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I love it all: embroidery, canvaswork, quilting, crochet. So much to do, so little time.





Monday, February 10, 2014

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!

22 comments:

Claudette497 said...

Your work is really beautiful! No snow here, but people will rarely leave a person to stand in a space at the beach - it usually leads to the would-be parker trying to bump the person with their car, or else any passengers will leap out and drive the placeholder off; a lawn chair would get run right over, lol. I haven't seen a lot of these efforts, but they've always been ugly. I can't even imagine a whole city cooperating about holding each other's parking spaces - what a festival of neighborly love!

Preeti said...

Lovely stitching and what a great progress on each of them !! I like tangerine twist the most, so many colors to work with :)

Gillie said...

Oh my, those are some gorgeous pieces! Especially the first one. We are going to do a small canvas work piece at our EGA meeting in March, not tried it for a long time. Mm, too many cancellations! Nope it's very common in Pittsburgh to put chairs out, puzzled me no end when we first came to live in the US! Why not sit in the garden, lol? There it's a year round keep the space occurrence . Don't remember seeing it in Chicago but we lived in the northern suburbs. Off to do my TT post!

Agnieszka B. (Abulinka) said...

Beatiful progress :)

Faith... said...

Your canvaswork is simply gorgeous! The pumpkin is so bright! You got in lots of stitching this month.

I love going thru the city and seeing all the things people put out to hold their spots! Mayor Rahm will never get this Chicago tradition to stop - no matter how hard he tries! LOL

Jacklyn Cornwell said...

Beautiful work and very labor intensive.

geeky Heather said...

Wow, you have made a LOT of progress!! I love all the canvas pieces you are working on.

geeky Heather said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anne said...

Very impressive work! I absolutely love your "Winter Logs!"

Linda said...

Great progress on all the pieces. Those canvas works are stunning. Glad to see you did more on Mates.

Linda

SoCal Debbie said...

Your needlepoint projects are gorgeous! We are both at the same point in "99". Let's see how far we get by next month! The wolves are gorgeous!

LOL about Claudette's comment about the lawn chairs holding a parking space here in Southern California! She's exactly right! The chairs would be run over or stolen or thrown out of the way.

Sarah Beth said...

I love the needlepoint canvas work you are doing. I've had my eye on that pumpkin design ever since I saw it last year at my needlepoint shops booth at a sewing expo in Cincinnati. Isn't it just gorgeous. I love all the beautiful stitches. I bet you have a lot invested in fibers to stitch it. Your other designs are lovely too.

Julie said...

WOW ... smoking needles... you've been really busy. Such vibrant and colourful canvaswork, its all so beautiful. Winter Logs is amazing!
Lots of little x's put in too, well done on such a productive time.
I hope the snow soon melts for you and you can have some spring sunshine to brighten your days.
Happy Stitching!

Pull the other thread said...

Wow such amazing progress on everything. I just love your canvaswork. Mates is coming along beautiful.

Pat said...

Beautiful stitching on all, love the canvas work.

Anonymous said...

Wow...you are really making great progress! Congrats! Love all of your pieces. This "stay in" winter has been helping all of us get some serious work done!

Chris said...

Your canvas work pieces are so lovely. Great stitches and textures and fibers!!! Your other stitching projects are looking great too.
Stay safe and warm.

Giovanna said...

Brilliant canvas work, and nice new bottle :-)

Minnie said...

Your stitching is gorgeous. Saving your parking space is very common and of course only done in the winter when you have to dig out a parking space. Shoveling snow is no joke,and it is predicted that we get between 5-14 in Wednesday night into Thursday.

Anna van Schurman said...

People in Philly do the same. In the suburbs people move the damn chairs. Which is the reverse of what you might think. You've done a lot of beautiful work this month!

Wendy said...

some gorgeous projects there and you seem to be going great guns! Noone round here would stand for people reserving parking spaces. It's very common for us not to have garages or driveways at all. I live in a victorian street so of course there are no garages or drives and I very rarely get to park near my own house, snow or no snow!

~ Toni ~ said...

Great progress on your pieces this month. Happy Stitching!