Year of Starts #6

Yes, this is my second new start in as many weeks, but whatever. I'll reform next year. ;)

On June 18th, I started a cute little bird chart from Tellin Emblem. It's from their Birdies & Glories series (I think there's just two) called Kingbird. I'm stitching on 32ct Raw Natural Belfast, and managed just over 1600 stitches last week:

I really like this design, and definitely plan to stitch the second one, called Grosbeak. It's fairly small, about 5.5 by 8 inches on 32ct, but I can't say it's stitching up quickly. It takes me about an hour to get two leaves done. They're small, but it's a lot of stitches. I won't be adding the pink heart button, but I might attach the emblem on the lower right. There is an alternate chart to stitch my initials there though, so I'm still thinking about it.

If you want to stitch this design, I've got two warnings for you. First, it takes a lot of colors for such a small design, 32 colors total. Most of the leaves are different greens, and all the morning glories are different as well. The good news is that the same colors are used in the second design. Second, I had to do a bit of unstitching as the chart does not match the model picture. On the chart, the lattice in the background is stitched in a grid that also crosses the space where the worm is, just under the bird's beak. I had stitched it in according to the chart, but when I saw the discrepancy, I unstitched it, thinking I would also like a gap there. It's really irritating when the charts don't match the picture, but as least it was a small fix.

I also made a tiny bit of progress on Stitcher's Prayer, which I started back in May. I just had a little bit left to do to finish off the first half of the design, so I pulled it out and got it over with. Mainly, I wanted to finish off the details on the lady, who now has her needle and thread and a pair of eyes to see what she's stiching:

It took me four tries to get those french knots right, but I think I'm getting the hang of them on linen. The chart said to do them with just one wrap around the needle, but they were much to fine to see like that, so I did two wraps. I was also supposed to use two strands for the red thread, but she's doing extra fine work, so she only required one strand. ;)

Here's a close up of the lady. I think the stitches in her apron turned out really well. (yes, I'm bragging.)

Last, I have my temperature charts for the week. We had some clouds and rain move in mid-week, so there was a nice cool down. Typical for Kansas City weather, our first day of summer was the coolest it's been all month:

I got another round done on the ornament chart, but now it's back to boxes and squares. At least it's really easy stitching.

Well that's all for this week. Hope you all have some awesome stitchy progress! Until next time!