July Wrap-Up

I got a very late start on Jolly July. I was originally planning on working on the Christmyth ornies (as per the suggested Christmas theme), but then I finished them earlier in the year and I had no idea what to do. I actually skipped the previous theme-a-licious update. But then I decided to tackle Sleepy Hollow and finished it, so that was all good.

The original plan for Atlius August (learn something new) was to work on some of Hardanger projects. Instead I've decided to embrace the Olympics ;D

Goals for July:
1. Keep up with Tulip Praise. Sadly no. I was having colour issues, and although those have been sorted out I don't really feel like working on it for now.
2. Finish Legends of Dragons. Yes!
3. Finish all the cross stitching on Palm. Yes. In fact I finished Palm.
Pipe dream: Finish Japanese Octagon Box. No. I'd say I have about 15 hours left in it though.

Unexpectedly This Month:
1. Finished Palm.
2. Started Maple Leaf
3. Started Maia

Goals for August:
1. Finish Japanese Octagon Garden.
2. Restart Maia.
3. Finish Maple Leaf.
Pipe dream: Make a new general use bag since my current one is getting ratty.

Fi-neigh-ly Done

What can I say? I have a weakness for awful puns ;)

There are lots of changes in this, and I can't remember most of them because this was before I made extensive notes. I know that I made some change in the border somewhere and had to shorten the tree. The moon is not made of Caron Waterlily, it's made of DMC 745. The metallics are not what are called for. The bottom of the jacket is purple instead of green. There's only one bead colour instead of two. I'm sure there are more things *shrug*

Title	Sleepy Hollow
Designer	Glendon Place
Start date	August 30, 2010
Finish date	July 27, 2012
Total time	130.25 hours
Fabric	32 ct Thunderstorm linen
Floss	I used the provided DMC conversion

A Long Overdue Winner

This weekend was devoted to getting all the backstitch in Sleepy Hollow done. Now I've just got all the beading in the border to go.
Sleepy Hollow
32 ct Thunderstorm
And the end of the backstitch means it's time to announce the winner from my 2010 contest to guess the hours of backstitch! It took me 28.5 hours to finish all the backstitch: 7 hours in 2010, 8.5 hours in 2011 and 13 hours this year. Which means the closest guess was Annie with 25 hours (the highest guess). Apparently folks were somewhat optimistic about how fast I could stitch. Of course, considering I promised to send the winnings out by Halloween 2011 I was clearly the delusional one LOL! Drop me a line Annie and we'll see about those winnings...

July TUSAL

This month's TUSAL features a lot of frogging. You can see a tiny bit of the yellow at the ton. There's a lot more yellow and green under it. I'm playing around with different colours on Tulip Praise. This has served to reaffirm my inability to pick colours on my own.
That's The Runekeeper Saga by Dragon Dreams in the background.

With A Little Help From My Friends

16 hours of backstitch later, I'm done Palm!
I've mentioned the story of this piece several times, but a quick recap: When I moved houses in July 2010 I brilliantly packed all my stash away and then had several hours of nothing to do. I also had a Dimensions kit available, so I started it. And then I unpacked everything I put Palm away. Then I participated in a UFO Round Robin and sent Palm out. The ladies made such a big change in it that I knew that a determined push could finish it off. Of course, it still look me a while to get around to finishing it, but I could never have done it without all the RR ladies! *hugs*

And because you can't make out much of the detail in that picture, here are some clickable close-ups:

Title	Palm
Designer	Dimensions
Start date	July 10, 2010
Finish date	July 12, 2012
Total time	No idea how many hours the RR contributed, but I put in 38.75
Fabric	16 ct khaki aida
Floss	As provided in the kit

If Only I Could Use One of Those Leaves as a Fan

I've been plodding away at Palm. It came back from a UFO RR looking like this: And once I got all the cross stitches and half stitches finished it look like this. I was being incredibly lazy, hence the atrocious photo. I almost ran into trouble with one of the greens in that upper border. I stitched the whole thing, looked with relief at the single strand I had leftover and realized that I'd done the stitching in the wrong direction! And it sas half crosses in an area of more half crosses so it would've been really obvious. So I had to carefully frog and reuse the thread. And since this is an older kit some of the threads aren't the hardiest things around. I'm not sure how to describe it, but they sort of untwist and stretch and then pull apart. I was absolutely terrified that I would run out. Luckily it all worked out, but you can bet I was extra paranoid about direction for the next few hours!

Trio of Dragons

Another

Another finish!

Legends of the Dragons was my 2010 New Year start. It's now midway through 2012 and I've finally finished it! It's a three-parter with each dragon designed by a different designer. All three are now out of the business (although I believe Jennifer of DD still occasionally puts stuff out for retreats).
Magic by Dragon Dreams was the first one finished. I remember being very gung-ho at that point. I was going to stitch a dragon a month and finish the whole thing in 4 months. Ah, those were the days... I finished the border next. I was going to use an overdyed since I didn't want to tackle the border (it's all TW), but I never managed to find one I liked that was in my budget. So I eventually sucked it up and stitched it as charted. I'm glad I did that. And then it was Teresa's Wisdom. This is where I got stalled. I can't remember why, but I probably wasn't in the right mindset for a TW. That was a long hiatus. I didn't touch it during all of 2011. And then one day I just had to finish it. And the last one is Majesty by Black Swan Designs. Looking at my numbers this took the shortest time to stitch, which is surprising because I thought it would have been Magic. I was a bit nervous about the lettering because it's over one. The last time I had to stitch a small over one part in a larger design it didn't turn out too well. Too much puckering. But this turned out excellently. I owe everything to my Q-snap. And the fact that I stitched all the lettering over two days.

Title	Legends of the Dragons
Designers	Black Swan Designs, Dragon Dreams, TWDesignworks
Start date	January 1, 2010
Finish date	July 4, 2012
Total time	102.5 hours
Fabric	28 ct antique white lugana
Floss	As charted