February Turtle Trot

Hey Blog Buddies,
It's time for a first progress report for my Turtle Trot SAL projects, so let's get right to it:

Winter Logs

 Before

 After

The January Guild meeting was cancelled due to weather (sigh),

and the leader of this SAL suggested

that we just wait until the February meeting

to do the next two sections.

(We are doing an eighth at a time.)

I decided to do the piece that we would have normally done
now, and not have a double assignment later.

Autumn Pumpkin Patch

Before

After 

I love this design,

but it is very labor- and time-intensive.

Still hoping to get it finished

by May-June.

Tangerine Twist

 Before

 After

Seems I'm doing a lot of canvaswork this year!

Cool Cardinal

Before  

 After

Without his crest, the cardinal

looks more like a fat, red vulture!

The top photo most accurately depicts the linen color.

99

Before

After

I was only able to stitch 1.2 bottles!
It didn't help that I had to rip out half of the first bottle
and the bottom part of the outline of the second
because I miscounted and they were too long.

Mates

 Before

After

Yes! I'm getting some momentum going here!

My plan of stitching a little on this piece every day

seems to be working!
I'm usually the first up in the morning,
so I've been working on this in the quiet hour before breakfast,
which is good because I need all my concentration for it.
There was a large swath of white block stitching
 in Mr's muzzle this month,
so I may not have quite as much progress to show next month.

I might have overstated in my last post

when I mentioned "ten active WIPs"

because, as you can see, I've only worked on 

six this past month.

The other four are still officially UFOs.
Maybe I'll pick up one of them next month.  Maybe.

I'm itching to finish one of the above pieces

sooner rather than later.

The only two that have any chance of being finished soon

are Cool Cardinal and Tangerine Twist.

Cool Cardinal just has the bird's crest

and a moderate amount of backstitching on the bird.

And 80 large snowflakes.  Yes, I've counted!

Tangerine Twist has only one more square to stitch.

And 240 beads of assorted shapes and sizes need to be attached,
 to be chosen however I decide--no instructions on that.
Any guesses as to which of these
will get finished first?

I went into The City this past weekend
for a needlepoint workshop (more on that in another post),
so I'll leave you with this...

 This is a very common sight in Chicago's neighborhoods.
Lots of folks may not have a garage or, at best,
only a one-car garage, so they have to park in the street.
They have to shovel their car out before they can drive anywhere,
so they reserve that nicely shoveled-out spot
with anything they can get their hands on.
I saw plastic crates and buckets and even a wooden reindeer
this weekend, but lawn chairs or folding chairs
are by far the most common.
It's not really legal and "Mayor Rahm" 
has told people to stop doing this (yeah right),
but the overwhelming consensus at the workshop was
that no one would have the nerve
to move those items and park in those spots!
This doesn't happen in the suburbs, to my knowledge,
just in the city.
Is this strictly a Chicago phenomenon,
or does it happen where you live (if you experience snow)?
BTW, more snow is predicted for this week.

Well, that's it from here.
To see other Turtle Trot progress,
visit Claudette at BAP Attack for all the links.
Thanks for visiting!