Sunday, April 22, 2012

IHSW - Spring Knotgarden

I haven't worked on anything but Spring Knotgarden since my last post... which really means I didn't do anything all week, and this has all appeared over the weekend.  It was a bad stitching week for me but I'm glad the weekend allowed for some good progress.  Even if I spent way too much time playing Diablo 3. :p

Part two continues to be a challenge, so I moved on to part three.  I'm almost half done already, so if I can keep up the pace I'll be done with part three by next weekend.  I don't want to fall into the trap of leaving part two for the bitter end, so I'll be back to that next weekend no matter what.

I guess the problem is all the quarter and three-quarter stitches.  It gets hard to get so many colors into a small space, it feels like the fabric is taking a lot of abuse!  And the back of the fabric is a shameful mess.  It's not usually something I worry about, but I don't want the fabric to be lumpy...

Anyway, here's the glittering beauty!


I really love the blackwork, especially the purple parts because there's some sparkle in there!  The little triangular gardens on top of the rounded ones are super-cute too, with rice stitch in a very lightweight perle silk.  Mmm, have I ever said how much I love Dinky Dyes silk?  It's so soft and smooth, and the regular floss is very thick and covers so well... ♥

Haha, maybe I should make a pile of DD silk and roll in it. :p

Sunday, April 15, 2012

like a snail

Back to normal posts... :)

Spring Knotgarden proceeds at a snail's pace... and a sleepy snail at that.  My goal for the weekend was to finish the top garden, but I didn't quite get there.  Or halfway there.  But any progress is still progress, so I'm not beating myself up over it.

I changed the leaves to a darker color, SNC Camouflage.  The charted color is very similar to the color of the stems (in fact, in all the WIPs I've seen, I can't tell the difference!) and I prefer more contrast.  The leaves are a bit dark, but I think it will work nicely overall.


And now instead of stitching more, I'm off to play World of Warcraft.  No wonder progress is so slow, huh? :p

Friday, April 13, 2012

another bad experience with Silkweaver

Just wanted to share my most recent bad experience with Silkweaver.  It's a long story, so I've made an annotated PDF that was printed directly from my gmail account, showing dates and messages with no alterations except to cover up my address and phone number.

You can find the PDF here:
http://rahenna.com/temp/silkweaver.pdf
(sorry, this link no longer works, but if you check the comments you'll get the idea)

Please feel free to link to this post, and share with your stitching friends!

My intent here is not to be a bully, but to show that Silkweaver is still not dyeing products that match the swatches on their website, and to highlight the consistently poor customer service.

Other Silkweaver stories from me include:

1.  The FOTM fabric I received that had dark grease stains on it (think dirty car parts!).  It took over a month to get a replacement sent because the first person I spoke to said I should keep the dirty fabric (gee, thanks) but others were expecting me to return the fabric... at my expense!  After several phone calls, I finally got the replacement, and kept the dirty fabric.

2.  A large order I made last summer when I had a 30% off coupon.  It took about a month for half of the fabrics to be sent, and there was no documentation in the package AT ALL, so I had no idea what the status of the remaining fabrics was.  This also took mutiple phone calls to resolve, and several weeks passed after the items were "shipped" before they actually arrived in my mailbox.

Needless to say, I will not be ordering again... three HUGE strikes and you're out, Silky.

Friday, April 06, 2012

WIPocalypse #4 ~ baby sampler & Octopus!

It seems like I just did a WIPocalypse post, but I think that's because I was so LATE last time. :p  I've been cruising right along on my projects, and for once I'm sticking to my goals for the month.  We'll see how long that lasts!

First up, I finished the baby sampler for my nephew!  There's text too, but I didn't take a picture to keep things a little bit private. :)  This is a really cute pattern called Oh Baby by Lizzie Kate.  It includes about 15 different motifs and an alphabet, and you just mix and match them to make a customized sampler.  I love having lots of options, and I was able to pick out four of the more boy-like motifs for the sampler.


And I finished part two of Octopus Treasure Cave!  I still have to bead three corners for part one, but I think I'll save that for later and go back to Spring Knotgarden for a bit.

I took some pictures outside, but the camera was being stupid and didn't show a preview on the screen for some reason, so this one came out weird.  The fabric looks good so I'm posting it anyway. :p


And here's a view of everything so far.  Even though I didn't use a flash, it's still kind of washed out.  It was bright outside today!


And finally, this is all of part two.  The jellyfish on the right is still my favorite!


Hope everyone else made some good progress in the last month too! :)

Sunday, April 01, 2012

April goals & Chatelaine progress!

Whoops, I keep forgettting to post goals!  Oh well, I guess it's okay... just start over again. :)

Goals for April:
- finish my nephew's birth sampler
- finish parts 1 and 2 of Octopus Treasure Cave
- finish part 2 of Spring Knotgarden

And here are some pictures!  I really wish I could capture the true look of these pieces with my camera, but the colors are always terrible and nothing looks right.  I know everyone says this, but you really MUST see these in person to know what they truly look like!  I guess that's how I managed to avoid the Chatelaine bug for so long, because even the most beautiful photos aren't quite enough.

But I tried anyway!  Here we go. :)

Spring Knotgarden:

 Octopus Treasure Cave:

There are two more jellyfish for part two of OTC, and the rest of the beading on the outside of the border for part one.  I'm pretty sure part one will take a LOT longer than part two... but it's amazingly shiny, so I don't mind spending the time!

...I took a scan, which shows the colors more accurately, but it's blurry because my scanner doesn't like things that aren't perfectly flat.  And there's lots of beads making this not perfectly flat!


Next time I'll have a picture of the birth sampler... should be finished soon as it's quite small, but cute!