Golden Gate Bridge finish!

Another finish for the year! This time it's Debbie Patrick's Golden Gate Bridge. This project has been in the works since about May 2007 so it's one of my older projects and one that I blogged about here in 2007. I started it as my 'travel' project and in the early days mainly worked on it when my son was having his weekly tennis lesson. I found it very fiddly, though with frequent colour changes and lots of small patches of one colour. This made it difficult to work on as a 'pick up' project so when I re-planned my rotations this year I stuck it in as one of the rotations and that's worked out well.

So now (probably in a week or so) it's off to the craft shop to have this and the two Fabric Collectors framed. That will be great to get those all done!



Now I continue on with Cottages at Oak Bluffs II. Here a progress photo of that.

Latrobe Terrace half finished

In just two rotations I've finished half of Latrobe Terrace. I can't believe it. I've never worked so quickly on one of these Juniper Designs street scenes. (And I've already completed five of them.) When I've worked on them in a dedicated way prior to using a rotation system one has taken me about 10 months to finish. Here I am only the equivalent of one month into this one and I'm half done (not counting backstitching). I'm getting sold on the rotation system.




Today is the first day of the Term 3 school holidays which means I'm on an even more irregular schedule than normal with ferrying the kids around. Jarrah has a couple of orthodontist appointments (today is actually his official treatment start date) and baseball training on Wednesdays. Jade has a busy gymnastics training schedule with more mornings than usual. Thank goodness Paul takes her for the 7am starts! I've also got work this Wednesday and my usual Saturday afternoon examinings this Saturday. So who knows what will get done this rotation? One good thing is that this is the final rotation on the Golden Gate Bridge and there's only backstitching to do. I've done a bunch today but there's heaps more with all of the bridge cables. I hope I have enough DMC356 to finish it all!

I'm going to make a list of all of the patterns and kits I have. It's going to be painful doing this because it's only going to highlight the impossibility of getting through it all.

We went to the Melbourne Show (actually the Royal Melbourne Agricultural Show--like a US State Fair) yesterday and I took a few photos of the kids. I thought I'd upload one of them in the animal nursery.

Finally getting somewhere with the Bridge

I've finished the foreground of the Golden Gate Bridge despite the hiccup with the shades of green. With three green shades sprinkled amongst each other I don't think it is apparent at all that there is a minor colour difference between two areas of DMC3051. So the problem wasn't really a problem at all.



Closeup of the green area

Since I finished the foreground I've been working on the buildings on the other side of the bridge. This is where I've got small numbers of stitches of many different colours. Rather than keep threading my needle with a new colour I've been keeping the one colour and moving through the pattern doing as many areas of that colour as possible. Because it's harder to see any progress towards completion this way I now realise this is why this project has been seeming to take so long. I think now it's about 80-85% complete however so the end is in sight!

Last night I went back to doing some of the cloud areas in the sky. I made a small error near the end and decided to take a few rows out and re-do them. I'm working with DMC775, a very light blue. The threads I'm using are from a plastic spool in my mother's DMC box which I inherited. It's wonderful to have this collection with all of the DMC colours (excepting some of the newer ones) organised on labelled spools. The numbers on the spool tags are in her handwriting which makes it even more special. It's funny, my Dad was going to give the box away to a friend of hers after she passed away until I asked him if I could have it. It's a wonderful keepsake of her for me especially as she was such a craftswoman. She was also, however, a smoker and a heavy one especially towards the end of her life when the Alzheimers really affected her memory. She would light up a cigarette, forget she was already smoking one and light up another one. She nearly started a fire at least once when she put a lit cigarette in a plastic waste basket full of papers. When I first brought the DMC box home every time I opened it I would smell her cigarette smoke. This definitely brought back memories of her to me. I go into all this background because number 775 was stained due to the cigarette smoke. I didn't want to throw it out though so the other day I washed the thread with liquid detergent. Most of it lightened up. The one length of 6 strands that didn't I threw out.





My mother's DMC box--the box opens on 2 sides and both sides are full of DMC spools



The threads for this project organised into snack bags on metal stationery rings

I'm now close to finishing two of the five items in my rotations--this one and version 2 of The Fabric Collector. So now I can begin to think about what other projects in my stash I'd like to do next. It's exciting to be getting through projects like this! More on this later.

DMC colour problem

I'm working on the foreground below the left support of the bridge doing the various shades of green there. I stitched one section with 3051, a medium green, then began stitching just below it with another strand of the same colour. After doing a few rows I realised that there was a slight (but to me noticable) colour difference between the two areas. The new strands I'm using are a bit darker, almost with a blackish tinge to them whereas the first strands I used don't have that blackish appearance. You probably wouldn't see the difference in a photo but when I finish this rotation and put a photo up you can have a look at it.

This problem has slowed my progress as I've found it discouraging. I've decided to keep going on with it and to look at the first area I've done after I finish stitching all of this colour. I may have to restitch what I did with the first two strands. It wouldn't be a lot of work. I hate problems like this.

I'm stitching again

Well it's been a long time since I've added to this blog. From my recollection I was still stitching in '07 but just not blogging. But then '08 hit. What a frantic and frenetic year with work, study and kids. I totally abandoned stitching.

This year looks to be very different. Firstly, my uni position has not been reinstated and so far I haven't looked for any other work. I do have some weekend work as an English as a second language examiner so I'm doing that more regularly to make up for not having the other job.

Secondly, I finished my Graduate Diploma (major equivalent) in Chinese!!! Hooray!! However, I would still like to continue studying Chinese in some form but I haven't been able to find anything formal. And, really, after 9 years of Chinese what I really want now is to be able to speak more fluently and classes just weren't giving me that. So I'm continuing to meet my language partner from uni once a week and getting some Chinese practice in that way.

Thirdly, my daughter's gymnastics commitment is getting heavier and heavier to the point where it's going to be pretty difficult to find work around the times I need to be available to drive her to training. Right now she's doing 17.5 hours per week over 6 sessions and some of these impinge upon school hours. I haven't given up on the idea of weekday work but I want to finish things I'm doing around the house first.

So I'm home, doing a huge declutter of over a decade's worth of course notes from courses I've done and teaching handouts from classes I've taught. I started with the filing cabinet then progressed to numerous boxes stashed all around the place. I'm still not finished but I can only do it sporadically as I fill up the recycling bin quickly! I've also gone through the kids clothes and given away heaps to the bushfire appeal.

A couple of weeks ago I got out my stitching and started working on it. I'm going to rotate my pieces like I was doing before as I think that is a way to make progress and prevent boredom. I started with my smallish Golden Gate Bridge by Debbie Patrick. It was going so well that I kept with it for 2 weeks. Now I've just switched to the Verandahs of South Battery from Charleson. I'm working on my third house and in just one day have done heaps. I'll have to take photos as all the pieces have advanced from the last photos on this blog. I don't know which project I'll rotate into but I'd like to stick with the Charleston piece for a couple of weeks and possibly finish the third house.

I hope you enjoy reading my blog!