Year of Starts #7

Hi all! Back again with a quick update. I didn't post last week 'cuz I really didn't have much to show. It was a weird in-between week for my projects, but I was stitching! :)

I pulled out an older project from The Drawn Thread, called Sampler Game Board, and worked on it for six days. I don't know when I last showed it here, but here is my progress:

I really love this piece, but progress does not show on it very quickly, probably because those houses are solid blocks of 400 stitches. But I finished the red house plus two motifs, and got a good start on three more houses. I didn't make room for this again in my official rotation, but I might squeeze in a few more days on this to try and finish out this top portion before the end of the year. We'll see.

Of course, on the 18th I had a new start, though I switched up my plans a bit. I was going to start My Stash by Waxing Moon, but instead I went with 7 Virtues by La D Da, stitched on 32ct Fresco by Picture This Plus:

I had planned to start this one earlier this year, but started another project instead. I guess I couldn't overlook it any longer. This is only 3 days progress so far, but I'll keep working on it next week. This one is very relaxing to stitch on since it only has 4 colors, so it's perfect to do while listening to my audiobooks. :)

I did make a change to the red in this chart. I'm stitching with DMC, and the called for color was 3857, which is a very nice brown. I didn't want a very nice brown, I wanted red like the photo shows, which is part of the charm of this piece for me. So I changed it to 815, which is a little brighter than the image in my head, but very close. I also considered 814, but at a distance, it also looked brown. It's times like these I wish I could afford all those special hand dyed thread clubs and have my own stash of awesome one-of-a-kind threads, but I have a bad habit of spending all my money on charts instead. But I do have a DMC thread chart, and I know how to use it. :)

Well, that's all I got for now. It feels weird not showing my Temperature Charts, but at least I'm keeping up with them. Until next time!

It's a Finish!!

Hello again! It's been a while since I've updated (very sorry about that) but I'm back with a finish! It took 18 years, but finally my oldest wip is complete! Here are my Tigers, captured in full:

I finished them on Tuesday the 6th. The backstitching took a little over three hours, not including the other little baby's face near the tail. That bit was done somewhere around a decade ago, I really can't remember. (Sad, isn't it?) Close ups!

Two little darlings, curled up under Mama's tail

So cute! Those lazy daisy stitches turned out really well.

Tiger luv! :3

Perhaps this one shows just how much the whiskers interfered with proper chart reading. All those lines were just in the way! But I'm so glad it's done. :) I haven't signed it yet, though I plan to. It'll be my first, as I always seem to forget that part. Haven't decided just where to stitch my initials; probably around mama's right paw. Eventually, this will be washed and framed. (My mother insists.)

I haven't been stitching a whole lot lately, but I'll share a few things. First, I'm up to 10 days on Paris from Stitchery Stitch, and made some good progress last weekend:

I actually did all that green in one day. It kinda felt like I was stitching the emerald city for a while, but I just kept stitching. It's kind of hard to stop when it's all big chunks of color, and I kept thinking, "oh, just this one little bit here." Totally addictive stitching.

Another addictive one is Red Riding Hood from Prairie Schooler, which I worked on the last week of August. This is only 5 days of work, but it's coming along really well:

Just started on the house in the middle. Those trees have a nice rhythm to them, it makes for a very relaxing stitch.

And, because I can't resist, here's day 3's progress on Sampler Game Board from The Drawn Thread:

The first two houses are complete, three motifs are done, and the third house just needs the sky. This is such an awesome design. I'm really looking forward to stitching all the different little houses, each with a different landscape. There's a lot of detail packed into those little squares, so it's a lot of fun. All the motifs are upside down, for the "gameboard" effect. It's kind of strange to stitch things in that orientation, but I like it. :)

I am still stitching on Scale, trying for a page finish this month. I'm about halfway there. I'm also working on He Holds Tomorrow from My Big Toe Designs as a gift for a friend. That's about halfway done (why don't I have a picture of this?) and should be finished by the end of the month. (Pics then, I promise.) 

In other news, Life is about to get really hectic for me (though last month was no picnic). We are planning on moving later this year, hopefully late November if we find a good place. So I'm super busy cleaning, organizing, pretending to pack (why do I have so much stuff?). But to make it fun, my Aunt is moving in with us at the end of this month, so my craft room (aka the spare bedroom) needs cleaning out now. So, stitchy time is getting shorter, and I haven't been as good about reading and commenting on blogs (sorry about that!) but I'll keep trying. I don't know how the rest of the year will pan out, but hopefully I can keep stitching at work if nothing else. :)

As always, 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!