The Parade Keeps Moving Along

It's been another week of stitching progress on the Christmas Parade canvas. Just sit me in front of the television and give me great PGA Championship at a favorite spot along the South Carolina coast coupled with Shark Week and I will show you how much stitching I can get done.

This week I added a good bit of the snowy ground. Before I do too much more of the ground, I think I will work on the trees in the background and figure out how the ground area will work into the trees. On the painted canvas the trees blend into the snowy ground. There is a suggestion of the trees' shapes (tent stitches) that will need to work with the bold bargello pattern on the ground. Should be interesting to figure out!

The wagon wheels are finally complete and you can see just a hint of additional elements to come with the red ribbon bow at the front of the cart. Eventually there will be streamers that hang from the bow and the addition of the ribbon reins that attach the harness on the bear to the cart.

Santa now has a stitched candy cane walking stick held by stitched fingers and thumb. A green sleeve
cuff peaks out from under the fur cuff on his sleeve of his coat. Not that you can tell from the photos but the green cuff is stitched using a detached buttonhole stitch.

This first photo of Santa was taken after I stitched Laura's Turkey Work on the sleeve. The sleeve cuff is a very small area - maybe 15 threads across by 15 threads down (on the diagonal). It took a couple of hours to add all of that Turkey Work that you see in its uncut state. This is the first time I have ever attempted Turkey Work so I was surprised at how long it took. Before starting my work on the cuff, I watched the Turkey Work section on Amy's DVD Just Fur Fun several times. It was just like having Amy sitting right next to me. I highly recommend her How'd You Do That? DVD series if you haven't tried any of them.

The photo above is of the trimmed Turkey Work on the sleeve cuff. It's amazing to see how all of those loops trim down to a thick, sheared fur cuff. I used four strands of Threadworx overdyed floss for the fur. There is still a lot of Laura's Turkey Work left to stitch on Santa's coat. I'll be loopy by the end of this week - sorry I couldn't resist the pun!

Even though I finished the Christmas Banner two months ago, it took until this week for me to finally wrap it up and ship it off to Marlene's in San Francisco. I loosely rolled it and sealed it in a ziploc bag for its trip across the country. It is accompanied by three Creepy Characters Halloween ornaments and a  Kelly Clark Halloween apple ornament. I had a conversation with Matt at Marlene's about how the banner will be finished and I feel confident that the next time I see my banner, I will be one very happy stitcher!

We had a bad storm on Friday that really took its toll on quite a few of the old trees on my street. Last week I had lost a huge limb on the 60 year old oak tree at the end of my driveway. The damage to the tree came from a diseased area within the tree and wasn't storm related but it will require that the tree be taken down. Fortunately, it is the city's problem to handle and won't require my pulling out the checkbook to pay a tree service to do the work. The tree has a notice on it from the city saying that it will be taken out. My neighborhood has been so sensitive (and vocal) to the loss of trees in our area due to disease and also storm-related problems that the city gives everyone a week to voice any concerns about the loss of another tree before it is taken down. The storm on Friday damaged at least another four or five trees  just in my block.  It's so sad to see these old trees being lost.

Well, time to get back to that Turkey Work! Hope you have a great week ahead!