All Done With Adriana

I first saw this ages ago on Kielrain's blog and fell madly in love with it. And I still love the colours in it. It's really the backstitching on the birds that makes them stand out. And strangely my favourite part is actually these frond-things.

Title	Adriana B
Designer	AaronArt
Start date	January 7, 2012
Finish date	May 29, 2012
Total time	86.5 hours
Fabric	18 ct white aida
Floss	I used the DMC conversion provided

This was stitched with the Sticklounge group.

Long Weekend Shenanigans

This IHSW was the Victoria Day long weekend! Strangely I thought it was next weekend, so I was caught a bit off guard. For those not in the know, Victoria Day is a federal holiday celebrating the birthday of Queen Victoria. It also celebrated the birthday of the reigning monarch regardless of that monarch's actual birthday. While it is a federal holiday, depending on what province or territory you live in you may or may be given the day off and you may or may not be paid for it. Yeah, I don't know either.

I was marathoning away on Japanese Octagon when suddenly I wanted to just chuck it across the room. Q-snaps and all. Taking that as a sign that I was burnt out on it I picked up Ganesha, put him back down (and thereby failed the first Theme-a-licious update) and ending up working on Adriana's backstitch.
Prior to the IHSW:
And after:
So far I've managed to backstitch most of the birds, and am about a third of the way through outlining the green bits. Which isn't really that noticeable.

Adriana B is designed by Aaron Art, and stitched with the Sticklounge group.

May TUSAL

Just scraping this in with less than an hour left of the day.
It's interesting using a sphere because the threads inside rotate as the ornie rolls around, so what ends up visible doesn't always correlate to what colours I've been stitching. Those oranges are from Adriana, but I finished all the orange bits months ago. And the blue along the bottom is from when I did some marathon frogging, maybe in February?

That's Cirque des Cercles in the background. I'm thinking of starting either Triangles or Carreaux after my next finish...

A Bit of Confusion

I was plodding along on part 14 of The Great Escape. And I mean plodding. The signpost is composed of Van Dyke stitches which gave the Wheat-Ear stitches (wings) a run for the title of Most Boring Stitch. Well, the stitch isn't boring, it's just having to do a billion of them that made me lose interest.


The Great Escape
28ct white Jubilee, DMC 317, 318, 413, 414, 415
Eventually I got to the text and that's when I got confused. I wondered why there should be a sign if the town was a metre away. Because to me, "1 m" equals "1 metre". "1 mile" would be "1 mi". Adding to my confusion was my belief that the UK is metric (apparently Mousehole is a place in Cornwall).

A bit of research later: Apparently the UK still uses miles for distance, and "m" as an abbreviation. And it's illegal to use "km" for distance! The mind boggles!

For my own sake I'm wondering if a bit of modification to "mi" isn't called for...

Full Moon Frenzy

Tons of progress on Japanese Octagon for this month's

Japanese Octagon Box Panel
32ct white lugana
I'd just a tad obsessed with this one. I've also made so many changes that I haven't written down that I don't want to put it away in case I forget any of them before I get to the last two panels!

The over-one "clouds" gave me fits. At least half of them are in wrong places, but luckily it doesn't make much difference. I am not looking forward to the over one birds.