Oh look, it's raining again ...

I mean, "Hooray! July is here!" 

*ahem* 

I meant to write yesterday. The day got away from me.  I spent the evening working on my bunny stitch. 

I told my hubby that the closer I come to completing this stitch the more goof ups I make. 

Over the weekend I started stitching up the bee. 

And quickly realized I had made some mistakes stitching up the leaves.  I thought "I can make this work." until I realized I couldn't make it work.  

Bah!

So yesterday I spent my lunch hour ripping out stitches.  

Ugh ... no matter how I try to rip out a large number of stitches, it turns into a mess and then the mess takes longer to clean up than if I had been able to just take the threads out. 

Last night I diligently worked on this little bee and put the final stitches in around 9 p.m. 

Finally! Now the back stitching can commence. 

This cross stitch project has been my main focus. 

When I wasn't working on my February Lady Sweater.  Mostly I've been working on my sweater in the mornings, before getting ready for the day and work. 

I am done with the sweater body.  Yay!  Time to start the sleeves.  I have just over four skeins of the Temu yarn to work with.  I'm optimistic that each sleeve will need only 2 skeins each. 

I had the idea that I would write a post at the beginning of the month stating what active projects I have, and what I hoped to get done by the end of the month.  Overly enthusiastic, perhaps. The list will help me get things in perspective since I'm still kind of all over the place, project-wise. Frankly, until I get this bit sorted out I don't feel I can move forward and make a flosstube. 

So things that are currently in the works/percolating along. 

Knits

February Lady Sweater - I would like to get this complete by the end of the month

Monkey socks - Another project I'd like to get done by the end of the month.

Princess Passenger socks - No deadline since I'm only going to work on them when I'm a passenger.  I will pick up stitches on the heel flap in the house.  I don't think I'd be able to do so in a bouncy vehicle. 

Quilts

Sandpiper quilt - I have the top all sewn together and the backing sewn together. I'm debating on whether to put a label on, or not.  The binding still needs to be cut. I would like to have this done by the end of the month. 

Just picture all my squares with sashing and borders around them.

Yes, this is my quilt backing, all in a heap. I think the color will look fantastic with the front. 

Dancing stars quilt - I have about half the quilts squares to sew, still. ... I think I'm going to hold this one until August, unless I get the other things done. 

I have no current photos of completed squares. Sorry. 

Sewing projects

I now have fabric for five WIP project bags.  I want to make them by the end of the month.  I could maybe accomplish this.  It's something to strive for. 

Spinning

My spinning has been pushed so far to the back burner that I haven't touched it in months.  I would like to spend one evening each week of July spinning my little heart away.  Currently the Tour de Fleece is going on.  I've never been good at following any kind of a-long, so I didn't even try to start it this year. 

No current photos of the wool I'm working with. 

Cross Stitch

Currently there are three cross stitch projects going. 

Bunny stitch before the back stitching. 

Where One Piece is. I haven't touched it in a while.  The goal is to get it done by Christmas, at least.  If not, then February next year. 

You may be surprised to read that I *finally* started my porkie cross stitch.  I decided to make it a birthday start.  Well ... I started it during my birthday week. 

It's not much but it is a start. I was still a bit intimidated to start it, and then I just went ahead and set up the aida cloth on my q-snap and started it. 

All the colors ... all 49 of them. 

I've been on the hunt for a porcupine needle minder.  Most of what I find are hedgehogs or images that really don't look like porcupines.  I may end up making my own.  Though I'm not sure how I will go about it. 

Project Name: Porcupine cross stitch

Chart purchased from Etsy: Purple Stitching
Started: June 2024, during my birthday week, 

Finished: 

Floss in called DMC colors: 167, 168, 169, 310, 317, 318, 413, 414, 415, 433, 437, 451, 452, 453, 524, 535, 611, 612, 640, 644, 645, 646, 647, 648, 762, 779, 840, 841, 842, 844, 927, 928, 934, 935, 939, 3021, 3023, 3031, 3032, 3041, 3072, 3371, 3756, 3787, 3799, 3828, 3863, 3864, 3866

Needle Size: 26

Made For: myself. 

Against my better judgement I kinda kitted up a few more cross stitches up that have come across my social media the last month or so. ... I'm really tempted to clear the cache, so to speak and take them out of the bucket until I get less projects on my plate.  As I keep reminding myself, there are no deadlines or urgent reasons to work these projects. So I just may file the floss back in to my storage system and put the charts away for now. 

My WIP bucket. My February Lady Sweater is in the blue daisy bag. 

I have this other project going.  It hasn't been touched for a while.  

A month ago, or so, I saw something on a few flosstubes and I thought "Hey, that's a good idea."

What, you may be wondering ... 

Putting a master set of floss on floss drops and sorting them by color families. 

I don't remember who came up with the idea but it took flosstube by storm, I think. 

This is a set of floss from Temu. The colors match DMC.  It's amazing! 

So my idea is to use this floss for my master set of colors and fill in the few that may be missing with regular DMC.  Also, if I need some floss in a pinch, I can use the floss from my master set. 

I think it will also be helpful to make color subs in the event I'm not wild about a color listed on a chart. 

I don't know how many I have put on floss drops yet.  I sort of burned out on it after a weekend of punching out floss drops.  I think I might have done some damage to my punch. Or, the card stock I was using for making themed floss drops was thicker than what I'm used to.

I'll post more in-progress project photos on my Instagram

Something just happened and I lost the tail-end of my blog post. I guess that is my cue to go work on my back stitching. 

In order to have success, you must read the instructions

 The saga of my quilt squares ... I tell ya, I'm smarter than this, except for when I'm not. 

I've come to the determination that this Dancing Stars pattern is deceptive. Based on the shape of the cut pieces and how you sew them together, you'd think they should together one way. However, after you cut out the diamond-like shapes you sew three of them together, and then you trim them down into square pieces, and then sew those pieces together with the angles going a different way. 

Clear, as mud, right? 

The other night I ripped apart the pieces of block because I sewed the pieces together incorrectly.  I had 3 sets of four when I should have had 4 sets of three pieces sewn together.  

Then I tried sewing all the pieces together and had weird circular wrinkles going on.  I thought "Oh, that's not going to get fixed if I redo this square." and moved on. 

Then I had an instance of sewing pieces together  and realizing they didn't match the first square I pulled together.  It was a moment in which I was SO frustrated.  I ended up ripping apart that first square and moving the pieces around so everything was the same. 

All the pieces were sewn together. ... 

And wrinkles. ... 

By this time I was like, "What the heck?" I'm obviously doing something wrong. 

I dug out the instructions, looked them over, and mentally slapped myself on the head. 

Well, for one thing, I'm not supposed to sew all those pieces together. 

Each 3-piece quarter is trimmed down to a square.  Then you sew all those pieces together.  Only not in the direction you'd think.  I was thinking I had to sew all the pieces together, and *then* trim the entire thing down. 

In this photo it shows what the pieces look like before and after you trim them. 

I trimmed them so the center piece is as even as possible.  Then when you sew the 4 square pieces together, the larger part of the center piece faces the center of the finished square. 

The finished piece looks a LOT different than what I was originally trying to do. 

I've been fighting with this for way too long.  It could have been completely avoided if I had just sat down and looked at the instructions, and actually READ what it said, instead of half-glancing at it all. 

Once I started sewing and trimming the pieces the way they were supposed to, everything fell into place and came together really quickly. I finished these blocks last night at 9:59 p.m. 

I think there are eight more sets to go. Now that my brain has worked it all out, I'm really hoping the rest is a cake walk.