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.

Catstronaut - finish! (plus goals update)

Here's the Catstronaut in all its glory! I was able to adjust the colors pretty well this time, so this is actually accurate for once. The fabric is the perfect space background. :3

I only made one small change, and that was changing 553 to 552 in the purple yarn ball planet. 553 was too light, especially in the piece of unraveling yarn, but 552 looks perfect. I don't think changes would be needed on a lighter fabric (the model is on light blue) but my dark fabric made the lighter purple look too washed out, especially in comparison to 550 which is very dark.

~~~

And let's do goals since the month is almost over and I achieved them all. :3

January goals: all done! 

• frame my sister's birthday present and send it to her ON TIME
• one section of Jessica stitches on Peacock Band Sampler
• one section of central band fills on Peacock Band Sampler
• start a small (probably Catstronaut)
• 100% no buy of any stitching stuff 

February goals: (pretty much an exact copy of January)

• one section of Jessica stitches on Peacock Band Sampler
• one section of central band fills on Peacock Band Sampler
• start a small (TBD) one flower on Pennelate di Magia
• 100% no buy of any stitching stuff 

So here are the two spots I want to fill in:

If I end up doing more than planned (like I did this month) I'll be happy with that, but I won't push for more because the Jessica stitches can be very tedious. I don't want to get burned out like I did last year and put this project aside for months. Slow and steady!

Not sure what small I want to start yet. I have a lot of cute patterns from Etsy, but many of them are quite large. Catstronaut was one of the smallest out of the pile I purchased last year, easy enough to finish in a couple of weeks. Maybe I'll spend a little time playing with fabric to see what feels interesting. :)

ETA: Wait, I just remembered that I started Pennelate di Magia by Renato Parolin a while back, didn't like the fabric, never blogged about it, and shoved it to the bottom of the WIP pile! There's nothing actually wrong with the fabric other than it being 28ct evenweave (I prefer 32ct linen) soooo... that's going to be my small for next month. One flower panel!

Picture next time because I don't seem to have any in my records. Hmm. Well, here is the model picture instead! I'm doing the color version:

Hard to see, I know, but they are beautiful in person!