A Quick Breather

Work, work, work.  I got in to the lab this weekend to finish up an experiment.  The computer is here at home tonight, since I need to write a mastodon presentation due Thursday.  I just needed a quick break and I figured that I'd stop by and write a quick hello to everyone.  Sorry, no blog-visits until Friday, I'm afraid.

Last week was pretty productive.  I am slowly getting the CRC acorns together and learned a few tricks on the way.  Here is the first trial acorn: Rest.  You can see all the pieces ready to go - batting, mat-board pieces, felt caps, stitched fronts and cotton backing.  I think that cutting out the mat-board is much more painful than all the sewing that goes into finishing up the ornaments in the end.  LOL

 

A pile of acorn fronts waiting patiently for their backs.  I love that Vickie always tries out fun linen colors, even though it can be tricky to gather all of them.

Finally - fronts AND backs are done.  Now I just have to figure out what I want to use for the hanger and the edging.  I did not find anything that got me real excited in the home stash and you know what that means - time for a shopping trip.  Maybe on Friday....

For the hangers I am contemplating using some pretty, brown, shear, wide ribbon and use it to tie the ornaments to the display (whatever that will be...  LOL) rather than use a loop to hang them.  I figure that it will be easier to get the ornies to face the way I would like them to.  Plus bows would be so pretty!

Our work crafting group is expanding and we are having a great time.  It is so relaxing to get in a few minutes of stitching in the middle of the day, while catching up on life, news, science, books and everything.  Today, we were all pretty somber since it was Monday and we ended up laughing hard after just 15 minutes.  It was great!
We do also get a lot crafted.  Hip^Hip is working an a very pretty Scarlet Letter sampler (I think this is the one) - amazing, since she just started stitching about a year ago.  She is a quick stitcher and she is fearless, a great combination!
Road Runner is crocheting baby blankets galore - she pretty much has a manufacturing process going; she is really pumping them out!  They look great.
The Barbarian hangs out with us and solves puzzles.  That is probably harder than crafting, as much as we chit-chat while we all hang out.
The Boss is stitching a beautiful, large fraternity crest for her son.  It looks really good.  She has also been working on a really involved book-mark for her daughter, so she has a couple of projects going at the same time.
I tend to stitch smaller projects at work.  I had been working on Sweetheart Tree's Halloween Quadrielle, but I had to take a break.  It felt like I was ripping out as much as I was stitching...  To avoid getting completely depressed, I put that to the side and started on Sweetheart's Chickadee Winter Welcome instead.  It showed up that was a good switch, since I got it done in about two weeks.  
Here is the stitched piece (You can click on the photos to have a closer look on and drool over all the beads and sparklies):

I did one small change to the design; I switched out "Welcome Friends" for "Welcome Winter".  

Here is the linen piece mounted on the precut mat-boards together with the mounted backing fabric:

Finally - the winter chickadee is hanging out with the autumn pumpkins and the summer sun-flower.  I started on the spring kit on Friday and it is coming along pretty quickly (knock on wood).  I will change the "Welcome Friends" to "Welcome Spring" for that one.  I think that I will try to display all of them together hanging on a ribbon - it looks great in my head, but time will tell.  I am excited though!

On the home-front I still keep neglecting Fremme's "blue sampler".  Instead I decided to stitch on a Samsarah Xmas stocking.  It is a lot of fun and it is honkin' HUGE.  Look at the small leaflet up in the left hand corner - that is a letter size booklet!  It is stitched on a pretty coarse linen; 20-ct Guacamole WDW linen.  The floss is Caron Collection Watercoulors.  This floss is cool; it's a three-ply hand-dyed cotton.  One ply is about the same weight as #5 pearl cotton or six plies of cotton floss.

I am, however, getting a tad tired of cover pics that have completely different colors than how they show up in reality.  Since I am really looking a lot at color when picking out designs, the cover pics that are not showing me the truth makes me tired....  Anyone else out there having the same problem?  for this design, I loved the soft pistachio green of the linen, but that is not quite the shade of the cut I got.

Here is a close-up showing the effect of the variegated floss.  I love how the greens turned out - just wish that the red had shown the same beautiful shading.

Other than that, we really need rain badly here.  They have the record for the wettest summer in recorded history in Stockholm, while we haven't gotten a drop for over a week now.  Everything is wilting in the garden - no surprise, since our temperatures are up in the 90:s and flowers and leaves are getting burned into smithereens.  We have been promised a cold-front, but nothing noticeable has come by yet.
I did take some garden photos one early morning last week. I love the lazy looking passion flowers!

DH  took about 20 photos of this little bunny that hangs out around our house.  He is quite a bit smaller than Bubba and Princess....  So very, very cute!  I love the good-bye waves by his little white tail when he takes off.

Well, I'd better unpack the work-computer and get a few slides written before bed.
I hope that all of you are doing great!  And thanks so much for all your sweet congrats on my last post - that really meant a lot to me.
Take care and Happy Stitching - I really hope that I will be able to visit all of you soon,