Ever closer and further

The urge to finish something burns stronger than ever, and yet I have started more projects.  This one can't be helped, though, because it is Time To Spin, and when it is Time To Spin, you spin.  Simple as that. 

This little beauty is Fiber Romance on merino/baby camel from Allons-y Fibers.  I got it last year, along with another nice one, of which I spun two plies - well, I divided for three plies, quite unevenly in fact, and decided oh, it's cool, I'll just spin one super-thin, one in between, and one super-thick!  Which I realized was probably pretty dumb, and it's time to spin the third chunk, and I deeply suspect that it's not going to turn out well.  But that's no reason to avoid spinning - it's just reason to avoid spinning that particular project. 

Come for the disjointed rambling, stay for the helpful life-hacks and abrupt transitions. 


Raccoon

So, all the colors of the raccoon have been used.  Not completed, which is why there are still what look, depressingly, like hundreds of little spaces that still need thread.  You know how you reach the end of a pregnancy, and you're like, whew, that's over, and then an eighth of a second later you realize that, actually, now you need to parent for the next 18 years?  Finishing the last color was a teeny bit like that. 

With spinning, I can make yarn.  With cross-stitch, I can make the final product look like the picture.  Eventually.  I think there are strategies for this type of intense full-coverage work - I know there are, in fact, have heard tell of them on faraway message boards, and even seen pictures.  Seems that some people do one square at a time, and some people "park" threads and move along a solid line diagonally (-ish) through the picture.  If people do "cross country," that is, doing one color at a time, they have a way of making sure that they're getting every stitch in each box of 100 stitches. 

That skill continues to elude me.  I pick a color and follow a path through that color, and when I can't be bothered to find any more of that color, I pick a new color.  Until now, of course - now I've got 17 needles threaded and am finishing square-by-square. 

This one time, a couple days ago, I shook my craft room like a Boggle game, really got those letters mixed up, looking for the "/" color, which had been an early one and which - shockingly - I had missed a dozen hundred of here and there.  Looked and looked, then gave up and ordered more because surely any day now, that little color will be all I have left. 

Aaand, of course, the next day I found it in with this little project:

Aquarius

which of course does not actually use that color, but it also involves embroidery thread, so. 

This is the Satsuma Street Aquarius stitch, and I love the colors on the black.  The black is harder to work with than white, but it's coming along okay.  The middle water curl on the left is missing a layer, but it doesn't affect the scaling of the rest of the piece, so I'm leaving it. 

I am writing this post now because I need to get this picture off of my camera because the little spy has probably already seen it.  That kid can sniff out a present at 50 paces.

Bag

Every once in awhile, I add some stitches to the bag. 

There is a lot of space to cover.  The bag does not feel pressing, because we are in the After Times, wherein we do not need to leave the house carrying bags.  At some point I suppose that will probably change, so I continue to work on the bag.  It involves lots of decisions, so there are times when I decide to work on the bag, stare at it for 11 minutes, and then decide to work on something else. 


Lion

Progress on the lion is slow and steady.  The lion is looking a little weird to me these days.  Definitely occupying the "what was I thinking, again?" spot in the lineup.  However, it is easy to work on this a tiny bit at a time, so I do at least a little on it most days. 

Bright Birches

...are not even close to being finished, or progressing at all.  My desk is like a beach, and when the tide is in, you can't lay a cutting mat down on the sand and cut stuff.  Well, people, the tide is in.  No telling when it will go out.  Hopefully once one of the darn above things is finished. 

Happy crafting!