Kali's Creations

Well I always have the best intentions of getting some stitching done but life never seems to want to cooperate. I'm working full time and going to school which keeps me busy enough and then add in I haven't been feeling well and that doesn't leave much time to put needle to fabric. It also didn't help that in our smaller place my stash was hard to get at so I've rectified that and we have a bit of a road trip planned for the weekend so I'm working to get all my homework for class done so I can bring stitching instead of a text book in the car.

Hope everyone who reads is doing well, I've been catching up on blogs and seen some beautiful stitching posted all around -- helps motivate me to get things done so I can get to my stitching

I can't remember the last time I picked up a needle, how sad is that. Between work, spending time outdoors and now school, life has kept me pretty busy. Jay was doing some shopping on Amazon and had some credit left so I asked him to order me a blackwork book I've looked at many times which has some lovely traditional blackwork designs

The Beginners Guide and Traditional Blackwork Samplers by Lesley Williams, the Sampler book has several pages of bands and motifs that you can stitch as shown or put together for your own unique design.

My favorite "new" piece was from a class that I wanted to take but we moved before it was scheduled so I wasn't able to attend. Sew Tote-ly Love-ly by Janice Love. Yet another piece that could be extremely functional but I'll stitch it up and hide it in the glass cabinet so it doesn't get dusty :) My mom took the class with our local needlework guild but isn't the biggest fan of hardanger, all the counting and potential for cutting the wrong thread -- she prefers things that don't involve cutting of the fabric itself so win for me :)

The new job allows much less time for crafting than some of my previous ones, they actually expect me to work at work, novel idea. I've finished the sweater/jacket in the previous post, its waiting to get blocked this weekend and I realized knitting worked well when it was slow so I decided to start on a nice pair of socks.
Here is my start on the first pair, they're worked with medium weight yarn so the first one knitted up pretty fast and I am going to get started on the other today I hope. The yarn is a shadow yarn, primarily red but its got bits of other colors blended in - you can see the yellow near the ankle pretty well in the photo.

This is pair 2, done with a stretchy fingering weight yarn. This one is going to take a bit as those are US 2 needles. I also want to finish the red ones first, the only reason this pair is on the needles is that I misplaced one of the double pointed needles for the red pair so I started these until it turned up or until I could get to the store to pick up another set.

And here is my progress so far on my Einstein jacket, one sleeve done and stitched and the other nearly complete. Maggie is apparently doing some quality control for me, she refused to get out of my shot no matter what I did :) You can see from the direction of the stitches this is done in several pieces, for the next section you pick up stitches off the edge of the previous section so there is minimal sewing, one seam up the top of each arm that carries onto the shoulder and that is all. Once the last sleeve is complete I'm going to add on the collar and then I need a clear day to get to the store to buy some buttons. The weather has been bad for nearly 2 weeks here, they were only anticipating a few days, so I left long enough to go to work on the days we were actually open and thats about all.

Well, I'd like to say I've been stitching and finished a dozen projects since my last post but that would be a complete and downright lie so I won't go there. I did manage to get to the local shop to pick up some stash so its not all bad


Picked up a copy of the Just Cross Stitch Ornament issue, I've found several I'd like to make but I'd actually need to stitch for that to happen :D and a fabulous Lavender and Lace they had made up in the shop called Mother's Tree. My husband has an amazingly well documented family tree for several lines and I'm thinking about making this tree up following one of the family names instead of the mothers as I am currently hitting some road blocks following the females back through his mother's side of the tree

The biggest consumption of time lately has been knitting, I started a new job a few months back and the building I work in is huge and not the easiest to keep at a steady temp which results in me consistently being over or under dressed for the climate indoors. I started on the Einstein jacket shortly after I started and I have one sleeve and the collar to finish so I can dress however I want and keep a comfy blanket sized jacket to wear if it gets too cold. I could have pictures, but I don't. Until I seam the sleeves it looks like a huge beige blog which really doesn't tell you much, I personally can tell you it is very nice and warm. I pinned the sleeve to check the length before binding off the stitches and it was lovely. Hopefully it will be complete before the holiday and it will scare the crummy weather away :)

This one was rather productive and I'm not much in the mood for work this morning, crawling back into bed sounds much better :) Ok.. well it was productive from a stitching standpoint, I didn't do much else which was just fine with me. I managed to get almost all the wedges in this square finished, I might have been working on the center square but I grabbed the wrong thread on the second darkest orange wedges you see and did them with the wrong color and had to frog them *sigh* Its coming along though so I guess I can't complain too much. I think once this square is done I will work a bit more on the border, the only thing time consuming about that is constantly staring a new thread because it seems to go so fast working on the green blocks. The lazy stitcher in me wants to use longer thread but this congress cloth is tough on the thread so I'd end up with a bigger mess than its worth once the thread starts to wear. I hope you all have a great week!