IHSW?

Hi all! I do hope everyone is having a lovely November so far. It seems I have finally hit my stride again with stitching, and have a small update on Pavonia to show off. :)

This weekend was supposed to be the IHSW sal, but unfortunately our beloved hostess seems to be missing. (I do hope she is okay...) But in the spirit of my favorite weekend of the month, I've hermited as much as possible and managed to knockout of big chunk of stitching. She still doesn't look like much, and she is getting very dark (I'm stitching the shadow side of her face, which is further shading the feathers behind her) but it won't be too long before she begins to look like something. Here's the before and after:

 I want to say I'm more than half done with the worst of the confetti stitches. The shadows have three main colors, and I did two this weekend, so hopefully next weekend I can fill her in a bit more. I'm saving her forehead for last, as my reward (and something to look forward to!). It will be so nice to stitch some nice light colors for a change.

I'm hoping I can finish this part by the end of the year. I'm also hoping I can resist buying too much stash during any holiday sales this weekend. That's going to be tricky...

Until next time!

Because Sharing is Caring

Hi everyone! Just thought I would take a moment to share something, as I have no idea how many people know about it. But for those who were once fans of Nene Thomas charts on HAED, this might be of some interest.

If you've seen my stash, you might've noticed I was a little bit peeved when Nene pulled all her charts  from HAED. I liked quite a few of them. Well, there was a reason for that. It seems Nene has decided to get into charting designs herself. While she's not charting all her designs -- only a very select few -- it's still worth mentioning that they are available, and the mock-ups are gorgeous! She offers two sizes: regular, which are usually 356x577 stitches, and "epic," which are around 554x898 stitches. They are kinda pricey, at $20 and $40 respectively, but might make a nice Christmas gift... Here are a few to tease you:

 

Unfortunately, I have not purchased one of these yet, but when I do, I'll let you know my thoughts on the charting. And of course, if you want to check them out yourself, look here.

And yes, I am making progress on my current wips, still working on Pavonia at the moment, but nothing worth showing. Instead, I'll leave you with another crochet finish, as these are quite popular this time of year.

Twin Kitties

Happy stitching!

Pushing Forward

Well, October has come and gone, and I still don't have a page finish to show you. I kept thinking, next week for sure! But here we are, several weeks later, and I have a terrible lack of progress. There are two main reasons for this: one is a cooking class I'm taking that is eating up my precious weekend free time; the other is my back, which has been finicky since an accident I had ten years ago, and does not like this change in seasons. It does seem to be getting better though (fingers crossed) so hopefully November will be more productive.

As for my darling Luna, she is just two partial columns shy of a finish for page 5. I really thought I'd be done with this page by now, but it's like I've got a block with her or something, so I'm putting her aside for a short while to focus on Pavonia, which I feel I've been neglecting.

It's very frustrating looking at that short bit of space, but I'm putting it out of my mind for now. I think I'm just a bit frazzled by the end of the year push to get all of my goals met. I don't know about you, but this time of year I always start thinking about all of my stitching projects, and I've already started planning for next year. It's fun to dream about what a project will look like at the end of next year, but first, I have to remind myself to focus on this year. To that end, I've made a small start on Pavonia's third set of pages, which I hope to have finished by year's end.

That dark swoop down the center is her hair, and to the right of that swoop begins her very large forehead, which I am beyond excited to get to. But first, I have to trudge through more feathers, which are still very confetti heavy and time consuming, though I wouldn't change them for the world. Her hair continues horizontally for four pages after this, just to give you an idea of how large she is.

Lastly, I'll leave you with another crochet cutie, this one made for a friend's birthday last month. She asked me for a pink zebra almost two years ago, and I finally got around to making it.

I don't think mine turned out as cute as the original, but I still like it. The pattern is from Janagurumi, here.

I suppose I'm done rambling for the moment. Hopefully I won't be another month without an update. ;)

Happy Stitching!