Leafing Out

I stitched both leaves on the left this week; this project goes so quickly and every time I work on it, I feel I've accomplished something. Especially working with the Gumnuts, it's a pleasure to be crewel. I didn't like it nearly as much before I discovered this yarn.

What to do With an Old Container

This tin originally held a watch for one of my sons. It's not quite square, and I saved it because I thought it'd be useful some day. Some day came. I signed up for an altoid tin cover exchange with Crazy Quilting International. And so - I covered it!

The top is all one piece because I picked out the blackwork pattern before the tin. Then I found the tin to fit it. I didn't buy anything for the project except the two pieces of ribbon around the outer edge.

The inside papers were marbled by me a few years ago when I did it on a regular basis. This particular set has always been one of my favorites.

And here is the tin from the side. I really like the effect of the two layers of ribbon on it. I hope the person I'm sending to likes it too.

A Blackwork Star

I have an altoid tin swap due on the 30th. This is the base I am working from. The group is crazy quilting, so this is going to be pretty different from the others, but I liked this star and it turned out bigger than I thought, so - no other fabric pieces around it. There's going to be more embroidery, though. Anyway, fabric is a scrap from somewhere and thread is Vikki Clayton's perle 12.

This is coming along pretty well. I'm halfway through part six now and the latest release was part eight. Since it comes out every three weeks, I should be catching up. I still like this despite stretching myself and using colors I normally would never pick.

Got Some Gold

I added gold to the middle and finished off all the cross stitches there. Now to just finish the border and I'll be ready for the specialty stitches!

A Rather Bright Temari

This is the third and last temari for Kosovo. That sounds like some kind of clothes drive, doesn't it? Oh well, it's the end. This one is very different because I used the Bunka thread I got from tentemari.com in Japan. The Bunka thread is soooo different from anything else I used. It's a nylon chainette (that surprisingly doesn't ravel, thankfully) and doesn't lay like perle.

The reason the colors are so different on this one is that I had ordered two assortments of the thread - one variegated and the other solids. This used one of the variegateds and three of the solids. You'd think in an assortment of eight colors, some would like ... be compatible. They weren't really. So I decided to go Mexican.

It came out better than I feared, but it's certainly not like any of the other temari I've made. I wonder if that's a good or bad thing.

One Band Done, Another Started

When I last worked on this in March, I was a bit fed up with it. I'd separated the strands of some Soy Silk and was using them for the border. It shredded like crazy, no matter how short I made the strands. So when I was in Kosovo it got laid aside, and it just got back into my rotation last week. I buckled down and did the last of that border. I'll never repeat that experiment, either. Band eight is officially done, and band nine is started. It's a very small band and I hope to finish it in a couple of weeks. Only three more bands to go after this one!