Tomatoes finish & May/June goals

Finished up Tomatoes a few days ago and here it is!

I made a few tiny changes as always. First, the tomatoes all the way on the right side were all the same color, but I changed two of them to the lighter red for some more variety. And there was some sort of green thing under the tomato cage to the right of the house. I guess it was meant to be a topiary? It honestly looked like nothing. So I copied one of the flower pots with a young plant from the bottom middle to put under the tomato cage instead.

I also goofed and stitched the tomato juice bottle one stitch too far to the right, which threw off a lot of other things but shhh... You don't really notice it unless you look closely. Honestly the table and basket above the juice and jarred tomatoes looks better one stitch to the right. It was way too close to the tomato cage originally. So I fixed it lol. :3

And finally, the goals. For May, I had:

• add one band to Peacock Band Sampler
• finish Raven Queen's dress
• stitch half of Tomatoes
• probably no buy of any stitching stuff

I... actually don't remember for the first two. I didn't take a lot of pictures this month (so I can't check my progress) and I was distracted by a lot of negative real life things. I think I made a lot of progress on the band sampler but my sense of time has been a bit messed up. Tomatoes obviously got more than half done in May (though I finished up in the first few days of June), and I did buy a few things that I've had on my wishlist for a while. But everything in the past 2-3 weeks is really fuzzy...

Anyway, new goals.

• finish current band on Peacock Band Sampler
• visible progress on Raven Queen
• visible progress on a Chatelaine WIP
• probably no buy of any stitching stuff

I've had fun with the small projects and I'm feeling the itch to work on a Chatelaine again. Not sure which one but probably Chinese Garden Mandala as that's the closest to a finish. I think I'll keep it in my monthly goals for a while as it would be nice to actually finish this beast!

Cucumbers - finish!

It took a bit longer than I expected, but Harvest Season: Cucumbers is done! It's stitched on PTP Sterling Belfast, which is a greyish green color that's almost a perfect match for the recommended solid fabric. It's a little greener in real life vs here:

Okay, now that I look at this, I see that I missed a few stitches in the cucumber slices in the bottom right. Whoops. I've already taken this off the qsnaps so I'll have to fix it in hand. Should be easy enough.

Oh, and I made one kind of major change in the top left. There was a multicolored paisley-ish pattern up there that didn't seem related to cucumbers or pickles in any way. I changed that area to some white clouds adapted from other Owlforest designs. Sort of. About halfway through I decided to just wing it and I think it turned out okay. :3

Here's what the model looks like, just for comparison: 

And now a funny story. I ended up running out of the medium green color used for the leaves/stems of the plant on the right after stitching the largest leaf at the bottom. I have a few Owlforest kits from several years ago, before the bobbins were marked with color codes, and was frantically trying to find the same color in one of them. No luck, but then I remembered that I have a few Owlforest thread packs as well, so it was off to rob one of those.

Guess who had the thread pack for this design the entire time?

Well... I still have the thread pack for this design, minus one length of the medium green. Oh well, surely I have another pattern that uses similar colors. Like the matching Harvest Season: Tomatoes...

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!