November Friday - Monday SAL

[WendyLee]

Good morning everyone! I forgot that it's now November and should have started this thread for our SAL. I'll be in with David, and Lucette is in with her Cafe Terrace at Night. Will anyone else be participating?

[Debbie Kluge]

I'm in with Night Cafe.

[Debbie Kluge]

Ooooh, I'm the first one to post progress for the weekend SAL. That has to be a record for me. It seems like I'm always late. As it way past my bedtime, I'm not going do much more than to post my progress pictures and to say that I now stand at 28,941 stitches finished, which puts me at 14.2% complete, and that with the push this weekend, I actually met the stitching goal for my 21 day challenge with 5 days to spare. Not bad. So here's Night Cafe. The first picture is my last progress picture and the second is my current one. I will apologize for the new picture. It's a bit overexposed. That's what I get for trying to get a picture of it using artificial light. Oh well, c'est la vie!

Progress as of 10/29/18 Progress as the close of the day on 11/5/18.

[Lucette]

Debbie, you had good progress. Way to reach your goal!

Here is my before and after.

[WendyLee]

Wow, awesome progress Debbie and Lucette! I'll comment more and post my photos tomorrow afternoon. It's been an interesting few days here - only two days of stitching and then a wild windstorm that put our electricity out for three days. We finally got it back today and the house warmth is back to normal, thank goodness, but life has been upside down. We don't realize how much we depend on electricity until we don't have it. Thankfully it wasn't in the middle of winter!

[Lucette]

No power for three days! That’s terrible. You’re right we don’t realize how much we depend on it. I always find I don’t know what to eat when we lose power, never mind what to do about coffee! Did you lose all of your food in your fridge and freezer? Thank goodness that it’s back on now and you can be warm again.

[Debbie Kluge]

I shouldn't say this (calling down the fates, and all of that) but it's been years since we've had a long-term power outage. We used to get them all of the time when I was a child. We never used to worry about them, though. My mother's house had a gas fireplace in the living room and we cooked with gas, so when the power went out we pulled out the candles and made a party out of it. The living room, dining room and kitchen were all contiguous, so we simply closed off those three rooms and lived out of them. My grandmother would sleep on the sofa and Mom and I would use air mattresses on the floor. To me as a kid, it was pure adventure. Mom told me many years later that the worst part was that it killed our water bill since we had to leave the taps in the bathroom running in the winter to ensure that the pipes didn't freeze! Unfortunately, if that happened to us today, we'd be in a world of hurt as, with the exception of the water heater and furnace, everything in our house is electric. And for all that the furnace is gas, it won't run without the blower system, and that's electric!

[Debbie Kluge]

And it looks like you made some really good progress, as well, Lucette. I like the sky and the use of those grayed blues. They don't strike me as being good candidates for portraying a night sky, and yet once they're worked it's clear that it's a night scene. That's what you get with a really good artist and a highly skilled craftsman to do the conversion to a chart. You're doing a wonderful job with it. What count fabric are you using?

[Lucette]

Thanks Debbie! The picture never does justice to the true colour. It’s more blue in person, there are some vivid blues in the blended threads. However what you said is true about the artist and about the ability of Marcus to make these patterns so true to the painting! I use 18 count, I don’t think my eyes could take anything smaller then that.

[WendyLee]

Finally, here is my progress on David. I only was able to stitch two days, and was going crazy with nothing to do in the power failure!