This should help!

Hi folks.  Spending the weekend at home because of weather, and I came up with what I hope will help me with the motif placements.

I started at the bottom of the grass and highlighted the graph into five rows.  Using a bright thread, I wove it into the margin matching the graph.  This should allow me to check the position of the motifs along that left edge.  It's difficult for me to see the linen threads and I am very unsure of myself.  Counting off of them will be much easier and I can be more confident that my placement is close to the chart.  

I've been using my new Oxo duster, and these old bentwood stools took only minutes.  They were always a PITA because of the tight curves and this duster took care of it all.  Happy dance.  I've been looking for new stools for quite a while but since we have only one furniture store and they have ... well.... nothing that I like, I am forced to order online.  I don't know about you, but I prefer placing my rear on the seat to test comfort and not have to assemble, but I have no choice. I guess cushions can always be added.

I sprayed a lot of the Feliway on a mat inside the carrier, and Bud handled the vet visit much better than before.  He did cry, but only a few times and actually laid on the mat instead of pacing.  Even at the office, he was afraid and anxious but not like before.  I hasn't worked on their favorite napping spots in the house, but I do believe it helped in the carrier.  We are trying the tiny cut of Valium to get Missy manageable but there is always a chance it will have the opposite effect.  Carole took Valium once and felt like she wanted to crawl up the walls.  We'll see.  He's on an antibiotic and his heart is not doing well, so we are also to give him 1/8 of a 81 mg aspirin every three days.  No more.  That is very difficult to cut into such a small piece.  He should start to feel better in a few days.

I was gathering fabric to make my own little thread catcher/holder, and found uncut corduroy to work really well, as did velveteen.  I was working on a pattern to make one with two sides, two colors, one for dark threads and one for light.  Not sure I will go any further.

Hope the weekend is going well!

Corner doors

Hey!  Just wanted to show a few tiny corner units that I think are really unique.  Extending Grace is a lovely shop in Hubbard Ohio and I saw this on their Instagram and FB page featuring their offers, so I did a little searching and found other examples on Pinterest.  

Have you ever seen this done?

Cut an old door in half with a miter or straight cut, add some thick shelves, and what a great unit for a small corner.  Never saw this before!   But if we find a door and try it, I have to remember to cut one side shorter by the thickness of the wood so when it overlaps the other half, they will be the same depth.  Our table saw does not have an extension so cutting this length on a miter would be tricky.

Getting ready to head out onto the bad roads with Bud.  He remembers the carrier and is hiding.  This won't be pleasant for him but it's necessary, he needs antibiotics.

Thanks for the suggestions on Ann.  Haven't made a plan yet but I need to soon because I can't do any other motifs until I figure out if all will need to be moved.  I'm thinking that should be the case, and I can go back and correct the culprit later if I choose to.

Have a good day!!

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Full blown crabass

Yep.  I am.  My testing is complete, seeing the doctor this afternoon, another (the third) slow developing auto immune disease is confirmed.  Slow developing.  Sure.  Full blown high numbers within months, just like the other two.  I don't care how many nurses post their opinions on FB, I have three doctors, a law firm, and thousands of patients that have been compensated for developing auto immunes from a vaccine.  The odds?  Extremely low, one in one million estimated, but not everyone associates or recognizes it could be the cause.  Guillain-Barre is the most common, and happened to Frank's mom.  Again, the risk is extremely low.  But am I ticked off?  Furious.  This not only affects me for the rest of my life, it affects my health coverage and drug coverage. 

I'm not the only one feeling poorly.  Budman is sneezing, very bad eyes, I am sure he has a respiratory problem.  We're taking him in tomorrow morning and unfortunately, the spray I bought to calm them is not helping.  This is a mobile vet, and he will come here to check Missy and (hopefully) Petey.  I am taking photos to show their size so he can determine what portion of a Valium pill is needed to calm them down so he can handle.  He will also pass the photo on to other vets for a possible ID.  Petey is doing fine, slight limp, his paw injury drained and he's back to himself.  But he does have some other injuries from fighting.  He sits and watches the birds, does not even try to hunt, and I wonder if he has been declawed.

My eyes were bad yesterday, but my errors are making it difficult for me.  I am used to a row of alphabets!  My first error was leaving a row off the chimneys, raising the house.  When starting the second page on this side, I spotted another.  This (butterfly?) should have one row between it and the grass.  The motif was split between two pages but I stitched it entirely from the first.  What the hell did I do?  It was not as charted, the eyelet areas were wrong, and when I frogged the top part and stitched correctly, it doesn't fit.  I had to leave off the top row.  To match/balance, I left the bottom row off too. 

And here's the math question for you so I don't have to interrupt my pounding sinus headache for something productive.  How many rows do I need to compensate before stitching the green parrot beneath?  Three seems too easy an answer.  Can't judge placement from the tree because that was a mess and may not be proper either!  I think my best solution is to frog the entire butterfly (again) and start over.  Leave two spaces beneath that funky grass and I should be OK.  It looks easy to be off when motifs are all over the place but I'm concerned that starting with three rows may lead to a disaster by the time I reach the bottom area, I'm sure there will be more. What say you????

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Over one epiphany

Hello people!  I'm stitching the over one!  Slowly, but making progress.  I remember Barbara sent photos of how she stabilizes this type of stitch with a loose weave gauze on the back side.  Do you think I could find something similar to use in my mess?  So I am following the notes and tips that I've received from other helpful stitchers.  And it took a while for me to realize the easiest way to remember the rules.

What finally drilled its way through my thick skull, is the intersection.  That's all I need to see in order to lock the stitch and prevent that disappearing act.  My 1 and 2 cross is always the same direction, the loop behind runs the same as the intersection's linen thread.  If it's running horizontal, my thread from 2 to 3 does also, same with vertical.

Since the sewing method doesn't work with letters, I am doing one full stitch at a time.  If the end of the prior stitch would be the beginning hole for the following stitch, 1 and 2 are reversed but they are always top right bottom left.  And if I am wrong, please tell me.  I won't yell.  I had written instructions that I followed before which I saved, will look for this evening.   My biggest issue is forgetting what to do, which direction, the back leg, but this simplified it for me since it applies to one stitch at a time.  In fact, this may be what I did before, but do not remember.  One of the benefits of forgetting, everything seems new.

This brain breakthrough does not mean my stitches are neat, even, or acceptable, but since I can barely see with magnifiers these tiny PITA messes will not be noticed.  But they aren't disappearing behind the linen!  I did have to frog a few and that took longer than stitching.  The H is not as charted and will stay that way.  I wasn't paying attention.

I wanted to show you how you can change the look of a project you see online if you'd like to use a different color linen.  This Merry Wind Farm reproduction of Ellen Spedding uses linen that I don't care for.  So to get an idea of how it would look with a light beige or tan fabric, I saved the photo to Photo Gallery and used the fine tuning option, changing the slider for color, tint, and saturation.  I can now see if the change would be to my liking.  I tried a light gray too but prefer the beige.  

Last night, I was shot out of my chair by the most awful screaming.  It was Nit.  The newest orange/white stray that Petey is after was at the back door.  I never heard anything that loud and terrifying from a cat.  I chased it away but he/she has been hanging around, eating the deer's corn, and checking out Petey's houses.  I don't want another, and I do NOT want him hurt by mine.  I can't imagine what the neighborhoods in town are like where ferals are such a problem, the fights have to be vicious and there is no help for the injured and infected.  This may be mating season because this morning, there are two other cats sitting on the deck looking in.  Missy.  She is spayed, but that doesn't stop them I guess.

Hope your week is going well.
Thanks for visiting.

Just saw a comment that offers another thread catcher mat.  She is currently sold out.
https://www.etsy.com/shop/cattycrosstitches/sold

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Have you felt it?

Wow.  As I told Jennifer who was so kind to email me with this information, I need to find a smaller rock to live under.  Have you all heard of Bitzy Bobs?  There is a felt thread holder on Etsy from ThatsSoKellyCo called Bitzy Bob.  It comes as a single pad (Basic), larger open pad (Cutie), snap closed in three sizes (Bitsy Bob 1, 2, and Biggie), and customs in your own fabrics.  You can keep your left overs or short pieces in these popular items, slip extra felt pages into its bag to store with a project.  There isn't much available right now, but you can browse her Sales tab to see prior offers.

With the floss cabinet hubby built, I don't want to go into another storage method but I have seen some really good options from you.  I do plan to get the cards/drops with the large hole to try.  They can be stored in these same Floss Away bags.

Thank you Kelly for the video link showing how to pull a single thread from a thread drop.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiqK1YdZ37M&feature=youtu.be
Didn't know they were called drops.  And didn't think that pulling just one thread would be possible, assumed the six strand would be pulled out and then separated.  I really feel foolish for not knowing but when your friends have no interest at all in needlework and you've been decades without a shop, does that warrant a pass?  Or with online options is there no excuse?  Flosstube has opened my eyes to many products and do-dads.  I think Laura has more floss ring tags than I have bracelets (love them) and more stitching bags than I have shoes (in my lifetime). 

Petey has an injury to his paw, probably a fight because he was really messed up last weekend.  Dirty, matted, muddy.  He hangs here all day, must have happened during the night.  I can't get as close as I was before, he is obviously more cautious.  We are giving him additional cans of food and going out to talk to him, today he came to the house and although still limping, seems to be improving.  He is being tolerated by the boys from a distance, but Missy is afraid of him.

That's all folks!

Hope you have a great week.

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I was never a hippy

but I do love fringe.  Nice heavy, thick, neat fringe.  Not the wimpy pieces that I carry on my clothing in various places.  Why after all these years do I have no idea how to keep the floss lengths from adorning my arms?  Many of you use bobbins.  Some use thread cards, hornbook styles, decorative woods, cut shapes, hand painted, corner squares with holes, a nice selection for those that know what they want.   You lucky people.

I remove the skein from its bag, pull a length and cut, and it's that piece I am using that has never had a rightful place during a stitching session.  I find more pieces on my clothes, the floor, the washing machine, than I do when needed!  No matter where I put it, it ends up on my sleeves or side.  If using a bobbin, I guess you wind it back on and secure in the slot, but I've never liked them.  Using these cards would require the skein to be cut, does a strand pull out nicely or tangle?  The cut piece would be looped back on?  But then I have to sort through the ring again to find the color or remove/return that thread card, opening and closing the large ring clip ... a lot.  Too many times for my aging crooked hand.  But so is opening and closing the zip lock bags.

Strawberry Lane on Etsy

Snuggly Monkey on Etsy.

What do you do when using cards such as these?  I would think having many threads on one and close together would be a hassle trying to add it back.

From Tristan Brooks

Although I don't want to change from using skeins in a floss bag, I can certainly see the advantage of switching to these.  This hole seems large enough for ease of use and there is a second tiny hole for the 6 strand that is now a four strand waiting to be used.  Those are the pieces that hang from me, become play things for Missy when they hit the floor, and send me into a search every time I need another thread.  I think I will order a set or buy the pretty ones and punch another hole.  They will fit into my floss bags, I can quickly see if a thread has already been divided, and the zip bags will only be opened to remove the cards and then returned when the project is complete.  At my speed, maybe twice a year.  But will I be able to grab the thread and pull it out of the loop with these fingers?  Testing will begin soon, there will be quite a bit of color changes in the next pages of Ann.

What do you do with that piece once you pull a thread or two out when stitching in hand?  What should I have been doing with it for the last 40 years?  What simple solution has eluded me?  Should I just throw it over my shoulder?  Well, yes, you twit.  That would work.  Why did it take all these years and this post for it to come to me at the very end?  What a putz.

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