Tuesday, December 30, 2014

last finish of the year!

Probably, haha. I don't think there's any chance of finishing something else!

After a couple of nights of Good Eats on Netflix (including an episode about popovers that made me get up and make popovers right that second! man I love popovers), I finished A Day at the Beach! Finally... poor thing had been lingering forever and it was sooo easy! I did at least half of the design in those two stitching/watching sessions.


It's the usual terrible picture, but at least I was able to color correct it so it's sort of okay. The fabric is more grey than blue, but I had to overcompensate a bit to get the floss colors correct.

As always, I turned my nose up at the cheap plastic pearls in the kit and attached some real ones! It's hard to tell in the picture but they have a nice glow that looks great with the beads.

It feels so nice to be in single-digit WIP territory again! Yes, I know I've been at 9 for a while, and this brings me down to 8, but... I'm starting Chinese Garden on January 1st so that'll bump it back up again. Except it won't! Ahhh, single-digit WIP land has been a dream of mine for a while. :)

Tuesday, December 23, 2014

stitchy plans for 2015!

Well, let's not talk about how I miserably failed my grand stitching plans for this year! In my defense, I was VERY sick for about three months, and after I started feeling better, I got verrry caught up in an old fandom of mine that ate up most of my free time in the second half of the year. (And it's not going to get any better in the new year, haha.)

But! I'm going to make some not-grand plans for 2015. :)

Current WIPs I want to finish next year:

- A Day at the Beach (Sweetheart Tree)
- Angel Procession (Wentzler)
- Beaded Dragonfly Tile (Chatelaine)
- Floral Fifteen (Just Nan)
- Gypsy Mermaid (Mirabilia)

These are all about half done, and the STree and JNan charts are relatively small. I find Mirabilia charts easy to stitch once I get in the groove, so the real challenges will be the Chatelaine and the Wentzler. I stalled out on the Chatelaine because I had trouble fitting the beads on 32ct (yes, even though they're delicas!) so I'll have to let that go for now and concentrate on the stitching.

And poor Angel Procession has been a WIP for so long, it's old enough to vote. :(  It's time for me to give it the love and respect it deserves. I think I'll concentrate on clearing out the other four WIPs first to get the ego boost of finishing a few things, and then work on AP as my focus piece.

How about those other WIPs?

- Air ACEO - Butcher (HAED)
- Fatum (Passione Ricamo)
- Night (Wentzler)
- Transcendence - Sessler (HAED)

Well. Transcendence for sure will NOT see a finish, even if I spend all year working on it! Air ACEO is relatively small so maybe I can aim for half? Night is barely started, though it is "small" for a full-sized Wentzler chart, and it's a special one to me because I originally started it ages ago when I was still in high school. I finished most of the figure but I ended up tossing my WIP because the linen was too small to comfortably fit the border. (That was a HARD decision to make!)

Fatum is relatively simple in comparison to all the others and is the one most likely to reach a finish. I stalled out when I saw the text on the bottom of the chart. I absolutely hate text on charts, I feel that it's very cheesy. I've seen it completed without the text but the border isn't perfect if you leave it off, so I'm conflicted about that... that's why I stalled out on it. Sigh.

Let's talk about new starts. :)

I also joined the A New Stitchy Start SAL, which is all about starting a big project on January 1st! I chose Chinese Garden by Chatelaine since I've had the full kit since the chart was a class project! It's such a shame for that to be sitting and waiting for so long, so I'm NOT waiting anymore!

awwww yeaaaaaah

For other projects, I want to work from my bucket list instead of just doing random things, either to fit in with a SAL or to otherwise be part of a group. I want to focus on my favorite charts and make some progress on the ones that are extra special to me. I'll probably pick a Mirabilia and a Renato Parolin design from the list early on in the year,

Probably one of these Miras...


And these are my two bucket list Parolins, though I should probably add Christmas to that list too!


I know that was a super boring wall o' text type post, but I wanted to get it all out there before my attention wandered again!

Wednesday, December 17, 2014

I made the thing!

Bless you, no-sew cube. You make any crappy finish look great.

Sorry, only one picture of this thing because it doesn't look good head-on... it's kind of boring to look at it that way. But looking at it from the side a bit is pretty nice!



Well, at least I have a present for ONE person this Christmas. I'll be giving this to my MIL on Friday or Saturday since she'll be leaving on a trip before Christmas and I want to make sure she has it before then.

I might switch out the bow on top for something else... I got frustrated and just slapped a premade bow on it when I couldn't get the ribbon to cooperate with me. Ahaha. It does make it look like a gift box, though, so I'll probably leave it. Plus, laziness.

Monday, December 15, 2014

small giveaway!

Kind of literally as these are three of the smalls I recently completed. :)  I'm giving away all three charts to the same person (sorry, don't want to deal with mailing multiple packages at this time) so if you like these, please enter!

My goal is to give away a lot of the charts I complete, but I haven't stitched a lot this year, so I haven't done a lot of giveaways... BUT I finally have these three!


The three charts are:
  1. Ink Circles - Four de Lys
  2. Brooke's Books - Fiona the Fay
  3. Elizabeth's Designs - Dragonfly II
These are just charts - no charms, fabric, floss, or anything else. :p  If you check my list of finishes, you can see what each one will look like when completed.

If you'd like to enter the giveaway, please:
  1. Be a follower of this blog. (New followers are welcome too!)
  2. Comment below, clearly stating that you want to enter.
  3. Check back on December 31 to see if you've won!
Well, that's it! I'll ship anywhere in the world, so anyone can enter! (If you're outside the US, the package will not have any sort of tracking, it will be sent as regular mail and may take a long time to arrive... but hey, it's free!)

Friday, December 12, 2014

Stitch from Stash - December report!

aka the final stashinating of 2014. :)

New starts from stash:
- Christmas Ornaments (Nora Corbett)

Though it doesn't really count since I also purchased it with this month's budget. I needed a small and elegant pattern for my MIL's Christmas gift and at $2 for the PDF download, it was perfect!

WIPs or UFOs worked on:
- none, I've been slacking on stitching for a while :p

Amount spent:
I said I wasn't going to spend much of my remaining $129.48 budget (includes the $50 year end bonus) buuuut... okay, don't hate me, but I'm fortunate enough to have not just one, but TWO LNS. (LNSes? I don't know, haha.) They're 3 Stitches and ABC Stitch Therapy, which are oddly located within walking distance of each other, which I think is stupid and not a coincidence, but I'm not here to complain about that...

ABC is having an in-store only special until the end of the year - 30% off everything, plus some other items at 40% off. So this happened:

Mermaid Verde (Nora) & the Just Nan ABC exclusive:

40% off fabric! Got a FH of lavender Belfast for only $22.
I'll use it for Chatelaine's Sparkling Peacocks!

40% off these cute Shephard's Bush kits that my wife wanted. :3

And this amazing Crossed Wing fabric (Autumn Oak) because... well, LOOK AT IT.
And this isn't even a good picture.

Ahem. So between that and the two PDF charts I bought earlier this month, I spent $127.14 total, leaving me with about two bucks for the rest of the year. Haha. And I DID actually put back a bunch of things I'd picked up at ABC, including making some changes to my order right at the register to make sure I stayed within the budget and bonus!

Since I'm going to be co-admin of Stitch From Stash next year, I thought it would be mighty hypocritical if I failed out of this year's challenge at the last minute. :p

And so, I feel like SFS has really made a difference for me this year! Not just for me, but for my wife as well... I did end up spending ALL of my budget, but I STUCK TO A BUDGET. In the past, I'd just go nutty and get whatever I wanted without thinking deeply about it. This year, I had to make careful choices about what I was buying, watch for sales, and try to save up my budgeted amounts from month to month.

I know this is basic stuff for many people, and that with $25 a month, that's still $300 a year for stash, which is more than a lot of stitchers have for hobby money. But, er, in the past, my wife and I could blow $300 a MONTH between the two of us (yarn's not cheap either! if you get the good stuff, anyway, haha), so I'm really happy with the changes I've made. We're very fortunate to have low expenses and a lot of "extra" cash - or at least we DID until I got sick and couldn't work for a while. I'm still not working, but maybe that will change in the new year as well. :)

Well, this is getting pretty long so I'm going to stop now... :)

Thursday, December 11, 2014

finally finished!

Woohoo! I finished the Nora Corbett ornaments and I even picked up the supplies I'll need to make it into a no-sew cube so I can give it to my MIL for Christmas. :)


I actually finished this up at knit group tonight! And yes, I was good and actually did some knitting after this too. I've been better about actually KNITTING at knit group this year instead of just dragging a cross stitch along and doing my own thing. :p

Ahhh, what should I work on next? One of my WIPs for sure... I wonder if I can squeeze in another finish this year. Maybe not, with all the fandom stuff I've been caught up in lately...

Tuesday, December 09, 2014

boring admin-y post :)

Blah, I transferred my blog from my old gmail address to my personal email, and of course it didn't transfer the list of blogs I'm following!

So if it looks like I've suddenly unfollowed you, I promise that was NOT my intent! I'm going to go back through and start refollowing everyone, but that's a project for tomorrow, when I'm not half asleep.

Thing is, I think my old email address is still showing up as a follower, so maybe everyone will end up with an extra follower instead.

Oh well, it had to be done, I was sooooo tired of having to sign into an account I neverrrr use just so I could read the blogs I'm following! I guess this will help me clean up the list and limit it to bloggers who are currently active... though I'll be sad about missing older blogs that had good stuff in them!

Hmm, to make this less boring, here's a nice picture of threads. :p