It's Thursday

Well, at least it is getting me to post once a week. 
This will be the last stitching picture for a while as I have a model from Just Cross Stitch. 

This is the first item in Nordic Needle's Hardanger Stitching Accessories Club.  Unfortunately I cannot show you the information about it because all of the sets have been sold and there is no longer a listing for it on the website.  The lid insert for the box was the first item.  The second item is a pocket for the scissors.  It came during the week before the JCS model came; I was only able to stitch a small part of it before putting it down.  As soon as I finish the model, I will stitch the pocket. 

Once a Week Posts??

Well, don't laugh.  It is a lot better than I have been doing.  :-D 

I checked back and I am fairly certain that I never showed you the Gingerbread Mouse from Just Nan.  I was supposed to poke the end of the tail into the fabric just above the button on the bottom.  I stitched the button on so securely that I could not force the end of the tail through the fabric.  I stitched it on the outside and secured it in place in the middle with a Kreinik braid tie. 

I did not have time to stitch it for this past Christmas because I had to take time out to stitch a model for Just Cross Stitch magazine.  Right now I am trying to get as much stitching accomplished as I can because another model is supposed to arrive in a day or two.  I have a very short turn around time so there will not be an opportunity to stitch my own things.  

During the night it is supposed to snow; depending upon how the storm tracks, we could have more or less snow.  Normally this would not be a problem but our son who shovels the walkways at church has his car in for repair work.  The  transmission is kaput and is being rebuilt.  We are all hoping that the work will be done tomorrow because it is extremely difficult co-ordinating the needs of four adults and one car. 

In the meantime, it looks like he will take our car and his brother to church to do the shoveling.  That means we will have no way to get to the health club in the morning.  I will be exercising at home, the best that I am able. 

Happy Valentine's Day - Happy Snowfall

This morning we woke up to new fallen snow.  But, we knew we would when we went to bed last night.  The question was how much would it be?  The answer is not as much as it could have been but it is heavy snow.  It sticks to everything. 

I watched for the sun to come up to try to catch a few early morning pictures.  Unfortunately, it was not a pink sunrise so there was no pink sunlight for me to revel in. 

Missing Again??

Yes, I am back again with no excuses or explanations other than I just was not writing.  I wasn't even looking at the blogs that I follow.  I can now show you the gift that I made for Blackbird Designs Exchange.  I just arrived.  Because it was an international delivery, I was afraid that it might not arrive in good time if I did not send early.  I posted on the first and it arrived today.

Monday mornings I go to school.  I help one of the kindergarten teachers at our local elementary school.  Essentially I give the little kidletts some extra practice to help them develop pre-reading, basic reading, and basic number skills. 

Today was a wonderful day.  While I was working with him, a little boy, one of the youngest in the class, learned to count by 10's and subsequently learned to read all numbers between 1 and 100.  When he caught on to counting by 10's, his face lit up with the excitement of the ah-ha moment.  I will always remember and treasure that moment; it was like a light went on in the room.  After that,  he was able to read all the big numbers and every time, his face lit up with pure joy. 

National P-I-E Day . . .

. . . was yesterday. 

I made a lemon meringue pie for the day.  It was an extremely busy day; I took the pie out of the oven sometime after 5:00 p.m.  By that time, I was just too tired to write this post. 

March 14 is National P-I Day.  I wonder if I should make some p-i-e for that day too. 

Another Finish

Yesterday I finished this little ornament as a tongue in cheek gift to the husband of one of our pastors.  I actually decided to make it just prior to Christmas but had to put it aside.  We had a baptism scheduled on very short notice for the Sunday between Christmas and New Years Day.  Dad was home on leave. 

Through the years, we have frequently had a baptism scheduled on short notice on that particular Sunday and they are more likely to not be military families.  My theory is that the family is together for Christmas when they begin to talk about the fact that everyone or at least everyone who is important is in town so let's see if we can have the baptism right now. 

 This year I had to set the moose aside to prepare the baptism banner.  Our pastor's husband is a librarian and also does a reading program during the summer at our church.  It is an outreach to the community as a whole.  He calls it Moose on the Loose and uses a plush moose puppet to help him read the books to the children.  When I saw this design from Designs by Lisa in the 2012 Just Cross Stitch Ornaments Issue, I knew it would be perfect. 

All I had to do was change the wording just a little bit.  As you can see I used the DMC alternatives for the Gentle Art threads.  I also used a star charm that I just happened to have.  Yes, I dove into my stash and came up with everything I needed. 

Now the big question was would my off beat sense of humor be understood or just politely tolerated.  Today our pastor's laugh said that her husband would truly appreciate his new moose. 

 

Analysis of Light, Dark, and Color

Does that sound scholarly?  In reality, it is not quite so.
The Christmas tree is outside now and the decorations are back in the attic.  There are still a couple things left and a little more clean-up to do.

Tuesday I finished assembling the ornament on the left which I will call the first one.  The one on the right is the second one and was finished first and given away in December.

Son, Dan, designed this to go with a set of three based upon the New Testament Christmas story that were done by a very gifted professional designer.  The object here was to make a co-ordinating set of three based upon the Old Testament Savior prophesies.

Originally Dan planned to use the names of the Savior from Isiah and which feature in Handel's Messiah, Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty God, well you get the idea.  When I mentioned this to one of our pastors, she suggested working with the prophesies.  I was hesitant to suggest this to Dan because I did not want to stifle his creativity.  I did and he came up with the basic idea for a set of three.

He utilized the colors and basic design of the original set of three.  As the designer, Dan did the stitching with the exception of the row of yellow eyelets.  He does not like to stitch eyelets so I got to do them as well as all of the finishing.  He doesn't like to do that either.

Dan came to an impasse on the first ornament.  There was an error in the

wording which is stitched in cross stitches with one thread over one fabric thread.  To pick it out was a monumental task which he decided to put off since we still had a second ornament and he could work with some ideas on it.

I am going to upload the picture here a second time so that you do not have to scroll back up to see it.

If you look again at it, you will notice that the argyle like design in the upper right corner is different.  The light and dark shades of the coral are reversed.

The color progression of one is dark to light from the center of the diamond shape out and the other is light to dark moving outward.  The appearance of the first ornament is more like what would be produced by a soft focus lens while the second one is more sharply defined.  It resembles what would happen if you drew a picture and outlined the elements with black. Do you want a romantic soft focus or a clear, bright effect? 

In the picture, the light colors look darker than they actually are.  One thing we realized is that the mock blackwork needs to be done with a darker shade, particularly so with the row of snowflakes but it would also help the green shoot.  Blackwork is done with black thread for a reason - it shows up well.  We tried a medium blue with the dark blue in the scroll at the bottom of the second try and are much more pleased with it.
The flowers are poinsettias.  We know they are not mentioned in the Bible but we decided to use them because we have poinsettias at Christmas.  The eyelets and Smyrna cross stitches are suggestive of stars.  

The stitches used in this design are:
1.  Algerian Eyelet
2.  Smyrna Cross Stitch
3.  One over One Cross Stitch
4.  Over two Cross stitch
5.  Blackwork Technique

The extra special nice thing about this design is that the sermon series for Advent dealt with the family tree of Jesus.