Luna Makes her Appearance

Hi all! I've made some good progress this week, and have hit a milestone with Moon Indigo. So should I show her first? I think I will! :)

My goal with Moon Indigo is to finish two columns a month (1900 stitches). This month I managed about 2200 stitches, and I finished her face!! I am so happy to be done with all that confetti, but I am more pleased to have her whole face done. She's kind of doing that emo look to the side (like, finish my hair already, gah!) but she is really beautiful. Sometimes I see her from across the room and I'm like, Wow! Hopefully the stitching will be a bit easier and faster now that I'm on to simple sky and hair. Still shooting for a row finish this year:

For my morning stitching, I continued with Stars by The Drawn Thread, and managed to get the top third done:

I had so much fun doing all those little stars! And all those flowers too - they are Octagonal Leviathans, and threw me for a loop at first. But once I got the sequence down and learned to count properly, they were a breeze.

I didn't have the called for Dinky Dyes, so I subbed in Belle Soie Sister Scarlet. I've really enjoyed stitching this design, so it's hard to put away, but I'm also looking forward to the rest of my rotation. So next week it's on to Frosty Forest. :)

And of course, here are my updates on the Temperature SAL:

We've had some warmer weather this week, so it's into the greens. The darker green represents the low 60s. I'm wondering how soon I'll get to use a yellow, for the 70s. On the ornament, I'm starting a row of cute little hearts, and there is the first one in the top row. So cute! :)

That's all for now. Keep those needles smokin'!

The Year of Starts Begins

Hi all! Well I've worked on a few projects this last week and I think I've made some decent progress, so here goes. :)

First up is the Stitchrovia Quotes SAL, which I'm still stitching at a snail's pace. Last week I started quote #7 and got in 6 days of stitching:

Most of the stitching is done, but there's a lot of backstitch left to do, and I'm also doing the border as I go. So next rotation, I should get this one done. Then just three left! It does seem as I stitch these quotes that they are appropriate to how I'm feeling at the time. This one seems to be affirming that 2018 will be much better than 2017, and that makes me happy. :)

Next is Morning Glory, which is up to 12 days of stitching:

I like how she's coming along, but I'm definitely not going to get her done this month, which is a shame. Still, I am enjoying her very much. I'm trying to get the dress done before I move up into the wings, but they are very tempting.

I've also been keeping up with the Temperature SAL for Stitch Maynia, both my boring chart and the ornament. The weather is always a little haywire in Kansas City, so I'm getting a good range of colors to stitch. Our warmest day so far was 57°, the coldest was 8°:

And of course, I officially began the Year of Starts on the 18th. Last time I hinted at silks and specialty stitches, and although that suddenly made me think of a Chatelaine (did any of you think that as well?) I was actually referring to a chart by The Drawn Thread, called Stars:

I super love this design. I used to study astronomy, so I love all the stars, and the verse as well. The words are actually the last lines of a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, called Morituri Salutamus. I haven't read the entire poem, but the last few stanzas essentially say that it's never too late to be creative or do great work in life, no matter how old you are. The blue silk is Silk n Colors (one of my favorites silks) in Stormy Skies. The others are Dinky Dyes, and it calls for NPI silks, but I'm subbing those out for what's in my stash. Here is a close up of those little star stitches:

There are 4 different sizes for the stars, so I'm looking forward to the bigger ones. I don't know if these quite look entirely star shaped, but I'm happy with them. I really want to get to those flowers as well (Octagonal Leviathans) but I want to finish the vine first.

So, I guess that's it for this week. Next week I hope to work more on Luna (I'm almost done with her face!) and squeeze in some Morning Glory if I can. Hope everyone has a productive stitchy week!

Making Progress

Well, January seems to be speeding along already, and my needle is trying to keep up. Not a whole lot to show this week, but I did make some decent progress on Morning Glory:

I feel like the dress is really starting to take shape, though there's still quite a bit of stitching left just in the skirt. I've started into one of the buds she's holding, and would like to finish those before the end of the week, but we'll see. I'm starting to get that feeling like I'm not making enough progress on her, and she'll only be halfway done at the end of the month. (Those wings look particularly daunting at the moment.) But I shall persevere! One more week, then I'll be switching to Luna for a full week for my facebook challenge.

I've also kept up with my Temperature SAL for Stitch Maynia:

We started to warm up there for a moment, then came the cold and the ice and the snow. Thursday morning at 3am (when I get up) it was 52°F. At 3pm, it was 8°F. Typical KC weather. But it makes for pretty colors on my chart:

Last week I mentioned a cool little ornament that Katy A. was doing for the Temp SAL. Well, it's cuteness got the better of me, and I started stitching that one as well. I just think it's something different, and it's a neat design:

I'm stitching mine 1 over 1 on 25ct White Jobelan, so it will be 4.2 inches square. If you'd like to stitch this as well, even as just a cute side project with your own colors, the chart is free from Hetti on her blog, Creative Workshops from Hetti. For the SAL, we're just stitching one block per day, so it's easy and colorful. :)

That's really all for this update. I've been working on my Quotes SAL a bit, but I think I will put a couple more days into that before I share my meager progress. I'm also prepping for my first in the Year of Starts, which involves some yummy silks and specialty stitches. :) So, see you next time!

Welcome 2018!

The first week of the year is already over, and I think my stitching routine has regained much of its "normalcy." I've stitched on 3 things this week, and although progress is never enough, I think I'm getting better at finding time to stitch in the evenings.

First, I finished off my 12 days of working on Jim Shore's 12 Days of Christmas. I finished the stitching for block 1 last year, so this year so far was all about block 2, the turtle doves. They are actually kind of cute, but it's a lot of stitching:

After all the greens and yellows from the first block, I really enjoyed stitching all the blue, which are some of my favorites. I was sorry I didn't have time to fill in more of the white, but it's coming along nicely.

Next is the first of my 2 new starts from the first. This is Morning Glory, by Nora Corbett:

The Lilac fabric is working out really well, and it's so pretty I keep just staring at it. :) I'm really pushing to get her finished this month, either entirely or at least all the stitching. There are a ton of beads though, 5 packs in all. So far, I've got about 1600 stitches in.

My second new start is for the Temperature Chart SAL in Stitch Maynia, where we stitch a color each day to represent that day's high temperature. I just thought the idea was really fun, and I've really enjoyed seeing everyone's progress and different designs on facebook. The Stash Queen herself is doing a very intricate design that I can't wait to see develop. Mine is a simple chart of my own design, stitching each month in columns. Each day's block is 8x3, because I wanted something small and easy to stitch, but I also want to see the colors clearly from across the room. The first few days were really cold here, so I got to stitch some lovely purples to start:

So that's the first five days of the year. I plan to stitch the month names above each column as well, but I might do that in the color that represents the average temperature for the month. Just an idea.

Well, that's all I've got for this update. Hopefully I will see you again next week. Until then! :)

2017 Review: The Wips

Hello again! Happy New Year! :)

Well, 2017 is officially at an end, and I must say I'm happy to say goodbye to such a disappointing year! In the last 12 months or so, I've had to pack up and move twice, help my mother recover from falling down the stairs, deal with difficult family until they finally left and cut all ties with us; I worked about 130 hours of overtime over five months, and was rammed in a hit and run that totaled my car. There's more, but you get the gist. Not fun. So here's hoping for better next year!

Needless to say, I wasn't able to stitch as much as I wanted in 2017. I still managed a ton of stitching somehow, but many projects were neglected or not touched at all. But I want to share a few of my favorites, some that did see a good bit of progress.

For the year, I managed 114,637 stitches. Less than last year, but still over my goal of 100k. Total time was 570 hours, 349 days. I really tried to stitch everyday this year. I think it was my New Year's resolution. And I actually managed it until July, when I had to move the second time. I'll definitely be trying again in 2018.

So, pictures! I'll start with my current favorite, Moon Indigo from HAED (retired). I was zooming along great for the first half of the year, but barely touched her the second half. So I didn't meet my goal of finishing page 11. It's halfway though, and she's really starting to look good:

Her face is coming out so well! In person, you can actually see a bit of dark blue in her eye. The details are awesome. :)

I also worked pretty hard on Crystals and Crows, though I'm still shy of a page finish:

I'm loving all those colors in the crow's tail. It's actually a lot of dark blue, not black, and very pretty. I also started parking instead of doing cross country stitching. I didn't want to at first because there are so many colors, and I didn't want 50 threads hanging around. But it's actually not bad at all, and it really helped get some progress going. I think I'm starting to prefer stitching in rows rather than columns as well, especially for heavy confetti projects. Somehow the colors flow more easily. Hard to explain, but my needle seems to like it. Also, that is one of my newer needleminders, from Sun Spot Creations on Etsy. I've named him Sir Thomas. :)

Those are the only larger wips I managed any real progress on. I worked on Wisdom for a bit, but only got a couple columns done, and it's nothing worth showing yet. Blood also has another page, but it's just more background gray.

So for new starts, I'll begin with Angel of Grace, my New Year's start for 2017:

I still really love this design, though the fabric is still impossible to photograph. There was a moment where I realized I'd been stitching with the wrong color, so she spent time in the naughty pile until I finally frogged and fixed it. But now she's back on my favorites list, and I wish I had stitched on her a lot more. Getting there though.

The Quotes to Live By SAL from Stitchrovia occupied much of my year, but I'm only about halfway done. This is why I usually don't participate in SALs. I do love the design though, and plan to have this finished around September:

My big wip this year was my first Chatelaine, Herbularius:

This has been so much fun to work on. I only managed 5 days this year -- it's hard to put down once I start. All those silks are so luxurious and bright. I'd love to finish up the center portion next year, but we'll see.

Another favorite I started back in May is Jinn, from HAED. I'm tent stitching this one so it goes a bit faster, and managed to finish the first page. I so love the colors in this, and all those swirls are fun to stitch:

Sometime in 2016, I took a little trip to my "local" needlework shop (about an hour away) to see what they had. Their chart selection wasn't spectacular, but the walls were festooned with finishes, so the eye candy was very worth the trip. One of the many things that caught my eye was a 12 Days of Christmas piece, charted by Jim Shore. I think I'd seen the chart online and passed on by, but seeing it in person was like, whoa. First of all, it was huge. Like, 2 feet by 3 feet? But the wow factor was the beads. I mean tons of beads, in all different colors. So I had to buy it. :)

I started this in July, but have picked it up again to work on for Christmas, plus the following 11 days. The plan is to work on it every year during the same time until it's done (even if that's 10 years down the line). I'll be working on this 'til the 5th, but I've just finished the stitching on block 1:

I kept having to check to make sure the stitching was done, as there are so many gaps left for beads. And the block is about 6 1/2 inches square on 32ct. So yeah, huge. I'm working in qsnaps, so I'll have to save the beading for the very last. But I do adore this design. :)

Well, those are the highlights for the year. I'll show all my other wips at some point, probably when I pull them out to work on again. In the meantime, I already have two starts planned for New Years Day. I know, I'm a glutton for punishment!

First, I'm really looking forward to starting Morning Glory, one of the Nora Corbett garden pixies. I had a bit of purple fabric in my stash that I hope will look well with her. It's from Hand Dyed Fabrics by Stephanie, 32ct Lugana in Lilac:

I'm also participating in the Temperature SAL in Stitch Maynia. I just thought this would be fun, and colorful. :) I'm just doing simple blocks of color in columns, one column per month. I wanted to keep it small in case I felt like doing this again, so I could easily display them in 8x10 frames. This will be on 32ct Taupe Lugana:

Yummy, huh? :)

Plans for 2018: I'm still doing the Year of Starts for Stitch Maynia, starting a new project on the 18th of every month. I also have a few extra starts planned, so I think my total is 22. (I'll reform next year.)
Moon Indigo is still my focus project, so I'll try to finish off the row this year.
I've also joined a Facebook group called Full Coverage Fanatics, and they're having a monthly SAL called Stitch By the Numbers. The goal is to put in 1200 stitches on a project each month, and I'd like to feature a different project every month. (That's still only half my full coverage projects...)

Eventually, I'll be focusing on more finishes than starts, but that time is not yet. For 2018, I'm just going to enjoy stitching all the things. I hope everyone has a good stitchy year, and a good year in general. May your needles be swift and your counting true. Until next time! :)