Short on the Live Simply

I’m not even going to bother to explain why I haven’t posted for over a week.  I’m sure by now you are all aware that I am scatter-brained and don’t always get around to doing what I intend to do.  Thankfully, I rarely let other people down, it is generally only me whom I disappoint.

I’m working away happily and successfully on my piece for the Biscornus and Other Smalls exchange over on the Rotation Stitchers board.  However, I ran into a snag yesterday. You see, I went out for a little yarn and stitching shopping by myself yesterday morning, leaving my project safely on the end table, and Baby Man in the capable hands of my wonderful husband. Baby Man has been well trained, and he never touches my scissors or projects.  If he knocks my pattern on the floor, he picks it up and hands it back to me (after colouring on the back or stomping on it, usually).  Well, yesterday something happened while I was out and I came home to this:

A big mess of floss

Thankfully nothing is badly tangled. I just need to pull out my colour card and get the labels back on the proper skeins. If Baby Man was older, it would be his punishment to sort these out.  But at 2 1/2, I figure it probably isn’t worth the effort to make him try. 🙂 (I’ve played with the colours in the picture a little bit so they aren’t completely true. I don’t want to spoil the surprise for my recipient too much!)

I made great progress with my punch needle project earlier this week, until I ran out of ivory floss.  I did contact Dimensions, and they say they are sending me more. Hopefully it arrives quickly.  I barely had enough of the darker tan colour as well. And by that I mean I had less than one 3-strand 6″ piece left.  While I do appreciate Dimensions getting back to me so quickly, I will probably think twice about buying another one of their punch needle kits because they seem to be stingy with the floss.  I will, however do more punch needle! I’m planning on starting the Halloween design in the latest Cross Stitch and Needlework as soon as I get some weaver’s cloth.

Live Simply by Dimensions (WIP)

Over the past week I also made one of PlanetJune’s new dinosaur patterns, the T-Rex, but I forgot to take a picture of it. It’s very cute, trust me, and will make a great Christmas or birthday gift for Baby Man. Yeah, I’m one of those. I honestly nearly have my Christmas shopping done. I still have several projects I need to make, but the shopping portion of gift giving is almost done. I’m more or less just waiting to see if the prices drop on a few things before I buy them. Please don’t be too upset with me. 🙂 I just hate going to the malls any time after the beginning of November. I worked far too many years in retail to enjoy the hustle and bustle of holiday shopping.

And speaking of shopping, I’m working on another market bag. This one is for me, and done in crochet using Anchor’s Magicline yarn. It is a bright and cheery mix of red, pink, orange and white. Yeah, they aren’t my regular colours by any means, but I love how happy it looks. Maybe it is the summer weather that is influencing me, but that may mean that using the bag in depth of winter will make me think of summer. Whatever. 🙂 Here are the first four squares sewn together.  I have twelve more squares to do, plus some handles and then everything gets sewn together in a weird way to make a super cool Inga’s Haekelbeutel (link is to a pdf). If you are going to attempt this yourself (and why not?), note that there is an error in round 2. Check out this page on Ravelry for the errata, or just make 16 closed granny squares and then follow the directions for assembly.

Inga Bag (WIP)

My next craft to try is needle tatting. I’m planning on taking a short class at the CreativFestival, and in anticipation, I picked up a book and needle set very inexpensively on eBay. I tried shuttle tatting back when I was in university, maybe twelve or fourteen years ago. I never really got the hang of it, but I understand needle tatting is a little easier.

Lastly, I’ve decided to give up on Victoria Sampler’s Heirloom Baby Sampler that I was stitching for Baby Man. It seriously isn’t to my tastes. What I will probably do is stitch a few more rows and then call it done. The ribbon heart at the top of the sampler is beautiful and I’d hate for it to go to waste. Instead I will be stitching Joan Elliot’s Fairy Mother & Child, which you can see in her blog post here. I’ll do it on some hand-dyed fabric, and I will probably change the hair colour a little bit.  I plan on moving the name and date to below the picture. Unfortunately, that means that it won’t fit in a standard frame, but it does mean I can fit in Baby Man’s full name.

Oh, and very lastly, if anyone is interested in the floss and bead kit for Brooke’s Books Emma Rose, as sold by The Gift of Stitching, please let me know. I’ve decided not to stitch it, after some input from the husband. He is usually very supportive of whatever I choose to stitch, but he seems to really dislike this particular design.