School of Magical Stitches and Literature Year 3, Week 5 and an Oops for Week 4

Homework came out very early this morning and is different again than the previous weeks. This week we're concentrating on Boggarts, who show up for the first time in HP and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Boggarts are a creature that hides in a dark place and takes the shape of your worst fear. Harry and classmates learn how to tackle them in their Defense Against the Dark Arts class with Professor Lupin. You defeat a Boggart by laughing at it, so our homework this week is to stitch 500 stitches on something that makes us incredibly happy, and 500 stitches on something scary.

Week 5

The definition of "something scary" and "something happy" is fairly loose, you just have to state why each project fits the definition. I know what I'm going to work on for the "happy" part, Tribal Dragon.

Another 500 stitches might finish off the dark green, or possibly finish a few more of the belly sections. I'll have a look tonight and see how I want to approach it. The reason this one makes me so happy is it's the first big project I started after DD was born and the first one I chose for her. I also chose all the colours myself and determined how I wanted it to look instead of as a straight black silhouette. So it's definitely a happy place project.

The scary one is more difficult, and I'm not sure what to pick yet. I was thinking of Otto, which is an incredibly daunting full coverage project and has a pathetic amount stitched:

which will eventually look like this:

It's a giant piece I'm going to stitch 2 over 1 on 32ct tent stitch instead of full crosses.

There's also a lot of HAEDs I have that are only slightly stitched, but they're not as daunting as this monster of a project. Or if we took the literal translation of "scary" to mean something frightening, I have a lot of spooky Halloween projects I could work on. Like the Wings and Things mandala from Ink Circles, I have the fabric and thread and pattern, but haven't started it yet. Plus adding a new start with the amount of WIPs I have is a "scary" thought too...

I'm leaning towards this one since it would be easier, but then that would be the opposite of what we're supposed to stitch on, since it's not as scary as Otto. :)

Any input is appreciated!

For the Oops part, I had thought I was all set with my homework, but I double checked some of the "not allowed" parts and they said the moon and moon phases aren't allowed for divination. The project has some stars, which are allowed as they're in the sky, but since the pattern looks like this:

I wasn't sure if it would fit the definition. Just in case, I stitched 200 stitches more on Joy Snowglobe, so that counted for 2 homework assignments last week, Muggle Studies and Divination. It now looks like this:

And one more thing we had this weekend was traveling on the Knight Bus! We had to "check in" and post a photo of our starting point on any project, as long as it wasn't something that was also going to count for homework or extra credit. We then "checked out" with our end point that included a photo and stitch count. For every 1999 stitches our house contributed, they received points. I'm not sure if they've totaled it up yet, but I think we did well.

I chose Ocean Curiosity which was last here:

 and added almost 90 stitches:

Ocean Curiosity by Who Knew?

Stitched 2 over 1 WDW Michael's Navy on 14 ct purple Aida by Colour Cascade Fabrics

And I also got out I Love You More Today last here:

and about 90 stitches later:

I Love You More Today by Jodyri Designs

Stitched 2 over 2 on 28ct Eye of Newt by Chromatic Alchemy 

The bottom photo is a little truer to life, but both are a little desaturated, the colour is a lot brighter. Hopefully once I finish it I can get a better photo of it. 

This past weekend was the Vermont Maple Open House weekend and we went to a really fascinating maple operation. It's called Runamok Maple and they had samples of all their different maple syrups. They infuse them with different ingredients and one is even smoked with pecan wood. We ended up bringing home some and our favourites were the cinnamon vanilla, makrut lime and jasmine tea. It tasted just like really good jasmine tea, it was so interesting! DD loved all the maple syrup and kept wanting to try different flavours. If you're a fan of ginger taste, their ginger root one has a nice strong flavour. We didn't try any of the liquor barrel aged syrups since we don't drink alcohol, but I'm sure those are good too. :) 

Please let me know your thoughts on my "scary" project and any additional ideas are always appreciated!

Happy Stitching!

Tiffstitch