successes, failures & new starts

I suppose I'll start with the successes since it'll make me seem

more, uh, successful. To begin with, I managed to finish my dragon, who will now take up residence in my "finished but unfinished" drawer (which is kinda full) until October when he will be framed for my friend's birthday.

And since every finish deserves (at least) one start, I dug into my recently acquired stash pile for this goodie by one of my new

favorite designers, Stacy Nash. Despite my somewhat limited sewing skills I am going to attempt a scissors pouch with this one, picture to be posted later if everyone promises not to laugh. I need to improve my finish skills since I signed up for the LHN exchange which Kathy K. mentioned on her blog.

Of course, since this was a quick stitch, I had to start something

else (I can justify ignoring my WIPs since these are small pieces and don't really count). This is Sibley Hall by The Goode Huswife, another one of my favorites. I went on a Goode Huswife buying spree a few years ago so I figured I might as well actually stitch some of the charts (I know, novel concept...).

Last but not least, here is a picture of the adorable ornie I received in an exchange for the ILCS Yahoo group, done by Debbie B. It is much cuter than my lousy picture shows.

On to the failures. Here is the first, the Brooke Nolan angel from

Just Cross Stitch. I took this along with me to work on in the car while waiting to pick up the kiddies from school, but forgot the pattern, and decided to trim around her for something to do...well, I overtrimmed. No room now for her little hand on the one side. I am sure there is a solution for this problem but I don't know what it is right now, so she's going in the WAL (worry about later) drawer.

And this is my final failure (at least in the cross-stitch realm) of the week

--my first attempt at a homemade fabric dye. I'm not sure if the picture shows how neon-y yellow it is. I found a recipe on the web for a turmeric dye, which did NOT mention how very bright the yellow would be; I tried to tone it down a bit with tea, then coffee, and ended up throwing in a little bit of just about everything in the kitchen. Quite a witches' brew and a lovely smell too, believe me. I guess it might be usable for a Halloween piece, or I might develop a taste for neon colors, who knows.

I guess that's it for a while. Thanks all for the lovely comments.