Picking Up the Pace of the Parade

I am back in business - photography-wise - with a cheerful, cherry red Nikon Coolpix S6300 to document the weekly progress on my various needlepoint projects. I wish you could have been with me when I bought it at Best Buy for no other reason than to have seen the puzzled look on the face of the salesman who helped me when I told him that I photographed my needlepoint for my blog each week. I had the distinct feeling that he was thinking "What is needlepoint?" and "Why would anybody want to look at pictures of her needlepoint?" Needless to say, it wasn't worth the time to explain it to him, but I am grateful for those of you who come back week after week to look at pictures of my needlepoint. So let's see what I accomplished since last week -

There's been lots of progress on the July 4th March but there is a little more work to be done on the baby in the wagon. Amy calls for the wig on the baby to have a slide bullion curl at the top of the wig and a big coil of "hair" across the middle section below the large padded area of the wig. To create the coil she suggests wrapping the thread around something like a knitting needle and tacking down the coils of thread as you slowly pull the knitting needle away. I made a initial attempt at that technique off to the side of the canvas with a small amount of success but I think I'll tackle that later and move on to some other areas. I'm not happy with the white hair color at the end of the wig and I may change that out. Amy gave me three "hair" colors for the wig using overdyed floss. Even though the white has shades of gray though out, it is still such a bright white and just too much of a contrast to the other two colors to suit me. For the top section of the wig, I used two strands of the white and 2 strands of the "galvanized" color to tone down the white. I may do the same thing for this bottom section of the wig. There is also an applied piece of needlework for the wagon wheel which will require a trip to Lowe's to find a washer of a particular size. That can come later as well!

Over the last couple of days I stitched the little girl with the brown skirt and purple vest. I love everything about the stitch pattern and the thread (overdyed Waterlilies) that Amy chose for the skirt. The pattern of the bargello gives a nice flowing movement to the skirt. Love it! Now it's on to her cap which is thickly padded with felt before stitching. That should add some nice dimension to this little character.

It was hard to put down the Candy Twist cracker and make myself work on the March. These crackers are such fun and so easy to stitch!

The fifth egg in the From Russia with Love club from The Needle House arrived Friday evening just in time for some weekend stitching. I'm not off to the best start on this gorgeous turquoise egg. The stitched area where you see tent stitches are really supposed to be slanted Gobelin stitches but I was completely defeated by them. After several attempts at stitching according to the stitch guide and a wasted hour and a half (not to mention wasted thread), I gave up on the slanted Gobelin and just went with the tent stitches. Hope I'm getting the problem area out of the way first and that the rest of the egg will go more smoothly.

I'm very happy with my current stitching line up with 2 small club projects and one larger canvas to stitch. It is easy to switch back and forth between them and still see good progress at the end of each week. There are many hours of football ahead this afternoon and evening so I hope to have even more progress to show you next week.

Have a great week ahead!