TUSAL, IHSW, & Catching Up

My most recent blog post was this past Friday & here it is Tuesday!  How can this be?  I have never let so much time go by without a blog post before!  Not only that but I only posted twice in the past week!  I'd say I need to see a doctor but I did ... yesterday ... although for some reason the subject of blogging never came up.  Go figure.

If the truth be known, the reason I was not visible on my blog this past weekend is that it was the first IHSW (International Hermit & Stitch Weekend) of 2012.  I just found out about this event last Friday.  The IHSW occurs the third full weekend of every month & the idea is for you to hermit yourself in your stitching chair & stitch.  There is no set requirement like you have to stitch so many hours or complete a project or anything like that.  You just stitch whatever you want, whenever you want during the weekend.  No pressure ... I like that   : )   Therefore I hermited myself in my recliner & stitched to my heart's content throughout the weekend.  I decided to work on my Santa ornament for the Christmas All Year Round SAL & I made great progress!  I only have a few tiny rows to complete & I will be done.

This was a really enjoyable stitch!  I love stitching letters for some reason & they worked up quickly.  Santa, however, was more complex ... or at least I made him that way.  I have this "thing" where it freaks me out if I have to stitch more than 1 color in an area.  I'm always afraid there are going to be noticeable lumps from running threads over or under other threads on the bottom, or that there will be darker colored threads showing through the lighter colored ones on top, or that some stitches are going to appear flatter than others because of running thread ends underneath them.  At one point while stitching Santa I had 5 needles filled & in use at the same time.  This turned out to be quite a pain though because it was difficult keeping the needles/threads separated.  More than once I found I had caught resting threads underneath working threads & had to then unstitch to free them.  I think I caused myself more problems than not.  How do you handle a design where more than 1 color is used in an area?  Stitch the biggest part of the design with your main color first & then add in the lesser used ones ... or stitch the smaller areas first & then finish off with the main color?

Incidentally, I know I am a Q-Snap lover but Frosty has taken up residence in my Q-Snap.  That is why you see me using a round hoop for Santa ... & a Morgan hoop no less because I didn't have a regular hoop big enough.  I'm sure the hoop marks are going to be permanently embedded in the surrounding linen but that's okay ... the linen inside the hoop is large enough so that when I make Santa into a finished ornament the hoop marks won't be an issue at all.  

To the right of Santa you will see my TUSAL.  TUSAL stands for Totally Useless Stitchalong ... or is it Stitch Along or Stitch-A-Long or ???  I don't think anyone really knows & that's how it got shortened to SAL.  Anyway, this is the first TUSAL I have participated in.  It is the brainchild of Daffycat & what you do is as you stitch you save your thread ends (orts) & put them into a jar.  Each month at the new moon you take a photo of your jar & post it for all the world (or at least all your blog followers) to see.  It's a fun little thing to do & practical as well.  If you have enough of these orts you can use them to stuff a little ornament or pinkeep!  Recycling ... I know some of you like that   : )  By the way, yes ... ort is a real word although it actually refers to crumbs of food, but these are crumbs of threads so the same principle applies   : )

I plan to finish Santa today & then revisit Frosty.  I hope he's taken our time apart to think about the stress he caused me last week & that he has decided that his white threads will now lie smoothly & his stitches will start & stop just where they are supposed to   : )