Big Finish #3

 Hello lovely people! I'm finally back for an update, and I've got some good progress to share.

March was a pretty hectic month for me, and my stitching was all over the place trying to meet the challenge in FCF (which I did, by the way). I kinda wish I had stuck to my planned rotation, but it was also nice to touch on so many of the projects I did, even if for just one day. Most of those projects are scheduled to be worked on again, so I'll share pics when I get to them.

In the meantime, I finally managed a huge finish I've been working toward for quite some time. Yup, I finished Elizabeth Oliver:

I haven't added up my total time and stitches yet, but she did take me 162 days to stitch. This was the second sampler I ever started, and there's a lot I would do differently if I were starting her now. For starters, I'd have stitched her on a higher count to make her smaller (she's 22.5" x 25" on 32ct). And I would have changed some of the colors, particularly the yellow and pinky brown. (Fun fact: 407 is my least favorite DMC color.) She does have some blended colors, and I love the way they look, but a variegated thread might've been just as nice.

Overall, I'm thrilled with how she turned out, and I actually took her to the framer's the same day I finished her. It's still kind of surreal though. I finished her on April 10th, but I could've finished her a bit sooner. Unfortunately, when projects I love are nearing a finish, I actually find I don't want to work on them, probably because I don't want to let them go. And also, I let myself get totally distracted by a new start.

So I have finally caved in and started the Modern Folk Embroidery sal. I really thought I could resist, but I've been seeing it everywhere and the fomo is real. So I spent a couple days trying to pick out some colors and just started:

I think my palette could use a little tweaking, but I was way too impatient for that. The purple isn't as light as I had pictured in my head, and the brown isn't as dark, but it's the only brown that wasn't too dark or didn't clash with the purple. And of course there's more than 2 colors there. I just couldn't decide! So I'm using a handful with two darks, two lights and a mid tone.

This arrangement was purely happenstance as I was sorting colors. They ended up in a pile, and I went with it. So it's DMC 30, 31, 32, 779, and 451. The fabric is 40ct Latte by XJuDesigns. And if you haven't noticed, it's an uneven weave, and I actually kind of like it. I counted it out, and it's 41 threads in width, but 44 threads in height. So my octagons will be a bit squished.

My focus piece for April is Luna and I've already managed to finish off page 20 (and yes, her hair is finally complete!):

I've got a good start on page 21 now, so a row finish is in my near future. :)

Lastly, here's my Temperature Library for March:

Had a warm start (highest was 77) but mostly 50s and 60s. The painting on the shelf adds a really nice touch, doesn't it?

Ok, I think I'm mostly caught up now. Hope you all are enjoying the changing seasons. Until next time!

Hi's and Lo's

 I didn't do quite as much stitching last week as I would have liked, but honestly, isn't that always the case? I did try my best to get some good progress on my current Frosty Forest block (which I started last February) but it was much more work intensive than I anticipated. So instead of finishing off this block and getting a good start on the next, I didn't even manage to complete the one:

In all honesty, this project started to drag me down after a few days, and I found myself not wanting to work on it. Nothing against the project, but it's on that very stiff Wichelt, and it after typing all day for work, it was a bit hard on my hands. I had been really looking forward to stitching the house (love stitching houses!) but stitching that variegated thread one stitch at a time is not my favorite, but I liked the effect too much to stitch in rows. Plus, I found my thread a bit tangly, so I used my trolley needle for most of the house. It looks much nicer, but slows me way down. So I hope I can find more time for this one later this year and finish off a couple blocks. That house needs to be done!

I've also put a few more days into Elizabeth Oliver to meet my goal for the month:

I am so happy to have most of that green block done, and I've got her name in! That makes her officially official in my mind, and she's in the home stretch. I'm really hoping to finish her in March, or at least early April. Fingers crossed!

When I didn't want to work on Frosty Forest, I turned to my Temperature Library instead and surprised myself by catching up:

I added 4 colors for that very cold week we had (a new color every 3 degrees) and chose a really pale purple down to the very dark gray-purple for our 0 day. That way it's easy for me to spot. Then a week later we hit 69, so I got to stitch my first yellow. I really thought about trying to mark the days when it snowed, but my official weather station doesn't record trace amounts, and I haven't been keeping track. But next time I do a temperature chart, I may find a way to indicate some weather.

So that's all I worked on last week. My March plans are a bit all over the place, and I have a crazy notion I'll be participating in the Full Coverage Fanatics challenge for History Sprints. It involves switching to different projects almost every day to match a prompt, so we'll see how that goes. I'm kind of excited to try though. Guess that's all for now. Happy stitching!

It's So Cold!

 Currently here in KC, it is -5 degrees and snowing. The high for today is 0, maybe. I don't think it's been this cold here in my lifetime, although I could be wrong. It doesn't feel like it though. I had to replace my car battery last week, and I'm hoping the new one will be ok. At least my apartment is fairly warm, and the pipes haven't frozen, thank goodness!

I didn't have the best stitchy week, but I think I had a minor cold for a while. Just a couple days of bleh and drippy nose and being very tired, but I think I'm better now. My weekly projects did suffer a bit, but I managed a little progress.

I'm still working on Ann Barson everyday. I'm not sick of her yet, but I wish I could hurry up and finish her. I did get in a page finish though, so just one more page to go:

I debated about stitching that bit of border in gold or to keep it white, but I thought, since I've stitched all of Ann's other "mistakes," I'd keep it consistent. It is a bit quirky, and I think I like it. She really did struggle with that central basket though. It's not at all symmetrical, and because it's on the page divide, I actually had to frog twice to restitch it as charted. I do wonder how Ann would feel about me restitching her mistakes. Would you cringe if someone meticulously reproduced your errors? Or would you feel vindicated, because it's just a cool hobby we do for fun? And it still looks nice. :)

Beth ended up a bit neglected this week, as I just couldn't rouse myself to stitch in the evenings. I'm blaming my cold for that. But I did get three sessions with her, and managed to stitch in the year and her age:

That green box is quite enormous. I've still got the outer color to do along the top, and then I'll let myself stitch her name. I'm kind of daunted by that, as it makes it officially hers somehow. I suppose it's been a long journey with this one, and I'm grateful to Ms. Oliver for letting me share it with her.

I spent the weekend with one of my full coverage beauties, Secluded Blue. I'm actually doing the WipGo challenge of Facebook, and her number was drawn this month, which made me very happy. I spent 5 hours working on her and managed 700 stitches:

My WipGo board is a mix of yearly goals and indulgences -- those projects that I love but might not pick up without prompting because they aren't my priority. I don't know if I'll make all my bingo's, but I'm really glad to have an excuse to spend time with my non focus pieces.

I guess that's all for now. I need to pull a few more colors for my Temperature Library, since I wasn't expecting another polar vortex. I hope you are all much warmer than I am, wherever you are. Happy stitching!

A Brief, Belated Farewell to 2020

 I know yearly summaries should be accomplished at the end of the year, but here we are, almost done with January, and I'm just now getting around to mine. I feel like time has turned into an express train and I keep waiting for it to stop. Oh well. I don't want to spend too much time going over everything I've done for the year, but I thought I'd mention a couple highlights, and document a few statistics since I like keeping track of those.

My big goal for 2020 was to stitch on all of my wips at least once. I didn't quite succeed, but it was so close, I'm considering it a success. My main reason for doing this was to reacquaint myself with all of them and figure out if any should be ufo'd or become more of a focus. I'm really glad I did that, because I did have a few surprises, and that has helped me rearrange some goals for this year.

I started 2020 with 66 wips (I think) and, after a bit of lockdown madness that started in April and somehow managed to reverberate through the rest of the year, I finished with 77 active wips, 2 finishes, and 6 ufos. Out of all these wips, there were only 3 that I wasn't able to stitch on, and 2 of those became ufos. So, pretty much a success.

Because of the quarantine, I was able to have a very good stitching year. My total stitches for 2020 came to 153,622. (I should mention, I do count tent stitches as 1 stitch.) I think this is my highest total yet. My total time came to 792.4 hours, and I managed to stitch 355 days for the year. Not too shabby.

While I would love to show you all the progress I made on each of my 77 wips, I know that's impossible for one post. But I would like to highlight a few favorites. First up, as always, is Luna:

I had really hoped to finish off the row for the year, but that just didn't happen. But I did manage to add 20,500 stitches to this beauty, so she wasn't too neglected. She's still a focus piece for 2021, so we'll see if I can make up for my lack of progress.

Next is Elizabeth Oliver by Moira Blackburn, I've decided to gift this to my mother this May, which means I need to hurry up and finish her. I'm definitely getting closer:

I've really enjoyed stitching on this one, and I'll miss her when she's done. For the year, I put in 14,899 stitches. Yes, she really is big.

My New Year's start actually became one of my favorites as well, even though I'm only stitching the carpet at the moment. I've loved this image for so long, that may be part of the reason. This is absolute confetti with blended threads, but it's hard to put her down once I've started. This is The Fireplace, art by James Tissot, chart by Golden Kite. (Please excuse the messy threads and terrible lighting):

I've nicknamed this one Sofie, as sort of an homage to Georgette Heyer and her book The Grand Sophy. (My Sofie looks pretty grand too, right?) I wish I had picked this one up a few more times, but I'm glad I got as much progress as I did. Total stitches so far is 8872.

Last, I will show what is probably my oldest wip, Kabuki from Mystic Stitch. I spent a few months watching all of Kim Hollenback's flosstube videos, and she really inspired me to try to make more progress on at least some of my full coverage wips. To that end, I challenged myself to work on Kabuki for 30 days straight with the goal of at least 50 stitches per day. It's not a lot, but it's more than nothing:

I did my 30 day challenge from mid November through mid December, so she got a total of 53 days progress. I managed 2909 stitches in those 30 days, and 6270 for the year. I was really surprised at how much I've enjoyed working on her, as this is a pretty difficult chart. But it was hard to put her down at the end of those 30 days. I've actually picked her up again this month, but that will have to wait for another update.

Hopefully, I can get back on track this year with my updates. (If I can tear myself away from stitching to do so.) Wishing you all the best for 2021. Happy stiching!

August Wrap Up

 Well hello there! As promised, I'm back with a quick update on some non full coverage wips. I've hit a couple milestones this month, so check them out! :)

First up is Elizabeth Oliver. I have finally finished that house!

It was actually pretty quick to finish up, unlike that lawn which took for-ev-er! I guess I really like stitching houses, cuz I really just couldn't put this down til that was done. I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out. I wish all the windows weren't black, but I don't think yellow would be very appealing either. I had a fleeting thought to put some detail in the attic window, maybe some backstitch lines to make it look like segmented glass, but I just left it plain. I do like how the color of the house turned out though. It's a blend of DMC 782 and 833, which gives it a nice textured look.

Next, I've finished up Courage on my Sheep Virtues, so now this project is half way done:

This was a really cute block, and another quick finish. I had to change the purple though. It called for DMC 3041, which is more like a deep mauve-y purple. But the cover picture was a nice light violet, and I really liked that look. So I subbed in DMC 209, which is a little more saturated than I would like, but it's almost exactly like the picture, so I'm happy with it. Not sure if this will be out again this year since I've met my goal, but you never know. 

I've been trying out a new rotation this month which I've really been enjoying. I might discuss it in a future post, but I'm not sure if anyone would be interested? We'll see. But first, I'm still trying to work on my new year's resolution to work on all my wips. Thanks to all the shenanigans of this year, I still have about 34 to go. Yikes. Some drastic measures may need to be taken.

Well, I think that's all for now. Told ya this would be quick. Hope you all are doing well. I want to hope that things will get better soon. So until next time, happy stitching!

A Bit Random

So it's been 5 weeks. Returning to work has been quite an adjustment, especially where my stamina is concerned. My first week back, I was all but useless after work, and my first foray into overtime required naps afterward. But things are getting back to normal-ish, with only a few bumps here and there.

I haven't been stitching much, but I've still managed to stitch almost every day. However, my rotation is pretty much random as it seems picking up something I'm not feeling results in a loss of my stitchy bug. Kind of worrisome, since that hasn't happened in a long while, but I haven't lost it yet.

So here's some of my random selections. First, I was inspired by the Bingo event in Full Coverage Fanatics on Facebook to pick up Scale, which I unfortunately hadn't touched in two years. I moved her from a scroll frame to qsnaps, so I can treat you with the full image of where she was before and a close up of where she is now:

Overall, I didn't get very much done on her, but I'm very happy to have worked on her again. I love working with all those vivid colors.

Next, I couldn't get Jim Shore's 12 Days of Christmas out of my head, so I made a start on 6 Geese a-Laying:

It feels like I barely made a dent in this block, but at least I managed to get the nest of leaves done, which is probably the most stitch intensive part of this block. I'm looking forward to the checkered egg, though there's still a bit of confetti there. Hopefully I can finish up this block in December.

I haven't stitched on Elizabeth Oliver since June, but I love this wip and I'm making some good progress on the house:

Hopefully next time I show her, the house will be done. It's really going pretty quickly. If I can just carve out a little more time to stitch.

I think that's all for now. I've been stitching here and there on several other pieces, but I'll show them once I get a bit more progress in. Hope you all are doing well and staying sane in these crazy times. Happy stitching!

May Wrap Up

Hello again! I hope you've all had a productive week. :) I'm still a bit scattered (but beginning to find my flow) so I've got a lot to share this week. But first, here's a little story about obsession.

So, have you ever had something kind of on your mind a lot to the point where everything you encounter reminds you of that something? Like if you're thinking about cinnamon rolls, and someone mentions "aluminum foil" and you say, "Yes! I love cinnamon rolls!" Well, that's kinda what happened with me and Louisa Horsey.

So I started Louisa Horsey, another one from Shakespeare's Peddler. After a lot of internal debate, I made this my birthday start, though I've been resisting her since March. I had intended to start Ann Thomas from HATS, but that can wait. Louisa is one of those charts that didn't appeal to me at first, but hearing Theresa Venette extol all her virtues when she was released, I decided to get her anyway. I am a chart collector after all. Then sometime in February, I just got this impulse to pull her out and look at her. I was busy, so I shrugged off that impulse, but then she kept popping up at random places, so I finally gave in and pulled out her chart. And then I fell in love!

Louisa's border is probably one of my favorites. It has a double vine which is very time consuming, but also very beautiful. There are several kinds of flowers with different styles and color palettes, and a few odd bits thrown in for interest. I'm stitching her with dmc on 40ct Vintage Examplar from Lakeside Linen, starting in the bottom right corner:

I'm about 2700 stitches in and loving it so far. I wish I could have splurged on the silks, but I can't always indulge. The dmc colors are really nice though. The white/cream flower does blend into the fabric a lot, but I can't decide if I want to change the colors. Whenever it catches the light, it just seems to glow. There's a little girl in the other corner to mirror the boy, though the french knots I did for his eyes aren't the best. Still, isn't he cute? It's the little details, like the heels of his shoes done over 1, that really draw me to this pattern.

If you're not familiar, Louisa Horsey is a mourning sampler done to commemorate the death of her infant brother. The middle has a ton of over 1 stitching that lists her entire family and a verse, plus various motifs. I'm not the best at over 1, but I'm looking forward to the challenge. But I know it will be a while before I get there. For now, I'll just focus on that lovely pastoral scene. If you want to hear Theresa talk about Louisa, check out her Quicky StitchyTube 2 around 14:05.

Ok, I'll stop gushing about Louisa. For now.

I haven't shown Elizabeth Oliver in a while, but I haven't been neglecting her. It's just taken me a long time to finish off all this grass:

So that's the entire lawn and drive that will eventually lead to a great manor house. It's only about 3000 stitches, but I've been working on it since March. I'm hoping to have the house done by the end of August, but we'll see how long construction takes.

I also got a little addicted to Ginger Nova and managed to finish off page 2 with a little start on page 3:

It's fun to stitch all those bursts of color, though the stars are very confetti heavy. I kind of want to keep going on her, but I have too many other projects calling. *sigh*

I'm still playing catch up with Luna, but I managed 4 columns in May:

I hope I can keep up this pace for a while longer. There's still 17 columns left to finish the row.

Well, that's all for now. It always feels like I have nothing to talk about or everything to talk about. I'll try to work on that. :) Take care of yourselves. Happy stitching!

Catch Up Stitching

Hello again! I know it's only been a week, but I've still got a ton to show you thanks to some catch up stitching I've been doing this week. It seems parts of the netherworld may be experiencing a chill because my work has actually shut down for a full two weeks. They said it was to comply with the city mandate, but I think it has more to do with a confirmed case of the virus, plus a few suspected. Either way, I'm happy to be home stitching! Hope all of you are staying safe as well. :)

First up is last week's morning project, Elizabeth Oliver. I didn't take a full pic again (getting really hard to do that) but I'm making good progress on my current row:

These two trees were quite fun to stitch, especially the second one. It's very asymmetrical, which was a welcome break from all the mirror image motifs. I really enjoyed stitching all those leaves. I've also put my initials in, though that was a bit tricky for me. There was an alphabet provided for this, but no designated space, so I had to go by the cover image and do a bit of guesswork. Picking a color was the hardest part, but I'm really happy with the gold I picked, DMC 833. It stands out enough to be seen, but blends in well with the design.  The lines you see to the right are actually my start on that massive house! It's going to take an age for me to get through that lawn, but I think I'm up for the challenge. (Famous last words!)

My first day off work was Thursday, and the first project I picked up was my Wonders of Space SAL. I was almost done with the March block, so finishing it off was quick and easy:

There's Pluto! I was really hoping for another pretty nebula to stitch, but I do like how this block turned out. I'm glad I'm keeping up with this SAL, but it's really hard to wait for the next block. Hoping we get a galaxy somewhere in there...

Next up was my R2 Silhouette, and yes, I managed a finish!

I've had 5 page finished this year on my full coverage wips, but this is my first project finish, so my wip count is now 71. I started this on June 15, 2016, but it actually took me 45 days to stitch. All that black was pretty tedious, but I love the effect. I plan to frame it some day, but for now it's stuck in a drawer until I can go frame shopping.

Since I was on a finishing kick, I decided to get Kabuki out again and finish off page 8:

Isn't she gorgeous? That confetti was super frustrating, but I'm happy to have the row done. She's now halfway done, which is awesome, but the bottom half is mostly a confetti nightmare, so it's might take me another 12 years to finish her. (I hope not!)

I think that's all for now. You might have noticed Luna has been missing for a while? Yup, she's been totally neglected. I'm hoping to remedy that next week and do a little focus stitching to catch up. Hope you all are staying healthy. Until next time!