Celtic Christmas/Castle Sampler

I'm not doing too well with one of my July goals - I'm slacking again with the blog updates! It seems I am more of a stitcher than a blogger......




Here are two WIPs of Celtic Christmas, taken in very different light! The first was taken before I unpicked and re-worked the face, the second afterwards. I found the long lines of the border quite monotonous, but the symmetrical patterns were relaxing as I learned them and didn't need to use the chart. I don't like metallic thread though, I really don't like it! As for the face, I don't think the stitching of the re-worked face is any neater than it was to start with, but the colour shade is a little better. Perhaps I used the wrong colour for the middle shade the first time round. I had intended to work the face over-one, but that didn't work out. Either the fabric had become distorted as a result of already having been worked in twice, or because its linen it isn't totally even anyway, the over one stitches didn't look good, so they came out. The face isn't perfect now but I don't think I can improve on it so I'm going to leave be. All I have to do on CC now is the beads.



Every time I pick up the Castle Sampler I remember how much I love it. Its not striking in the way that CC is .... it doesn't have the immediate impact but its charm is in its subtlety. I'm going to keep working on this and get as far as I can until Thursday of next week then do a few days on Taj Mahal to finish the month up.




My monthly evenweave stash from Tandem Cottage arrived at the weekend. The sand coloured fabric will be useful for a future TW, but I don't think I can use the rather icky green and yellow fabrics. I'm cancelling this club from now on because, although I like receiving the monthly packages, I've now got far more fabric than I need and some of my future projects, especially the Passione Ricamo ones, call for hand dyed fabric so I will need to venture in to that so far unexplored area.

Question of the Week.

What do you do when you have some sort of obligation stitching to do,
but don't want to do it?
Eeek! Obligation stitching! Run away! Hide!!!
When I was obligation stitching African Dawn last year, I moaned, I whinged, I complained, I grumbled. I eventually finished it a month after it was due and vowed never to obligation stitch again. With Numbers in January I behaved much better, plugging away at it until it was done. I hadn't actually committed to giving it as a gift beforehand which I think helped. Lately I have become a lot more disciplined with my stitching, I would probably work an obligation into my rotation and doggedly work away at it, but I will still avoid it like the plague unless absolutely necessary. Stitching is meant to be fun!