A personal note today: I’m sorry to have to report that my father passed away last week after several months of declining health. Between helping my mother and my own grieving process it will be a few weeks before I’m up to finishing any current stitching projects and blogging about them. A modified version of my father’s obituary is posted on our family blog.
Thanks for your kindness and understanding.
I took a break from the Japanese Octagon Box to begin the Heirloom Wedding Sampler, and I would love to show you pictures of it, but I can’t. Why not?
Last week our home was robbed, and the burglar took my digital camera, in addition to some other small electronics, laptop and computer parts (but thankfully not the main computer) and all of my jewelry. It has been a rough week as we try to put ourselves back together and work towards feeling safe again.
When I do feel like stitching, this band sampler has been a great comfort. There’s something very soothing about concentrating on a specialty stitch, then embroidering the line across the fabric. And since the sampler is for our upcoming anniversary, it’s a good reminder of what we still have.
First pocket finished! This is a very pretty design; I’m looking forward to the next pocket.
But first I have to put stitching aside for a little while for (brag mode on) Thing One’s Eagle Scout Court of Honor this weekend. His award marks the beginning of the third generation of Eagle Scouts in my husband’s family: Thing One’s grandfather is an Eagle Scout, his dad and all three uncles are Eagle Scouts, and now Thing One has set the example for his much younger cousins and little brother. While putting together the slide show, it has been fun looking through the pictures of his adventures in Cub and Boy Scouts and seeing how much he has grown.
All my husband’s brothers, his sister, and parents are coming and staying at our house, starting Thursday. With a few of the nieces and nephews and two sisters-in-law, that makes sixteen people. My stitching room has to take one for the team and convert into a guest bedroom, and my work table will be used as a second dining table, so I have to stash my stash for the time being … although I think I’ll keep Three Friends out just in case. See you next week!
Welcome 2010! Did anybody else spend some part of their New Year’s Eve at The Silver Needle’s sale? The biggest discount was offered at 4:00 am my time. Not my preferred shopping hour, but the resulting stash enhancement will be well worth the sleep deprivation.
Better late than never, here’s my 2009 finish gallery:
This is more of a sample collage; for a complete finish list see my new 2009 Finishes page.
For 2010 I’d like to work on a Hardanger project or two, and I’d like to stitch (or at least begin stitching) a couple of larger Victoria Sampler and Theresa Wentzler patterns. We’ll see if all the usual smalls get in the way of these lofty plans, though — I’m always so sure I can finish a needleroll, stocking or biscornu in a day or two, but two days stretches into a week, and one small leads to another, so before I know it, the larger project is in the corner, gathering dust.
Speaking of which, I’m not much for resolutions, but I do want to finish this project this year:
Remember the Japanese Octagon Box? I stitched up two panels over the holidays! Now that it looks like it’s over half done (but not really half done, as the scissor case and box top & bottom aren’t stitched yet, but we won’t think about that) I feel more confident about completing the stitching. The finishing instructions still look pretty intimidating, though. One step at a time …
For the past month I’ve been trying (mostly unsuccessfully) to transfer all the files and structure from my web site, blogs, and photo gallery from my old web host to the new one. The thought of having to re-assemble and re-label three years worth of photos was especially good motivation not to give up on the move. After backing everything up, I didn’t want to make too many additions, so this blog in particular has been dormant while I worked on a solution to the problems in other parts of my web site.
I was finally able to fix everything this week (hooray!), so I’ll be blogging (and stitching) again. Unfortunately my blogroll was lost in the move so I’ll have to redo it, and if you see any broken links or missing images, please let me know. Thanks for your patience. It’s good to be back!
If you tried to visit GimletBlog, Sinister Craftiness, or Solitary Elegance today, you were probably greeted with a nasty “Access Denied” page. Our web hosting service determined our account was overloading their servers, shut us down, then apparently took a lunch break, so we couldn’t get access to our files to try and fix whatever was wrong until this afternoon. Our buddy Editrix over at AustenBlog uses the same web hosting service and had her web site shut down for the same reason. After putting our heads together, we think the problem was probably bots hammering our sites looking for a way to break in and hack us. To that end, I’m going to be checking our access logs, comparing them with the other visitor data, and banning the IP addresses that are no friends to Sinister Craftiness. We are also considering today’s lockout as a good reminder to back up everything, just in case. Between backups and the access logs, it’s going to be a long night.
We apologize for the inconvenience. Please bear with us while we come up with a good solution to this problem. If your IP address is banned by mistake, send us an email (if you’re a friend, you should already know our email addresses, but you might want to jot down Sinister Craftiness’ contact email just in case) and we’ll take you off our Bad List.
The blog will be pretty quiet for a few weeks as our family heads out for a road trip through the Southwest. Our main destination is a week at the Philmont scout ranch in Cimarron, New Mexico, where The Gimlet will participate in a training program, Thing One will backpack through the back country, and Thing Two and I will find ways to amuse ourselves. We’re also going to visit as many national parks as we can stand: Arches, Bryce, and the Grand Canyon are on the list. The laptop is coming along for the journey so we’ll try to do some travel blogging whenever we can find a WiFi connection, or at least share some photos along the way.
I don’t know how much stitching I’ll get done, but I’ll be on the lookout for any needlework or quilting shops in the area. And yes, there will be a trip to Shepherd’s Bush!
All of the old Sinister Craftiness posts from GimletBlog have now been added to this blog. They can be found in the archives, categories, and tag cloud. The old posts won’t be deleted from GimletBlog, but that category is now effectively closed.
Getting started …
Welcome to Sinister Craftiness, GimletBlog‘s craft room, fiber arts studio, girly sanctuary, whatever you’d like to call it. Here’s where I’ll be tracking progress on various embroidery and quilting projects, showing off completed work, chatting about books, stitching toys, and other stash goodies … whatever seems interesting at the time.
Why Sinister Craftiness? Gauche or Stitchin’ With Lefty might more accurately describe my craftsmanship. After a long break I’ve returned to cross-stitch and have been learning about other types of needlework, including pulled thread embroidery and Hardanger.
Please note: While I can usually provide information about where to purchase a chart or kit featured on the blog (and am happy to do so), I do not make copies of charts, so please don’t ask.
More about me and my family can be found on our family blog, GimletBlog, and visit Solitary Elegance for my Jane Austen-related image galleries, including monthly desktop wallpapers based on fashions from Ackermann’s Repository. My younger son, Thing Two, and our Ragdoll kittens, Nanaimo and Chinook, take an active interest in my projects (especially Nanaimo), so they’ll occasionally appear on this blog.
With all that out of the way, let’s get stitching!
