It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!

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Daylight Saving Time began this morning, and just to prove that that lost hour of sleep hasn't totally destroyed the weekend (and that it's sooo worth the extra sunlight in the evening), I'm going to do something I haven't managed to do for months...WRITE A BLOG POST!!

You don't want to hear the knitty-gritty of why I've been missing for months...a (not) thrilling pastiche of being out of town, home demolition/reconstruction, video games, and work woes (so what's new?). No, you are here for pictures of needlework! And possibly fun things I've been doing! Well, today you're ONLY going to get needlework pictures, but buckle up, because I promise that will be enough.

One of the trips was to take a class with my EGA chapter. I joined the duClay chapter in Florida a few years ago, but I've only been down once to a retreat. There was finally a class that fit with my schedule, so I booked a plane ticket! Since my birthday was the day after I would have flown back, I managed to finagle a birthday trip to Disney World out of it (my argument to Michael was that I would be more than halfway to Disney anyway, so he drove down to Jacksonville and picked me up after class!)

So, my first finish of 2018 was my chapter nametag, which should have been finished eons ago.

I finished it as a mini-flatfold, a technique I made up after reading the (most excellent) tutorial written by Vonna on how to make a proper flatfold. However, I thought a proper flatfold would be too bulky for something so small that I also wanted to wear around my neck, so I figured out how to do it with just two pieces of mat board. If anyone is interested, I can share what I did.

I stayed with my DF Teresa, who is an amazing hostess. The class was great! Here I'll show you our prestitching (the thread keep) partially assembled (as we learned to do in class):

It was very interesting to finish; the eyelets were made by first enlarging the hole in the linen with an awl so that it would be big enough to put some thread strands though and tie in a half-hitch.

I'd share more pictures, but the ones on duClay's blog are much better, so please visit there! The blog is maintained by Jackie, who does lovely stitching and knitting. And she is the one to thank for the rest of this post! A couple people asked if I had stopped blogging, and I was saying that I needed to get back to it, but I had just missed the Olympics when Jackie said, "Well, you HAVE to do March Madness!" Holy Shamoley, I had completely forgotten about March Madness*!!!

At first I thought I was going to have to miss it this year, since I wasn't going to get home until March 4th. But then I realized...with the class piece, the "emergency" stitching project I brought just in case there was a free moment somewhere, and the two knitting projects I had started for Loopy Academy Senior Year and had along...this just might work!

So, on March 1st, after stumbling home from a great day at Hollywood Studios, I pulled out my class piece and did a little more work joining the two sides of the thread keep together.

The next day, following a day at the Epcot Flower and Garden Festival and a night waiting in line for Flight of Passage in Pandora at Animal Kingdom, I pulled out the "emergency stitching project", which is a hardanger piece. Please enjoy this very blurry picture of it.

March 3rd saw us on a special safari at Animal Kingdom, followed by a night viewing the new fireworks show at Magic Kingdom. Every color in this brioche cowl was in that fireworks show, plus some!

March 4th we had to head home, so I got some good knitting time in the car on a cotton vest.

Unfortunately, I have since had to unravel the whole thing and start over, since I gave up on my knitterly denial and realized it was going to come out big enough for Michael instead of me. I'm thinking he wouldn't really want to wear a hot pink mesh vest....

We got home at about 10:30 pm and had to go to work the next day, so I was too exhausted on March 5th to do anything at all. Well, that, and the Sparkly Compote of Decree was being difficult. You see, I knew in advance that due to the upheaval of construction, I wouldn't be able to get to (i.e., "find") all of my WIPs. So, I was just going to draw until I got a project I could actually find. Here's how many draws that took:

*sigh*
After many trips up and down (and up and down) a few sets of stairs, I found one! Castles by the Sea, by Teresa Wentzler (a class piece from a long ago retreat!) The picture on the right is what it will look like when it's finished, although I am making up my own verse.

March 7th found me stitching on Convents Herbal Garden by Chatelaine (or, as it was known when I started it, "Mystery 2"!):

When I found the piece for March 8th, which was Shakespeare's Garden...

...lo and behold, in the same box was the very first piece I drew out of the SCOD and couldn't find! So instead of drawing for the 9th, I stitched that one. This is another Teresa Wentzler piece from a retreat, called "Sewing Seeds of Love". You can see a small picture of the finished piece on her site (I gave away the charts for the other two designers' pieces at some point).

That almost brings me up to today! Yesterday (Saturday), we went to the Botanical Garden to see the thousands of tulips and orchids that are in bloom right now, and I couldn't face downloading all of those pictures.... So, you'll have to wait to see what I stitched on yesterday. Who knows, my instagram feed might get some madness showing up, too. Stay tuned for more March Madness! And let me know if you join in with me!

JiffNotes

Hooray for Daylight Saving Time and not coming home from work when it's dark! Please excuse the sizing of the pictures in this post...one of the "upheaval" things was getting a new computer, which is awesome, but my old image software no longer works on it and I'm definitely in the "making do" stage right now! *For those of you not familiar with March Madness...in the United States, college basketball playoffs begin in March, and there are so many crazy games, they coined the term "March Madness". Back when I used to run Theme-a-licious...and actually every March since...I would do my own "mad" stitching March by picking a different project every day! Nowadays the project I stitch on each day is "chosen" by the Sparkly Compote of Decree.

Smalls SAL June 2017

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No idea what the Smalls SAL is all about? Click the graphic above to learn more (and see lovely smalls from others!)

All I managed last month was finishing a small I had already finished the stitching on, but I'll take it as a win!

This is Keep a Little Secret by Just Nan, also known as She Who Makes You Stitch Really Intricate Designs, Only to Hide Them in a Tin or Box. I love it, anyway.

Why did I have so little time this month, you may ask? Well, I spent two weeks in Shanghai and and Tokyo! And let me tell you, jet lag is REAL. I'll just show you one thing for now...I "rescued" this temari from an airport gift shop on the way out of Tokyo.

Isn't it gorgeous? I say I "rescued" it because...airport gift shop. And it was only about $20! I know how much work went in to this temari, and I will appropriately appreciate it!

JiffNotes
Yup, I was gone for a while...but I have a good excuse...I was out of the country!

A Week of Mice and Madness

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If you're participating in Theme-Tas-Stitch (or you've been around here for over a year), you know that March means March Madness. And that means that I try to stitch on something different every day of the month! I don't always succeed, because I don't always get to stitch every day, but on the days I do get to stitch, I draw a slip of paper out of the SCOD (Sparkly Compote of Decree), and it tells me what I stitch that day. March first brought me this beauty to work on...

This is Toccata by The Drawn Thread. I only got one little square done, but, hey, that's pretty good for a work night.

March 2nd we went to see Phantom of the Opera at the fabulous Fox after work, so I got no stitching done that night. (My one-sentence review of the show is that if you saw it in the 90s, don't bother, because this production is much scaled down and misses a lot of the iconic staging moments.)

The next day, I told the SCOD to go take a flying leap, I was working on my first Loopy Academy project, Spliced (qualification: must be a two-color-per-row project):

I did not get all of that done, but I did get a lot of it done. The next two days I did not stitch at all, because I had better things to do...

We went to Disney World for my birthday! It's the first time in a while that I haven't been there on my actual birthday. That's OK; I still got the button, and the Dapper Dans sang "Happy Birthday" to me. =)

The Flower and Garden Festival was going on at Epcot, so that park was just beautiful.

Sometimes the Festival starts just after my birthday, so although some of the topiary displays are up, we don't get to enjoy other aspects of the Festival, like the fabulous food booths!

I tried to convince Michael that the cheese strudel with berry compote was terrible and I should just eat it all so he didn't have to suffer through it, but he didn't buy it. =)

Our second day, we got up early and hustled over to the back entrance of the park (we stayed at the Swan, so we were able to walk...and a big shout out to my Falcons for being in the Super Bowl and getting us a three-for-two deal there!) We wanted to be there at "rope drop" so we could speed-walk over to Norway and be in line for Frozen Ever After!

I didn't try to take any photos during the ride because I just wanted to enjoy it. The wait time can balloon up to several hours, so getting there early is your only hope if you can't get FastPasses (and we made the decision to go down too late to get them). We only waited about 10 minutes! We really enjoyed the ride and talked about how cool it is to go on a brand new Disney attraction...it's a treat that doesn't come along every day!

I'll end my pictorial review with a pair of dragons, because: DRAGONS!

China pavilion topiary at Epcot...

Maleficent "float" at Magic Kingdom.

On the way home, I knit on my second Loopy Academy project, Sinnesfrid.

I'm still not 100% sure about this color...I wanted a bright Spring green. Sometimes I think this is it, and sometimes it looks weird to me. It really changes color with the light.

That doesn't quite bring us up to today, but here's the last picture that was in the camera, from Tuesday:

The SCOD coughed up a blank slip of paper, which means I get to choose! So I picked a project out of the Drawer of Shame...it's a drawer in our coffee table where I keep stitching supplies like scissors, needle minders, stitch markers, etc. But it also contains various random small projects that get stuffed in there for one reason or another. I decided to stitch something from there to help clean it out...I wasn't sure what all was in there! I found a few ornament kits that were not started, an ornament with one side stitched, one side unstitched, and one side completely missing (along with the fibers!), a bead kit, a stumpwork ornament whose directions I'm sure I packed in a box somewhere, various other things, and this. This was pretty much the only started thing in there that had all its bits together! It's going to be a PEACE tree by M Designs. If I have enough fibers left to complete it. I have my doubts...

The madness will continue! Stay tuned...

JiffNotes
Disney World got in the way of March Madness, in the best way possible, but I still got a lot of stitching done!

Long Weekend of Gorgeousness

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I just got back from a long weekend with "the girls" in Highlands, NC. A good friend has a condo there and allows us all to descend on her and her husband and plop ourselves in comfy chairs to stitch for the weekend from time to time. There is much laughter and food and fun. And stitching. Oh, yes, there is stitching! While some like to stitch on one thing the whole weekend (those people that actually finish things), OTHERS of us tend to bring enough stitching for six months and flit from project to project like a hummingbird on Pixy Stix. I pretty much switched projects every time we stopped to eat a meal.

Since I'd been knitting for so long, and I just "reorganized" my WIPs, I really brought a random selection of projects that would travel well. (Read: I grabbed whatever I could find that wasn't mounted on a frame or stored in a giant container.) Here's what I ended up stitching on (yes, there were even a few things I brought that did not see the light of day)...

Purrfect Christmas Santa (Jim Shore) from Mill Hill

Always good to have a "my eyes are too darn tired to see much of anything" project along.

In Full Glory by Blackbird Designs

You might remember this from the Lottlympiad. It's a conversion to Gloriana silks by Jean Lea at The Attic.

Bluebell by Nora Corbett (Mirabilia)

I did not get too much done on her (tired eyes!) Someone asked why I started her at the bottom...there is a little swirl in the fabric that I wanted her to be "skipping over", so I had to place her feet first. =) See that cute little bee skep pincusion at the bottom? That was part of my Christmas gift from our hostess that I forgot to take a picture of when I took this picture:

Can you believe she found a bag with a knitting squirrel on it?? And the other squirrel there is holding hand sanitizer. I don't know which of those two needle minders I love best! Oh, and as if that wasn't enough, she ALSO gave me...

This gorgeous squirrel canvas!! She is trying to tempt me to the dark side (needlepoint). I think it's working... ;) She also gave us cute goodie bags with things like hand moisturizer, scissors, and that super-cool green twisting needle case. You twist it like a tube of lipstick and it fans out your needles like an old-fashioned soda shop straw dispenser! I am fascinated and may have played with it like a 5-year-old....

I was really excited to work on Prancer (by Mirabilia)!

Although, technically, I did not stitch on poor Prancer, just his GIANT Christmas stocking. It's big enough to fit a tree in! Oh, gargantuan stocking, where were you when I was a kid???

Peacock Cypher by Just Nan

If you've never seen this piece before, you may be thinking, "What language is that??" Well, it is a code (hence the "Cypher" in the title). It's difficult to explain without seeing the whole piece, but you need to find a letter that makes the words make sense. I'd tell you what it is, but Nan assures you in her directions that if you reveal the secret, all your needles will rust and all your stitches will unravel! =)

Castles by the Sea by Teresa Wentzler

I bet not many of you have seen this piece. It was taught at a retreat in 2004. I am changing the verse. Here's what the original looks like:

Finally, I tried something new this weekend...soutache embroidery!

The kit makes three snowflakes, and I got four out of six pieces of the first snowflake (the right-most one in the picture) done. I wish you could see how sparkly this really is! One of the pieces of soutache is an iridescent pearl.

I have already identified this as one of my Theme-tas-stitch 2017 projects for Focus Finish February! What's that? You haven't heard of Theme-tas-stitch? The wonderful Kerryp77 at Ramblings of a Biscornu Addict kindly contacted me to ask if I'd mind if she hosted a SAL reminiscent of my Theme-a-licious SAL from years past. I was happy to give her the "go-ahead"! And I'm thrilled to participate in a themed SAL that I don't have to host. ;)

I am linking up with Jo at Serendipitous Stitching for Gifted Gorgeousness 2017, because I posted about some really lovely gifts I received, a friend gave me the gift of stitching time, and I learned about soutache embroidery (I am getting the gift of knowledge!) ;)

JiffNotes
I came, I sat, I stitched (on a girls' weekend away). I'm excited for Theme-tas-stitch!!

Amsterdam, Day 2 - Museums!

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I'm saying "day two", but it really felt like the first day...since the day before was arrival day, I had been seriously jet-lagged and sleep-deprived and was pretty much a walking zombie by the end of the day! We slept almost 12 hours (remember, we'd only gotten two hours sleep the night before on the plane) and awoke still fairly early. The weather forecast was for some rain, so we decided this would be our museum day. Although we were up at a reasonable time, there was a snafu with the streetcar we boarded (they changed the route, and of course, not speaking Dutch, we did not understand the announcement on board), so our 20 minute trip turned into an hour and a half. That's OK, we met some lovely Canadian girls, so we had friends to slog through the rain with while we were lost. =)

Eventually, we made it to our first destination: The Van Gogh Museum.

You can see that the sun came out as soon as we were no longer wandering around trying to find the proper streetcar stop!

Sadly, I still don't know how to properly pronounce "Van Gogh"..."Van Go"? "Van Ho"? "Van Goff"? I never heard a native say it and I forgot to ask! Guess I'll just have to go back. ;) No pictures are allowed in the museum, except in the atrium:

They have a nice projection screen up that scrolls through a few pieces of his art for selfies.

Of course, I had to pick the one in my favorite color and that was a decal on my last Kindle Fire (and hotel room decor in LA).

An aside about my hair: I'm not just sporting the "drowned rat" look due to all the rain. My hair is naturally curly (I know some of you are surprised!)...I usually straighten it. But we completely forgot our voltage converter, and apparently they don't work that well with flat irons, anyway (hotel hair dryers don't cut it for straightening my hair!). The recommendation is to just buy a flat iron with the proper voltage in Europe, but we were never near a store that sold them during the day!

The next museum we visited was the Rijks Museum. You can see the clouds found us again. =)

The "I amsterdam" letters are a brilliant marketing campaign; when it's not wet out, you see people all over and on top of these letters!

This beautiful museum holds paintings by Dutch masters and some gorgeous decorative arts.

The inside looks a little more modern. =)

Since our streetcar detour gave us a late start to the day, it was well past lunch time by the time we arrived. One thing I love about museums in Europe is that almost all of them have fantastic cafes!

Look at my delicious smoked salmon with avocado, pomegranate seeds and horseradish mousse! I am always a little iffy with smoked salmon here (it can be pretty fishy-tasting if it's not fresh), but this was delicious.

Here are just a few highlights from the museum....

Group portraits like this of city militia were common. This one is life-sized; look at all the fancy clothes!!

Love the dynamic motion of this swan! He's about 3 feet (1 meter) tall.

The Rijks has a few Vermeer paintings (if you're not familiar, "Girl with the Pearl Earring" is one of his, though this one, "The Milkmaid", is more typical of his work):

His use of light makes him one of the best. I was highly amused that the museum gift shop had a Playmobil set of this painting, although I could not convince Michael to buy it!

The interior of the museum itself is also very inspiring. This is the hall that had the swan and Vermeer:

And the next hall...

Detail of one of the walls...

I won't bore you with all the pictures of the decorative arts portion of the museum, but get a load of this porcelain!!

When we left the museum, it was time for a snack. We were so hungry, we picked the very first little cafe we saw outside the museum, where we had THE BEST WAFFLE EVER.

It was crisp and carmelized on the outside and creamy (but not "eggy") on the inside. I'm been to Belgium and had waffles there, but THIS WAS BETTER. We looked around us in pity at the suckers who were having ice cream instead. =)

Things were closed by this time, so we wandered more picturesque streets and canals. This is a smaller canal than the one we were staying on, so there were small boats rather than all the houseboats.

Shop cat! We saw several shop cats while window shopping. I mean, if you are going to have a giant store full of mouse bait, you need a shop cat, right??

It is a lot of fun to go into the many cheese shops and just sample all the delicious cheeses!

Detail of some row houses:

Another canal shot:

Our hotel recommended a restaurant nearby that served typical Dutch food, so that is where we went.

Everyone we met in Amsterdam spoke English; most spoke it very well. Here our waitress was a delightfully saucy woman from a Dutch island near Venezuela (I think it was Bonaire?) I had to ask where she was from, since it was clear she was not speaking Dutch-accented English, and I am very nosy. ;) I later heard her speaking Spanish to a nearby table. Imagine being fluent in three languages!!

We split a delicious meat stew covered with potatoes for dinner (think a very saucy shepherd's pie). Since we couldn't decide on an appetizer, we were happy to see they had a sampler!

My motto with food is, "I will try anything once!" (Actually, there are a few things I would never try...like anything with brains!! But for the most part, I will try at least one bite of pretty much anything that the locals eat.) Most of this was pretty "normal": goat cheese with balsamic vinegar, potato fritter, fish stick, potato salad, smoked salmon. In the middle there, though, was mustard eel soup. I know, I know, but it was actually really good! I do like unagi sushi (the eel is cooked), so I thought it wouldn't be bad.

After dinner, we headed back to the hotel for another good night's sleep (no street festival that night, thankfully!!) Day three will find us flying to Copenhagen!

JiffNotes
Rainy days are great for museums!