I've not achieved much in the past month, so there is little to report. I did crochet an outfit for a pre-loved kewpie doll which will form part of my Christmas gift for a 1 year old great-niece. Sarah loves musical sounds, and Kewpie has a lovely squeak when pushed in the middle, so I think she will be a hit. Kewpie's underwear (with press studs for easy dressing):
And in her new dress:
I have finished all my planned gift stitching except for a growth chart for which I am waiting for measurements, so at long last I was free to drag my HAED WIP out of it's basket in the craftroom and bring it down to my stitching chair. The chart, fabric and most of the threads were bought with birthday money, so it qualifies as a GG project. It's 16 months since I last stitched on Christmas Dreams, and I am keen to finish 5 pages to complete the 4th row of pages by the end of the year. Wish me luck! I am finding it a bit hard to get 'into' it, but that's pretty normal for me. I'm pretty much a 'one at a time' stitcher except when it comes to huge projects, and I'm not good at swapping in and out of projects. In the first week of stitching I spend more time than I like searching my floss cards for the one marked 'J' until I finally realise that what I am really looking for is the floss marked 'n' (x 90 symbols, many of which are very similar), because my stitching is sideways and I marked the floss cards before I understood that I would be stitching with the left side of the design upwards. I usually eventually swing into it and convert without thinking about it (fingers crossed that it happens this time). I am about one-third through this project; I have stitched 19 of the 66 (large format) pages. Here's where I started on 1st November, about one-quarter of the way through the 20th page, which is actually page 48:
I tried to stand my fabric up to take the photo, and that has made it look quite out of shape, which isn't how it appears. The edges are really very straight. And here it is back on the frame and ready for stitching:
(If you have good eyesight you may notice my L&L Angel of Love - my very favourite piece - hanging in the right side of the pic.) It is a bit tricky, stitching sideways, but it wouldn't fit on my frame the other way. I am forever consulting my little plan to check that I am working on the correct page, and I did already fall into the trap of re-stitching three stitches at the beginning of each row on two consecutive pages - that resulted on several months of frogging and restitching to correct the error. Something I am so desperate to avoid in future that I have written reminders to check on each page. This is where I am on November 15, having completed a good section of the 20th page:
Nov 18
I am sad to say that I have taken Christmas Dreams back upstairs for amother rest. Hopefully not for long this time. I was finding it too uncomfortable while stitching on the frame, and my concentration has been a lot better than it is right now. I' m going back to small projects for the next few months.
