Sketching For Christmas

It's such a beautiful day today.  I should be out doing some yardwork...pulling weeds and hosing down the porch, but first, I'll show the new design that I'm working on.

It's going to be called "Popcorn Treats"

This is just the rough sketch of the idea.  I always sketch out my idea first.  The most difficult part of it is turning the sketch into a pattern.  Drawing it out so it's exactly the right size and shape takes a tremendous amount of time and even after I think it's all done and perfect, sometimes, I have to redo it once I actually cut the wool shapes and start the stitching.  

 The mice gave me a hard time.  When I initially drew this, I had so much trouble getting that standing mouse to look right.  Frustrated, I searched through Google images to find a mouse that would look similar to what I wanted.  But no luck.  After a whole lot of repeated erasing, I took a break from the whole thing, almost ready to give up.  When I came back, the oddest thing happened.  I mean, it was so incredibly odd, that I know that once you read this, you'll find it hard to believe too.
I took one look at all of the eraser smudges on the paper and the mouse design seemed to be outlined right in the smudges.  I followed the smudge lines and the standing mouse was created.
Now, I'm not saying that this was some kind of devine inspiration like seeing Jesus in a piece of toast, but holy cow, it was pretty amazing.
Believe it or not ... I believe, for some odd reason, I had a helping hand with creating that cute little mouse.

I'm just about done stitching this up and should have it ready to show in a week or two.  I had to make some adjustments in design with the center candle circle.  I did want to stitch some pine branches that had a popcorn garland intertwined in it.  Once I started stitching it though, I realized that there is so much going on in the design ..with the snowman face, the hat, the mice and the popcorn, the pine branches was just too much for the eyes to look at.  I needed to create less "busy-ness".  Other than that, this design will end up being almost exactly how I originally sketched it.

In the meantime, I have a new Halloween pattern called "Boo!" ready to go.  I'll introduce "Boo!" in the next few days.

Happy Day everyone!   ....

Oh, and an email from Blogger told me that I need to add the thingy that lets people add my blog to their "Circles".  I don't really know what that's all about or how the Google circles work but there are 4 of you who seem to know and have already added this blog to their circles.  If you would like to add me, just scroll all the way down to the bottom of this page and you'll see the little button that makes it easy to add.

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