Tag Archives: round robin stitching

Noah Returneth

Yes, my UFO has come home. You may remember Noah’s Journey headed off looking like this? Well, it’s come home looking like this:

Noah's Journey After

Much more finishable looking, don’t you think?

Thank you Tracey, Suz, Laura, Juli and Claire, for the many stitches you have put into this. I’ll be making every effort to finish this before the year is out (ie before Finn turns 5), so watch this space!

Catching Up: Part I

Well. Our Easter break was… slightly more than we bargained for, since our car ended up in parts in my father-in-law’s front paddock for several days!

When we arrived on Thursday afternoon, we had planned to do a fairly simple strut replacement job before heading off camping. As soon as FIL got a look at the underneath of the car, it rapidly turned into a drive-shaft-rebuild-needed-asap job. One of the drive shafts turned out to be a bugger to detach, so we weren’t able to get them into the rebuild place before everything shutting down for the long weekend. Nevermind… we loaded our considerable cargo into a trailer and FIL’s car, and took off from Friday through Monday for a lovely few days of riverfront camping.

On Tuesday morning, we had the drive shafts rebuilt, then FIL and OtherHalf spent the afternoon getting the car back in working order. And here we are, back again. Chocolate-bloated and laden with half a ton (it seems) of dirty laundry, but back.

Here then, are some promised catch up pictures. First, the two pay-it-forward packages I didn’t show you earlier:

For Angi
PIF-Angi
For Debbi
PIF-Debbi

Next, the final UFO that I stitched on for the round robin. This is Tracey’s Royal Holiday. It was nice to finish on another Mirabilia design:

Before:
UFO-RR-Tracey-1
And after:
UFO-RR-Tracey-2

And that, boys and girls, marks the end of so-called ‘obligation‘ stitching for me. For the time being, anyway. I joined this round robin because I knew I would go through a bit of a stitching slump while Niamh was little, and I figured this would be a good way to spur me into doing a little bit, better than nothing at all. But I have to confess, I’m not sad to see then end of it. I was growing a bit resentful of the time spent stitching on other people’s work (though I will no doubt feel differently once my own UFO gets home, and I see first-hand how much has been worked on it). Each time as the deadline approached, I felt pressured to stitch, even though I didn’t necessarily feel like doing so. I have done very little other stitching for the whole year so far – I completed the Hardanger exchange, I’ve spent a couple of hours on Lilly, and just in this last week I’ve come very close to a finish on one of my smaller pieces (hopefully I’ll dance this weekend). But that’s all. So I’ve decided to opt out of any more exchanges or round robins for at least the rest of 2007. How much or how little stitching I will actually do, I can’t predict, but I just don’t want to feel the pressure of deadlines for a little while.

Show & Tell

Far overdue, may I show you in full the hardanger exchange which I stitched for Jenny. You can see it hanging on the wall in her post – here’s a slightly different angle for interest:
Hardanger Exchange

Or, you can get up close and personal with the stitching here. Although I thought finishing it as a ‘wall ornament’ was kind of uninspired (hey, I was really tired!), I was really happy with the quality of my finishing. I have a bag (or, um, three) of finished-but-not-finished projects which I’d really like to start making a dent in – Anne and Karen have started up the Focus on Finishing blog, have you seen it? That should provide me with some inspiration.

The reason I’ve taken so long to post this is because my ‘spare’ time (insert maniacal laugh here) has been taken up with Suz’s UFO for the Round Robin. She sent around Black Swan’s Lily Pond Dreams. Confetti stitching ahoy! It kicked my butt, and once again I didn’t achieve as much as I would have liked. Here are the before ‘n’ afters, clickable for biggering.
UFO-RR-Suz-1UFO-RR-Suz-2

And, just in case you aren’t all pictured out, here are pics of the three pay-it-forward packages that I know have arrived. (Should check up on the other two – Angi, Debbi, are yours there yet?). I dyed a fat 1/8 of linen or evenweave, and some stranded cotton (plus a perle for Jenna) for each person in their colour preferences. So far, so good, everyone seems to like these:

For Jenna
PIF-Jenna
For Tash
PIF-Tash
For Jinger
PIF-Jinger

Phew! I think that’s about it.

Big Hair Lady

Aka ‘Tigerfly’ from Fanta Cat Designs. This is Laura’s UFO in the round robin. I took her from this:
UFO-RR-3a
to this:
UFO-RR-3b
I felt bad that I didn’t do more – the stitching blahs hit me pretty badly over the time I had her. But seeing these pictures together makes me feel a little better, it does look like I achieved something.

A number of Fanta Cat designs have drifted on and off my wishlist over the last few years. I can’t figure out if I really like them as much as I think I do. I think this one will look great when it’s finished (it’s for Laura’s mother), but those featureless faces do kind of creep me out a bit.

UFO Round Robin Part II

Here’s the stitching I’ve managed since you last saw me. I put about fifteen hours into Juli’s UFO before sending it on its merry way. Unfortunately, I neglected to get a ‘before’ shot, and Claire’s website seems to have disappeared, so I can’t point you to her picture. You’ll just have to believe me 🙂 I stitched all of the tree (brown) you see here. Just tree. Treetreetreetreetreetree. Bo-oring, lemme tell you, but hey, I didn’t have to pull out too many colours of floss or learn too many symbols, so it was the perfect no-brain stitching for me. Plus, it advances the project (which will eventually look like this), and someone else will thank me that they don’t have to do that slab of tree!

UFO-RR-Onilyn-2

‘Lizzie’

Last night’s marathon (for me) stitching session took Lizzie from here to here:
UFO-RR-Claire-3

And now, her bags are packed and she’s leaving on a jet plane for America. Tracey, I hope you enjoy stitching on her 🙂

I have nothing more for you tonight – it’s tax night in our house (yeah, I know, we are really, really, really late!) so I’m off to join in the fun :giggle:

My Neck Hurts

I just finished up three and a half hours stitching on Claire’s UFO. 3½ hours! It is a long time since I’ve done that, and I’m sure I’ll pay for it tomorrow, especially in neck pain – I really need to find a better chair to stitch in when I’m stitching for that length of time :ouch:

I finished up the right hand border, and ‘Lizzie’ will be in the mail tomorrow. I’ll get a picture for you before she goes.

While you wait, why not go waste some time? Be careful, it’s v.addictive!

Elizabeth

OK, you caught me. I cheated again. I blogged yesterday today. My entire evening yesterday was written off by a migraine such as I have not had in a long, long time. Nasty. Niamh picking yesterday to take an hour and a half to be put to bed (by me… she won’t go down for anyone else yet) did not help matters one bit, either. She just wanted to feed and feed and feed, and if she wasn’t feeding, she was screaming. The screaming, ohhh the screaming :ouch: Luckily I can breastfeed lying down, because I certainly wasn’t able to stay upright for any length of time. At one point, I just had to put her (screaming) into the cot, and walk away to throw up (sorry, that’s gross). It’s definitely been a long time since I’ve had one that bad.

Today hasn’t been a great deal better. I always have a bit of a hangover effect after a migraine, and on a hot day it makes me feel kind of out of it. We headed off to the park for a bit and I sat in the shade with Niamh while Finn mucked about. I’m feeling okay now that kiddos are in bed and the house is quiet, and I’m hoping to sit and stitch now for a little bit. I’ll be working on Elizabeth – Claire’s UFO. Here’s my progress so far:

Elizabeth when she arrived:
UFO-RR-Claire-2

Elizabeth now:
UFO-RR-Claire-1

I was hoping to finish up the border at the right hand side before sending her on her way, but to be honest it has caused me some grief – the froggies have come to play on more than one occasion :yuk: Much as I think she’s beautiful, I think if I had stitched this for myself, it would have become a UFO for me too!