Gardening Along

I completed the February portion of the stitchalong for Cyberpointers this week and found out something really valuable - never, ever snag your thread or let your dog jostle your elbow when you're doing those swirlies under the purple. It pulls and you never get them to lay flat again. That's my story as to why some of them look distinctly - odd. I'm having fun with this. It doesn't have a lot of repetition, so there's no boredom.

A Little Red

It doesn't look like much, but I added some red to the flag and some more filling out of the sashing on the side.

Little Cherries

So I'm still working on this over one, and it's going okay. The big thing is clipping ends and stopping and starting so the colors don't show through the back. It's especially important with the red and dark green. A lesson in being careful!

Handy

Bibendum has a hand! This is almost mindlessly easy to do when stitching the white, as it's just filling in the outlines. It's going fairly quickly, though, and he gets more and more personality with each stitch, so he's fun.

One Garden Done

I'm sorry this post's so late in the day - I had a busy, nonstitching one.

One full garden motif is done and a second one on its way to completion. The Rhodes stitches take a lot of floss because they're huge and fat - two strands of floss in every intersection. It's good to have a part of it truly done, at least. I could, I guess, do this one quarter at a time and get to other parts more quickly, but then I'd have to go back and do it four more times. Better, in my mind, to do it all and get it over with.

The Road is Cobbled

Yay, another finish! I got it done on Tuesday. Not even two weeks into the year and two finishes. Not bad. This, if you remember, is Cobblefield Road by Jean Hilton, taught by Ro Pace as a cyberclass oh ... a year and a half ago? The major thing I did wrong with it - and no, I'm not going to change it - is misplace the upper/lower border. It's off by one thread. I'm not going to let it cause me anxiety and redo the whole border, though. I think it looks fine. This piece stretched me with a few of the stitches, and the Edmar threads were awful to work with. They kink and twist no matter how careful you are. They did add some shine to the finished product, though.

A Couple of Colors

I'm still not to the fun part (the specialty stitches) yet, but the outline is coming along, if slowly. One day, maybe, I'll start finishing things more quickly when I get fewer than ten pieces in my rotation. On a bright spot, that's -all- the pieces in my rotation at the moment. I've let it balloon up to as many as fifteen before. Talk about feeling like you've made no progress!