So here it is posed next to my thread box.  It was literally the biggest vase that I could find.

I thought I would have the squirrel panel to show off to you all tonight, and I did try to get it done.  I'm switching over to night shifts, so I'm trying to stay up until 5:00am, and thought that would be plenty of time to get the final leaves finished and the backstitching done, but I didn't quite finish the leaves, and now with night shifts starting, it might not be done for another week.  Oh well, this panel had a lot of thread changes and is, I think, the busiest panel of them all.   If I get a chance to work on it throughout the week and finish it, I will be sure to post pictures stat.

Well, that, my dear fellow stitcher's, is all I can seem to manage tonight.  I've made it to 4:42 am, so my goal of staying up until 5am fell a bit short, but I am just too dead tired to carry on.

I'm off to bed to dream of baby woodland creatures.

Goodnight all.

~Rai Rai

Panel 2 Completed - There is No Stopping Me Now

I'm definitely getting the hang of this. I find the biggest challenge of this project is that the stitches are so loose and a touch uneven.  I'm used to stitching snugly, which results in a nice even stitch. But I have to say, I enjoyed this frog much more than I enjoyed the owl.

I decided to backstitch in 2 threads, and not one, as the pattern called for, and I feel the result was much bolder.  I will go back and backstitch the owl with one extra thread once I am finished with the afghan.  But I managed to get this adorable little fellow done in a week, which is pretty good considering I worked a lot this week and my stitching time has been severely disrupted by this.  *Shakes fist at work*

Anyway, here is the little frog.  Cute, no?

Also adorable are the little butterfly and ladybug, which were super fast to do.

In other news, I've noticed there are a lot of animal lovers who stitch, so I thought I'd share my news with you.  On Thursday, hubby and I adopted a little cat from the SPCA. He is 3 years old and black as night, with green eyes, and the loveliest personality.  We have named him Kip.

Not the best pictures of him, but you can see how sleek and shiny he is.  Our other cat, Ruin, is warming up to him and I think they will be the best of friends in no time.

I know I don't talk about my pets much, and I don't intend to really include them much in this blog, but since I am showing off pictures of Kip, I felt I should share a photo of Ruin. She just turned 1 last weekend.

She was still very much a kitten in this photo, but she's hard to pin down for photos.

Anyway, that's it for this week.   Hopefully I will have another panel to show off for next weekend. Next up, a very cheeky looking squirrel.

Happy stitching!

~Rai Rai