Cross stitching

A few months ago, I caught a wild hair to cross stitch a mandala.  After some poking around on Etsy, I bought a pattern (which turned out to be a bigger commitment than I realized at first) and dug out whatever I could find to get started RIGHT THEN.  Rainbow mandala?  Yes, please. 

Rainbow mandala!!

I had some purple and blue on hand, though not the ones called for in the pattern.  No matter, I was starting, so I went with what I had and started. I haven't added up the total number of stitches, but the light orange was the most with 2600-odd, so this is a lot of stitches.  I finally washed it last night and need to frame it.  

This project taught me how much I detest ripping out cross stitches.  Wow, is it not fun.  From now my plan is to just be very, very careful to not make mistakes.  That should work. 

Below is my next cross-stitch project, which is a fabulous little thing that combines unicorns, swearing, and grammar jokes.  It will be a surprise for a friend who likes all three.  Below is one night's work.  I was also unprepared for this one, colors-wise and thread-wise, but I had some sparkly pink on hand and some shiny rayon yellow for the horn.  I may backstitch around the horn with a medium brown so you can see it better.  

This year, instead of training for the Tour de Fleece exclusively by buying large quantities of fiber, I am am buying large quantities of fiber and spinning some of it. 

This is corriedale X from Brown Dog Fiber Arts Studio, which I got at a sheep & wool festival last fall.  It is pretty and will probably turn into a 2-ply. 

With my glorious, glorious few hours to myself today, I rolled up 6 (6!!) quilts' worth of white borders - Kona Snow.  This was going to be a story about how prudent and responsible I am being, but actually most of those stories turn out differently.  This time, I thought very carefully about how wide to cut them and then made the crazy decision to cut them 3" wide, which yields a finished quilt that just barely fits within the backing size I normally get, which is 1 1/4 yd.  So I guess I'm committed to pretty large crib quilts for the forseeable. 

Why did I do that?  Dunno.   The thought of cutting them down and losing all that fabric just doesn't sit right, so big quilts it will be. 

Here is the first one of the large-bordered quilts, all bordered up this morning.  

I held up the intended backing, and phew, it does fit.  I've started another similar top, so the gender-neutral quilt on the docket may end up being orange/blue/green, although the idea of koalas does appeal to me.  Maybe I will make a shop quilt of it instead.  

Happy crafting!