Embroidery Floss That I Adopted

I have not been here in so long! Life has again been just too busy. I haven't stitched much in the last six weeks, either. Haven't had a chance to read many of your blogs. I miss reading them so much. Hopefully things will settle down soon at work, and I will have more free time to spend stitching, reading, and blogging...not to mention all the other things I like to do with free time.

Thanks for all your kind comments about Summer Queen. I really must pull her out soon!

I have a  friend who recently handed me a plastic bag. Here's how it looked:



She said, "Thought you might like this embroidery floss." I have only one close friend who stitches, and she hasn't done it in years and years. A few more people I know used to stitch when it was popular in the 80s and 90s, but they've all given it up completely. I brought it home about a week ago, and just for kicks took a few photos of my progress in going through the floss.

Here you are:


I found a pair of tiny scissors in the mess. They're marked "Overland Germany". I wonder what the story is behind those scissors?



Now as I sit here, I wonder if you've ever received leftover stitching supplies in the form of floss..all tangled up? What did you do with it? You may remember that a few months ago another friend gave me an old WIP/UFO that's a stack of teacups stitched on Aida (See the post from March 28, 2010). I haven't done anything with that yet! I really will work on it "someday".

Finally, here is what I ended up with in the end:



I decided that truly I didn't need these 18 skeins of floss, but nonetheless I did add them to my floss boxes. Shame on me, I didn't take the time to wind them around the little cardboard bobbins. Some of the skeins look old in that the labeling looks like the kind from years and years ago. Even though I didn't wind the floss around bobbins I did, however, take the time to pour myself and my husband a glass of merlot. I will enjoy that glass of wine now, knowing that the large tangled mess of floss that remains is in our wastebasket. Yes, I know it could be strewn about the yard and one of our backyard birds could pick it up for its nest. In reality, I've tried that for years and not one bird has ever picked up even a tiny strand of thread. So it's in our wastebasket, for good.



Thanks for coming by today! I appreciate your visit here.

Adding Garden Elements and Disorganized Floss

I decided that instead of stitching and deciding upon the final house I would instead add some garden elements around this lonely house:



For a better look, it's the one in the middle row, on the far right:


Doesn't it look bare around it?

So I sat down and pulled out lots of books and patterns, and came up with this:



I've added a fence, some flowers, a dog, a cat, and several trees. Most of the elements came from this June's Just Cross Stitch Magazine, but I had to scale it down considerably. I changed the flowers to fit the design, and I also added a few small trees, too.

Here's another view of the entire plan. As you can see I've haphazardly taped together the different large sheets of paper, which is my usual style:


Next comes the hard part. What do I do about thread colors? I tend to only slightly change from the designer's colors, but either way it's hard to find threads in my very disorganized storage of floss. I'm amazed at how organized some people are, and I wish I were one of them. Anyway, I've been collecting these threads for over 25 years so it really gets to be a pain to find colors. Yes, I should get them all neat and perfect, but I just don't want to take the time to do that.

One summer when time was long I even bought those little preprinted labels for my floss cards. I didn't manage to do all my thread, just a small portion. Sadly, today I found that some of the labels CAME OFF of the floss cards so that left me with floss cards without numbers! That's not something any stitcher wants to find, ever.

So I trudged along, looking for colors. I also have a DMC color card that I love and use for each of these 'design' sessions. Here are the threads boxes I had to look through to find the colors I needed:



In the far upper left corner is my Summer Queen box. You can see the box I have for Fruit Bellpull, too, in the front center area, to the left of the baggies. At the right bottom corner is my box for this sampler.

Here it is, up close. I'm sure you'll see I don't have all the threads properly organized. It just takes too much time.



The label is nice, isn't it? My husband bought a much longed for label maker, and he made me up a cool one for the box.

Here's a peek inside the box:



Some of the floss colors are missing. They're resting on my sampler as part of the latest 'floss toss' for the elements I'll be adding soon.

Here is the 'floss toss':


The blue is for a flower, as are the golden colors. The dog and cat will be brown and almost black, and the fence will be a little darker than off white. The leaves and trees will of course be green.

I'm excited to get started on some elements in this design besides houses.

Thanks for stopping by today, and thanks for all your comments as I continue working on this sampler.

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Never Say Never

Here's a photo of a wonderful hummingbird eating at my new feeder in our backyard. I love to watch them fly around!

I returned from our trip a few days ago. Going on a trip is always fun, but it also always reminds me how much I love to come home. The trip was great overall, and I even hit upon some good luck while on the trip. I'm very grateful for that, and feel very, very lucky.

Yesterday I drove with my mom about 150 miles to visit with some cousins. We had a complete blast, and I somehow bet the waiter was glad to see us leave after we sat in that restaurant for four hours. We all live far apart, so we choose to meet up at a central location. There's nothing like talking with people you've known your whole life. What a history you share.

Tomorrow I am hosting a small gathering at my home. I'm having a group of students come here, and a few of them will be giving me some cooking lessons of their native cuisine. Knowing them they'll bring some more food, but just in case they don't bring any food that means that today will be spent preparing a casserole and salad for them to enjoy together. Busy times for me, but that's fine as I've had such a relaxing summer so far.

On the stitching front, last evening on the way home from my "cousin gathering" I stopped at a craft store and bought some little sticker numbers with the DMC colors on them. You place them on the thread bobbins. I love them in a 'nerdalicious' way. I started putting them on one box of my many boxes of floss last night, but stopped at one point due to exhaustion. (It was after ten at that point.) Have you seen these little numbers? Do you use them? When I first saw these stickers I never thought I'd use them, but as they say, "Never say never."