Atlantis - finished!

Here's another belated finish! Atlantis by Owlforest Embroidery was completed back on November 28, but I didn't make time to take pictures until today.

This project is only available as a kit, so it's stitched with the kitted fabric and threads, with a few small exceptions when I felt like the same color was being used too much in one area. I also used a pale blue/purple/white DMC variegated thread in place of some of the almost-white to give it some variety.

Atlantis actually comes as three separate kits (seahorses, jellyfish, and octopus), or you can get one larger combined kit. This is the full combined kit.

And now the detailed pictures:

As always, the colors are better in real life, but hopefully the cuteness of this project comes through despite my lack of photography skills! The only part I didn't like was working near the top and bottom, as Owlforest cuts their fabric with a relatively small margin (about 2 inches, instead of the 3 inches that I prefer). It gets tough to reach those areas when the qsnap is almost covering them.

Next post will be yet another finish, but it's one I finished TODAY instead of a month ago! I guess I'll post about it tomorrow. :p

Forests of Sumatra - post #4 - finished!

I've really been slacking on posting here - I finished Forests of Sumarta back on November 9 but didn't get around to taking some finish pictures until today. As always, the pictures don't do it justice, and the colors are much nicer in real life. The fabric is greener and more mottled, but it looks washed out in the picture. Same for the threads. I wish I was better at either taking photos that are more accurate to begin with, or at editing after the fact.

Oh well, at least I know it's pretty!

This is stitched almost exactly as charted. The only change I made was using 40ct linen (PTP Sterling, the recommended color) instead of 36ct. I much prefer the coverage when stitching with one thread. It also makes for a smaller finish which I find a little more charming. Or maybe it's just more practical considering the lack of wall space in my stitchy hallway...

WIPocalypse 2020 - October check in

Oops, WIPocalypse has gotten away from me yet again! It's been three months since my last post. It's not that I forget about the SAL (I always read all the posts!) but I don't make the time to pull out all my projects to update progress photos.

Here's my progress since July:

Atlantis (Owlforest Embroidery) is almost filled in on the left side of the design. The seaweed at the far left is the edge. So close!

Chinese Garden Mandala (Chatelaine) is slow going but fun to work on. I'm filling in the arches with bricks before doing the scenes inside of them. Also made a tiny start on one of the seasonal scenes in the corners, but just the border there too.

Finery of Nature (Dimensions) hasn't had any progress in a while. There's only couching, cording, and french knots left, there's just... a lot of couching. Like a LOT. Kind of have to be in the mood for that...

Forests of Sumatra (Ink Circles) was a new start in August. I'm almost finished! There's just some stitching along the top, and then a border band under the trees at the bottom.

Fox (Riolis) was also a new start in August. The kit threads have some wool in them, which creates a slightly fuzzy matte effect that's a perfect fit for the subject. I swapped out the 14ct aida for Belfast linen, and I'm stitching with one thread instead of two. There's a lot of blended colors, so I handle that by putting the dark color on the bottom leg, and the light color on top.

Mushroom and Fern Mandala (Chatelaine) is also slow, mainly because it's huuuuge. Finally finished most of the second big arch!

Night (Teresa Wentzler) has seen a lot of action since the last time I posted about it! I'm still working on the massive border but it's growing steadily. Maybe some day I'll get to the lady. :p

This month's question:
How do you choose what you’re going to stitch on next?

Well, I look at my stack of WIPs and pick up the one I feel like working on. That's it! If I'm going to start something new, I usually check my bucket list and pick something from there. Other times, I dig though the patterns I've already matched with fabric and go with whatever stands out to me. I'm pretty unstructured and act on my whims at the moment, basically. :)

Forests of Sumatra - post #3

Another update on Forests of Sumatra! I'm working my way across the main motifs on the bottom and I have one more full tree left, plus a half triangle to the right of it. It should fill the blank space in the bottom right corner of this picture:

This picture shows the entire main part of the design... or rather, where it will fit, since I'm not done yet! There's also borders along the entire top and bottom, but my qsnap isn't large enough for me to fit those in while working on the center. I'll reposition and add those after I finish the middle.

I'm guessing that I'm solidly at the halfway point now. I've used up two skeins of the Gloriana Sumatra thread and just started on the third. I bought five total for this design and it's looking like I'll end up using all of them, though maybe not too much of the fifth skein. No worries there, though, it's an awesome color and I'll definitely make good use of it somewhere else!

Speaking of colors, the photo doesn't show the colors too well. The fabric is 40ct PTP Sterling, which is definitely green and nothing like the color of sterling silver, but that's fine with me since green is the best color anyway. :)

And a little somewhat unrelated ramble for today: I'm a little disappointed in my lack of finishes this year. I feel like I've been stitching quite a bit this year (haven't we all haha) and while I'm making progress, nothing is getting DONE. I guess it doesn't help that all of my projects are big and/or complex but it's still kind of discouraging. Even if I really pushed myself, I think I could only finish three of my current WIPs this year - Forests of Sumatra (half done, simple but large), Finery of Nature (Dimensions kit, tons of couching, cording, and french knots left), and Fox by Riolis (maybe half done, lots of blended colors demanding a bit of extra attention).

The leftovers are two Chatelaines, one Teresa Wentzler, and three HAED. Yeah. I love them all but it's a bit like stitching into the void, I see lots of progress but there's just so much left to do.

I mean... finishing isn't really the important part of stitching. I know that. But I'm the kind of person who really likes the satisfaction of a finish, and I refuse to let my WIP count hit the double digits ever again - aka no new starts until I finish something. Which is fine, because I genuinely like all my current WIPs. (Uh, except for the one that's been placed in permanent time out. Shhh...)

I guess the only solution is to stitch faster...

Mushroom and Fern Mandala - post #9

 Quick update with a bad pic of Mushroom and Fern Mandala. :p

I ended up buying the Lowery "large frame adapter" to hold the qsnap, but it's really meant for scroll frames. It can just baaaaarely hold this 20 inch square qsnap, and the clamp at the top is seriously about to fall off at the slightest bump. For now, it works, but I'm always worried that it's going to pop off.

Seriously, this is how it's hanging on for dear life on the back.

If the mega washer didn't exist to help it hang on, this wouldn't work at all. I'm thinking I'll send a picture of this contraption to my dad and ask him to get me a longer piece of wood. He's been friends with the guys at the local lumberyard for ages and I'm sure they'll be able to figure it out from a picture. The adapter is a super simple thing, especially the long piece of wood. I mean, it's literally just a long piece of wood with a groove down the middle and three holes at the bottom for hardware...

Japanese Hiragana Sampler - start & finish

Here's a small sampler that I started and finished so quickly I didn't bother taking any progress pictures for the blog! This is Japanese Hiragana Sampler by Modern Folk Embroidery. It's stitched on Daybreak Belfast from Crafty Kitten with Hydrangea silk thread from Missus Sedas.

Honestly I'm not too happy with this project but I pushed through to finish it over the course of a week because it was small and I liked the novelty of seeing actual Japanese in a cross stitch pattern. I've been studying and using Japanese since I was a teen, and my wife and I do amateur game translation for fun (and aggravation haha) in our free time.

This is basically the Japanese "alphabet" (syllabary, really) written in hiragana, the basic writing system used for native Japanese words and word endings, etc. It goes from right to left, top to bottom, so the order is あいうえおかきくけこ and so on. I would explain how they're organized but it's probably better to let Wikipedia do it for me. :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiragana

Some of the characters in the sampler were oddly shaped or sized, so I fixed them up on the fly. Most were quite nicely charted, though, especially considering that each has been fit into an 8x8 space! There are also some issues with uneven spacing between columns that I adjusted the best I could. I would have liked a more interesting border as well.

I was worried about the look of the thread while stitching, too. I don't know if it's intended to be this way, but the color change isn't smooth and even. Instead, it's kind of mottled. The weirdest thing is that if I cut a length of six strands and separate it, each one is spotted in a slightly different way. It creates a tweeded effect when stitching instead of a smooth transition from one color to another.

I tried to take a close up picture, but I think it's hard to see. It's fairly apparent in person, but I wouldn't say it's bad. It's just not what I expected, so I'm a little disappointed.

Overall I'm still happy that I stitched this project because it's so unique and connected to something that's been an interest of mine for many years. There don't seem to be many Japanese cross stitch designers (Maruoka Kyoko has some great designs on Creative Poppy!) and even when I look at Japanese stitching blogs and shops, all I see are imported designs. Gotta do more searching...

Fox by Riolis - post #4

I know I said I'd have a new start to show, but that turned out to be a bust. I started Greek Gods and Goddesses by Cloudsfactory, but after completing a few of the figures, I didn't like it. The color choices in some areas aren't a great match for the mockup and it just doesn't look good in my opinion. I also regret starting it on light mocha Belfast instead of a light blue. Maybe I'll try restarting on a different fabric eventually, but I dunno. Cutesy stuff like this isn't really my thing.

Well, I got this far before I gave it away to a stitchy friend:

There was another new start (and finish!) after that, but I need to take a picture under decent lighting before I can show it off.

Instead, let me show some progress on the Riolis fox kit. I've finished the fox's head, and added lots of the background in the upper half too. Seriously adorable. :)

I'll probably keep going for a while since I'm enjoying the pops of color in the leaves. The rest of the background is a little bland and maybe blends too much with my fabric, but it's fairly hard to see in the cover photo too, so it's probably just as intended.

Forests of Sumatra - post #2

 Oops, too busy stitching, not enough time for posting. :)

Forests of Sumatra got lots of love during the FB stitching game! It was a new start for me and ended up being about 40% done after two weeks. I normally don't track stitches, but since the game required counting and the back of the pattern says how many stitches are in it, I had to check the math. :)

I know this is nuts but our team was trying really hard to win, so I pushed myself to stitch as much as possible. I wouldn't normally spend this much time stitching on a daily basis. Honestly I was feeling a little burned out and annoyed toward the end, haha...

I've put Forests aside for now to give my eyes a short break from 40 count. I absolutely love this pattern, though, and I know I'll be back to it soon enough! For now, I'm working on a new start (yes, again) and I'll show that one next time. :)

Forests of Sumatra - post #1

I started a new project on Thursday night in preparation for a stitching game on FB. The game requires players to count their stitches, and I wanted a project that would be good for speed. For me, that means one color and a single strand of thread (no fussing over twisted stitches), so it was the perfect excuse to start Forests of Sumatra by Ink Circles!

I'm using the recommended thread (Gloriana Sumatra) and fabric (PTP Sterling), only I'm using 40ct instead of 36ct for better coverage with one strand.

I did a small, uncounted start on Thursday night (about 150 stitches, maybe?) and then proceeded to add 2900 more stitches from Friday to Sunday. :)

I started in the middle, as usual. The completed triangle in my picture is the one right in the middle of the full design. Here's the model picture:

The thread is a bit darker and leans more blue than the model shows. Honestly, it's more blue than green, but that doesn't take away from the design at all. It suggests that kind of blue-green that evergreen trees tend to have. And anyway, the thread is pretty much all my favorite colors rolled into one, so I'm happy with it no matter what. :3

a silk experiment

Have you ever seen those packages of 50 or more colors of silk on Aliexpress and wondered what that stuff was like? Wonder no more, because I checked it out. :3

Now, keep in mind that this silk is meant for Chinese Suzhou embroidery and so it's optimized for that usage. It's not really meant for cross stitching but hey, we do what we want, right? :)

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I ordered the 200 color set directly from the seller's Taobao shop since I shop on there quite often. The price is lower on Taobao, and since silk weighs almost nothing, it hardly adds anything to the shipping cost of the overall package. On Aliexpress, there's a shipping charge of over $18 to the US. Here's the identical listing on both sites: Taobao (180 yuan or about $26) and Aliexpress ($33.60).

The package contained 200 single strand lengths of silk thread, 20 meters each. That's 4000 meters total for about $30 all told. (Even Taobao charges US state sales tax now, and Alipay charges the credit card transaction fee to the customer.) If you weren't combining shipping with other items, shipping from Taobao to the US starts at 90 yuan (about $13) at the moment, so you'd be up to $43 or so.

DMC from 123 Stitch is 60 cents for 48 meters (8 meters of 6 strands), or 1.25 cents per meter. The silk cost me 0.75 cents per meter. Even buying from Aliexpress and paying $18 for shipping, it comes out to 1.3 cents per meter, comparable to DMC. So yes, you can have silk tastes on a cotton budget!

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Okay, great, that's all sorts of info about the cost, but what about the quality? What is the silk like?

First of all, it's SHINY. It's incredibly shiny in person, especially the lighter colors. White practically glows. The thread is about as thick as DMC so two strands is just right for most applications.

If you're familiar with solid color silk like NPI or variegated silk like Waterlilies, SNC, Gloriana, etc, this Chinese silk is a little different. The brands I mentioned are all spun silks, with a twist that's more like DMC, so in general it all stitches up the same as DMC. The spun silks have some give to them, like cotton does.

These silks from China are filament silks, made from long and continuous strands of silk fiber. Each fiber is incredibly thin, so there's a ton of them in each "single" thread. The silk is "two-ply" (really, two bundles of many, many individual fibers) and those two bundles are lightly twisted together. It's nowhere near as tight a twist as you'd find on a thread like DMC, and it tends to untwist as you work. This can lead to some fuzziness and uneven stitches if you aren't careful. It's very important to let the needle drop and to realign the strands of thread, if you're using more than one.

Even tension with a light touch is absolutely critical to avoid loose stitches or big holes in the fabric. This thread has no give at all, so every little tension error will be immortalized in your project.

Comparing to Eterna Silk, which is also a filament silk, these threads are thinner and lower quality. Eterna has a satisfying heft to it which this silk does not. Eterna is also less splitty and has fewer problems with fuzziness. But Eterna is out of business and their silk is impossible to find now. I've heard that The Silk Mill makes a comparable product, and I even have a small set of their colors, but I haven't tried them for myself yet so I can't say exactly how they compare. YET. :)

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Enough blabbing, how about some pictures? :)

This is Snow (Wee One) by Heart in Hand. I matched the silks to the suggested DMC colors and stitched on a random 28ct evenweave fabric from Silkweaver.

This shot does a pretty good job of showing the shine on the dark blues:

It's hard to capture the shine in a picture but trust me, it's very noticeable in real life, especially on the white silk. If you zoom in, I think you can see the spots where I had a few small tension issues. I consider myself to be a veteran stitcher with good tension, so it's a little embarrassing, but filament silk really is a different beast. And again, you're probably not supposed to cross stitch with this stuff, but I do what I want, okay? :p

Overall, I'm pleased with my purchase and I would recommend giving these silks a try if you're curious about them! They come in a huge variety of colors (up to at least a thousand different shades, if you're so inclined!) and while they are a bit tricky to work with, you get used to it quickly. They would definitely be fun to have on hand for small projects like this, where you can be a little bit flexible with the exact colors you use. :)

Now I really want to find the hefty, higher quality silk that Eterna was made of...

Fox by Riolis - post #3

 Still going on the lovely fox kit from Riolis! I've reached the far right edge, though it's a bit hard to see since it's grey on grey-blue and doesn't have much contrast with the fabric.

The red leaf in the background is a nice pop of color, but I'll have to do the rest of the red background elements after everything around them is already in. That one little leaf has given me a lot of headaches because the red is so fuzzy and stitching anywhere near it picks up the fuzz. Hopefully the red fuzz isn't too visible on the nearby grey stitches...

Fox by Riolis - post #2

My fox has a face! I can't seem to stop stitching. This is four days of progress total. :)

There's more backstitch around the eyes and in other areas, but I want to fill in the rest of the surrounding areas completely before I do more backstitching. So pleased with this project so far!

Fox by Riolis - post #1

I've done more on Chinese Garden Mandala (enough to justify a new progress post, I think!) but I have something a little different today! Over the weekend, I decided to start one of the projects on my new start list for the year! It's simply called Fox, a Riolis kit that uses the wool/acrylic Safil threads.

I replaced the 14 count fabric with smokey pearl Belfast. It's actually a better match for the original fabric than this picture makes it look.

The instructions call for 2 strands of the yarn for most stitches, which is far too thick for my 32ct fabric (and honestly, it wouldn't look good on 14 either as each strand of yarn is equal to 2 DMC strands), so I'm stitching with only one strand. There's a bunch of blended colors in this design, so for those I'm using the darker color for the bottom leg and the lighter color on top. At first I tried separating the yarn since each 'thread' is two strands twisted together, but it loses its integrity without the twist and pulls apart into fuzz. Not recommended. :p

It's looking great so far!

I love the effect that the lightweight yarn gives to the piece. It's very slightly fuzzy with a completely matte look, very different from the shine of cotton. It's also easy to work with, aside from trying to thread the needle. :)

I'll definitely be sticking with this one for a while!

Chinese Garden Mandala - post #5

All the missing threads for my Chinese Garden Mandala arrived before the weekend, so I was able to get in some good stitching time in the areas that needed them. I'm nearly done with the center now (still need to redo the rhodes stitches in the temple and add some backstitch) and I've made a good start on the gates around the center.

As always, the colors are a bit off, but I did find a filter in my phone settings that helps a bit, so you can finally see that the fabric is a light mottled blue.

Nearly complete center:

The entire thing overall! It feels good to have the four gates sketched out and in position. There's still more stitching along the top, but this is the most basic outline. Each one will be filled with a different scene, but I'm going to focus on the repetitive part until I get tired of it. :)

And a closeup of the bricks. I especially love the texture of the large bricks, they feel so nice when you run your finger over them! And the color is great too, giving the impression of old mossy brick.

Still loving this project and I intend to keep going with it for a while! There's still some more work to do on the border between the center and the brick arches, so maybe I'll try to get that done over the next few days.

WIPocalypse 2020 - July check in

Oof, I haven't been keeping up with WIPocalypse properly this year. I did okay for the first few months, then skipped a couple. Well, time to get back at it! I guess I'll post the progress I've made since the last time I mentioned each project under my WIPocalypse tag. :)

Adia the Garden Fairy (Mirabilia) is a finish! I converted her wings to 100% metallic purple. The fabric color on the left is more accurate to reality than the finish photo.

Atlantis (Owlforest Embroidery) has been my focus for the past few days and I've made a lot of progress on the left side of the design. I haven't quite reached the left edge yet, but the large house at the bottom is pretty close.

Chinese Garden Mandala (Chatelaine) got picked up after being a UFO for years! I'd barely started part one, now I'm almost done with parts one and two. Just waiting on some threads before I can really get back into this one.

Finery of Nature (Dimensions) went from about 60% done with the cross stitching to 100% done, with a small start on the massive amount of couching and other specialty stitching. No picture right now. :)

Mushroom and Fern Mandala (Chatelaine) got about a week of attention before heading back into the WIP pile for a time out. I'm having some doubts about the inner leaf garland and I need to figure out how I want to change it, or if it's even worth changing.

Transcendence (HAED) was finally entered into Pattern Keeper and I made a huge amount of progress in just five days! It's an incredible app and very easy to use.

This month's question:

What new charts or designers are catching your eye this year?

For designers, I think my tastes are pretty similar to past years, haha. I'm somewhat more likely to stitch "Quaker style" designs and samplers now, but I haven't changed much recently. I did pick up a hard copy of The Red and the Black by Prairie Moon recently, which wouldn't have been my style a few years ago, but now it's exactly the sort of thing I want to stitch.

As far as new charts go, I just picked up the Zoe Box PDF from Faby Reilly and I'd really like to get Blueprint for the Rainbow City by Ink Circles soon. Oh, and Gaia by Bella Filipina.

These are all my typical style, but they're all relatively new charts by the designers. :)

Chinese Garden Mandala - post #4

Lots of progress on Chinese Garden Mandala! I've finished most of parts one and two now. I'm a bit stuck on part one because one SNC silk was missing from my kit (or maybe I borrowed it for another project and lost track of it), but it's on the way. I hope to get it soon because I'm anxious to see how the center will look once it's completely finished.

The yellow roof came out great! I love the change from the charted blue.

As usual, the photos are terrible and the color balance is all wrong. My fabric is a very pale mottled blue, like a cloudy sky.

I finally got the hang of making a perfect Jessica stitch, so I enjoyed making lots of them in part two! The dark yellow flowers are incredibly shiny in person thanks to the Eterna silk.

The flowers in the corners are pretty challenging because the stitch diagram is hard to read. Some of the lines overlap and it's difficult to see where some stitches end. Still, I think it's looking good!

I have to pause here and wait for my missing SNC threads. There's the one I mentioned before that's missing from my kit, plus two of the threads had undyed spots throughout and couldn't be used. (Thank you so much to Cece at The Thread Gatherer for helping me out with replacements, even though my threads are from 5+ years ago!) One of the spotty threads is the orange-red used in the rhodes stitch 'bricks' of the temple, so I'll probably cut those out and redo them with the new thread once it arrives. Hopefully that doesn't make other stuff unravel... eep.

birthday stash!

This year was one of those 'milestone' birthdays for me. I'll let you guess what that means. :p

My dad asked me what I wanted for my birthday this year, and I half jokingly sent him a link to my 123Stitch wishlist. It's a little embarrassing but he bought me the entire wishlist! I was pretty shocked because it's been a couple of years since we've exchanged gifts for birthdays or holidays, so I wasn't expecting anything at all.

I got a lovely yard of light mocha Belfast, a couple of Halloween patterns, some Mira/Nora charts, the new series of Tellin Emblem birds, and a pretty Ink Circles pattern. Naturally, I love everything because it's exactly what I picked out, heh.

I also got some birthday money from my in-laws and treated myself to some quality needles and some pretty silks from Missus Sedas on Etsy. And some Crafty Kitten fabrics. Oh, and the bead pack for Dressmaker's Daughter. *ahem*

It sounds excessive, I know, but I typically either stash my birthday/holiday/bonus money in a savings account until the end of time, or use it to pay bills instead. This time I used all of it and paid myself back for some of the fun money I spent on bills. No regrets. :p

It'll be a long wait before I get my hands on these pretties, but that's okay. I have plenty of projects to keep me going until then. :)