Pieta, pt. 15

Twelve pages! I’m thankful for progress pics. Stitching row after row of one color makes it easy to lose perspective on how much you’ve stitched, more than “regular” stitching. If that makes sense, you might be a stitcher. 😉

Progress stats, according to Terri Reckoning (tm  ):
Completed rows: 183/235, or 78%
Completed pages:12/16, or 75%  It’s actually 78%, because the design isn’t a square.
Completed stitches: 35140/42300, or 83%

   

Before/After

Happy Stitching! 🙂

How Does Your Garden Grow?

I have a brown thumb, so I grow mine one stitch at a time. 😀 Here are the pieces awaiting assembly. At a quick glance, you can see the pink pieces appear to have seam allowances that are too small. If any parts are going to end up in difficulty, these are the pieces you’d predict. You’ll soon see that wasn’t the case.

    

Assembly in progress~~

The top and bottom pieces stitched together…

At this stage of assembly, the boy and I agreed it looked like a Chain Chomp from Super Mario World. You might also be able to see that in addition to interface, I lined each piece with quilt batting. I had two reasons for this. First, I came across the idea on this blog while looking for photos of other stitchers’ completed balls. That post’s pictures didn’t load for me, ironically. I was intrigued by the recommendation to use batting. I’ve never had the experience with lumpy fiberfill she mentioned, but that seemed a good reason to try it. My second reason for using the batting is that I love this project so much, I wanted to prolong the experience.  Eventually, though, it was finished…

I love it. There are a few wonky things “wrong” with it. But I love this piece so completely, I don’t even care. That’s so uncharacteristic of me. Here’s the wonkiest part~~

I’m not sure how/why that happened. That’s the white fabric, which puzzlingly, had the largest seam allowances of all of the linen colors. It’s DMC brand. It had the loosest weave and was the stiffest fabric I used. The stiffness was nice for finger pressing, but something went wrong with the stuffing. I chalk it up to the loose weave. I would ordinarily flip out over this. But Fray Check is my friend, the ball is safe and I am wabi-sabi about the whole thing. As I said, uncharacteristic. Love is blind. 😉

Happy Stitching! 🙂

Ready for Beading

I’ve finished the stitching on all six parts of my Patchwork Garden Pincushion Ball. Now I have beads to attach before assembly.

Page three, stitched on 28-ct. DMC white linen.

Page four, Raspberry Light Jobelan

Page five, Meadow Mist linen. This is my favorite color combination. J’adore.

Page six. White linen again.

I hope it’s not too fiddly to assemble.

Happy stitching! 🙂

Pieta, pt. 14

Another page complete! It’s like I never put this down for a whole year. I took a couple of progress pics along the way with my phone–

                  

She looks like this now–

Progress stats, according to Terri Reckoning (tm  ):
Completed rows: 62/235, or 52%
Completed pages:11/16, or 68.75%  It’s actually 72%, because the design isn’t a square.
Completed stitches:33078/42300, or 78%

Over 3/4 complete! I can see the end. The next three pages are very uncomplicated, so when I pull her out again, it shouldn’t take as long as a typical page.

     

Before/Middles/After

Happy Stitching! 🙂

Busy, busy stitcher bee

No bee stitching, though. 😉

On July 3, the 150th anniversary of the final day of the Battle of Gettysburg, I began stitching Primrose Needleworks’ 272 Words.

I decided I didn’t want to stitch the text in the nutmeg color of the chart. I found a color I liked at the LNS, but they didn’t have enough, and what they did have was from two different dye lots. I’ve taken a chance at another color. We’ll see where this takes me…

I’ve also been working on Patchwork Garden Pinball by Twisted Oaks. The original pattern has six pieces that spell out GARDEN. I didn’t want that, so I found and modified some motifs in books I own. Way to make those purchases pay off! I was really enjoying it. Then I started 272 Words, and then it was the SAL weekend on Facebook’s  Cross Stitch SAL group. I worked on Pieta for the FB SAL.

This was stitched on 28-ct Raspberry Light jobelan. It doesn’t show up well with a pink background. It’s pretty. You can take my word for it.

This was stitched on 28-ct. Meadow Mist linen. I’m also going to stitch two parts on white linen.

I’m really enjoying this project. I hope you’re enjoying yours. I’ll be posting a Pieta update soon.

Happy stitching! 🙂

Adventures in Framing

Happy Independence Day!

Framing isn’t usually adventurous, is it? It can be deeply satisfying, maybe nerve-wracking or frustrating, but it’s not especially dramatic. Up until now, the most adventure I’ve had with framing was when I made a poor choice for a frame, and “fixed” it with gold cream paint~~

That was it. Until yesterday. A couple weeks ago I took the Doctor Who piece for the boy, and Missing You by Prairie Moon to be be framed. Missing You is three years old! I haven’t had anything framed in three or more years! Truth be told, the adventure wasn’t in the framing, but in photographing it for the blog. Anyway. First up, I’ll show you an ordinary framed piece. I loved the look on the boy’s face when he saw the finished piece. He just loved it. Made me so happy.

So, that went well. 🙂 Then, there was my piece. It all seemed to be going fine. When the framer put down the molding, we both knew it was exactly right. I was, and am, so pleased. I kept it in front of me for hours that night so I could enjoy it. I’m weird like that. I get excited when projects are all done. I took a photo with my phone, and shared that on Facebook. I should have been satisfied with that photo. So much trouble would have been avoided. I didn’t take Missing You outside to photograph when I took the Doctors, and ended up waiting quite a few days before I took it outside. The weather was very uncooperative here. Another opportunity to avoid trouble wasted.

I finally had the right combination of remembering and good weather yesterday. The picture-taking went according to plan. Then I went inside. Wait. No I didn’t. I tried to go back inside. The front door was locked. The back door was open, but the deadbolt was locked. All I can say is, I am so grateful I was “properly” dressed and had shoes on. That wasn’t the case when I snapped the pic of the Doctors Who. I had just spent the night alone. The husband was out of town, and the boy was at a sleepover. I couldn’t call anyone. My phone was inside. The husband wasn’t going to be home for about six hours. I had a doctor appt. in fifteen minutes. Needless to say, I missed it (oh, shucky darn). Then I remembered my friend has a spare key to my house (CHEERS!!). She only lives half a mile away. Off I trudged. Her car was gone. GROAN. No one wanted to answer the door, except their dog, who, you know, can’t. GROAN. I thought I knew where she was, figured she’d be home within an hour at the longest, sat on her stoop. Finally her husband answered the door. I’d woken up the sleeping household. I sympathized, believe me. Their insistent, barky dog is now one of my best friends. 😉  Hubby went to look for said spare key with no luck. It was in friend’s car. SIGH. He called her. I heard the confused silence when he informed her I needed my key. 😀 Lucky me (considering), she was on her way home. Fifteen minutes later, the door was unlocked! Hooray! She was going to give me her spare key. NOOOooo, I need you to have it in case I do this again! I wouldn’t put it past me. You shouldn’t, either.  This is what all the fuss was about:

I should have been satisfied with the phone picture. It wasn’t bad. In fact, it’s arguable a better picture. It has much less glare. That’ll learn me.

Happy stitching, and may your stitching be free of woes. 🙂

Pieta, pt. 13

That was fast. You know, for someone that puts a project away for months at a time. Like me.

I present to you Pieta with 10 pages completed:

Progress stats, according to Terri Reckoning (tm  ):
Completed rows: 62/235, or 52%
Completed pages:10/16, or 62.5%  It’s actually 65%, because the design isn’t a square.
Completed stitches:29072/42300, or 69%

      

Before/After

Happy Stitching!

Rest Stop

I got a bit of burn-out, and a bit of startitis, while working on Going to Market, so we pulled over to a rest stop. I can’t actually start my project of choice just yet. I’m waiting for my LNS to call me about a couple of frame jobs I dropped off last week to go pick up the necessary perle floss to begin. I could start without it, but I don’t want to.  I’ve been working on Pieta in the meantime (progress pic to follow).

Here’s the current state of Market–

Happy Stitching! 🙂

Going To Market

This week I worked on a new start, Going to Market by Dimensions.

I love Julia Cairns’ art. I had her calendar two years in a row. I bought this kit many moons ago because it reminds me of the year the husband and I lived in Antigua; our honeymoon busman’s holiday. I want to put it in an Olde Colonial clock when I’m done.  I’m pleased to have completed the little man and his bowl.

The kit comes with 14-ct Aida. Stitching them one-over-one on 32-ct. linen will make it an ideal size for the clock. I don’t know the name of this linen, but I saw it in my LNS while looking for someone else and I knew it would be perfect for this design. I’d looked at other fabrics, but never quite felt any were “just right” until I saw this one. I love serendipity, don’t you?

This kit has some blended needles, so I’ve been improvising with DMC. The background is charted for mostly blended needle half stitches with three and four strands of floss. I’m considering using one strand for the three-strand symbols and two strands for the four-strand symbols. I”m going to experiment a bit to see whether using two strands over one is too tight. Stitching is full of excitement!!

Now I’m itching for stitching something else, like a small. Poor Pieta! 😉

Happy stitching! 🙂

Pieta, pt. 12

Patience. I can has it!

You know that non-yelly piece of parenting advice that suggests that you withhold fun privilege A from a child until they’ve accomplished icky task B? I’ve had frustrations with this in the past, because, boy, can a kid sacrifice A in order to avoid B, you know? Sheesh, just do B, and we’ll all be happy. But, nooooo. I tried this tactic on myself recently. Since I’ve had difficulty motivating myself to stitch on Pieta, I proclaimed there would be no stitching on anything until a page of Pieta is complete! I was very strict with myself. I’m impressed I didn’t abandon this plan in favor of stitching whatever I wanted. I waited TWO weeks before I started stitching on my. Can you imagine no stitching for two whole weeks?!? Neither could I before it happened. She looked over my shoulder from my stitching stand, and I gave her virtual raspberries. I looked through kitted project after kitted project, and didn’t lose my resolve. Finally, after TWO WEEKS of no stitching, I started up again.

This sort of patience is not normally in my wheelhouse, believe me. I didn’t imagine it would take me that long to return to stitching Pieta. Or, if I did, I certainly didn’t imagine I would wait that long to stitch anything. It’s more my style to tell myself stitching is supposed to be fun, so get busy stitching whatever it is I want. What a surprise. Anyway, here is the current progress pic:

It always amazes me how seemingly random stripes of gray start to actually look like something as a page fills in. I made a point of “touching bottom”, since the page I was working on doesn’t reach that far. That was thrilling. Remember “touching bottom” in the pool as a kid? Yeah. Same feeling. Sweet memories. I’m also really satisfied to have her entire left side solidly stitched. It was a joyful celebration thinking that I’ve now completely stitched more than half of the pages. Seriously, you’d’ve thought I was this close ( || ) to being done. When I realized just how far I have to go, I started looking for my fainting couch. Turns out I don’t have a fainting couch. Time to go shopping, I suppose. sigh

Well, stitchers, I’ve earned the privilege of starting anything I want. The excitement is palpable, believe me. 😉

Progress stats, according to Terri Reckoning (tm  ):
Completed rows: 62/235, or 52%
Completed pages: 9/16, or 56%  It’s actually 58%, because the design isn’t a square.
Completed stitches: 26,865/42300, or 64%

   

Before/After

Happy Stitching! 🙂

Bigger on the inside?

I completed the Doctor Who pixel piece a bit ago. It’s so adorable.

Vitals:
Doctors Nine, Ten, and Eleven
Designed by weelittlestitches
Stitched 2 over 2 on 32-ct linen with recommended DMC fibers

Happy Stitching! 🙂

Time to See the Doctor

I’ve been working on a little Doctor Who piece for the boy. I got it from wee little stitches on Etsy.

I had fun filtering it through Instagram, and I’m sort of having fun posting from my phone. The screen is tiny (like the wee little stitches)!

I’m just doing three doctors, though you can get all eleven. It’s so cute and pixel-y.

Happy stitching! 🙂

March at the Shores, pt. 19

I FINISHED!! Sorry to scream, but I almost can’t believe it.

Block 8 completed. We decided to use Capt. Jack Aubrey’s name, because the husband loves Patrick O’Brian’s series. We used the date of O’Brian’s death in 2001 as the death date. It seemed appropriate to lay him to rest in 1818. The last year Aubrey is known to command a vessel is 1817. Last night I thought 1821 may have been a better year, since O’Brian’s final, unfinished manuscript was titled 21. But, you know, whatever.

Here she is, finally:

Vitals:

Shores of Hawk Run Hollow, designed by Kathy Barrick-Dieter of Carriage House Designs
Stitched on 40-ct Lakeside Linens Vintage Autumn Gold with NPI silks as recommended.

I hope you had a lovely Easter. Happy Stitching! 🙂

March at the Shores, pt. 18

I’m so close.

I would normally include a picture of the full sampler, but this is my first time posting from my phone, and I didn’t take one. We can see the important parts. Ain’t technology grand?

Oooh, I hope it’s not long before I’m done!

Happy stitching! 🙂

February Catch-up

This is what I was up to in February:

Vitals:
Peace on Earth by Victoria’s Sampler as appeared in 2011 JCS Ornaments issue. Stitched on 28-ct Cafe Mocha linen.

I love this little purse so much. It was fun to stitch.

Vitals:
Think Snow by Sweetheart Tree. Stitched with recommended fibers and beads on 32-ct Blue Ice linen.

I’m not going to mention how many times I’ve lost and found this chart, mmkay? I think I love the final choice of linen color, though I do occasionally wish I’d used the opalescent gray I bought for it, because it was sparkly. But the icy blue makes me happy without opalescence, so it’s all good.

Happy Stitching! 🙂

Fruit of the Vine

Peel me a grape?

No?

Fine, I’ll stitch my own. 🙂

It’s supposed to be a scissor fob. I forgot to add the cord. Maybe I’ll do it later. I’m fine without it right now.

Vitals:
Fruit of the Vine by Sheepish Designs
Grapes stitched on 32-ct Lavender Bliss, leaves are 36-ct Patina linen.
Grapes stitched with Crescent Colours Plum Paisley. All other stitching used recommended DMC floss.

I have a tiny bowl of fruits:

Poor Robin

I have a weakness for Shepherd’s Bush small designs. I tend to like their bigger designs, too, but their small designs quite often make me weak in the knees. I finished Poor Robin’s Pincushion a few days after Warm Heart. I haven’t decided whether to finish it into a pincushion or  a pinkeep. For now it’s on a table making me smile when I pass.

Vitals:
Poor Robin’s Pincushion by Shepherd’s Bush
Stitched with supplies in kit.
Modifications: Omitted words around design

Warm Heart

I finished Shepherd’s Bush Warm Heart a while ago. I had the box the model is finished in. I especially love the flowers coming out of the snowman’s head. I love the box, too. I filled it with lucky stars, because I like to have a reason to make them.

Vitals:
Warm Heart by Shepherd’s Bush
Stitched with supplies included in kit
Modifications: Stitched a couple extra snowflake motifs instead of words

Ornaments, plus a couple other goodies

Well, I’ve been scarce, haven’t I? Part of it was not feeling like blogging, and part of it was Webshots changing over to Smile. That completely discombobulated me. I’m still pouting that all my linked photos are gone.

I hope you had a happy, blessed holiday season.

I may have been hiding, but I was stitching while doing so! So, pictures, pictures, pictures!

First: June Monthly Sampler finished into a flat fold. Yes, I finished stitching it in ’07. Yes, I have many more flat folds to complete. Don’t judge me.

Next is God Bless Those by Shakespeare’s Peddler. I ordered this as a gift to myself and stitched it up straight away. Now it needs to be finished, as my many previously mentioned monthly samplers do.

Vitals:
God Bless Those by Shakespeare’s Peddler
Stitched with included supplies as charted on 40-ct linen provided; key charm added where stitched key was charted.

Now the ornaments. 🙂

I finished the Shepherd’s Bush Merry Be pincushion as an ornament. The fabric you see was used as backing. The red isn’t that bright, but you get the idea. When I try to darken photos, Picasa gets upset. I was going to ruche the ribbon like the model, but I liked it plain. I like the knotted ribbon, too. Amazing ideas can come from impatience and laziness. I liked the plain finish so much that I didn’t bother to cover the slice I put into it with a seam ripper. I’m learning to be wabi sabi about my stitching. Sort of. You can see where the slice was, but I’m not helping you find it. 😀

Hardanger Poinsettia by Carole Rodgers for Cross Stitch & Country Crafts, April 1994. This was stitched on 32-ct Picture this Plus Phoenix linen. The flash was really bright on this. The red is darker. The splotch is pink, which I really like. That only took eighteen years.

He’s a Flake by Little House Needlework. I stitched twins. One for an exchange partner, one for myself, because I lurve him. They were stitched on 32-count linen (I think Rue Green) with the recommended colors, except the red. I don’t remember what I used. It was less brick-y, but not really bright.

Christmas Beer, front and back. This is modified from Christmas Cheer by Heart in Hand, as appeared in the JCS Ornament issue, 2001. I removed the year, moved the stars, and used the hearts from a different ornament on that page (I can’t remember the designer offhand. You don’t want me to procrastinate posting this to go check, do you?). The beer stein was modified from a picture of an old design I had saved on my computer. This was stitched on 32-count linen, Rue Green.  I’ve been planning this for forever, too. This ornament has great family sentiment behind it. It’s based on a carol my husband “wrote” while enjoying Christmas cheer. Here are the lyrics:

A McGinty Carol

Christmas cheer
For Christmas beer
Christmas is
Our time of year!

{You’re welcome. 😉 }

I’m thrilled I finished two ornaments that have been on the back burner for so many years. You know how it is: so many ideas, so little time. And so many distractions.  Nod, nod

Happy Stitching, and all the best in 2013.

November at the Shores, pt. 17

I’m stunned that it’s been two months since I updated the blog. I’ve been stitching away. No lie. For instance, I finished block 4 of Shores of Hawk Run Hollow in early November.

I have one more block to go. I planned to finish this year, but I’ve been bitten by the Christmas stitching and crafting bug. This will likely be my last update of Shores for the year. It doesn’t help that the final block to stitch is the dense memorial block. Too easy to procrastinate. And then there’s my indecision about a border. Should I, shouldn’t I? Will I, won’t I? What should it be? Do I have enough fabric to frame if I do stitch a border? See? It’s the indecision, not the distractions that are keeping me from finishing. Uh-huh. That’s it.

Here’s the current state of the WIP:

I’ve finished two ornaments. They’re identical. I stitched one for an exchange that I loved so much, I stitched an identical one for myself. I have to wait for the opening day to post it (Very soon, I hope!). I also stitched another ornament, but I’m not done finishing it. I need to decide on a trim. I had another, not Christmas-y, small finish, Shakespeare’s Peddler’s God Bless Those. I bought the kit as a birthday present for myself from The Silver Needle. As soon as it arrived, all others stitching came to a halt. I had to stitch it immediately. Now I need to finish it. I’m heading to craft stores in search of many needful supplies, and will hopefully find a trim I love. That will leave the question of whether to finish it as a pillow or a pinkeep. And, now I see I should have checked Wasatch Needlecraft, as it’s on sale there. sigh

See? I’ve been busy stitching and neglecting my updates. I hope you’re enjoying your holiday season.

Happy Stitching! 🙂