Umbrella - WIP 01

Well, here's my new project! The raindrops are going really quickly and the handle should go quickly as well, so I may finish this sometime tomorrow.

There are a few errands that may get in the way of that though, as usual. At the very least the pattern should be in my store on Thursday.

I live in West Virginia's chemical bubble, where we get far less snow than our neighbors north and south of us. Seriously, Charleston's weather is always much less extreme than everywhere around us. However, in the valley we got a few inches of snow, and in the hills five inches or so (even on the roads). 

I'm happy for it to be colder, as then my electricity bill drops quite a lot. I like it chilly anyway, but being on the fifth floor I get a fair bit of heat from my neighbors. Glad this is our only fallout from Sandy, though. The pictures of NY and NJ I've seen are stunning in the horrible sense.

Tintin!

I grew up with Tintin and Asterix comics, and while Asterix will always be my favorite, I'm very attached to Tintin. We had some of the Tintin cartoons too, which I adored.

So here's my Tintin-in-progress. It will be just like my base image (just without the black fill background. I think I need to get a lighter skin tone though and also need to look for a good color for his hair, so the project is on hold for a bit. I think it's a really good translation from my base image to the cross stitch though!

Now I'm trying to design a pattern of the Grateful Dead logo from the Steal Your Face album. With Christmas coming a lot of the things I'm stitching either can't be posted here (since they're presents) or are so obscure that I don't think you guys would enjoy them. I did design a fabulous blackwork ax though, so if anyone needs an ax design, just ask!

I'm desperately hoping that I won't have to turn the AC on again this season, but it's hard to say. Sometimes it's still pretty warm during the day. All my plants are inside though and I've rearranged some of my succulents. These days my only non-succulents are my lemon tree and a lone African violet. Oh, and the cat grass but that doesn't really count.