Slow Sunday Stitching - December 10, 2023

 Let's see where I am on the stitching goals for December in order of priority - links to my blog posts

1. Set up "FFO / Frame" WIPGO board for 2024 - DONE
   
2. December part of Birdhouse SAL - DONE
   
3. Pillow finish for Marita - Christmas gift - IN PROGRESS
   
4. Tree fill in and frame on family tree
   
5. Blackbird Needle Case - 10 hours to finish "historic" slot - IN PROGRESS
   
6. Back to Birdhouse SAL - top border across to the January section
7. KC Plaza Sewing Bag - 2.5 hours to finish "modern" slot (I have 7.5 done, close enough in a pinch to call it a slot finish if I don't manage to make it this far). 
   
8. Perforated Paper Santa (and finishing)
9. Sugar Skull - lace area around eyes 
10. Project Bag - if not finished, put on WIPGO board #13

Today I'm working on the Christmas Pillow.  I've picked out a nice green semi-solid (it's an old Jinny Beyer print) and I'll get the borders cut shortly.   Ignore the pencil markings; former me had bad habits.  The needlework is from 1984 and I have no idea who the designer is.  I tried an image search, but there are just too many 'row of Christmas Trees' images out there. And it's old enough that it's possible it's not even archived anywhere.

I picked up my grandson a couple of times this week.  School pickup = travel knitting!  The hat is within 0.5 inches / 1.25 cm before the decreases start.   I'm not crazy about the color combo on this one.  The brown is fine, the black is fine, but that yarn in the stripe is iffy.  Now it's a lovely texture, and the very short shots of color (two or three stitches on this size needle) are wonderful.   I'm just not sure that brownish purple (why I picked brown to go with it), a dull teal and yellow ocher are a color combo I would have chosen.   It came to me in a grab bag of sock scraps and beggars can't be choosers.   And it's out of my stash now into a nice warm hat.

Lastly, I picked up the Blackbird Designs Needlebook ("Two Hearts", Loose Feathers # 34).   I put in a couple of hours and got the right side of the palm finished.  At the bottom of the pinkie finger!

I will say that I wish I would have worked on the diagonal from the start.   I really like the movement in the overdyed threads better in the palm section.  But I'm not going to pull out all the green and old gold at this point (frogging one over two on 56 count is NOT FUN).  And I wish the light grey (CC "Lunar Eclipse") was just a touch darker to have the 'cuff' show up better. 

Linking up with the SSS crew.