Dreaming of Tuscany Finished

 Hi all -

I hope everyone is staying safe and warm! It's been a crazy week for our country! We've been very lucky at my house with only one day of subzero temperatures. The rest of the time it's been beautiful here. We did get a foot of snow last week, but we usually have more of that up here and need a lot more so hopefully that will keep coming.

I don't have many pictures to share today, but I'm excited about my latest finish. I finished working on my Dreaming of Tuscany cross-stitch project:

Dreaming of Tuscany

I really love how it turned out and the beautiful colors! I'll be saving it until this summer when I'll get it framed and hang it in my bathroom. I'm waiting until this summer since that's when I expect to be vaccinated. Although I really want to support the small framing businesses in their time of need, I'm not comfortable yet spending time in a framing shop making all of the matting and framing decisions until I've had my vaccine. At that point I'll also get the cross-stitch of my mom's that I finished a little while ago framed, too.

Since I've really been enjoying working on my cross-stitch projects, I picked up another WIP (Work In Progress) that I've had sitting around for years. This one is called Fanciful Butterfly and I think I will be able to finish it up pretty quickly.

Fanciful Butterfly

I remember putting this one aside years ago because it was a real pain to stitch the white thread on white fabric at 18 stitches per inch. It's difficult, but it sure does turn out elegant! Now that I've picked this up again (and am using a headlamp for bright light while I stitch), it's actually coming together very quickly and I think I'll be finished with it fairly soon. This one is smaller and I think I will end up stitching it into a project bag.

Finally, I stitched up another Twistola headband designed by Laura Nelkin.

Twistola

Twistola, full view

I made this one out of some yarn that I had in my stash that's not as fuzzy as the yarn that came with the project. This yarn allows you to see the details of the cables better and is a little less slippery in my hair. I have extremely straight, shiny hair so it can be hard to keep headbands in place.

That's all of my projects for now. The last thing I want to share are some pictures of Lance from the day I brought him home. I adopted him on Feb 16, 2008. Hard to believe we've been together for 13 years! Damn, he's cute!!

Nancy

Making Progress

Hi all -

Sorry for the long silence.  I ended up going to Kansas City for a couple of weeks. At the time I left my house, my brother-in-law was getting ready to go into hospice so I wanted to be there to take care of my sister's dogs so she could concentrate on him. Of course, it takes a while to get everything organized, so when I arrived at my sister's house, she was at home collecting her stuff for the transfer to hospice, which was supposed to occur in about an hour. But when she got back to the hospital, she found that he had passed away while she was gone. It really was the best outcome at that point because he was in pain and the pain medications really messed with his head. So we ended up spending my visit making the arrangements and going through his stuff to try to get as much accomplished as possible while I was there to help. Ironically, the mat that I made for him and mailed on Dec 21 was sitting on the porch when I arrived on Jan 4, so I could have just brought it with me rather than shipping it. I like to support the post office, but for this package I really should have used FedEx or UPS. So that's why I've been absent for so long. But now that I've been back for a couple of weeks, I've been able to make some progress to share with you.

The project that I'm concentrating the most on right now is my cross-stitch project. I feel like I'm on the home stretch so I'm really motivated to finish it. Here's what I have so far:

Dreaming of Tuscany

This project is really starting to take shape! The top 2/3 is completely finished, including the backstitching that has to be done after the cross-stitches. I try to do a lot of the backstitching when I complete different sections of the project because the backstitching can take a lot of time and it's depressing to end up having a week of backstitching to do when you feel like you are almost done with your project! I'm really loving how this looks and the colors make it perfect for my bathroom. I think I'll enjoy looking at it there every day.

My other exciting project is my current sweater. It's the I See Spring sweater designed by Joji Locatelli. I'm about halfway done with the body and have finished the first sleeve:

I See Spring

 Even though the instructions have you finish the body before working on the sleeves, I like to finish the sleeves as soon as possible because there is less bulk in the sweater while you are twisting it when knitting on the sleeves and because knitting the narrow rounds of the sleeves is harder on my hands so I like to get it over with as soon as possible. All I have left to do on this one now is to knit the other sleeve, finish the body and knit around the neckline. I might do the neckline before the rest of the body, too, since it will again be easier with less bulk and I hate picking up stitches so I'll be able to get that over with, too. I love the weight and feel of this sweater. The yarn is a wool/silk mix that I think will be really comfortable.

I did go ahead and take a break from the other projects to knit a quick headband. This was the February 2021 Lola's Choice project that I got in the mail last week. The kit came with a really soft, fuzzy yarn that was wonderful to work with! The pattern was Twistola designed by Laura Nelkin and I was able to knit it up in about 4.5 hours.

Twistola flat

Twistola "worn"

I'll probably make several more of these as gifts!

Last but not least, I finally sewed together the bag that I made for myself out of the fabrics that I used for my niece's wedding wallhanging.

I love how this bag turned out and will try to work some hand embroidery into more of my projects. I think it really adds some fun and detail to things!

That's all for now. I hope everyone is staying healthy and happy!

Nancy