UFO Attack!

Hello everyone! Happy 2016! (I know I'm a bit late with that, but better late than never...)

First off, I want to say Thank You so much for the well wishes ahead of my surgery. Everything went well, and hopefully I'll be back to normal in another few weeks. I had hoped to post this much earlier, but those pain meds kinda put me in a fog. I have been stitching though, even if my abilities are still a bit limited.

Since my normal stitching posture -- sitting forward over a scroll frame -- is still very uncomfortable, I've been relegated to hoop stitching, as I can manage that reclining. In one of those happy coincidences, I had already decided that this year, I would get back to a few of my more neglected wips, some of which are still being sewn with hoops, including some which have now become (dare I admit it) UFOs. So far I've got 3 wips in a sort of rotation, though really I'm just picking up whichever I want in the moment. It is a bit embarrassing showing these to you, not only because they are so old, but because I have so many other wips going, with more starts planned in the near future. But hopefully this will help me focus a bit, and show all my projects a bit of love this year. :)

First up is Mädchen Am Strand, from Golden Kite. I started this March 7, 2014, so it's not that old. However, my attempts to work on her last year were cut short by other projects, so now I'm trying to catch up. I had almost one page finished; now I have almost two.

I really love all the soft colors in this one (blue and gray is one of my absolute favorite combinations). It's a very calming picture, I think, and lots of easy sewing. I'm working this on 20ct Aida, which now seems very stiff compared to the Jobelan I'm used to. She's also one of my smaller BAPs, just 300x543, so hopefully I'll finish her some day.

Next is Kabuki, from Mystic Stitch. This was actually the first large chart I'd ever purchased, and I was daunted by so many pages -- 16 to be exact. I had never encountered full coverage stitching before, and at first wondered if she were sewn on red fabric. Ah, such naiveté. This was began Sept. 22, 2008 on 18ct Aida, though I haven't stitched on her since 2012.

This is another favorite color scheme of mine (I love anything with gray actually, an odd choice, I know). Those big chunks of color make for quick stitching, but the confetti is awful. Mystic Stitch charts, as you might know, have a terrible use of symbols, and some of them overlap the grid lines, so I have to look very carefully to know what I'm stitching. Still, I love this design, and the end result is amazing (like with those sparkly things in her hair). Bit of trivia for you: as this piece is called "Kabuki," I'm unsure as to the gender for this piece. Traditional Kabuki theatre was performed solely by men. ;)

Last is a very old wip I started in high school. And again, at the time, this thing seemed huge. But as I have been "almost done" for over a decade, I thought it time to bring out my Tigers kit, a gift from my mother in 1998. That's right, this one is now 18 years old. Unbelievable.

I thought I had a "before" pic, but I guess not. So far, all I've done this month are the leaves around mama tiger's head. I think I stopped working on this because it was getting so complicated. Their faces are gonna be the most difficult, not just for confetti, but there are backstitching lines everywhere. A lot of the symbols are impossible to read, so it'll be a lot of guess work. But I think I'm ready to plunge forward. I'm hoping to make this my finish for this year, though there's close to 5,000 stitches to go, plus the backstitching. (gulp!) But I think I can do it. :)

Wow, seems I've rambled on quite a bit here. Hoping all of you are meeting your stitching goals (and your resolutions!). Hopefully I'll be back with my regular rotation soon. (I'm really missing Luna!) Thanks for reading. Happy stitching!