Moving Along

Hi all! It's been a while. Didn't mean to disappear, but... well, you know how life can be. :)

This is the time of year where it gets really hectic at work and overtime hours are encouraged. In fact, there's been a mandatory requirement of 8 hours overtime these past couple weeks, so stitching time has been quite sparse. Yet still, I persevere!

In fact, I've taken on a really fine challenge and finally started my Chatelaine! I'd been planning since last year to start it this April -- even took a day off work to give it my full attention -- and I am so in love with it! This is Medieval Cloister Herbularius (Herb for short) and it's going to be a real stunner some day:

My mother predicts this will take me 110 years to finish, but I think I've done pretty well so far. This is three days work, about 13 hours in (thanks to my marathon stitching on day 1). All the normal cross stitch for the center part is done, but there's lots of gaps for specialty stitches and beads. And more beads. And there's a ton of beads!! I hope they all fit, 'cuz this is 32ct Jobelan, and I really want everything to fit. (I think it should be fine though, really.)

Stitching with all that silk is a-ma-zing! Most of the blues are NPI, but there's also Gloriana and Gloriana Florimel, Waterlilies, and Dinky Dyes. Love using all those silks! The 3/4 stitches have been a bit tricky, especially in the water lily things, but I think I managed to make it look okay:

Oooh, silk... And yes, those gaps are for beads! :)

Can't wait to try my first Jessica stitches. Hope I don't mess those up! I'm hoping to get through part one this year, but I'm saving all that beading for last. The kit included a bit of beading thread, so that will be fun to play with. :)

This month, I also managed to finish a smaller project intended for a friend's birthday. This is Friends are Like Bras from Lizzie Kate:

This was really quick to stitch, taking just 7.8 hours in 8 days. I didn't use all the called for overdyed threads, but it still looks good in DMC. Hopefully I can find a suitable frame and gift it next month. :)

Also, I've had a lot of waiting room stitching this month, so my favorite travel project has a bit of progress. Still no ears, but Geometric Bunny has a face! Isn't he cute?

Love how these colors have turned out. Don't think you can tell from this picture, but from across the room, he really has some depth. Can't wait to start on his ears (finally!) but I will be so sad to see this little guy go. I've noticed this pattern isn't available from Velvet Pony Design anymore, and I don't know why, but hopefully they will put it back up again in the future.

Well, think that's all for now. Hope everyone is finding time to stitch and enjoying the spring weather as I am! Until next time! :)

Trying Really Hard

Hey stitchers! This year has been off to such a rocky start, I feel like I'm still spinning in circles, trying to find my direction. Moving in with extended family has its own headaches, but I still haven't had time to get things set up just right, including my main stitchy spot. But I am slowly getting there, and things are beginning to settle down. My mother injured her knee just before Christmas, but now she's well enough for physical therapy and she is finally able to walk with just a cane! So that makes a huge difference in how much I do for her, and gives me lots more time to stitch. :)

I've kinda been all over the place with stitching, but I've managed some decent progress on a few projects. I never got around to solidifying my goals for this year, but there is one goal I hope to stick to. I've decided to try and stitch Every Single Day this year, even if it's only 30 stitches. After barely stitching at all last Autumn, I feel like I lost a lot of potential progress, even if I'd only managed 10 minutes of work. So, this year, it's stitch every day! I've already had a couple nights where it's the last 10 minutes before bed, but I feel so much better the next day, knowing I made that small effort.

So, February started off with Flora, though I only managed 4 days of stitching. Last time I focused on the purple iris, so this time it was the pink shawl. There's also a pink/red flower toward the top that's slowly taking shape:

I also pulled out Crystals and Crows, which has been calling to me since last year. This project is so large, it's difficult to get it all set up, but I managed to put a pretty big dent in the sky on page 2, with a little bit trailing into page 3:

I really love that hint of lavender at the top. The colors are blending so beautifully together. There's a lot of sky on this page, so I hope I can get through it fairly quickly and make a start on page 3 later this year. But we'll see. It still amazes me that the original version was done in watercolor.

My Geometric Bunny saw a week of progress, and is now doing a fair imitation of a chipmunk. :)

This one is very relaxing to stitch, and feels good on a stressful day. All the symmetry and solid blocks makes it so easy, I'm gonna miss him when he's done. But that's still a ways away.

Angel of Grace also got 4 days of work, though I was sick for two of those days. However, yesterday turned out to be a really good stitchy day, my first all year I think, so that kind of made up for a bad week. I worked mostly on the flare of dress to the left, and I'm close to finishing some of those pretty pleats and ruffles:

I am so tempted to keep working on this project! I may keep her out a few more days, we'll see. The dress is supposed to be edged with DMC Metallic gold, but since no one has ever had a kind word for that thread, I want to substitute in something else. I thought of using Kreinik, but now I'm thinking Petit Treasure Braid? (I've never used that.) Only they have so many shades of gold! So now I get to have fun picking and choosing, which give this project an added personal touch and makes it even harder to put down. But alas, other projects are calling...

Luna got some love as well, but I think I'll save her for WIPocalypse so you don't get sick of tiny bits of blue. I've been struggling with my Stitchrovia SAL though, since it was an unplanned project. (I haven't even started the quotes yet!) Hopefully in March I can get my act together. I'll also be pulling out Scale pretty soon, as I've really started to miss her. Hopefully I can get another two pages done this year and finish off her lips. :)

In the meantime, I've been kitting up a new project. Another Massive project. And yes, it's a Golden Kite.

This is Palazzo Con Personaggi. It is 896x654, or 585,984 stitches. I plan to tent stitch this on 25ct Magic Guide. I don't know that I'll ever finish it, which I'm fine with, but I really want to start and at least stitch that couple on the left, the woman seated in green, and the man standing in dark blue. I think just those two take up 30 pages or so, but the pages are half the size of a regular HAED. So, for the last couple weeks, I've been slowly amassing materials and making lists of symbols for my Pako organizers, which really help in sorting those blended threads. I had about half the floss on hand, and thanks to a very convenient sale at Joann's, I now have the rest. So now I am slowly bobbinating before I start snipping lengths of thread and filling needles. It's a very labor intensive process, but very worth it once I begin stitching. If you're curious, I'll try to show more of my setup process in a later post. :)

Well, I think I've rambled enough for one post. Thanks for reading. Until next time!

WIPocalypse Challenge #1

Hi stitchers!

So, the WIPocalypse Olympic Challenge has officially begun, and I am super excited about it! Normally I don't get to participate in challenges thanks to my awkward schedule (and things are already starting to get hectic again) but so far I am having lots of fun. :)

Since last week was my normal rotation for Flora, she was my official kickoff for the Rotation Challenge on Friday. Thursday, I was able to finish off a tiny partial page (yay!) so Friday's progress was all aimed at page 7. I'm hoping to get an hour's stitching on each challenge piece per day, so here's Flora's hour:

Lots of pink added here (that's going to be a rose eventually) plus a few background colors. This page is past the halfway mark now, so I'm should be able to finish it by the end of the year.

Saturday was crazy, so I did my stitching in the waiting room at my mechanic's. (One hour for an oil change and a new lightbulb? Really?) This is a recent purchase from the Etsy shop Velvet Pony Design, called Geometric Bunny, which will eventually look like this:

Isn't he so cute? I started stitching in the center, with all those dusky blues and grays. This is an awesome pattern to have on the go, since it's just solid blocks of color. But I really like the effect:

 Not bad for an hour, but it was so cold in there, my fingers were stiff! Doing this on 16ct white Aida. (Yes, it's white, I promise.)

Sunday was also crazy, with lots of errands, but finally I sat down and treated myself with a new start. Lately I've been really charmed by patterns with cute little houses. Well, this one's got 32 tiny little houses in cute little miniature scenes. I just couldn't resist! This is Sampler Game Board by The Drawn Thread:

Managed almost an hour and a half on this. Was hoping to get that first little house done, but ran out of time. Still, this will be an easy and very fun stitch. Can't wait to get back to this very, very soon. Stitching this on 32ct Platinum Belfast.

For the Distance Challenge, I'm working steadily on Scale. I've only managed an hour a day so far, but progress is coming pretty quickly, and I'm happy to say I'm really getting back into this piece. All that white kind of killed my enthusiasm for a minute, so I'm only stitching colors for now. The white should fill in fairly quickly after that:

So that's it for the last three days! I'll try to update mid-week so these posts don't get too long. I've got quite a few new starts and barely starts to work on, so it'll be nice to switch up my normal rotation for a while, even if progress is minimal. :) See you all next time!