Grab Your Dancing Shoes

Ohm is done! It took me just a little over 100 hours and I enjoyed every minute of it.
It's really a design that looks good at a distance but incredibly garish close up. So no close ups :)

Title	Ohm
Designer	Alessandra Adelaide Needleworks
Start date	May 7, 2014
Finish date	November 10, 2014
Total time	100.75 hours
Fabric	25 ct black lugana
Floss	DMC as charted

Continuing Ohm

I got a bit more done on Ohm. And I'm still enjoying it, so more Ohm pictures for the foreseeable future. yay?

Ohm
25 ct Black lugana
I took at all the smalls I need to finish today. There are so many of them and it was very disheartening. I have no clue how you frequent finishers do this! There's measuring, cutting, lacing, assembling and adding all kinds of ribbons/ricrac/buttons/pompoms. I get so overwhelmed just thinking about it and go back to stitching on my WIPs because it's so much less thinking and decision-making involved. What are your secrets? Tell me and save me from this growing pile of smalls-that-need-to-be-finish-finished.

More Ohm

I made visible progress on Ohm. I'm debating just sticking with this until I finish it. It's just so much fun to work on.

This is what it looked like when I picked it back up:

Ohm
25 ct Black luganaAnd this is what it looks like now:

Nothing To Show

I actually started something new after Friday's Ohm update, so no progress on the WIP slaying. Oops.

Ohm
25 ct Black lugana
This month's question:
Tell us about your oldest and newest WIPs.
My oldest WIP is Ganesha from 2009.
It's meant as a gift for my parents. It's like a HAED in that a symbol might appear only twice in a 10x10 block, and like a Teresa Wentzler in that everything is a blend. And it's on aida. Sometimes I think I should just restart it. Other times I think I should just chuck it and offer my parents something else. My mum wants Winter Queen and I've been reluctant. I might just give it to her and restitch Winter Queen for myself. I'm much more likely to finish that than Ganesha at the rate I'm going!

My newest WIP is this month's biscornu, which I started on Friday. I haven't stitched much but it's fun so far.

Crazy Colours

I'm feeling the need to rotate! I haven't decided what's going to be in said rotation, but the first one is Ohm.

Ohm
25 ct Black luganaThis is a ridiculously forgiving pattern as far as colour is concerned. There's hot pink next to dark blue and red next to neon green. It makes no difference at all if I use the wrong colour. And I think I could probably stitch the motif wrong too, but as long as I mirrored it and don't go outside the shape of the overall design it wouldn't be noticeable either. It's very freeing to stitch something so forgiving.

May SFS

I didn't buy a thing this month! But I'm out of a couple of DMC so I'll be picking those up soon.

Spending so far is $69.63
I have $55.37 banked

A current picture of Ohm as I put it away for a couple of days. I realized this morning that the last Wednesday of the month is coming up "soon" and I haven't started my monthly biscornu. Guess this one is going to be either tiny or a very simple design.

Ohm
25 ct Black lugana

More about Stitch From Stash here:

Stitching Up Pretty Fast

I'm really enjoying stitching Ohm, which is a bit strange because I don't usually enjoy having so many colour changes in such a short time. I think it's the colourfulness after Egyptian Sampler's beige. (I really should finish up Egyptian Sampler; I only have some backstitching and beading to do...)


Ohm
25 ct Black lugana

May WIPocalypse

Just a bit of progress on Ohm since last time.

Ohm
25 ct Black lugana
In good news I've figured out the fastest way to stitch Ohm. I initially started out stitching the "background" and filling in the motifs but I kept getting confused about where I was. The new plan is to just pick a colour and stitch it as far as I feel comfortable, usually about two motifs and then fill in the leftover colours. These leftover colours usually show up in a new motif that I'm comfortable counting out to. So it's a bit of a leapfrog type situation. You can see it at the bottom: After that blue motif I stitched the lavender, and then the gold which I could count out from the lavender, and then the pale yellow counting out from the gold. Next I'll go back and fill in the gold and lavender motifs.

This month's question: What designs or themes do you really wish you could find? What do you think is missing among stitching designs?
I wish there were more non-Western European/North American themed ladies. I know there's a fair bit of Japanese themed designs, but so much of what's out there is Western European or American inspired. Ladies in ball gowns or girls in old pioneer American type dresses. I want more international flavour. South American, African, Asian etc. It might be available in those countries but I don't know how to find them. For example, I know that there's a huge Russian cross stitch community and I assume that there's a lot of Russian themed designs but the language barrier stops me from finding things.

Colour Everywhere

Yay I have pictures again!

Also: I started something new. This is Ohm by AAN and it's what I blew most of my Stitch From Stash budget on last month.

I was planning on stitching it on 28 ct black but apparently that's not being sold anymore. So it was either 32ct or 25. I went with 25 since 32 in black is a bit hard for me to stitch on. The colours in this are almost neon bright.


Ohm
25 ct Black lugana
I'm still putting Stitch Sampler I together. To be quite honest, I might just end up throwing the chart up and posting a bunch of links to other people's tutorials.

The Podium At Last

Altius August is about embracing the Olympic Motto and elevating your mind by learning something new. I embraced something vaguely Olympic-related and ignored the rest.
If you're wondering what a maple leaf has to do with the Olympics, well, aren't we all just a little extra patriotic around the Olympics? So here's my version of waving the flag ;)

I thought since I was stitching with a metallic thread on an opalescent fabric that it would take me a while to finish. It actually went by pretty fast. I used 2.5 spools and maybe 1/10 of a bead packet. This is going into my "to be framed" drawer (which at this point is just ridiculously full, but probably not going to decrease any time soon). I'm not sure how well you can see the sparkles in the fabric and the floss, but rest assured. It's shining with patriotism ;)

Title	Maple Leaf
Designer	Alessandra Adelaide Needleworks
Start date	July 31, 2012
Finish date	August 15, 2012
Total time	16.75 hours
Fabric	32 ct opalescent white lugana
Floss	Kreinik 003, MH 3049

A Late Start

I started this yesterday, so it totally counts as a WIP for this month's

So. The Olympics. See, I'm not a sporty person. The most athletic thing I ever did was play chess as a teen. I even managed to get out of mandatory gym class in high school. All this means that I'm rather apathetic towards the Olympics (sacrilege, I know). I don't really watch any of it. Occasionally if someone else in the room is watching something I'll watch with them, but I don't go looking. I do rather vaguely follow Canada's medal count.

Which brings me to the matter at hand. I know that there's a fair amount of people either starting something new for the Olympics or stitching something patriotic. So I decided to stitch something patriotic for the Olympics. (I was going to start on Friday but my fabric didn't arrive). I'm going for subtle but I don't think it's as subtle as I think.

Alessandra Adelaide Needlework's Maple Leaf. I'm stitching it in Kreinik 003 on 32 ct opalescent white. It is incredibly shiny.


Maple Leaf
32ct opalescent white lugana, Kreinik 003
When finished it will look like this (only, more shiny):