Thursday, March 14, 2024

long time no see

I've been stitching a ton, just not posting! At the beginning of the year I had some goals for my projects left over from 2023, plus new starts I'd planned to make. Here's the lists:

- Chinese Garden Mandala (Chatelaine) - finish in 2024
- Dragons of Sumatra (Ink Circles) - finish in Q1
- Magic Potions Temperature SAL (Teeny Weeny X Stitch) - finish in 2024
- Mushroom & Fern Mandala (Chatelaine) - finish in Q1
- Rosarium (Chatelaine) - ???
- Violet Patch Mandala (Chatelaine) - ???

- Amethyste Band Sampler (iStitch Designs) - finish in 2024
- Snowy Winter (Owlforest) - finish in Q1
- Wisteria (Nora Corbett) - finish in Q1

Things are not QUITE on track but I've done a lot! Dragons of Sumatra was a finish in February:

I didn't start Snowy Winter until after Dragons of Sumatra was done. My intent for the four Owlforest seasons was to have three full months to work on each (thus finishing them all in one year) so I might aim for Winter to be done by the end of April and carry on with three months each from there. I've already gotten quite a bit done here:

And yes, I went with hand dyed fabric because eff boring colors and skimpy kit fabrics. (I love Owlforest but their kit fabrics are SO stingy, less than 2 inches on each side.) This is Aether by Chromatic Alchemy, and it's a pretty ice blue with beige smudges. Even prettier in person!

Finally, the BIG BOY - Mushroom and Fern Mandala! I'm 100% done with the stitching as of March 13 so now it's time for beads! I'm super excited, this is the first "big" Chatelaine that I've gotten to this point and I can't wait for it to be finished! Previous finishes like Spring Knotgarden and Octopus Treasure Cave are on the smaller side for a Chat mandala, but I have to say that Mushroom is a lot less dense than Chinese Garden. Even though Mushroom is like 60 stitches bigger in both directions, I'm pretty sure Chinese Garden has a LOT more stitching in total.

Anyway. Here is the center beading in progress! The center pond has been done since the very beginning, but now there's gold beads in the meadow (in place of french knots in metallic gold because no) and the start of the blue corners and triangle borders. Exciting stuff!

Also I couched every single one of those little spiral ferns around the center, each of which had 30-50 attachment points to the fabric, so you're GOING TO look at them:

Thank you. :3

Thursday, January 18, 2024

progress and such :)

So far, so good! 2024 is off to a reasonable start as far as stitching goes.

I got started on Wisteria by Nora Corbett (aka Mirabilia) and finished her wing and started a tiny bit of her body and dress. I changed the colors on the dress because I can't leave anything alone they weren't anything like the actual color of wisteria. Honestly, nothing about this pattern makes me think of wisteria - the dress is too blue, the flowers are the wrong shape - but I'll change what I can and be upset about deal with the rest.

I think I did an okay job of picking colors to match the wisteria we have in the backyard. (Not currently flowering, this is an old picture!)

I also picked up Chinese Garden Mandala again and worked on the many layers of border around the bottom half of the piece.

It's actually pretty exciting to get a start on the swirly stuff on the left because once that border is done, it's on to the outermost motifs. Certainly nowhere near a finish but starting to get a little whiff of it on the breeze if I let myself daydream a bit. :p

And then there's Mushroom and Fern Mandala and the long list of fussy bits to finish!

It doesn't look like much since the last time I posted but there's more of the leaf garland, another blue triangle in the center area, and I finally decided to suck it up and just stitch those horrible quarter stitch hell corners. They don't look good (same as the leaf garland) but at least they're out of the way. Mostly. I had to leave the two sides at the very bottom unfinished because they're too close to the qsnap edge for me to get the needle in for quarter stitches without a struggle. I'll finish those the next time I reposition.

I've also done the couched scrolly ferns in the upper right mushroom panel, but those were added after I took this picture. Oops.

I still need to add the two (or maybe four if I'm feeling crazy) over-one snails that are sitting on the leaf garland, but I have to fix up the colors first. I don't really like the dark red body of the snail, especially since it's very similar to the shell color. I know red snails are real, but I want more contrast since they're so small compared to the rest of the design.

And the updated list so far:

 
Getting a little excited to move the qsnap on this one but gotta get those snails done first!

Wednesday, January 03, 2024

new year, new goals!

 ...aka time to make more goals that I will proceed to completely forget/ignore. :p

Well, hopefully not because I have a few big projects close to a finish and I'd like to get them done sooner rather than later! 

So, my projects left over from last year and my goals for 2024 are:

- Chinese Garden Mandala (Chatelaine) - finish in 2024
- Dragons of Sumatra (Ink Circles) - finish in Q1
- Magic Potions Temperature SAL (Teeny Weeny X Stitch) - finish in 2024
- Mushroom & Fern Mandala (Chatelaine) - finish in Q1
- Rosarium (Chatelaine) - ???
- Violet Patch Mandala (Chatelaine) - ???

(My single remaining HAED can eff off yet again, haha.)

I'll definitely work on Rosarium and Violet Patch (been itching to get back to them, honestly) but I haven't decided which will be the main focus once I finish Mushroom & Fern and Chinese Garden. Probably Violet Patch as it's smaller and less dense? Not sure though. 

A few progress pics so this post isn't totally boring. :)

 
 

 

As you can see, I got REAL far on the temperature SAL... Well, whatever, at least I have an entire year's worth of data already so I can just stitch it whenever. :3

And then there are new starts and their goals:

- Amethyste Band Sampler (iStitch Designs) - finish in 2024
- Snowy Winter (Owlforest) - finish in Q1
- Wisteria (Nora Corbett) - finish in Q1

No pictures yet. They're either barely started or not started at all.

I plan to start more stuff throughout the year, of course, but I'd like to get the Q1 finishes done first before throwing anything else into the mix. I'm a single digit WIP count kind of girl. :p

Snowy Winter is part of a set of four seasons, and I'd like to stitch one in each season, or I guess one in each quarter since a month or so of winter has already passed. I haven't decided yet if I want to use the kit fabrics or if I'll substitute something from stash and/or buy fabric. Owlforest kits are always stingy with fabric margins but Snowy Winter only has ONE inch on two of the sides! Plus it's 28 count fabric and a bland neutral color where white is barely visible against the background. I'd like some nice colorful solids in Belfast instead.

I guess I've already decided but sometimes I like to pretend I'll actually use the fabric that comes with a kit! What else am I going to do with four odd sized pieces of neutral Cashel? (Sell it, that's what.)

So that's the plan. For now, at least! I also have some nebulous goals for reading, gaming (aka finish BG3, holy hell that game is LONG), and even using up my massive stash of tea, but the basic idea is USE WHAT YOU HAVE. Easy enough. :)

Wednesday, December 20, 2023

Mushroom and Fern progress!

After finishing Peach Cranes, I got back to work on Mushroom and Fern Mandala. It won't be done by the end of the year, but I think it will get pretty close! Here's a picture of the section I'm working on:

It looks the same as last time, but I swear there's progress! There's so many little fiddly bits that need to be completed, and each one is pretty small. In fact, after a couple of days I made a list of all the missing parts, just to have some sense of accomplishment as I check things off.

This makes it feel a lot more manageable, though it's also depressing to see how long the list is, haha. And this doesn't even include beads...

The hardest parts will be the couched ferns around the center (many many MANY points of attachment), the over one snail on the leaf garland (bad colors, I need to rechart it), and the quarter stitch hell corners (easy enough to do whatever you want once, but to do all four exactly the same? good luck!) so... yeah. Not looking forward to any of those.

Well, whatever. I'll get through it and I'll be happy even if it's annoying because this project is gorgeous and the work is well worth it!

Saturday, December 09, 2023

Peach Cranes - finish!

I finished Peach Cranes by Owlforest Embroidery back on November 30 and now I'm finally sitting down to post about it. :)

The model was stitched on a slightly greenish brown (khaki, I guess?) and I originally considered a similar color, plus a few others:

The fabric I used is A Very Peri Winter from Fiberlicious (Belfast linen). This fabric is somewhere between the purple and blue (more purple than it appears here, but of course the photo isn't picking that up correctly!) and I think it was the perfect choice.

Once I got past the cranes and the satin stitch flowers surrounding them, I was kind of over this pattern. The rest of the bands are less interesting and I seriously considered leaving off the very bottom band which doesn't look like anything at all. I guess it's flowers but... nah.

I think it would look better with all the flower/leaf bands removed, honestly. Like this:

I think this takes it from nice to WOW. The mountains, cranes, and flowers are what drew me to this pattern in the first place and I love having those as the only focus.

Not saying this isn't a nice pattern or I don't like it, but it would be a top ten favorite for me without the narrow bands. I might go back and frog them all out later. Not sure what to do about the vine between the mountains and the peach trees, though. Probably just leave it alone?

Some day I will stop messing with every pattern I stitch. (Just kidding, I won't.)

Thursday, November 16, 2023

Night - finish!

I thought the day would never come. Night was my first large WIP back when I was in high school and it is now... a number of years later. Heh.

This isn't the original one from back in the day - that one was started on fabric that was too small and I discarded it ages ago. This one was started around October 2017, put aside for a long time, then restarted (like completely restarted, ripping out all of 2017's stitching) in February 2020. So... a bit less than four years to finish, haha. Listen, I finished like 50 other projects (not an exaggeration!) in those four years, so I think I did pretty well. :p

Anyway, less blabbing, more pictures, starting with an awful overall pic:

The colors are better in all the closeups.

Tried to get an angled picture to show the blending filament but I don't think it shows up well. I didn't blend it with the DMC, but topstitched it at the end as a half stitch over top of the completed crosses. That keeps it from tangling weirdly and also helps keep all the sparkle on top where you can see it!

I used rose gold size 15 beads instead of the recommended yellow size 11 MH beads for a more delicate look. All but one of the yellow-tipped pink flowers had beads charted around them, so I added beads around the one that didn't to make it match the rest.

I freaking LOVE the colors in the dress. Kind of wish the backstitch on the cream flowers was just a bit darker to match more with the contrast of the pink flower backstitch.

I redid all the satin stitch blocks in all four corners (and some of the eyelets I messed up while taking them out) but I'm still not happy with them. I'll just have to live with it.

 
Barf.
 
Also barf, this really out of place angular leaf among all the natural-looking ones.


By the time I realized how weird it looked, I was in too deep to change it. I mean, I could always go back and change it later, we all know this won't be framed any time soon...
 
I should probably change everything that's bugging me before I put away all my leftover threads... 
 
But this is definitely going in the finish pile for now and I'm taking a well deserved break from blended threads, double highlighting (yellow to mark what needs doing, then blue once it's done to turn it green), fighting with FOUR thread cards that love to tangle, etc etc. Back to something EASY!

For at least a couple of days, anyway. :p

Tuesday, November 07, 2023

Night - so close!

Cross stitching is done and the end is in sight!

Well, sort of. I didn't do any of the blending filament yet, but I like to stitch that on top of the completed crosses instead of blending it in with them. More sparkle that way. :) I may also redo some of the satin stitch blocks because the eyelets pulled them out of square a bit. It's not super obvious from the picture but it's obvious (to me!) in real life and I don't think I can live with it.

The joys of perfectionism. :p

A couple of closer shots:


Model photos do NOT do this pattern justice. Look how pretty the colors are! All the model photos are dark and skewed toward yellows, but the real thing has such a pretty blue border and lots of soft colors in the dress. Even the grass and flowers look so much nicer.

These pictures are a couple days old... I'm already done with backstitching the dress and about half of the grass. Next post on this one will be a finish! :)