The Remarkably Ravishing Alphabet Rally

It's the first Saturday of the month so it's time for detention!

"They only met online, but it changed their lives forever"

I think most of you know the lovely enigmatic Chiara who blogs at The Grey Tail?  We were chatting via email a while back and between us came up with the idea of an A-Z language challenge.  We batted some ideas around and are calling it the The Alphabet Club.  Chiara has the full details on that link but basically she will post a link-up post on the first Saturday of each month (Saturday being detention day in the film) reminding us of the month's letter and we will all link up with themed things, from stitching to designers and local customs.

R is for Raven from A Dark Alphabet designed by Julie and Becky's A Note of Friendship blog.  Ravens will feature on the Hallowe'en Ornie SAL Blog when I get to do R there.

R is also for Redwork, Rose and Running Stitch all of which appear in this month's Brooke's Books Stitcher's Alphabet block:

stitched on 28 count afghan

The chart shows all the background being stitched first, then the R being stitched on top.  Not going to happen!  Not with the amount of time I had to do this one in thanks to OAAT on the 12 Days of Christmas.

Here's another Rose, a freebie from La-D-Da:

We also have Reindeer, these ones are from Daffycat:

And Rapunzel from Teresa Wentzler:

I don't have any R designers in my stash but Rosewood Manor do some lovely Quaker designs and Renato Parolin has a wonderful selection of different tree designs.

What I do have for R is a Rotation.  I had a very successful rotation last year based on four different SALs for each weekend and one focus piece per month.  This year I am changing it to suit my current projects.

The rotation will start on the 26th of each month.  It may seem random, but that's the day for the ABC SAL I am stitching the Enchanted Alphabet for.  Then I will move on to the next Brooke's Books' letter to get it done in time for this post on the first Saturday.  Once I finish the BB letter I will stitch my piece for the Hallowe'en Ornie SAL and then the piece for the Christmas Ornie SAL.  Once those have all been done it should be the end of the first week of the month which leaves me three weeks to stitch on my focus pieces.  I might do one piece for all three weeks, I might do three pieces for a week each.  We shall see.

In my Reader we have the following friends:

Random Ramblings

(home of IHSW)

Random Thoughts from Abroad

The Return of..

Ramblings of a Biscornu Addict

Reading and Stitching

Ricamire

Relaxing Stitch and More

Riverside Stitching

Rosy Stitches

(who has the La-D-Da Rose in her header!)

Finally, it is traditional to give Roses to your Sweetheart on Valentine's Day but on this blog we prefer to send stitching!  If you would like to join in with the Secret Stitching Sweetheart blog hop this year, click on the Heart Photo and scroll to the bottom of the post for more details: