Well hello there! I didn't expect to be away for so long, but it's been overtime every week since early March, plus cleaning up my mother's house in preparation for selling it, and getting my stuff cleaned out since I'm moving soon. March was a busy month for me! But overtime is over (for now) so I should get back into the swing of things.
I didn't do a ton of stitching last month, but I did get four mini finishes done since I've last updated. First off was a page finish on Blood page 4, and a small start on page 5:
It's interesting how the sky is so gradually getting lighter. And I'm more than halfway across the row! :)
I also finished the Snowgirl's Cottage on Frosty Forest:
I used DMC 800 for the house, which was a bit of a disappointment for me since my Morning Glory was so pale and plain. But I think it turned out nice. I forgot to take a pic of the whole thing though, so you'll have to wait til I finish the next block.
Next, I finished page 15 on Moon Indigo, the first page on row 3:
The sky here is getting more uniform, so hopefully I'll be able to keep up my pace with her as I start packing things up to move. I'm not actually moving until July, but I'm trying to downsize the amount of stuff I have, which is pretty challenging. Right now I've got a ton of boxes sitting where I usually stitch on Luna, so they'll have to be dealt with before I can make more progress.
Last is my project from last week. Since I've put Blood away for the year, I'll be working on Jinn, which is far more colorful (and confetti heavy):
I only got in 3 days last week since I've just been worn out from working. But it was enough to finish off page 2. I had hoped to finish another page this year, but that might not happen. Also, I'm trying to decide if I want to skip down to the next row or continue across. Hmm...
Well, that's all for now. I'll try to post more than once a month, but only if I have good progress. It just seems like so much is happening this year! But at least it's Spring and getting warmer. :) Hope you all are enjoying the season! Until next time!
Well, February has been a little disappointing so far. I've been kind of sick over the last two weeks, first with a three day migraine, then with a 7 day cold, which I'm still getting over, but I'm mostly well again. Just haven't been doing as much stitching as I would like.
I missed last week's update because I wasn't feeling up to it, and all I had to show was a few more rows on Blood:
I feel like I should be stitching faster on this, but again, I was sick, so I should probably go easy on myself. This will be out again the first week in March, so hopefully I'll have a page finish next time around.
Last week, I worked on my Frosty Forest, but I don't feel like I got a lot done:
I was very happy to get a start on the house though. Those stones look very nice to me. Unfortunately, my Morning Glory, which is used to stitch the house, is both disappointingly pale and unvariegated, so I'll probably end up stitching with DMC. It really is a shame though; that house was one of my favorite elements of the whole design. Ah well.
I think that's all I have for this time. We're having a pretty wet winter here in KC. I think it's snowed about every three days, several inches at a time. Then we get one or two nice days, enough to melt the snow before it snows again. And yesterday was my mother's wedding. She is very happy; I'm just happy it's over. :)
I guess I should try to get more stitching done now. Until next time!
Hi guys! I've got my two most boring wips to show today. The good news is these count as my first two page finishes for the year, so I'm very happy about that. :)
I started my new rotation last week, and the first week is for HAEDs, so I worked on Blood. I think this is a good winter piece. Gray fabric and gray thread under a gray sky. Anyway, I managed to finish off page three:
And I got a start on page 4 where you can see another wisp of smoke starting to form:
I'll be working on this piece in February and March as well, so hopefully I can get another page done.
I haven't settled on any kind of rotation for my evening stitching. I've just been pulling out random wips and stitching on them. But when I pulled out my Marquise, she didn't want to go away for a few days, so I managed to finish off two diagonals which completed page 1:
The wedge is getting longer. :) The next page is more brown than green, so I wonder if it will show up in my bad pictures. It might be a little less boring, anyway.
Guess that's all for now. Hopefully I'll have something more colorful next time. :)
Guess I have a bit of catching up to do since I was too lazy to post last week, so I'll start with last week's project. I worked on Blood, which is never exciting to look at, and made a good bit of progress on page 3:
I'd hoped for a page finish, but I knew I wouldn't manage it. Just not enough time! But I'm working on my plans for next year, and I should be able to catch up. :)
This week I pulled out Frosty Forest and started a new block. This one is the third in the series (I think). Anyway, this sits in the top right corner of the block of 9:
All that snow really takes a long time to stitch! But I'm happy with my progress. I'm making this a sort of focus piece next year, so I should have this block finished relatively soon.
And of course today I had a new start for the Year of Starts. This is one I've wanted stitch for a few years now. (I feel like I say that about everything.) This is Queen of Autumn by With Thy Needle & Thread, stitched on 40ct Sand from Picture This Plus:
I am really loving this so far! There is a ton of floss for this one, so I actually started kitting it up early last year. But the color palette is nice and soft, perfect for a cozy fall day. And since Thanksgiving is this week, it seemed a perfect choice. I'm hoping to get the left third done this week, so we'll see how it goes. (Bonus points if I get to the lady!)
As I mentioned, I'm already deep into my plans for next year, and I do plan to change things up a little bit. After agonizing over which chart to start on Jan 1st, I kind of had the idea to not start anything, but instead to finish up the project I started last year on the 1st, my very much neglected haven't-touched-it-since-January Morning Glory. Sounds good, right? I really hate to break my tradition, but sometimes you gotta go with what makes sense. (Doesen't mean that will happen this time.)
I do know I won't be doing the year of starts next year. Much as I love putting stitches into new charts every month, it's time to start finishing what I've got going. 63 wips is kind of too much for me, even though they aren't all active wips. So the goal is to finish more than I start, though at the moment, I'm not planning any starts next year. Yup, you read that right. No planned starts. Of course, I have been known to be impetuous. :)
Okay, enough rambling for now. Hope you all are having a great stitchy month! Until next time!
Yesterday I spent a couple hours driving around and panicking because I had a nail in my tire and that yellow warning light on the dashboard really freaks me out. Went to the dealership, they said it wasn't covered in my warranty, but if I came back in two days, they could order a tire which would take a few more days. So I drove down the street to another place I know and had a new tire in 20 minutes. :) Easily dealt with, but the loss to my stitching time was sorely missed. Then several hours later, a friend just had to text me a clip of the very juvenile cheerleader movie she was watching (she's my friend, I can judge her tastes all I want). The clip featured that old 80s song, Mickey, by Toni Basil, but redone horribly (in my opinion). That was followed by a half hour of texting each other random lyrics and lots of laughter. And that's pretty much what my week has been like. Lots of stress, but lots of silly stuff that makes life fun.
As for stitching, I haven't gotten nearly enough done, at least not as much as I'd hoped. I'm still stalling on Euphoria, though working late three nights this week didn't help. Right now I'm struggling to finish a tiny little partial page that I thought would take me just a few days. It's disappointing, but I'm not stressing about it. I just wish I could find a better balance between work and stitching.
One project I did get some progress on was Blood, aka my Most Boring Wip (at least to look at). Last year was so crazy I never took a picture of my progress, but I did finish page two last October. This week I got a good chunk of page 3 done, almost halfway:
I always make a mess of the threads, but you get the idea. A bit of page 1 is covered by the frame, but most of it is there. Page 3 is just shy of the halfway mark for the row. I didn't notice until posting this pic, but I think I've got my first barely-there tendril of smoke curling up in page 2. :)
And, since today is the 18th, I got to start something new! This one is a Lizzie Kate design, called When We Do. I've only just started the tops of the W:
This is one of her "Boxer" kits, so it came with the fabric but not the threads. I really wish that was the other way around, but oh well. The included fabric is pretty bad, as in very stiff and scratchy. It's probably Wichelt, but didn't say. But getting the needle through the fabric has been a bit challenging, and very hard on my hands. I'm going to stick with it though, since it's so small. This is meant to be a gift for a friend in May, so I'll have to finish it pretty soon.
Are you tired of seeing my Temperature SAL updates yet? I still love watching them grow. :)
Almost done with another round on the ornament! It's surprising how often the 50-54 range is popping up. I've got 959 for those temps, and it seems pretty prevalent to me. This week started at 22, then warmed to 64, then down to 36 the next day. Last year, we hit 80°F on Feb 22. This year, I'm still waiting to see my first yellow (70°).
Well, guess I should stop rambling now and get to stitching. Until next time!
Yes, another update. :) The Rotation Challenge continues!
Monday I worked on a new start, but this is actually planned as a gift for a friend's birthday in October. The design is fairly small, so I should get it done in time. This is from My Big Toe designs, called He Holds Tomorrow:
This is actually my first time using overdyed cotton (that's Monkey Grass from Weeks). I don't always do one stitch at a time, but I can still see a subtle color change, if I look really hard. The scrollwork was a lot of fun and worked up quickly. Looking forward to getting back to this again. Stitching this on 32ct Jobelan.
Tuesday called for something easy, so I pulled out another newer start, but one I haven't posted about before. This is another HAED, called Blood by Melanie Delon:
I started this in March, I think, because why not? :) Actually, I really love this image, though it's hard to pinpoint why. There's just something about her stance and expression, and that wispy black smoke. And, my favorite color is gray. (Weird, I know.) Melanie says this is a portrayal of one of her RPG characters, which probably explains why she looks so fierce. I've started on page one, working on 25ct Pewter Lugana in tent stitch:
Most of a row done, not bad for an hour. But at the moment, it's only two colors. :)
On a side note, if anyone is wondering, I always like to work horizontally across a page when I use tent stitch. Every time I try tent stitching in vertical columns, I end up with "humps" and a visible separation between each column, even when I try to stitch across grid lines. I don't get that stitching across. I believe this is a tension issue, since loose tension lets the fabric pull more, but I have yet to try tent stitching on my Millennium frame. At some point I will though, and I'll probably share the results when I do. :)
So today, Wednesday, I went back to one of my Riolis kits, French Lavender:
It's still a blob, but the blob is growing! I still love stitching with this wool. It's sooo soft, and it hardly tangles at all. I'm still stitching in the shadows for the moment, but once I get to the lighter colors, they will seem all the more vibrant. Man, too many projects I don't want to put down!
For the Distance Challenge, I've finally hit a milestone with Scale and finished page 7!
I think she looks awesome. The nose looks so real, like it jumps off the fabric. This is one of those designs where the color choices during stitching seem really odd, but the result is stunning. I've already made a small start on page 8, so we'll see how much I can get done before the challenge ends on Sunday.
