Second TUSAL Of The Month

Lots more yellow and blue (not that you can tell) all from Egyptian Sampler for today's

January Smalls

In an effort to use up some of my leftover scraps and out of a sudden yen for more biscornus I'm participating in Silverlotus' Smalls SAL 2014.

I finished off this month's small at the start of the month and I don't want to bore people, so I'm going to just re-post this here, and direct people here if they want more.

Pearls & Rosebuds by The Drawn Thread

Lack of Spending, Captain!

One of the side effects of signing up for multiple SALs is that it means I have to post my progress. Which is good because otherwise I'd just tell myself that people are getting bored of seeing the same thing and stop posting. But this way I have to post. It's the SAL rules!

I'm participating in Mel's

where the rules are to spend less than $25 a month and use your current stash.

I generally tend to go months without buying anything (other than one or two DMC as I run out) but then have a massively horrifying splurge once or twice an year. I also want to track my needlework expenses to see exactly where I'm spending money and I'm more likely to do it if I'm doing it as part of a group.

So. January expenditure: $0

I've mostly been stitching Egyptian Sampler. I picked up the chart two(?) years ago and had fabric picked out last year. I have all the DMC colours (yes! I finally did it last November) so the floss is always there. Everything from stash.
I'm going to reach the over one bits soon. To be honest I'm not looking forward to them. The last time I stitched something that mixed over-two and over-one I had serious tension problems and the whole thing looked terribly puckered. On the positive side, it's been several years and I've hopefully gotten a lot better. Keeping my fingers crossed that it will work out.

Border Progress

My IHSW didn't go so well. In fact I stitched less than I would have a regular weekend. But I slept a lot so that was good.

This is what Egyptian Sampler looked like Saturday morning:
And this was at the end of tonight:
I finished up a few of the border motifs and started outlining them. The colours are actually very jewel-like and bright in person. The purple outline around the red stitches really enhance the gemstone look.

I've never had a lot of faith in the uniformity of my eyelet stitches and I wasn't interested in hours of doubt. So I switched out the small eyelets for Star Stitches and the big ones for Norwich Stitches. No worries about uneven pulling, just easy stitches.

More about IHSW here:

January WIPocalypse

I'm not exactly slaying a WIP for

I was convinced that I was ready to go back to a 10 hour per WIP rotation. Nope. I'm still on what-I-feel-like rotation, which means I have less to post because it's just the same WIP over and over again.

Egyptian Sampler
28 ct Antique White Monaco
Please ignore the apparently slant. I took this picture at a strange angle. I am actually a bit further and should have more done (maybe even some backstitch!) after IHSW.

Egyptian Sampler

My big start for this year is TWDesignworks' Egyptian Sampler. I've wanted to stitch this for a long time but kept putting it off. But this year is THE year!

Egyptian Sampler
28 ct Antique White Monaco
I usually stitch all the cross stitches and wait until the end before the backstitch but I'm not going to be doing that for this. It works for less complicated designs and smaller TWs but this is too massive. I also plan on heading out towards the edge so that I can get to the border. The plan is to stitch bits of the border and the main design alternatively instead of avoiding the border and then having to tackle it at the end.

First TUSAL Of The Year

I've decided to participate in TUSAL again because why not? And of course I'm 7 minutes late but shh! it's still January 1st on the west coast.

The past few years I've been sticking all my orts in clear Christmas ornaments but I don't have any in the house and I'm not braving the ridiculous weather. So I dug up this old vase I used in the first year of TUSAL for the time being.


Just a few since it's from the first day of the year.

And the link if anyone wants to know more about TUSAL

Start As You Mean To Go On

Keeping with my desire to stitch and blog more this year I started and finished something small.

This is The Drawn Thread's Pearls & Rosebuds freebie that I finished as a biscornu. I used up a scrap of fabric and leftover floss from a Dimensions kit. (Yes, I'm a terrible hoarder.)

This is what it looked like before assembly. I just used part of the motif for the corners. I find I'm less likely to do the same design twice if it's for a biscornu. It's not like the bottom bit is visible unless you're picking it up...

The worst thing about finishing something at night in winter is that taking a decent picture is nigh impossible.

I used some giant leftover beads for fun. It was not fun trying to whip stitch the biscornu together when the thread kept catching on the beads every single time. They're also a bit over powering, I think. But it makes this biscornu very different from the rest I have so I'm happy.

My collection of biscornu at present:

Title	Pearls & Rosebuds
Designer	The Drawn Thread
Start date	January 1, 2014
Finish date	January 1, 2014
Total time	3.5 hours
Fabric	25 ct White Lugana