Progress Update on Noel and Gus

It has been a week of slow but steady progress on my Noel canvas and Sarcoph A Gus. But, progress nonetheless. Noel has really been a joy to work on. It's such an upbeat, festive design with fun threads. I am still working the scarlet basketweave border across the bottom of the design.

 I love stitching with the Planet Earth silk. It is so soft and lustrous - such a pleasure to work with! It has been a while since I worked this much basketweave at once (not that it is all that much basketweave to stitch) and I am enjoying it. I find basketweave to be very soothing and relaxing. Hopefully by the end of the weekend I can get the border finished.

On the Halloweenies scene, Gus's wrappings are coming along. The wrappings seem to me to be fairly free-form in their design. I don't believe any two stitchers will stitch the wrappings the same way.

There's still a lot of work to do on Gus's wrappings. I bought some instant coffee at the grocery store today to use on the actual cloth wrappings that we will apply to Gus. I'll have to go back and read Amy's description of how she got the right "look" for the wrappings in last month's newsletter and, of course, in our stitch guide.

I've been watching the Weather Channel all morning wondering if their forecasts of snow and ice for Augusta on Sunday and Monday will come true. The snow isn't a terrible thing for us but the ice would surely be. We haven't had a bad ice storm in several years. When we do, we usually lose electricity from falling limbs and trees. I decided this morning to go on to the grocery store/pharmacy to pick up a prescription and a couple of extra items. It was busy, busier than most Saturdays but there was plenty of bread and milk. Why people buy bread and milk when faced with an ice storm, I don't know. If you lose electricity, you can't cook the eggs. I guess you can eat a lot of cereal and use up the milk. After the last time we had an ice storm, I went to Target and bought a small Coleman stove and some fuel. I've never even taken it out of its box and that was at least four or five years ago. I'm glad it's on hand but I hope I don't have an opportunity to use it.

Hope your new year is off to a good start and that you are getting lots of stitching done! Stay warm and out of the snow!

Noel Letters are Finished! Welcome Gus!

Today I finished beading the letters in Noel. It took two full tubes of beads and just a few from a third tube to complete the letters. I spent a week of dedicated beading on the letters. The beading lends so much texture and dimension to the canvas - well worth a week's work.

Ruth has lots of fun planned for the bottom red border and I'll get started on that tonight or tomorrow depending on how interesting I find the Chick-Fil-A Bowl tonight.  Would love to see South Carolina win - apologies to fans of FSU! I hate to see SEC college football come to an end for the year.

This morning I dealt with the not-so-fun part of Christmas - the dismantling of the Christmas decorations. Andrew was home for a short 24 hours earlier this week and he helped me put away the decorations that had to go to the attic. What's left to do now is find a place downstairs for all of this:

Basically I end up finding places here and there to store these things until next year and hope that I remember where I put them when Christmas rolls around again.

My new friend, Sarcoph A Gus, arrived late yesterday afternoon via the big brown truck. He will be magnificent - the majority of the outer sarcophagus is beaded! I thought three tubes of beads for the Noel canvas was a lot but Gus has it beat. There are 12 colors of beads for this canvas.

As you can see Sarcoph A Gus is on the stretchers and the stitch guide is ready for the notebook. I gathered all the required threads together last night from the previous characters' kits. I haven't quite decided where to start - bottom border or the mummy himself. Amy and Kelly have worked their magic again with this canvas.

Have you see the January newsletter from Amy's? It's always so fun to read and there is so much great information inside. I loved the "article" on our next character, Dev L Mann. Did you know he'll be wearing an asbestos pant suit? Too funny! I enjoyed seeing Caron's 4 finished Halloweenies. She finished hers as easel-back stand-ups. Good job, Caron! Jill gave us a great "how to" tutorial on finishing
a personalized tote bag. Amy has added another Melissa Shirley banner to her Home Study series for next year. Another decision to make - stitch the Thanksgiving banner or the Christmas banner, or stitch both?

Not too many hours left until we say goodbye to 2010. Stitch-wise, I don't think I have ever finished so many projects as I have this year. The Halloweenies have been challenging and lots of fun and just the right size project for me. These characters pretty much pushed all other projects to the sidelines. While I hate to see the Halloweenies come to an end, it will be nice to pick up some stitching that has been put aside for the last year.

I have a standing rib roast in the oven tonight for my New Year's Eve dinner - it smells so good! My plans for the evening include football, more football, and lots of stitching. I hope whatever you have planned is festive and safe.

Thank you for supporting my blogging these last six months! I look forward to more blogging this coming year and would love to think that maybe I will actually get to meet some of you in person this year!

See you in 2011!