sunday sal, tusal, and ihsw...

Wow, everything seems to have come together for this weekend and Monday update, that I don't even know where to start!

Let's start with last week's progress on The Last Supper... I worked on that last week and did pretty good considering I didn't get to stitch every night like I normally do. I didn't bother taking them out of the q-snaps as it will be coming up for more stitching time soon enough.

The blue robe on the very left, where I ended, is actually part of the last apostle standing at the table, so I'm getting close to finsihing off all the good bits, after all that stitching is done, I'm left with all the fiddly bits - the skin with all its colour changes and fractionals, all the stuff on the table - more fractionals, and of course the ton and a half of backstitching! So much still to do, but I know it will be worth it in the end.

Next up... the start of the IHSW - international hermit and stitch weekend. Edith and I had a stitchy date on Saturday (sadly Barbi couldn't make it - hopefully next time) and I started a new project - the Birds of a Feather mystery SAL in three parts by With Thy Needle & Thread. Its not so much a mystery anymore as the SAL has been over for a while and I have all three parts of the pattern, but I have been wanting to stitch it since it came out. I finally sat down to start.

Here is my progress from Saturday's stitching session with Edith and some more that evening...

As I mentioned, since I have all three parts, I started in the middle instead of working it part by part, which works much better for me, as I have a hard time starting on projects from one of the corners...

I'm stitching it on 28ct natural peal linen, with the recommended threads. I'm a little weary as the thread pack that came with it is for 35ct, so I'm hoping I'll have enough thread...

I normally don't like stitching on linen, and I know you have all heard me say that many times before, but this fabric is one exception... it is more like an evenweave than a linen in that there really are no slubs in it and I love that about it! Plus the stitches lay so nicely on this fabric! I just have to get over the fact that its sort of itchy feeling... Anyways, this one is up to continue to work on this week.

Next progress picture... tusal... today is the new moon, and I thought I would try something different this year... here is my progress for this past month - from Dec. 24 till last night. I have to admit I've got quite a lot of stitching done in that time, including starting and finishing Mirabilia's Holly pixie, so my jar is quite full...

As you can see, I've have two jars pictured. My regular small one that I usually just keep squishing the threads down in, and a new bigger one... I thought this year I would keep my regular ort jar for the monthly progress pictures and the larger one would hold the whole year's progress of orts... we'll see how it works out...

Here is a picture of the two jars again, but this time I've already dumped this month's progress into the large jar...

Last but not least, it was our Sunday SAL with Barbi yesterday, so that meant Mary Margaret time...

Here she is after last night's stitching session...

I think I did pretty good. I've started the border, as well as filling in the bottom grass/dirt. I did make one change to the pattern, in that I changed the colour of the outline of the raccoon... The colour that the patten called for in its DMC conversion was DMC 730 which is a dark avocado green... I didn't want my raccoon being green, so I switched it out for black instead. Anyways, she is coming into the home stretch, and I'm pretty excited!

That's it for now, I didn't realize my post would be this long, so until next time happy stitching!