Bead Bracelets

On Monday night my daughter and I went to the local EGA meeting. The program that night was beaded memory wire bracelets from LizTech. They spread about six or seven five gallon buckets of beads and let us play. We had an hour and a half. I made these six. The yellow one's for Lynne. The rest, I haven't decided on. I'll probably keep the blue and copper. My daughter made five bracelets, and the record that night was twelve. My daughter had a lot of fun and didn't think all us old ladies were dull.

Kid Leather Goldwork

The shiny circle is my very first attempt at "real" goldwork. It's on the "sampler" for the course, which is basically a doodle cloth. The circle has three layers of felt underneath, graded to have a smooth buildup of padding. The real goldwork flower was started - how they expected us to go from simple circle to these shapes I don't know, but they did. So it has, in this picture, its layers of felt built up. I finished sewing on the leather with a size 12 between last night. Argh, that needle's eye is small and is hard to catch the leather on. Anyway, it's at least progressing and I'm learning a completely new technique.

Bargello Ribbon Done!

Althoughthis picture was taken Saturday evening and doesn't show the final line of stitching, I finished the evil ribbon today. Okay, it looks good BUT it was a pain to stitch on the diagonal and on black congress cloth. Now to start the last three areas, all of which are much smaller than the ribbon.

The Chatelaines

As promised, I finished the metallic border around the area. Unfortunately, I didn't get much farther. I'm still not rid of Treasure Braid yet for a bit, as the triangular motifs inside are outlined in another color of Treasure Braid. There's some silk in the triangles, at least, and hopefully I'll be able to use it this week. On the Mystery, my goal for the week was a bit ambitious. On the other hand, I did get the top portion completely backstitched. Now I just need to do the bottom half. Maybe I'll get it done this week.

Panda Progress and Mystery Ornament

Well, I'm over halfway done on this large black area on the panda - the largest in the piece. These pictures were taken yesterday evening and I've made a bit more progress on the panda since. I'll definitely have this large area done in a week. And the Mystery Ornament - I have six more cross stitches and then the specialty stitches and it's done. Since it's one of two ornaments I have to put in the mail by the 20th, I've been taking it with me to work on while I wait for my children to get done with various things. LOTS of progress since last week because of that. I'll let you draw your own conclusions about how much time I spend waiting for my kids. I haven't even started the other ornament yet - it will probably be the Chatelaine freebie Christmas mandala on her website. I'll do the same kind of thing with it. If that doesn't get finished, I have the pulled thread ornament I finished last month to send instead. It's at an exhibition at Quiet Valley Living Historical Farm right now; my local face to face chapter of the EGA, Pocono Mountain Stitchers, holds one there every other year. They thought it was good to have projects of every size and type to encourage people to stitch. The exhibition's not judged except by those who walk through and cast ballots for their favorite piece. I don't expect to get that!

Florentine Ribbon

Well, the bargello is slightly bogged down like everything else. Since this picture was taken, I've completed both the stripes in progress. The goal for this week is to get that big ribbon done and get back to the fast stuff. I have only two and a half more weeks until Seminar to get it done. At least I don't have any prework for my courses.

Medieval Town Mandala and Midimystery Again

I got all the Rhodes stitches done at the top of the arches of the Midi Mystery - now to finish backstitching the central ornament and them before I can start on the lower Rhodes stitches. Of course, it being the first, I fell further behind on the thing because Martina released part 4 today. Maybe I can get part 1 done and get to part 2 before the end of October. On the Mandala, I ended up getting more of the Treasure Braid border done and will definitely finish it by the end of the week. I feel like I haven't made much progress at all!