New Moon and a TUSAL report for December Orts

It's been another busy week here with very little time for stitching, the weekend went by in a flash and here we are with another Monday under our belts.  Last Friday morning while taking out the trash I snapped a photo of a beautiful sunrise as seen from my driveway looking into the backyard.

Sunrise 12/15/17

Saturdays are usually reserved for me time but with the holiday season keeping up with shipping demands I sacrificed my me time to print shipping labels, three hours in finally I was done with the labels.

I did get a few stitches in Saturday evening but my hands were so dry from the shipping labels the skin on my fingers was cracking and it was painful to hold the needle so I put it aside, I did manage to get the first leaf of the greenman stitched.

Saturday afternoon I ventured down the driveway to bring in the mail which included a package from a friend that I had been waiting for since early November, it was one of those packages that gets to take a tour of our nations post offices until it gets on the right truck and makes it to my local post office. This particular package visited 7 states all north and west of Florida before finally reaching me.  I don't know about you but I have noticed each time the post office increase the postage cost the service get worse but that is a story for another day.

Inside the package my friend sent me some embroidery goodies she didn't want and knowing how much I love doing embroidery thought I would like to have them.  A few months ago she decided she really doesn't like hand embroidery, she prefers knitting, (I often send her my had to have it and bought yarn that never gets used).  Any way she sent me a package of the discontinued DMC linen embroidery floss. I had told her I had found some about maybe a year ago and she went searching the internet to find some because she thought she should have some too. It's hard to find though every now and then a few skeins or a pack will show up.

After I bought the DMC Coloris line of embroidery floss back in the summer of 2016 my friend bought them too, you guessed it they were in the box too.

She also sent me two packages of Mesh for embroidery, she was telling me about it a while ago I was picturing tulle fabric or something in my mind.  It's more like a piece of very light weight screen fabric.

DMC Mesh

I don't know it you can see the mesh in the photo it comes with the free pattern pictured, one side is gold and the other side is silver you can use either side.  You can bet I will be messing around with it in the New Year.  I checked the DMC website and they do have it for sale.  She sent me a few wooden hoops, some needles and a few skeins of embroidery floss.

She was so relieved when I called her Saturday to let her know the package arrived and to thank her for all those goodies. She was just finishing up the last of 3 wool hats she was knitting for her daughters using some of the wool I recently sent her, yes one of those I was at Rhinebeck Sheep and Wool festival and had to buy some wool that I never used,  heck I live in Florida it hasn't been cold enough to need anything made with wool, but oh those colors, that texture if you knit or crochet you know what I mean.  My friend and I have known each other most of our adult lives, we were neighbors when I lived in NJ,  friends since high school, she has lived in Vermont nearly as long as I have lived here in Florida, we have been sending each other our unused crafting supplies for two decades. 
While putting away the floss and mesh I pulled out a few old issues of Stitch Magazine, this is the UK's Embroiderer's Guild publication though you can purchase single issues of subscribe.

Here is a link if you would like to look around. https://embroiderersguild.com/   Speaking of Embroidery Guilds, last month I finally join the Embroiderer's Guild of America and ordered a few items from the sites store.

This nifty tote bag to lug stuff around, I have a weakness for tote bags and seem to buy them from all sorts of places.  I also purchased the Logo pin and a few stickers.

EGA Logo Pin

I am sorting through my fabric scraps to plan my crazy quilt blocks for the 2018 Crazy Quilt Journal Project, I have a few ideas rolling around in my head but nothing set in stone.  I like this book for block ides

maybe the first block

The blocks in the book are constructed all wily nily rather than the few shapes I usually see.  I haven't decided whether to make 1 block a month or make a few or all 12 so I can just concentrate on the embellishing.  There is still time to register if you are interested the deadline is December 31, 2017 so here is the link:
https://crazyquiltjournalproject2018.blogspot.com/p/crazy-quilt-journal-project-2018.html

It's the new moon today too so I am going to post an ORTS report something I haven't done in quite a while.  The orts I am posting are from June to December 2017

I worked on quite a few projects in the last six months and have gathered quite a few threads, I hope to have a few more to add before the last day of December. I'm going to post over at It's Daffy Cat for the TUSAL Totally Useless Stitch A Long.  http://itsdaffycat.blogspot.com/2017/12/last-2017-ort-report.html 
On Sunday evening I attempted to do more stitching but my fingers were still quite sore I only managed to get a few bees stitched on another project I'm working on.

I think the adhesive on the shipping labels irritates the skin on my fingers and combined with the drying effect the paper has on my hands I will need to find a solution so for the next few days I will be reading through those Stitch magazines.  I found a cute little project to consider.