Category: Get Crafty

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Diversions Get Crafty

Stitching – 8 Dec

So, exactly how much stitching did I get done this week?

Oh you know

It really is hard to get anything done with a puppy around.

So here’s the last thing I did as part of a group project known as Steotch and it’s most recent Steotchalong. I had a deadline. I knew I could barely make it. So I was a few days late but I did it.

Toronto as touque. Our team picked a Canadian motif; the touque. Or toque. Or tuque. Whichever you use is fine. I use touque. Deal.

Anyway, the team captain made up a few versions of the shape but the mess inside this one is all me. The black is all standard DMC 310 (I have a cone of doom!). The white in the cuff is blanc étoile; the tweedy in the cuff is 310 and étoile together. The stars are glow-in-the-dark threads and the pompom is a mix of all three.

Our team – the Screaming Beavers no less – has some amazing people in it and some have really gone above and beyond. Our captain keeps us all informed and motivated and others have really done so much – one is putting all the touques together to submit as our group project; a bunch of us “sang” bits of ice ice baby and others put it all together; others acted out a spoof on the fold it in bit from Schitt’s Creek (complete with a cameo from one of the actors on the show!); they made cookies; and so much more.

And WE’RE IN FIRST PLACE

So apparently the final push is the percentage of the team to complete the stitch. By December 26. Clearly I need a solid deadline and there we go….I guess I should start!

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Diversions Get Crafty

A stitch in time

1 December 2022 update

Okay – so here’s where I’m at in my stitching projects. I do intend to finish them all I really do!

Stupid Big Stitch:

a piece of gridded aida fabric with a whole whack of black stitches.

Everything else sort of went to the wayside when I started this. But even this hasn’t been worked on in months.

So – I need a December goal = 90 minutes a week? Sure. Let’s go with that. No wait, the baby announcement (NO! Not mine; more on this below) goes first in order of priority but I want to do a little bit on this every week in December – maybe Wednesday evenings will be to work on this one, 20 minutes? great! 60 minutes? even better.

Galaxy Temperature Stitch:

Ohhhh so I love Climbing Goat Designs so much it’s actually a little ridiculous. And, obviously I’m a bit behind.

A spiral of stitches on a mottled piece of fabric with sparkly bits intended to resemble outer space.

So December goal – my excel temp chart only goes to April 12 right now. I would like to get the chart at least up to date even if I don’t do any more stitches right now.

Secret Project for the kid of a friend:

Okay – I bought the pattern and pulled out the treads for this one. That’s about it.

December goal = pick the fabric because…..

Project for my cousin’s baby

(who’s obviously not getting his baby announcement as early as his sister did!) Pattern and threads have all been purchased. I even picked out the fabric for this one now.

This is going to be my primary December focus.

Random seeming bits of threads on a bluish-grey piece of fabric

Secret Xmas Project for a friend:

This is one of those things I’m gonna work on as a break from the baby announcement and not on Wednesdays lol And if I get it done for this xmas then terrific; and if not, she’ll get it next year!

Okay – I do have a December goal for this one. FIND IT! 😱

And another secret thing so secret I can’t even write about it really:

I am superduperthisclose to finishing something for a dear friend. I had hoped to get it done for min-November but that got lost in the puppy/sick Q shuffle. Should still be doable for December though.

scrunched up rainbow fabric with the back of stitches showing
Lisa tries to be “secretive”

I’m posting this stitching update on a Thursday so I’ll try and update every Thursday in December. The last Thursday might be dicey as we’ll be in BC but I’ll try!

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Get Crafty

Galaxy Cross Stitch – week 2

Here’s the galaxy after another week has passed! (so up to Jan 14, I’m a little behind)

I used 3 new colours that I hadn’t used in week 1 and six different colours in week 2.

I have a new “lowest high”: -5* C on January 5

The highest high was 4* C on January 4 – so it was a big of a swing there.

The numbers after the = in the captions are the DMC thread numbers.

  • 1 degree C = 796
  • 4 degrees C = 826
  • -5 degrees C = 154
  • -1 degree C = 209
  • 2 degrees C = 797
  • 1 degree C = 796
  • 0 degrees C = 333

AND I figured I should move the hoop after a couple of weeks so here’s the full fabric update. I tried to not move the needle minder so that you get a good idea of what portion of the fabric you usually see in the photos:

The pattern is from Climbing Goat Designs – website – etsy

The fabric is from Mystic Fabrics – website

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Diversions Get Crafty

Galaxy Cross Stich – week 1

Ohhh so this was a bit of fun actually. I had decided to use timeanddate.com for the weather. And then this happened:

well, that was unexpected

I ended up chatting with someone in the facebook group who is also in Toronto and told me that she uses a website from the Canadian government so I went over there and have now switched to using the temperatures as reported by NavCAN from the Toronto Islands. The Island is about 10 km away by car. Pearson Airport (where the weather is traditionally taken from I guess) is about 25 km away. And in a whole other city!

Anyway, here’s the first week:

  • 5 degrees C = DMC 799
  • -1 degrees C = DMC 209
  • -3 degrees C = DMC 550
  • 2 degrees C = DMC 797
  • 4 degrees C = DMC 826
  • -1 degrees C = DMC 209
-4 degrees C = DMC 550

I explained in the first Galaxy Cross Stitch post that I have a spreadsheet – of course I do – that I use to keep track of the temps and the colours and all of that jazz.

For the first seven days of January in Toronto:

Highest high: 5* – on January 1

Lowest high: -3* – on January 3

I’ve used the same colour twice two times already!

Oh and another nifty thing – apparently @muzic_drama06 did a tiktok about it and it’s been watched almost half-a-million times!!

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Diversions Get Crafty

Galaxy Cross Stitch

A temperature tracking pattern by Climbing Goat Designs

Okay, I have to go back and check my XStitch magazines because I am sure I have seen Climbing Goat Designs before. But I stumbled across it again recently on FB and discovered they were doing a stars stitch-along in 2022 so I bought that – wonders of the night sky – more on that in another post 😉

Then someone mentioned the rainbow temperature galaxy pattern, so I had to go give that a look and well, I looked. And I was hooked. Conveniently enough I have some down time now to get them both ready.

Okay first of all – why do I love the temperature tracking pattern so much? Probably because it’s complicated, and fiddly, and I had an excuse to pull out the spreadsheets! (well, “pull out” in this case means open another tab on the laptop; but I am a sucker for spreadsheets).

This is the example from the website. Yes, it really says Southampton!

What range to use?

The instructions explain that it’s a good idea to look back at the last year or two and see what the range of temps your place has. You can see where my spreadsheet came in handy! I went back and counted how many days in each month hit whatever max temperature. For all of 2020 and 2021. Yea, I really LOVE spreadsheets.

	4	5	6	7
January	1	2	3	
Feb		1	2	
March	1		2	4
April	1	1	1	2
May				
June

This is just a random chunk of the spreadsheet. The columns are the maximum high (in Celsius) reached that day. So in April 2021, one day the max was 4*C, and 2 days it was 7*C etc. May and June didn’t have any max temps this low; whereas January didn’t ever hit 7* or higher!

My spreadsheet goes from “-7 or less” to “31 or more” though from -2 to 30 it goes up by one degree at a time so I ended up with 36 different colours in the final range.

Climbing Goat’s designer – Clare Bray – included six different colour charts with the pattern. So you’re covered if you want to use 16 colours or 36 or really anywhere in between. Which I think is kinda awesome.

And then my mind turned to the fabric…

How could I resist?!? It’s NAMED Galaxy! Handdyed fabric from the amazing Mystic Fabrics

Spreadsheet ready to track temperatures ✔️

Threads assigned to temperature ✔️

Fabric – sorted ✔️

So now all I have to pull out the threads (and order the four I am missing) and I’m ready to go. Well, except it’s not January 1 yet!

I’m not certain I will stitch on this everyday – though that itself would be fun to take pictures of…

(note: I included links where I could because I love supporting artists and creative people etc. I did not receive anything for doing this and, in fact, I didn’t even tell them I was doing this until it was done; which is basically what I always do…)

(note #2: looking back at my “planning for planning” post I realised that I didn’t include EITHER of the CGD patterns in my goals. So I guess I should add them!)