FINISHED NEEDLEWORK: "It's Berry Time" by Blackbird Designs

 

Pattern: "It's Berry Time" Loose Feathers #37

Designer: Blackbird Designs

Fabric: 30 count "Iced Cappuccino" linen by R&R Reproductions

Threads:  Crescent Colors / Classic Colorworks as charted

 

Stitches:  one over one full cross, Smyrna cross (instead of eyelets), outline, lazy daisy

8 inches W x 3 inches H

 

Started 4/29/2026, needlework completed 8/22/2026

44.5 hours

Will be finished as a drum over BBD Academy summer break 2027

Slow Sunday Stitching - August 16 , 2026 AND 2026 Rotation #6 Slot #1 (Not Counted X Stitch) Changeover

 Wait, halfway through August and school starts this week!!!  How did that happen?  Got to admit, I don't like it, not ready for school AT ALL.  

But at least the crafting has been going well!

From the top.  I finished the ten hours on the vintage German needlepoint piece:

The back so you can see what I worked on.  I was all over the place - finishing the pump and water trough, doing the big bush in the bottom right corner and the yellow/orange bush by the house, rocks and grass and fences.

Where I was last time for comparison:

Also, it's mid month, so here is the current status of "Santa of the Forest".  I've moved the fabric up again, so you can no longer see the upper part of the piece but look there's 2/3 of a dove and an entire rabbit!

I added 1,146 stitches and I'm now at 66.06%.  I'm going to work around the bottom wing on the dove with the cloak colors next.  

I've also worked on my weekly Blackbird Academy SAL piece and got the third basket almost done - just the rest of the handle left.  There's still a leaf under the handle arch and two large floral areas on the right side to finish that motif, but it's coming along. 

On the knitting front, I did get back to the colorwork area after re-knitting the first dozen rows of the yoke starting with the joining round.   I'll take a picture when the colorwork starts showing up.  I finished charting the next Santa paper ornament into Pattern Keeper, but I haven't had an occasion to start stitching on it yet.

The other travel project (the LOSY hat) did get a couple of rounds in before choir practice on Thursday.  Yes, bells have started up again and I'm not ready for THAT either LOL.  Darn it, summer isn't supposed to be over until after Labor Day!

Good thing I have the SSS crew to keep me on track every week (this week's roundup is here).

Slow Sunday Stitching - August 9, 2026

 Most of the crafting this week ended up being knitting.  I took my grandson to his school physical.  At 17, he still needs an adult to check him in and sign paperwork. I did not have any travel project, since I'd just finished both the Muchness Cowl and the Toy Maker Santa ornament in the last couple of weeks.  So, another LOSY hat happened abruptly.  This one is in reds and oranges; Maple Leaf LOSY Hat (Knitting links all go to my Ravelry project pages).

I also finished the "Swatch Hat" for the colorwork sweater.  It looks very funky with the different chunks of pattern and slouchy fit, but I got the numbers I needed.  It will be fine as a "barn hat" for outdoor work, since I won't care if it gets lost or ruined. 

And last but not least on the knitting front, when I picked the "Brown Study Sweater" back up, I discovered a mistake on the short row section at the back of the yoke start.  When I tried to drop the stitches down to fix it, I created an even larger issue and ended up frogging the whole thing back to the join round!  It's all back on the needles, double counted and a lifeline run.  I'll redo the short row section this week and get back to the point where the colorwork starts ASAP.   But that took several hours last night.  Luckily, this yarn is not at all slippery so pulling the needles out and ripping back wholesale was practical.

On the cross-stitch front, I have a confession.  Over the last six months or so, I have expressed a bit of frustration that the 'historic' slot on my needlework rotation has been full of Blackbird Designs to the exclusion of the other historic projects in my stash.  In the past five years, all but two projects designated as "historic reproductions" or "historic inspired" have all been BBD patterns.  Now, I LOVE Blackbird Designs, and I still have over two dozen kitted projects from their Loose Feathers original series waiting in the stash.  But I would like to have a bit more variety.  I debated at the first of the year doing every other project as a BBD, but that hasn't worked out either.  I had determined that when I reset the rotation at the end of 2026 that I would add a "prim" slot and break the historic slot into two parts. That was the plan, until last week.....

This year, I have not participated in any larger Stitch A Longs or temperature stitching.  That slot in the rotation has been sitting empty since January.  I was watching Floss Tube as one does and stitching away on "It's Berry Time" when I stumbled across a couple of planning videos for a new Facebook group called "Blackbird Academy", which is hosting a ten month SAL with monthly prompts.   Any BBD project, new or WIP that fits the prompt in any way is welcome.  I looked at the prompt for August, which is "alphabets", and I looked at the WIP in my hands and BINGO.  I signed up right away.

I'm planning on working on the Academy on weekends (Friday and Saturday), continue the 111 stitches or a bit more on my pictorial every day and try to get in at least an hour on my regular rotation Sunday to Thursday.   Even with school starting up on the 19th, I'm hopeful that this is not overly ambitious.  Time will tell. 

Here's where I'm at on "It's Berry Time" after four hours (so effectively the first two weekends of August).  I'm making pretty good progress on the rose basket.  

For the record "Santa of the Forest" got 1,367 stitches this week and is now at 62.82%.   And I put in two hours on the vintage needlepoint.  Plus I set up the next Santa ornament and will hopefully get the chart into Pattern Keeper this afternoon. It's been a productive, though scattered, week!  Off to link up with the SSS crew (this week's round-up). 

FINISHED NEEDLEWORK: "Heirloom Santa: Toymaker Santa" by Willmaur

Willmaur Heirloom Santa:  Toymaker Santa

Designed by Sandra Cozzolino

Added Mill Hill beads

• to door handle - gold metallic MH00557

This ornament is in honor of my father-in-law, Jim.  After a 20 plus year career in the United States Army, he opened a snack and gift shop near the Kansas State University campus.  When he retired from that after another 20 years, he took up woodworking as a hobby and part-time job.  He specialized in wooden toys and garden trinkets (windmills and painted edgings and such).  I am 100% sure if any of his grandkids had been girls, he would totally have made a dollhouse like our featured ornament Santa is working on.   

Slow Sunday Stitching - August 2, 2026 AND 2026 Rotation #5 Slot #4 (Pictorial) Changeover

Time for the end of July check in on my pictorial piece "Santa of the Forest" by Lavendar and Lace.  This also ends off Rotation #5.  This month, I added 5,396 stitches, which brings me to 20,433 stitches in this project so far (approximately 58.88%).  And I have now finished 23 colors.

And where I was at the beginning of the month

Good progress: bear finished, and I added the checkerboard sleeves, the main part of the forest scene inside the fold of St. Nick's robe, and his colorwork mittens (white on green) are also done, along with bringing the folds of his cloak down to row 150 on both sides.  Speaking of the mittens, I think they may be Latvian style mittens (perhaps a pair like these - link to Ravelry).  Either that or his checkered sleeves have wide embroidered shirt cuffs and the mitten wrists are tucked into them.  But honestly, the purple patterns look like colorwork knitting to me - so I'm going with mittens with gauntlet cuffs.

You can see the outlines of the three remaining animals clearly now (left to right - dove, bunny and the wolf's ears).   What's up next?  The dove is very wide - wingtip to wingtip it is about 75 rows high, so I will probably need to work it in thirds.  The upper wing is almost completely outlined at this point, so I'll fill that in next before I move the fabric up.

And on the subject of colorwork knitting, my sampler hat is coming along.  And I think I have made a decision on which pattern I am going to work on the sweater yoke.  

I sampled the following three patterns:

1) from a sweater pattern I purchased (link to Etsy, the designer is not on Ravelry).  Very nice, but a little delicate - probably more suited to fingering weight than worsted weight yarn.  Also, needs an odd number of repeats to balance, and my sweater has an even repeat count.   On the docket for a future sweater though.

2) designed myself.  I like it, but it is not quite right - the eye is more drawn to the brown than the white, so the transition isn't what I was going for.  I may try to rework it for a future sweater at some point.

3) also designed by me.  This is the one I am choosing for the sweater yoke.   It's graphic enough to work in the worsted weight yarn and I like the geometric look of it.  I'm going to sample the decrease area depth on the hat (which will be more of a stocking cap shape) and when it's done, I'm move back to the sweater.

Starting Rotation #6, so pulling out the vintage needlepoint again.  I've been rolling through the slots about once a month, which is getting me good progress on everything.  I do need to get some finishing done.  The 'under the bed box' (aka the 'box of doom'/finished project purgatory) hasn't gotten any emptier!  

Even though it's not out of the 'doom box', I did finish (and very nearly FFO!) a project this week - the travel project. The next perforated paper Santa, which is the Toymaker Santa in honor of my father-in-law, is all stitched, embellished, and assembled.  I'm just waiting for it to dry overnight so that I can trim the backing down before I snap a picture.  (ETA:  FFO post for the ornament is here.)

Linking up with the SSS crew (this week's round-up is here)

Slow Sunday Stitching - July 25, 2026 AND 2026 Rotation #5 Slot #3 (Modern) Changeover

 

Took the bellpull off the side bars so I could show the whole thing.  That's a fair bit of double running!!  Good thing I enjoy doing it since it took all ten hours of this rotation (less the set up time, which wasn't much).  

As I was working the borders, I noticed that the top third (section 1 of 3 by Shepherd's Bush) is all cross stitch besides a little bit more of outline / double running.   And the bottom third (section 3 of 3 by Just Nan) only has three eyelets in each corner and the rest is all cross stitch.  But the center (section 2 of 3 by Charland Designs) has a lot of stitches like satin stitch, long armed cross and so forth that do not like to be smashed onto scroll rods at all.   So, I'm going to stitch the sections in that order = 1, 3, put it on longer side bars and then do 2 and the beading. 

On my other projects, "Santa of the Forest" got 1,180 stitches this week, which takes me to 19,288 or about 55.58%.   I will do a change over and end of month picture as of the 31st and report on that next week.

And look what happened unexpectedly this week!  

Yes, that's the 'swatch hat' (link to my Ravelry page) for the brown pullover sweater that has been long abandoned (well hibernated at least).  I came across the bin that it was in and figured it's on the home stretch, so why not finish it.  Par for the course, I am sitting (in front of a fan in air conditioning) with a lap full of wool in the midst of a heat wave.  I'm sampling three different colorwork patterns and the decrease pattern.   More pictures when I get to the top of the thing. 

Some projects just have to wait their turn for my attention!  In the mean time, linking up with the SSS crew keeps me accountable (current round-up is here).

Slow Sunday Stitching - July 19, 2026

It's been a very productive week on the crafting front this week.  First of all, I did finish the "Muchness Cowl" and it's ready to donate once the weather turns cooler.

color is shaded very orange in this picture, it's really burgundy

And I promised to show the mid-month progress on "Santa of the Forest" if I got over the halfway mark.  I am proud to report that I did hit that milestone.  I put in 1,269 stitches this week, which brings me to 18,108 stitches on this project (or approximately 52.18%).  The outlines of the heads of the next two animals are showing up - a dove and a bunny. 

I have also been working on the new piece in the modern slot, "Collaboration Sampler" by Shepherd's Bush, Charland, and Just Nan.  The borders are in that stage of a complex double running pattern where the stitching looks like a random collection of dashes.  So that one will have a photo next week for the changeover.  I don't think I'll get much further than the borders and the lettering in this round of ten hours, but that will give me a solid foundation for the rest of the bell pull.  Stay tuned for that. 

Linking up with the SSS crew for weekly inspiration and accountability.  (Link to current week's roundup is here.)