Crawling out of the black hole

See what I did there?  I fell off the face of the blog again.  Though, to be fair, life hit some rather nasty speed bumps since I last posted. Had a few really gnarly wide spread service outages at work, followed by someone important to me taking his own life just 4 days before Christmas, followed by additional stressors at work...Kind of soap opera-esque, really.  So, stitching has been somewhat impacted of late - mainly with regard to Happy Bat.

Spring might be peaking in at us here in central Indiana.  We had a lovely week of mild (dare I say warm?) temps last week.  Next weekend I'm going to hang out with friends at Abe Martin Lodge for my birthday.  I'm looking forward to watching B and C play in the kiddie pool.  I will not be partaking.  Me?  In a swim suit?  NOT gonna happen! LOL

I've been trying to get myself motivated to start exercising so I can actually meet my goal for this year.  My goal is to be in fair enough shape to join my sister in the annual Dragon Boat race in Lake Orion, MI.  Thus far I'm falling behind.  Here's my problem - or rather, what I TELL myself is my problem - I work from 10:00 am to 7:00 pm, Monday thru Friday.  I compulsively arrive early by 30 minutes, so that means I get on the road a little before 9:00.  If I get up at 7:20, that leaves me just enough time to shower, feed the cats, eat breakfast, wash my b-fast dishes and lunch box and make/pack my lunch for the day.  I get home around 7:30 and usually G and K have bedded down for the night (they get up for work at 5:00 AM).  Though, with the spring time change, they have lately been up watching TV.  So, to be unobtrusive when I get home, I usually just hit the sack and play with my iPad till I fall asleep 9:30 or 10:00. 

I've tried setting my alarm for 6:00 am so I can get up and have plenty of time for a workout before my typical morning routine.  Alarm goes off and I hit snooze - repeat till 7:20 am.  Two weeks of this and no change in behavior.  How about working out in the evening?  Every night I come home the girls have been watching TV in the living room.  Crap.  What's really happening here?  I'm finding lame excuses to NOT exercise.  Work in progress.

On to happier topics!

Pink Fairy Vomit is done - Huzzah!


B really likes it, and It was framed in time for Christmas.

In it's rotation spot, I've been working on Happy Bat - last progress pic was this



And latest stitching session ended here:



Just over half way.  This on has been challenging, to say the least.  I made an error on the outline of the wing where it goes up passed the tip tip of the ear and it didn't' become apparent till I was about a quarter of the way down the wing.  That resulted in a LOT of frogging.  I was less than amused.

On Konstantinople Hamam I decided to work form the center to the top, and then will continue clockwise around the design.  That helps me avoid stitching the same parts repeatedly.  Last progress photo was here:



And latest progress is here:



Yeah.  Everything between the middle part and this end part is rolled up.  You can peruse the album by clicking either of the pics.  Once I get the first tulip done I will unroll it and get pic of the whole thing.  

So that's it for now.  Later!

WIPocalypse 2014 - December

It's that time again!  It's been a productive month with one finish and a new start.  For those of you who celebrate Thanksgiving, I hope you had a wonderful day!  I got to go back home Michigan to be with my Mom, sister, brother in law and gramma.  Was a wonderful 4 days.  Weather permitting I will get to do it again for Christmas.

The topic for the month is:  Recap your accomplishments for the year.  This is going to be fun!

You see, I'm pretty much the kind of person who gets excited by an idea and then jumps full in, plays for a while, gets bored and looks for something else to do.  I did that with knitting, crocheting, polymer clay and paper modeling - all over the course of my lifetime.  And I really never got much done.  Small things, sure, but the big stuff never got finished.  Like the 4' tall paper model Optimus Prime.  His foot still stares at me from the corner where it's hidden, but the thought of getting out the mat, x-acto knife and glue makes me shudder.

Cross stitch is something I have always come back to, but it wasn't till the last couple of months of chemo that I really got back in to it.  With a vengeance.  I pulled out "Stitching the Standard" and made a lot of progress on her.  Then I remembered the hardanger work Mom used to do and I bought a set of bookmark kits and really enjoyed that.  Then I found out about Papillon Creations and got some of their charts with specialty stitches.  And I've been hooked ever since.  It's been a good solid 2 years now and I've felt no hints of the boredom that usually pops up after about 6 months.

What all this long drawn out blather is getting to is:  I actually have finishes in 2014!

Finish # 1
The Castle Garden, by Papillon Creations.
Started 9/28/2103


Finished 5/11/2014


Finish #2
Around the World in 80 Stitches, by Papillon Creations
Started around 7/4/2013


Finished 9/7/2014


Finish #3
QS Butterfly Fae, by Heaven and Earth Designs
Started 9/28/2014


Finished 12/5/2014, taken to framer 12/6/2014


When I look back at that, I'm kind of surprised.  A lot surprised.  I guess I finally found what I love to do.

So, on to the regular part of the post.  As mentioned above, QS Butterfuly Fae is done.  Last month at this time, I was here:


On Konstantinople Hamam I was here:


And am now here:


Last night, I started on K's project, Happy Bat, by AAN, and am here:


This is being stitched on 28ct Haunted Cashel, by PTP - 1x1.  

So there you go!  Hope you've found your hobby Nirvana, too!

It's cold here!

Central Indiana is in the freezer this week.  We had our first winter weather advisory on Sunday evening and we woke on Monday morning to snow, high winds and super cold temps.  As of this morning, it's still super cold and super windy.  We're in the low to mid 20's with gusts making wind chill drop to below 0 at times. I'm glad this is my work from home week so I don't have to go out there!

I've been feeling less than enthused about the Pink Fairy Vomit than usual.  I'm working on her wing, which is taking F O R E V E R.  So I decided to heck with it and moved on to working on Konstantinople Hamam.  I was having so much fun with it, that I got finished with part 1.  I'm a bad girl.  A realy bad girl.  So last night I made a deal with  myself.  When I get the fairy wing finished, I can work on the first section of part 2 of KH.  I can live with that compromise.  However, my negative side says that will be a year from now.

So, let's see...on my last update on the fairy I was here:

And as of this morning, I'm here



On Konstantinople Hamam, when I last posted I was here:



And now I'm here:



The only thing missing from it are the crystals that go in the inner and outer corners and the center.  Also, feel free to click on the picture to see the artsy fartsy angle photos I took of it.  Cuz, you know...art.

Ok, time to get ready to go earn my paycheck so I can support this habit of textile embellishment!  Keep on stitching, ya'll!

2014 WIPocalypse - November post

Hi, and welcome to my blog about stitching and cats.  I started this as an experiment to see if I would be able to keep up with it and chronicle my stitching adventures.  So far it's regularly fallen low on the list of priorities of things to get done, but I keep plugging away at it from time to time in hopes I get better at it.  Maybe if I join some blog SALs I might be more motivated to keep up with it!

My WIP on the October full moon was QS Butterfly Fae from Heaven and Earth Designs, being stitched on 32 ct Crystal Monet linen from PTP.  I opted to omit the background, stitch the background butterflies in tent stitch and the fae's wings with 1 strand of floss and 1 strand of blending filament.  So far it's been interesting.




And for the November full moon, I'm here:



Over the weekend I was Jedi Mind Tricked in to starting my Chatelaine.  Konstantinople Hamam, stitched on 28 ct Mystic by PTP.  This one is a monster project on my 36" Millennium bars and won't be traveling to work with me.  My plan for it is to stitch it in the evenings after work, weekends and the weeks when I get to work from home.



Sorry about the craptastic photo.  I had it illuminated by my new OTT light - the one with the LED's encircling a 3x magnifier. It really shows the colors perfectly, but it overexposes the picture taken by my iPhone.  

So, topic for the month:  What are your favorite and least favorite materials to use in your stitching?
For fabric, I would have to say linen is my favorite to stitch on.  Lugana isn't bad.  I really don't like Jobelan, though.  I stitched on it once and won't do it again.  It's too slippery and mooshy for my taste.  I haven't encountered any fibers that I don't like to stitch with.  That being said, thus far I have only stitched with DMC floss and pearls, Dinky Dyes flosses and Gloriana flosses.  I really don't like DMC metallics, but Kreinik #4 and Petite Treasure braid are lovely to work with.

I think that's about it.  Stitch on and thanks for visiting!

Fairies. Oh boy...

I've been plugging away at QS Butterfly Fae and hit a snag since my last post.  My plan was to add blending filament (2:1 floss:filament) to the wings on the fairy to give them shimmer. I stitched a fairly good portion of it and started noticing that the stitches seemed to sit up higher than the ones without the filament, and they seemed to be tighter in the fabric as well.  I didn't have any nearby stitches to compare to so I decided it must be my imagination and I continued on to see how it developed.

When I stitched one of the little lines on her wing (without the filament) I realized that yes, in fact, the filament was making the stitches heavier and it caused the plain stitches to have a kind of recessed look to them.  Not quite what I was going for.

So I posted over on a couple of the HAED groups on FB and got opinions about it.  The general consensus was that I should switch to using 1 strand each of floss and filament instead.  I was worried about what it would look like and then I thought, "What would Mary Corbet do?"  So I decided to stitch the bottom part of her wing the new way and see how it turned out.

It didn't come out as I imagined it would.  But then again, I have a bad habit of not seeing the forest for the trees.  While I'm stitching, I tend to really only "see" the immediate area I'm stitching and I was a little dismayed at how much of the blending filament was visible compared to the heavier stitching on the upper wing. It also seemed to be changing the perceived color of the thread it was paired with, but I decided to continue on and stitch a bigger sample with more colors to see how it turned out. A friend looked at it and commented that the test area has a translucent look to it - you can see a little of the fabric behind the stitching, lending it a more delicate appearance. That finally snapped me out of hyper-focusing on just that tiny area and I was able to "see" the whole project again. And I really like the way it's coming out.  So, I frogged the upper wing section!

And now I'm faced with another problem.  I'm really tired of looking at all that damn pink! My fabric arrived for Happy Bat and I keep looking at it when I come home from work, so I put it away in a tub so it won't tempt me.  And then my Ink Circles charts arrived - the 2013 RYO charts - and I keep fondling them and thinking about what color combos and kinds of finishes to use on them...and there's that Mill Hill kit I have...and a couple biscornu kits...and my UFOs...and another gift to stitch after Happy Bat...and I'm really tired of looking at pink fairies...

Of course I didn't start feeling this way till I frogged all that stitching...

Perhaps it will pass...

Oh, hey!  How about a picture?

Halfway done maybe? I don't know. I'm not good at judging that. And because I have that "forest for the trees" problem, I photograph my progress on all my projects at the end of each stitching session and obsessively upload them to Flickr so I can actually see how far I get from one day to the next.

Time to go do something else and stop obsessing over pink fairies.  bleh.

I'm not dead

So it's been just about forever since my last blog entry.  I guess it's evident just how this experiment is turning out and how much I like blogging!   

Lots has been going on since my last entry.  Let's see...where to start...

Castle Garden is framed and delivered to the intended gift recipients, however it isn't hung up yet.  They are agonizing over where to put it and making sure that it will be perfectly centered on the wall and all that good stuff.  Here's the most recent pic of it - it's still in it's plastic wrap:


I couldn't be happier with the results!  If any of you live near Indianapolis, you should check out The Frame Shop.  Don does excellent framing of needlework.  Very well worth the price.

So, next up - I got Around the World in 80 Stitches done.  It's currently being framed and is intended as a gift for my Mom.


AtWi80S was so darn fun!  I'm definitely going to stitch her again someday, next time without the cutwork, just for giggles.  I really went outside my comfort zone when I picked out the frame for it.  My initial thought was to go with a green frame, but the shades just weren't right.  Then Chuck laid out a couple of orangey frames and there was one that my eye just kept getting drawn to.  So I decided to go with it.  It will be either really awesome or really horrible lol 



So, that brings me up to my latest WIP - which is a gift for my "niece".  I affectionately refer to it as Pink Fairy Vomit.  You see, fairies are not my cup of tea, unless they are the ones from the Dresden Files series of books.  Those fairies will give you nightmares.  And they hate being called fairies. And I really don't care for pink.

Anyway, it's called QS Butterfly Fae, original artwork by Nadia Tate, charted by Heaven and Earth Designs.  I got her started on September 28.  She's being stitched on 36 ct Crystal Monet from Picture this Plus, 2 over 2.  I'm not stitching the background on it, so the fabric takes it's place.  The background butterflies are stitched in tent stitch with 2 strands, to make them look fainter than the foreground elements.  And I'm adding blending filament (Kreinik 032) to the fairy's wings to give them shimmer.  My progress as of last night:

Three of the butterflies are done, but they are rolled over the bars of the scroll frame.  To be revealed at a later date!

After she's done, I will be working on Happy Bat by AAN.  It will be stitched on PTP Haunted - to be gifted to K, my housemate.  After that will be Mini Purple Iris (another HAED) stitched on PTP Lunar (removing the background of the design) and gifted to my "step" niece.  After that, I should be getting back to my rotation.  Which is really funny.  Because I was supposed to get back to rotation after Happy Bat.

The 'mates and I did an epic vacation in September.  We departed on Sept. 11 and flew to Boston where we toured the USS Constitution (AMAZING!!) and then wandered around for a while.  The following morning we boarded our cruise ship, Dawn (Norwegian Cruise Line), and embarked on our sail to Quebec.  We had ports of call in Portland, Maine, Halifax, Charlottetown on Prince Edward Island, Gaspe and Saguenay then we disembarked in Quebec City and spent 3 days there.  Then took the train to Montreal and spent a couple days there before going home.  I didn't want to come home, and I've decided that my summer residence will be in Quebec City and my winter residence will be in Vancouver.  It's good to dream, right? I'm still going through all my vacation photos - digital cameras do not encourage one to be careful taking good photos.  So I ended up with well over 6000 pics to weed through.  Eventually I will have them culled and posted and then I will share.

Ok - enough naval gazing on my part!  Hope all is well with you - keep stitching!

Bulletin Board of Doom!

My cork bulletin board arrived last week.  And I was dismayed.  You see, I have this problem with seeing measurements but not really visualizing them.  So, Amazon had some boards listed of various sizes and I imagined them holding CG and figured they were way too small.  Then I found one that is 4' x 3' and I thought that should work perfectly!

When it arrived and I saw just how big it really is and then listened to G and K teasing me about needing to build an addition on to the house just to store the darn thing...Dismay.

CG is less than 30" square with margins for framing.

Yes.  I need adult supervision.  And a measuring tape.

So, to console myself I decided that the cork board can be used for multiple projects that need to be blocked!  But when I ran this one by my mom she asked me how many projects I anticipate blocking all at the same time...

Consolation - gone.

Now I have the ginormous Bulletin Board of Doom and Blocking happily stretching CG while it leans against my closet door in my bedroom.

Speaking of blocking...It's hard to do.  I think I don't like it lol.  Of course, it could be argued that my choice to use quilting pins was not the smartest way to go about it.  Push pins are probably the way to go.  I are dumb.  In any event, I'm not convinced it will change the condition of the linen in any appreciable way.  Would work better if I could have dampened the fabric.  But alas...silk threads.  So pretty, so impractical.

On the stitching front, AtW is coming along nicely.  I've got parts 8 and 9 finished and am over halfway done with part 10.  

Part 8 is really a 2 part section:








Part 9 was fun, although the Bokhara Couching was a pain in the butt.






So that's where things stand with projects so far.