Year of Starts #10

Hi all! Back with another update and another new start. At least you knew this one was coming. :)

First, I'll show you my progress on Hillside Travelers, which I worked on for six days over the last two weeks. Here's where I left off:

The lake was originally charted to be stitched in a gray-green color, the same color as that gentleman's jacket. I know lakes can be murky at times, but I wanted a nice blue color. I couldn't decide what to pick, so I just grabbed a color at random and went with it. I ended up with 3752, which seems like a nice gray-blue on the bobbin, but looks kind of bright in this piece. Here's the full view out of the qsnap:

After that, I spent several days filling in the bottom portion. I like to stitch in all the background before I do letters when it's full coverage like this. I think when you do the letters first, the threads kind of get sucked back into the fabric and end up looking sparse. I haven't gotten to the letters yet, but I think you can see what it says:

And of course, on the 18th, I had a new start. This time it was on Jack's Bash, by Plum Street. I went way out of my comfort zone with this fabric color. I had originally thought to stitch this on a light tan color, but I had this fabric in my stash, and when I saw the colors against this fabric, it just seemed to click. I've only worked on it for two days, so I don't have many colors in yet, but here it is:

The fabric is 40ct Cedar Plank by Lakeside Linens. It's a nice warm mottled gray, and some of the darker spots have almost a purple hue. I thought it would end up looking like an eerie, foggy night, perfect for a Halloween party. :) It's a bit more difficult to stitch on gray 40ct than tan, but I think I can manage.

Well, that's all for now. I'm still obsessed with my Marquise, so I won't have too much progress on Crystals and Crows this month. But there's always next month. :) Hope you all are getting in some good stitching! Until next time!

Hello April!

Well, I was supposed to get back to Cassiopeia last week, but that didn't happen. Lots of little reasons why, but I think one big one: it rained ALL week. Every single day, 4 days straight. We had a break Friday and Saturday, then today, it's snowing. So happy April Fools Day from Mother Nature, right?

Anyway, what I did work on last week was Hillside Travelers, another from Little House Needleworks. This was among my year of starts last year, but I don't think I've shown it here. It is one of my favorites though, and is among the few projects tempting me to be a one-at-a-time stitcher. So here's what it looks like and where I got to last year:

And here's what I did this year:

Of course I wanted to keep working on it, thinking "if I could just get those pine trees in" or "hey, I could start the verse at the bottom!" But at least I got the people and animals done, and most of the little hillside filled in. I need to find a good blue for the pond though. The pattern calls for 3022, which is the color of the gentleman's jacket. Definitely green. I know it's a mossy pond, but I want my water to be blue! But that will wait til next time, which will definitely be this year. :)

Since it's a new month, I've pulled out a new focus project for the evenings, and this time it's Scale. I haven't worked on Scale since Nov. 2016, and I really did miss her. I remember trying last year, getting her set up on the frame, but I never got any stitches in. So even though I usually stitch on Luna on Sundays, I just had to work on Scale today, and managed a little over 400 stitches. Not much, but a good start:

So yeah, I've moved down a row  of pages again, this time to work on her lips. Seeing her like this though, I can't help but think of my mother's name for this one: Big Nose. :)

I didn't finish my Temperature charts for March since the website I get my temps from hasn't updated the last two days yet. (Frustrating!) So here they are up to March 29th:

See those spools on the ornament chart? I think they're pretty cool. It's hard to see that the thread and spool are different colors on the first one, but I still like it. I'll be on this round for the whole month of April, so I hope I get some good colors. :)

Well, that's all for now, I guess. Until next time!