July Ornament!!

This is Mill Hill’s Icy Snowflake:

I love these ornaments….. they stitch up quick and are easy to finish.  (I did one of these for my February Ornament also)  The kit actually came with a pretty crystal to go in the center, which I promply lost and had to replace it with another mill hill blue treasure that I had in my stash.  It matched, and I’m happy with it.  I noticed that there’s now a series of these type of designs that are halloween themed.

I’ve got a vacation planned in a couple of weeks and will probably work on my August ornament during the trip.  I’ve got a couple designs in mind, but today started toying with doing this design by Teresa Layman:

Yep…. that’s all french and colonial knots.  I know… its insane, but I love the design and and I saw a model stitched up when I bought the kit.  🙂  I’d recommend visiting her page (linked above) and reading about her.  Pretty interesting…  I took a bullion class from her at Celebration of Needlework so in addition to the neat stuff about her on her page, he’s also a nice person and a patient teacher.  Anyway, the instructions say that there are approximately 1100 knots per square inch and its 3-1/2 by 2-5/8 inches.  The pattern is actually printed on the fabric, so no counting or anything…. just lots of knots!  We’ll see how long my patience lasts….

Alpine Seasons Update

I have been SO BAAAD about blogging…. primarily because I haven’t been stitching as much as normal and don’t have a whole lot to show….  Unfortunately, I’ve been playing Mafia Wars on MySpace for a couple of months and this has seriously interefered with my stitching time…

So, here is the last progress pic I posted:

and here is where I am now:

So… not a whole lot of progres, but I don’t have much left of the border to do, then I’ll be onto the fun stuff!

This project has reminded me of my love/hate relatioship with perle silk.

Love:  luscious colors, soft feel, pretty pretty stitches  🙂

Hate:  curly off the card, hard to lay due to fiber spring, tangles also do to curlyness, constant attention required to keep twist  😦

The Hate Parts can be alleviated by dampening the length and running it through your fingers, tho, so its not all bad.  🙂

In other news, I booked my summer vacation and am off to the mountains again!!  Colorado this time!  I lived in Denver for a summer in college while doing and internship, so I’m a little familiar wih the area.  Right now I’m trying to get in shape for hiking by doing lots of cardio.. I wonder how much good it does when you are starving for oxygen at 10,000 feet???

Anyone know of a good LNS in Colorado?