Happy Leap Day

I am not sure what happened to February.  It vanished out of my life very quickly.

I am still working on my house.  Life has interfered, so I am not as far along as I wanted to be.  I also need to put in more background before I can use some of the current TAST stitches.  The plan for this end of the house is the two people and a wreath above.  Although I have not decided for sure yet, the plan is a snowman on one short end and a decorated tree on the other.

Gingerbread people placed on one large side of the house

Really behind on everything

Vicky De Angelis on her blogoversary post gave away a thread separator made by Puffin and Company. Which I won. I love reading Vicky's blog and I want to send her a big thank you for my new toy. She wrapped it up beautifully with wired ribbon which you can see in the corner.

Thread and Yarn separator

TAST week 7

TAST week 7 is detached chain or lazy daisy stitch. This will eventually make it into my gingerbread house, but I need to put more background in first. So I played with detached chain on my doodle cloth. I usually think of this stitch as working out from a center, so I decided to play with it backwards. All stitches are done with 2 strands DMC floss.

 First I simply worked a square with the detached chain tack stitches all going into the center hole.

Detached chain 1

Then I did a shorter tack stitch with a little pull to make a center eyelet.

Detached chain eyelet

Finally I did the 4 chains across the top of the picture and wove the side ones in to make a basket effect.

Detached chain woven

Gingerbread house update

Front of house progress

I have been working on my house. Mostly I have been doing the boring royal icing buttonhole stitches around the outside edges.

 I have basted in my widow and door on the front of the house. The window will eventually be hardanger. I have added TAST week 6 - Chevron stitch to the upper part of the house.

The big picture

Cube bead

Cube ready to assemble

I realized I have not posted here for 10 days. No I did not get lost. My husband was home sick pretty much all last week, so although I did stitch, I did not post anything.

I did make my cube bead from Bead and Button free patterns.  I used size 8 beads to try out the pattern.  Of course it was easier with larger pieces and bigger beads.  I plan to make a cube with the 11s I used for my triangle bead.

Completed Cube Bead

I got distracted

I love to play with lots of different kinds of needlework.  I love beads.  I have been a subscriber to Bead and Button for several years now.  I also love math and shapes.  So when Bead and Button put out this free pattern I had to try it.  Please note, you do have to be a registered user of Bead and Button to get to the free pattern. 

For those of you who have done beading in hand, you know that the most annoying part is getting started. Once you have a few rows and something to hold on to, it gets much easier to handle. These beaded beads are made in little triangles. So about the time you get enough beads to hold onto, it is time to start a new triangle.

This picture shows the bead in the middle of assembly.  It is made in 4 different pieces and then they are attached.  The bead really only uses herringbone and peyote.  If you are familiar with these beading stitches and do not get too annoyed with tiny pieces, this is not a hard pattern to follow.  I would not recommend it for a beginning beader.  I would recommend finishing off the tails in all but the center triangle.  I left them because I was not sure which would be better to use for finishing the bead.  It was much harder to tie the ends in later.

The necklace shown in the whole pattern used 13 3-D triangle beads, a beaded cube, gemstone chips, pearls, and glass rondelles.  I know I will not make the necklace as shown.  I will make the cube.  I am thinking of trying it with larger beads.  The pattern calls for 11s.

Beaded triangular bead - made in 4 parts and then attached.

finished bead side view

finished bead top view