Hello there! I'm still here, just working on important personal stuff and not able to handle much internet at the moment. I just wanted to pop in to mention a new love... cross stitching! I haven't tried to cross stitch since I was a small child, but the adorably fantastic patterns at The Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery have completely converted me. I had been meaning to sign up to one of their clubs all year, but keep forgetting in time to start with everyone else. I do realize I can stitch any of the finished sampler clubs at any time, but the element of surprise (and the whole 'being in a club' thing) is totally part of the appeal. So I signed up for both the Autumn Sampler and the Halloween Spooky Sampler and I am so so excited about both! I have started with the Halloween Sampler as the patterns to fill in the squares will be arriving for this one first. I really enjoyed picking out my threads from our local haberdashery yesterday. Being able to shop local for all my supplies was amazing. Then last night Dan helped me to get started with the actual stitching!
I do find it pretty hard to count the spacings, especially before I have a reference point, and I have made a few mistakes so far. But I am systematically picking out the errors and replacing them with accurately placed stitchy goodness, and I am really really enjoying it :)
That might just be a finished Swoon quilt, in use and much loved already. Technically it is missing about 4" of hand quilting, which I'll get around to fixing shortly. Almost all my hand-quilted quilts end up missing just a few stitches where my thread ran out and I forgot to go back and finish the area.
I have been making a lot of progress with my dermatillomania control lately. I managed to not pick for an entire 7 days, the longest ever for me. Really really proud of that. I've not managed a gap of more than two days since but I am working on it. Its a huge (really really huge) effort to keep from doing something that is so much a part of every activity, but I do feel optimistic about my long term goals to lessen and stop completely.
Unfortunately, I have developed 'floaty craft syndrome'. I cannot sew at all right now. I'm still excited about my sewing, just cannot concentrate on any one project for long. I have tried knitting (and currently have socks on my needles for both Dan and myself), but even that is too intrinsically linked with derma. Hence the cross stitchery. It's really really helping :) Interestingly, it is also making my feel more excited about sewing. I'm planning to sew Noodlehead's Divided Basket this weekend, as a home for my stitchy projects.
My main machine really needs a tune-up, so any sewing I do take on will be on the tiny Brother machine, but I think we can handle it :)
