Blue Ribbons and Prior Commitments

After still not being satisfied with the stripes on my blue ribbon today, I made a phone call.  My favorite girls, Jill and Peggy, at my favorite needlepoint shop, Amy’s Golden Strand, pulled some additional threads for me late today.  I am going to go by tomorrow and make a final decision, but in the mean time…

I’ve made some prior commitments and I should start getting to them.  We moved into a new house last year and my husband asked me to finish up our Christmas stockings so we could hang them from our new mantle this year.  I guess I should confess that I’ve had these stockings at least four years (one of them for a decade or more I bet), but who’s counting?

This is my husbands stocking and I have stitched a great deal of the back ground already.  I know what you are thinking.  “You’ve gotten that much out of the way and stopped at the fun part?”  Well, see, I actually like skipped tent;  it’s that color of blue that I hate.  Hate may actually be an understatement here.   I really want to finish it for him, but I have to talk myself into it, can you tell?  He keeps telling me I won’t think it’s so yukky when everyone is ooohing and ahhhhing over it, but I’m actually self conscious about some of that skip tent.  I know I can’t be alone in thinking that some of the stitching I did early in my needlepoint career is less than spectacular.  I did get a great idea today to try some of the DMC Memory Thread to make the silver ornaments hanging from the trees.  Perhaps my procrastination wasn't all bad.  

I picked out the Tapestry Tent Snow Bear shortly after I started working on my husband’s so they would coordinate.   Little did I know I would have such a love to hate relationship with blue.  It is such a gorgeous design, but I will be stitching it last I think.  I even convinced my husband last night that if I finished both his and my daughter’s stockings this year I should buy myself a new one.  After all, to have two that are so blue and one that is not blue at all might look awkward hanging from the same mantle.  I’m not to that point yet though.  As I mentioned, it is such a gorgeous design!  I have lots of ideas for it as well, but my mood really is blue enough these days.

I love love love the Toy Maker Santa by Melissa Shirley.  I will be stitching it at the same time I’m finishing up Mr. Blue to break up the monotony if nothing else.  I actually bought it during one of Amy’s after Christmas sales right after I found out I was pregnant and months before I knew I was having a girl.  I am so eager to get started on it.  All this color and happiness on one canvas who wouldn't be?!!


I've also committed to stitch Stars for a New Millenium with my stitching group.  I've already stitched it once, but I would like to do another one to match my new decor.  I make my daughter an ornament every year for our tree and I haven't even begun thinking about this years yet.  I also  found a great idea on Pinterest a few weeks ago I am planning for as well, but again, that is a project for another day.  It's all part of keeping busy, right?  


I hope you'll stick around to see how everything turns out!

I Can't Get No Satisfaction

I'm not through with this ribbon yet, but I think I'm going to stop where I am.  I am not sure what it is that I do not like about it, but from the first layer where I changed colors I've just not been satisfied.  Part of it I believe is that I should have broken the color change up instead of doing it with the pattern as I laid it, but the middle segment of color looks stripey to me.  The two colors of blue are just so far apart that when it's stitched it gives the appearance of having stripes.  I thought as I stitched in the additional layers it would be less apparent.  I will admit that I am happier with it now that I've begun to stitch the third color (of the three colors in the ribbon--blue, red/orange and orange/yellow).  I am going to stitch in the next ribbon and see how the two look side by side, but I may end up ripping out the lower two thirds of this ribbon.

The lighting here isn't great, but you can see the stripey effect a little more clearly here.  There was a bit of this effect in the second ribbon (the green and red) but I don't think it's as pronounced as it is here.  This is a diagonal stitch so I only used two strands here, one of each.  In the green ribbon I used three and actually had four color breaks because of that.  I'm still amazed at the effect that tiny little accentuate has.  Here it is tying down the orange/yellow long stitches.

Hopefully my opinion will change as I stitch that next ribbon because this will be a booger to remove!