I Stitch With Dog Hair

Of course, I’ve been stitching with dog hair for many years, but when I had my beautiful little blondie, Phoebe, it was less obvious. Well, it was much less obvious to me, I guess. I think that Barbara noticed, though, when she picked dog hairs out of a few of my projects. I was mortified. 😆 Anyway, for me, unless it was a particularly long fur of Phoebe’s, I often couldn’t distinguish it from the usual fiber fluffing off of the fabric and threads.

However, I have now been blessed with a redhead (Abby) and a dark orange gal (Lily). And I’ve been stitching with white perle silk most recently. Which now has a slight tinge to it in some spots of my stitching, due to a stray red Abby hair having wrapped itself around it. I’m going to have to start being a lot more careful about doglet fur getting near my stitching corner. Which is difficult, especially right now, when both girls are shedding. Hmmm…

Whatever. It’s not like it’s going to keep me from stitching; I do that all by myself. 🙂 That said, here is a quick shot of my current project:
Photo removed. See the finished piece here.

This is a panel from the main project, a Lady’s Reticule, taught in Savannah. This particular panel was designed and taught by Patricia Bage of Patricia Ann Designs. The colors are a little washed out from the flash, but they are close enough. For the record, all of the white stitches that look like crosses are not simple cross stitches, but full Smyrna crosses. Each and every one. And there are plenty more to be stitched. BTW, that’s a line of basting down the vertical center, in case you were wondering.

I managed about 2 hours of stitching or so on this yesterday. I ripped out the border below the multicolored Rhodes diamond stitches below the wording because I didn’t care for the spacing and wanted to tweak the design slightly. I’m much happier with it now, but having to frog Smyrna crosses is worse than stitching them in the first place. And I actually don’t mind the stitch, in normal doses. I’m going to be completely overdosed after this panel, though!

We’ll see how much stitching I can manage this week. I have a work deadline in two weeks looming and I’m starting to get a little more stressed out about it as time goes on. While that means I should probably be taking the time to stitch to help me relax, right now it’s translating to poor eating choices and not enough quality sleep. But, this, too, shall pass.