Pennelate di Magia - 2 of 10 done!

I said I didn't have any pictures of Pennelate di Magia, but that was because I didn't scroll back far enough in my phone's gallery. My first progress picture was from June 2024... no wonder I couldn't find it! At that point, I'd finished one flower (left side in this picture) and started the border of the second.

Over the weekend, I finished the second flower panel and here's how it all looks.

Stitched as charted, except not really? There's a little color picture next to each chart showing a mockup of how it will look when stitched. The problem is... the colors as charted do not match the color mockup! The greens are all mixed up. I hadn't noticed this when stitching the orange flower (on the left) so that one is stitched as charted, with the greens placed kind of randomly. I changed the colors in the purple flower (on the right) to match the color mockup. Here's what they look like.

So now I'm stuck with the possibility of having to redo all the greens in the orange flower because it's going to look out of place. All the other color mockups have this logical color layout, with the stem being the darkest color, and the leaves getting progressively lighter as you go up on the plant. And honestly, I prefer that look so I KNOW I'm going to have to change this for my own satisfaction.

But why is it even like this???? It's not THAT much rework, but I'm getting pretty frustrated with every project having something annoying or just plain wrong with it, either charting or materials or being oversized or poor color choices or... etc etc.

I don't know. Maybe I'll start something new. Something small and cute and EASY.

endless Jessica band has an end???

It's finally over. The neverending band of Jessica stitches on Peacock Band Sampler has finally been defeated. I'm worn and bruised and my needle got bent but I WON.

So of course I had to keep working on it after finishing that band. Like a normal person. *eyeroll*

Well, I got pretty far on the central band and had a great time filling in the darkest purple. But when it was time to add the (looool) Jessica stitches around them, I got fed up...

Not because of the stitches, though! It's the thread that's driving me crazy now. I used HDF silk for the darkest purple (the kitted color was so dark it was pretty much black and looked awful) and now the lighter purple feels terrible in comparison. :( Every strand I used has ended up getting split around the eye of the needle, locking it in place (can't slide the needle toward the thread end) and then it breaks.

Several of the threads have a pink section in the middle, almost like they had gotten discolored by a drop of bleach. I've been avoiding those but used one by accident. The pink was pretty dark and blended in well, so I decided to keep using it. Of course, the thread ended up breaking at the pink part, and I wasn't putting any extra strain on it. It's almost like it crumbled instead of broke.

Luckily, the other colors in the kit have been okay so far, just a bit frizzy and prone to knotting. I've already reached the middle so I'll be reusing the previous colors in reverse order to finish the project. I just have to get past this unruly light purple first. But for now, this project will take a little break!

Oh, and I finally got a reasonably accurate picture of the fabric color.

I forgot that pulling back a little (or a lot) helps to cancel out my phone's automatic white balancing. The fabric is still more vibrant than this shows, but it's a lot closer than my other pictures!