I finished the trees in part 7 of the Celtic Garden Mandala last night. There is supposed to be a full moon in the middle, but I’m going to wait on that. I want to do the phases of the moon in a different order than they are charted. Instead, this quadrant (North/winter) will have a new moon, East will have a waxing (first half) moon, South will have the full moon that was charted here, and West will have the waning (second half) moon. I’m also going to change the color from dark gold to a very light silvery gold, which I think will look better on my fabric.

I also started working on Blackstone Fantasy Garden from Ink Circles, and I’ve gotten a lot done during my Metro commute to and from work. This is going to be a gift for my Irish dance teacher, so I’ve changed to colors to go with our school dresses. The fabric is black and the main threads are Yonder Sky and Zaffre Cobalt from HDF. I’m using metallics for the blackwork areas.

I wasn’t sure I’d finish part 6 of the Celtic Garden Mandala before the next part was sent out, but I did it! As you can see, it’s quite large now.

I ended up fussing with one of the colors a bit. The DMC conversion lists 370 as a replacement for Silk n Colors 155, so I did the first couple corners that way:

However, after looking at some other people’s WIPs, I wasn’t happy with how the color looked (it’s the dark yellowish brown). I wanted some varigation, plus the color wasn’t quite right.. So I bought some Gentle Arts Sampler Thread in Harvest Basket, which is almost an exact match to the original color. Here is the result, which I’m quite happy with:

One important item on my things-to-do on Saturday was to replace an outlet receptacle in my kitchen. It had shorted out a few days earlier, knocking out the whole circuit. This circuit also included the outlets for the stove, washer, and drier, so this needed to be fixed before I could do laundry. There was a scorch mark where the toaster had been plugged in, but I wasn’t sure what that meant. With all the thunderstorms we get, maybe a power surge had done something?

I must note that I had replaced this same outlet sometime last year. I think at that time a bug got in and shorted it out, so I figured the same thing had happened. It had been fairy easy to replace before, so I went off to Home Depot and bought a rew receptacle. Got home, unscrewed the face plate, unscrewed the old receptacle, and tried to pull it out from the wall. This is what I found:

One side and most of the back was melted!

Needless to say, I called an electrician and got an emergency appointment. His theory is that I didn’t wire the previous receptacle properly and it corroded over time. He spliced in new wires (the old ones were pretty fried) and installed the new one I’d just bought. I also bought a new toaster oven, because the plug of the old one was clearly damaged.

Thank goodness this didn’t start a fire!

I finally completed InkCircles’ CDT this weekend!

1×1 on 25-count white laguna, using Tiger Lily and Autumn Leaves from HDF.

Next up: Blackstone Fantasy Garden, in my own color scheme.

But first, a shoe delivery update.  Thursday, my boss told me he would bring them to my job site, but then he got stuck in traffic and never made it.  Friday, he told me he would bring them to my other job site, but then had to cancel (probably so he could do the cancelled weekly deliver to the other site).  There’s a rumor he is coming here today and will bring “THE package”, as he is calling it.  We’ll see!

Yesterday I completed the second part of the Victorian Secret Garden from Chatelaine Designs:

Ordering something off the ‘Net is supposed to make life easier, right?  You put in an order, the company puts it in the mail, a package arrives on your doorstep.  No problem.

Except when a package is sent by UPS with a requirement that the addressee must sign for it.  Or if the addressee lives in an apartment or condo that has no front desk, and the delivery people are reluctant to leave it sitting on the floor.  (When I was a kid, they routinely left stuff inside the gas grill in our backyard.)  At my previous apartment, I had a note tacked on my door asking delivery persons to take all my packages to the rental office.  Now I don’t have that option. 

When I receive a package through the Postal Service, I have to sign the slip they leave, with a note begging them to leave it in front of my door.  Sometimes this takes a couple rounds of slips and signatures before they give in.  Occassionally they ignore my notes and make me walk to the post office (which of course is not open late enough on weekdays).

UPS makes things even more difficult by insisting on a signature in person.  Which brings me to my travelling shoes.  Do to a long series of medical issues with my feet, I only wear one specific brand of race-walking sneakers.  Since they are on the pricey side, I look for sales online.  A couple weeks ago, I ordered a new pair.

 They were sent UPS.  I couldn’t stay home and wait for the man in brown to stop by, so I used the UPS website to ask them to redeliver to my job.  Of course, that’s not simple either.  I’m a contractor at two job site and don’t have any idea how to address something to be sure it would be delivered to me.  So I had it sent to my company’s main office instead.  Of course in doing this, they attached a new mailing label that covered my name up.  So someone had to open the box to look at the mailing label.  She passed it along to my boss, who is bringing it to my job site today.  He will in turn give it to my onsite supervisor, who will give it to me when I stop by to drop off my keys at the end of the day.  Hopefully.

After all my angst over floss choices and hours of looking at diagrams for French Knots, I finally completed part 4 yesterday:

Here is a closeup of the north-east quadrant:

First, a note not related to my stitching.  I wanna hike the Appalachian Trail!  For about 12 years I’ve had the dream of hiking across the country, but I know that would be very expensive and involves huge amounts of pre-trip planning (like caching water in the Nevada Desert).  But the AT takes less time and planning, partly because so many people do the thru-hike every year.  I made the mistake of taking Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods out of the library last week and now I want to drop everything and go.  Unfortunately, the only way I can manage a six-month leave from work and buying all the equipment would be to win the lottery.

 Sigh.  Maybe someday.

Okay, back to our regularly scheduled program.  I started working on part 4 of Chatelaine Mystery XI yesterday.  Tonight’s plan - frog some of last night’s backstitching!

Jan posted pictures of her first quarter, with all her lovely backstitching and French knots.  After seeing how the silks look, I need to rethink some of my floss conversion.

I’m still very happy with the WDW Spring Bouquet as a sub for TG Hydrangea.  The colors are much paler, but the contrast with my fabric seems to work well.  The blue of the silk would be quite boring against my blue fabric.  Spring Bouquet is actually so pale that it’s hard to see the colors in the cross-stitches, but I think they’ll look quite nice in the French knots.  Double Fudge Brownie still works well for the dark brown and Olive Branch is okay as well, though I might mix in some Williamsburg Blue (as originally planned) to mimic the color changes of the WL Winter Wheat.

Here is the big problem - while SSS Berry Smoothie:   is a great sub (better than it appears from the picture) for

TG New England Berries:  

 when it’s used all together, the colors flow very differently.  It’s really just red and green, without much of a bridge between the two.  Used seperately, they just appear to be non-variegated colors.  I started using my NN Mountain Spruce as a sub in one vine, but it’s too dark compared with the light shades of the original silk.  I really don’t want to buy more floss, so I need to pick from my current supply.

I love the two shades of pink on Jan’s French knots, so I’m going to pull out the Prickly Pear floss I bought for Mystery X and use that for the knots.  I’m hoping one of the DMC variations will work for the vine.  If not, I’ll just go ahead and use the green sections of the Berry Smoothie floss.

Of course the other issue is that some of Martina’s flosses are perles and therefore much bulkier than regular floss.  However, I think that trying to use two threads for such tiny backstitches will just look messy, so I’ll have to live with the finer thread.

 I’ll post photos when I finish this first quarter!

Added note: I decided that the lighter sections (pale yellow and green) of DMC 4060 will make a good sub for those vines!

Anther note: I’m going to try taking the darker sections of DMC 4060 (blue and yellow) and use them for the flowers in the hedges.  The more I look at my Spring Bouquet stitching, the blander it looks.  The colors are just too pale for that section.  I’ll still keep that floss for the knots, since the colors should show up better.  Never mind.  I’m sticking with Spring Bouquet, but using 3 strands to make the color show a little more.

The third part of Martina’s Celtic Mystery is BIG and I wasn’t sure I’d get it done before the end of March.  But I did it with a day to spare!

I made one change of floss from my original conversion. After looking at what the trees look like using Acorn Woods from Thread Gatherer, I decided to use Double Fudge Brownie from Carrie’s Thread as my cotton substitute. I’m quite happy with how it worked out. Here is my south tree: