The two lower left ribbons below had to be ripped out because the stitching was off by one canvas thread:

Almost fixed:

Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday!

Linda and Nancy came to Stitch of the Month on Saturday, which I hosted for the very first time.  Unfortunately, Nancy left before the pic so below is Linda’s (top) and mine (bottom):

Nancy did kindly bring me mums, and I managed to get them into the ground before a freeze along with some irises:

Hi Everyone —

Greetings from Alaska!

We had a small turnout for our Stitch of the Month at my house yesterday.  Still, I think we all made SOME progress.  I am thankful that we do this as a group because Tina has saved me from more than one screw-up!

Ruby Razzle Dazzle — Clockwise from top left — Rosie, Robin, Nancy, Tina, Linda

As you can see we are all at different levels of progress!

Can you believe we started talking about next year’s project already??

Cheers!  Rosie

The Stitch of the Month group met for August at Rosie’s house with 7 of us in attendance making progress on our Razzle Dazzle project.  Our focus this month was the center star and the leaves.  While most of us were still filling in petals, Sue and Jill started on the leaves, which involves lots of counting and couching  Actually a lot of this piece involves a lot of counting, which means we need to focus on what we’re doing instead of chatting!

Since Nancy and Rosie are doing the same colorway with different accent colors, it was wonderful to see the impact of the accent colors. Unfortunately Nancy left before we took the picture so we’ll have to wait for next month to show it.  As usual, one of the highlights of this project is the different color combinations with some of us using Anne Strite-Kurz’s colorways and some of us designing our own colorways.  Choosing what color to use for those designing their own colorway leads to some interesting discussions and insights into each other’s preferences for brighter or more subtle color.

Meanwhile, most of us still are making slow progress on the Smyrna stitches outlining the ribbons.  Who knew how long it would take to do all those Smyrnas!  We need to have one quadrant done for next month to start working on the ribbons.

To top it off, Sue brought a fabulous Blueberry-Zucchini cake – check the recipes section of our website for the recipe.  Jill and I would gladly have finished the entire cake, it was so moist and tasty!

For anyone interested, these sessions are wonderful therapy.  It’s a great opportunity to get together with friends, spend some time stitching, talking, discussing books and current events, etc.  The time passes way too quickly!

Unfortunately Nancy and Mary left before our picture was taken.