My Week In Stitches and A Mini Rant

I'm way late posting this week's update.  Saturday was a weird day, that's all I can say.  No, really, it's been a weird week.  But it meant a large block of stitching time on Wednesday, and no blogging mojo this weekend.

My kids' school called me during lunch on Tuesday to say my younger one had a fever.  I was able to go pick her up, and a fever in the middle of the day means she won't be clear to go back the next day (she has to be fever-free for 24 hours) so that meant I stayed home with her on Wednesday and worked on Great Is Thy Faithfulness:

(which just happens to be my Theme-a-licious project for September - the theme is Samplers.  And this has words.  From a hymn.  And will have Quaker-ish motifs in the half-circle border.  And in the small sampler section of MBTD's website.  There - all of that = sampler.)  This is turning out to be a very quick stitch, which makes me happy.  I need a quick stitch!

And look at all of this obvious progress on Fairy Sisters - it was the Facebook SAL weekend again, so I devoted some chunks of time to stitching the sky.

I also made some significant progress on the baby gift for T & S on Sunday afternoon.  As in, I'm really happy with how it's turning out and I wish I could show you a picture....

And now for my mini rant.  I enjoy streamlining things, which includes using my Android phone to take picturess of my projects and having those pictures automatically backup to my Google account.  Then I can go in when I'm writing a blog post and edit the photos online, including adding text, before publishing them.  The native photo editor on my phone won't allow me to add text, either.  (Which is strange because my old one would.....)  Well, Google made some changes to their online photo editor, and it looks like the option to add text is gone!  Now I have to either use a "real" camera and load pictures on my computer that way, or I have to open my Picasa photo editor, download/sync the online albums, make the edits, and re-sync them so I can add photos to my post.  I can still do it, but it's extra steps.  And I hate extra steps.  And the text I added looks tiny.  I really wish they would change it back.  I understand that it's free and open-source, but it seems the changes they've made only serve to make photos look more "vintage."  I don't want my photos to look more vintage.  If I want photos I take with my phone to look vintage, I'll put them on Instagram.  (By the way, you can follow me on Instagram if you want - sometimes I share sneak peaks of projects that I don't put on the blog.)

My Week In Stitches - Wing Work

How is it the end of August already?!?!?!?  I can't believe we're heading into September, fall, cool weather (finally! I'm tired of 95 degrees!), football, holiday stitching.......

This month's Theme-a-licious stitching theme is Wings - which means Fairy Sisters is getting extra attention.  And this week I actually finished this part of Big Sister's wings!

I didn't make as much progress on Irish Blessing as I wanted - I was doing the flame stitches and just didn't like the way it looked.  So (surprise surprise) I decided to change it up.  I always change patterns when I get into the stitching.  On the plus-side, I really like the tweeding of the yellow and blue, and I like the way the Rhodes stitches look:

I'll make a deal with you all:  If I ever stitch a pattern I design exactly as I design it....I don't know.....I'll do another giveaway.

Speaking of which, it's almost giveaway time!  A few people have entered, but there are just a few days left to enter my Blogoversary Giveaway - go here and follow the instructions for your chance to win!  Only comments left on the giveaway post will count as entries, and I'll announce the winner on Tuesday!

My Week(s) In Stitches and a Theme-a-Licious Checkin

Last weekend was a Facebook SAL, and it seems weird to me to blog progress in the middle of a SAL.  So you get 2 weeks at once!

Right now my SAL piece is Fairy Sisters, which fits in with the August Theme-a-licious, too.

Here's where I was at the beginning of the SAL:

And at the end of the SAL weekend:

And not much more done.  I would really love to get back to the wings, but I'm disciplining myself to do the night sky, too.  I have to save some fun for later in these pages, right?

And just for fun, this is where I was 6 months ago:

Oh, yeah, and I did some work on Irish Blessing, too! I'm over halfway through the lettering, and I added another accent piece in yellow.  I found more of muted colors that I stashed away, and these will go nicely with what I have going on with the greeny-blue and the ecru.  I'm thinking of tweeding the yellow with a dark pink and a blue.  I'll pull out the yellow on Sunday and see how one of the "tweeds" looks instead.

(For Theme-a-licious readers - this has no wings to it.  Unless you count the flame stitches that I haven't put in yet which kind of fly. But my needle is flying through this to get this done so I can start something else...)

Theme Stitching

How did I not know that Heather from LottLoft (I've been following her almost since I joined Twitter) is hosting Theme-a-Licious?  And this is the second year?  Thanks to Jo from Serendipitous Stitching for sharing how she "shoe-horns" to link her WIP to the theme, lol.

The August theme is "Airborne August" - WIPs with wings.  I can do that!!  Anyone else want to join in?  Click the banner to see the themes, Heather will post linkys on the 15th and last day of the month for progress updates.