Tales of Commuting Stitcher: Part the First

Well I discovered late this week, that yes I actually can stitch on the train on the way to and from work each day.  There are some limitations to be taken into account. Take small projects, on large stitch counts with lots of blocks of single colours. 

Don't even *think* about a BAP size or even a small TW!

I took Party Cat with me this week on the train - it is on 14 ct Aida and does indeed have large blocks of single colours.  You can see how much progress I did on Thursday and Friday in my blog.

Things I learned late this week:

• Progress is much slower than normal - but hey its progress right.
• Stitches aren't quite as even as usual -but well I'm not sure anyone else will notice.
• You can only stitch during the country part of the trip - once you hit the city limits, there are too many people.
• If you have a seat on your own and stitch with long threads, people tend to find other seats wherever possible before sitting next to you.
• Embroidery scissors fit well in an inside pocket of your overcoat.
• Don't drop your orts while wearing a black woollen overcoat.  The bright reds and blues stick to the coat and are very obvious when you get into work.
• You can sometimes attract nutters - one person sat next to me Thursday afternoon and started reading his bible, glancing across at my stitching and muttered about "heathen images" for the rest of the trip.  Or maybe that's just because it was psychedelic ...
• Always take spare needles - I've lost two this week already. Train lurches as I'm threading the needle and out it flies .... free, free at last .... wonder where they'll be found...

In other news I actually did some normal stitching at nights - not much some nights I fell asleep with the needle in hand without a single stitch being done - but I did manage to finish another motif on Hanky Psanky for Tracy.  I'll post a pic when I get the go-ahead from Tracy.

Well its almost bedtime - ready for a 5am start again tomorrow morning ....

{Post edited to include a reference to Hanky Pysanky now that Tracy has given permission for the pic to me shown .....}

Mel's Sunday Update

I have the flu and I have a migraine and I'm shaking with a fever and I feel awful so I'll keep this brief before my head explodes ...

I have loaded pics of Teegs lovely RAK of book, card and floss in my RAKS album.  I adore the personalised signing and the book is fabulous.  If you haven't read this series yet - you must !!!

I've also loaded a WIP pic of the Party Cat I've been working on.  Its in its own album.

  Debbie so kindly RAKed me with this one, and seeing my good news a little while ago, I thought a simple bright boldly coloured stitch was the way to go.   As you know I still had the flu (which is *why* I'm stitching it on cardboard Aida - well that's *my* story). I then lost power and telephone for a while, so I was dark and cold for another six nights.  I can't stitch by torchlight when its too cold to feel my fingers.  So most of this progress was done in the past few days.  And of course getting caught out in the rain again in the past few days (and getting soaked to the skin) and losing my electricity again last night (it came back on around lunchtime today) means that the flu/cold has come back with a vengeance.  I'm shortly having some dinner and going straight to bed.