I've been a busy bee

Oh, dear. Most of the pictures are not inserting properly. I'll try again later.

Here is my first knit-a-long dishcloth, the February pattern. Red or pink yarn was recommended and I was happily going to play along, but Walmart had no red or pink solid dishcloth cotton. Can you believe it? So, I bought a big ol' cone of ecru and I will be sedately knitting all the picture cloths in ecru for a lovely, understated 12 cloth set. I bought a roll of ecru/someotherstuff varigated for the February mid-month. Or I might use it to catch up on the January mid-month if I get my cable hook back in the next couple of days.

Here is a detail of the "Swiffer" cover. It's almost done.

And here is the beginning of my cross stitch sampler. Met with the sampler group on Monday. They are all working on cross stitch fractals. The scope of these is amazing. They plan to complete one page of pattern each month (maybe 3000 little squares)and at that pace it will take three years to complete the whole thing! I've already done 5/26 of the letters of the alphabet in three days.

It turns out the appeal of cross stitch for me is going to be the extreme fine-ness of the work. This is on some kind of linen (32 count over 2 threads for the cross stitch initiated). I am gleeful to discover that your really do account for every single little thread in your material! Duh, but too cool. I am imagining whole dresses and whatnot in the days of yore embellished with this level of precision. Amazing. It strongly appeals to the perfectionist and the miniaturist in me.

Haven't done any work on the Brazilian this week. Time to get back to those leaves. Haven't seen the crazy quilt block in a while--three stitches behind on TAST. I had an inspired idea to embellish the crazy-quilt type Gypsy costume I made last Halloween with each stitch from TAST. Then I got it out and discovered that it isn't really a piece put together with enough care to invest that much in it. Ah, well. Maybe a smaller Gypsy piece sometime, a headscarf or something.

From Barbie's closet: a patch-work bag. This was an insane idea. I used up the last of some varigated sock yarn and cut it into little separate color pieces to knit this bag from Epstein. And a rose dress and stole, Simplicity pattern 5755.