It's been a charity-minded weekend, stitching-wise. This cute critter is from the Barn Cats leaflet put out by Prairie Schooler in 1984. How is it possible that 1984, the middle of my (horrible) high school years, has already fallen 21 years into the past? (Picture Barbara shaking her head in mild confusion and disbelief.) Anyway, I'll leave the 'how can so much time have passed so quickly' rambling for another day and spare you that bit of boredom. Suffice it to say that I did goof on the border again - I obviously have a mental block on borders! - but the design came out quite well and I certainly hope the lady in England who receives it will enjoy it. I certainly had a good time stitching it (until the end stitches, when I attempted to close up the border).

I'm wondering what it is about Prairie Schooler designs that makes them so enjoyable. When you simply look at the chart, it's really not very interesting. I splurged on this leaflet (as anyone who's tried to hunt it down knows) and when I got it, I thought "oops - that was a mistake!" but I had this charity project to do and I figured I'd do the smallest cat first and just see how it turned out. The experience was similiar to stitching "Better A Small Fish" (also shown in an earlier entry) - it's sort of therapeutic, and the stitching seems to take on an existence of its own. The finished product is so much more than it looked like it would be based on the chart.

Anyway, I seem to remember making some vague promise to spare you boredom, so I'll wrap this up for tonight. I've become quite a fan of Praire Schooler designs lately (since stitching "Better A Small Fish", actually) and bought a few of the promo cards and all the stitching fairies recently, as well as my eBay guilty indulgences, so I guess you can expect to see them popping up here. My next piece, which I started tonight, is "Cats" from the Barrick Samplers alphabet card series. (Thanks to Maria for pointing these delightful cards out!) I'm doing it in colors to coordinate with our hungry kitty above because it will go into the same quilt.

But tomorrow is a long day at the office, so I don't expect I'll finish it before Tuesday night. And then I really will try to return to my August Goals list. Really.