A New Year and a New Project

Happy New Year! I must say I love having a couple of days off work!! I'm catching up with blogs, and this post will make my 3rd post in two days. Truly amazing. I guarantee all will be back to "normal" soon! In the meantime, it's been so nice to relax and focus on a few creative endeavors.

Many of you already know that New Year's eve marked the official groundbreaking for the Me, Myself, and I Neighborhood Round Robins. I've not broken ground yet - will be doing so this evening - but I spent part of yesterday finalizing my plans. I'll not repeat my initial plans I wrote about here. Instead, consider this post my first "progress" report!

I had a frame in mind that I purchased earlier this year that I thought would be perfect for my neighborhood. It has an opening of 21" x 24". However, when I sat down to place my designs and pick a starting point, it didn't take long for me to realize that I didn't have near enough room for the neighborhood I envisioned. So...I've placed the "big" project on hold, and instead I'm taking a very pragmatic approach to my neighborhood: I'll be finishing and framing each of my historical houses, so the end result will be a repositionable wall community.

Please meet the first residents: the local clergy and his dog, a female neighbor, and another neighbor's cow.

This scene is from Jenny Bean's 1794 sampler.

The pattern is from the Scarlet Letter, an excellent source of sampler reproductions and adaptations.

The floss and 29 count linen in the first picture make up the construction materials. Design size is 10" x 6". The history lessons will begin soon!

Evidence

I'm not posting as regularly as I'd like to, but I will submit evidence that I am still working on my rug hooking project. I started on the border weeks ago, but my progress is slow. I'll blame the spring fever that I've had.

You can see that I'm on row three of what looks like five to complete the border. Every time I take the project out of the hoop to reposition it, it looks so much smaller--and thicker. My instructor has promised that blocking will make all the difference, so I look forward to seeing what happens next.

While catching up with other blogs, I came across pictures of Andrea's Adam and Eve samplers on her site, Deep Fried Cupcake. I've linked to her April 13 post, but if you are interested, check out the other A&E samplers on her April 19 and May 2 posts. Gorgeous!


My only contribution is the photo above of an Adam and Eve sampler I finished in 1988. I certainly like the genre. Now that I've seen Andrea's pieces, I want a collection! If there were only more hours in the day for cross stitch!

What Happened to Hannah?

Once upon a time, I worked on one cross stitch project at a time. Then two things happened: (1) I began taking small "portable" projects along on vacations and family holidays. The further I had to travel, and especially if I had to go by air, the more portable my projects became, and (2) Hannah Lancaster.

Hannah has been in hiding for a long . . . long . . . long time. I'm embarrassed to tell you just how long. Suffice it to say, Hannah is my oldest unfinished cross stitch project. I don't hate Hannah. In fact, I love Hannah. But she had not seen the light of day until earlier this morning.

It was never my intention to turn Hannah into a UFO. But something happened. A different dye lot happened. I've always worked from my floss box on any project at hand, but while completing Hannah's dress, however, I noticed the dye lot had changed. I was about half-way complete on her dress, so instead of pulling all the stitches out, I finished her frock. About this same time, I also noticed the dye lot had changed on some of the leaves I was working. I continued on; my reason being that if Hannah had run out of a color, or the color had shifted, would she have stopped stitching the area? Probably not.

Every time I took Hannah out, though, I saw the color change in her dress. And finally, sadly, I stopped working on Hannah. I loved her so much, that I didn't have the heart to rip her apart.

I still think of Hannah, so this morning I unrolled her to see what kind of shape she was in. My eyes went immediately to her dress. I cannot see the color change that I know is there. Are my eyes that bad? The lighting? Has she mellowed with age? Was it the roof on the house and not the dress? Beats me. I was going to ask for advice as to what to do - rip it or leave it - but now I can't even see it! Can you?

I'm still shaking my head and have no explanation as to why Hannah now looks perfectly fine. I certainly hope that I'm not disappointed the next time I take her out. And when I do, I'll share more of her story.

Happy stitching!