September Achievements & October Goals

Goals for September:
1. Finish TOT DONE!
2. Start & finish another Ty Wilson print Nope
3. Start Peacock Majesty or Stretch (just one TW, thanks!) Started and finished Stretch
4. Start Ganesha He's very very slow.

Other things I did that were unplanned:
1. Started Dimension's Beautiful Bird
2. Started My Big Toe's Think on These Things

Goals for October:
1. Finish Beautiful Bird
2. Finish Think on These Things
3. Start and stitch everything except the beading on Nora Corbett's Bluebell
4. Stitch at least 20 hours on Ganesha
5. Stitch Sweetheart Tree's Shamrock Biscornu

Also, I just figured out how to do strikethroughs and change colours! (Ok, so I'm a little slow...html is weird...)

Adding background...

or Why I Hate 1 over 2 Half Crosses:



I spent the weekend putting in the border and the background of half crosses. It went on forever and I'm still not done and I hate "Pale gold brown" with a vengeance!

More words

A realization: the "whatever is" all start along the same column. It gets a bit repetitive after a while, but I switch to the green so I don't get too bored. Plus it's a small piece. Of course I have no idea what I'm going to do with it when I get done...



This picture is via scanner. Based on this and Stretch I have learnt that a scanner gives much better pictures when the fabric is black or white. I'm sure it's the same for other colours, but a camera is so much easier...and I'm so very lazy!
Oh, and the green isn't that odd muddy green, it's 369 and quite bright. The purple is 550.

A start of Biblical proportions...

A while ago, when randomly surfing blogs I came across another "Love" from 1 Corinthians 4-7(I think. my Bible knowledge is lousy, and Google is giving me conflicting answers). I like the sentiment, but it's just too sappy. But it was new designer so I went off to check My Big Toe's catalog. And found a bunch of droll ones that I may do. And then I saw "Think on These Things" and something about the words struck a chord. Google tells me that it is Philippians 4:8. It's the King James Version but instead of "whatsoever" it says "whatever".



So I started it.
I'm leaving out the alphabet and numbers part, and just stitching the left side. I also want it to have a rounded bottom, which shouldn't be too hard since I just have to turn the top upside down.

It's on 28 count antique white over 1. I'm planning on purple letters, green motifs and blue border.

A horrible picture at 2 hours:

That went well...

Or not. My plan to work on Ganesha for 10 hours failed. Mostly because I didn't stitch at all. I got completely distracted rereading Kresley Cole.
I also decided to take part in the Mirabilia BB Pixie Couture competition by stitching all the DMC in Bluebell. (Yes, another new start).
Then I dropped off a bunch of stuff at the framers. All in all it was a lazy weekend.
And I realized about 10 minutes ago that I have a test tomorrow for which I am not prepared and really don't feel like preparing either.
How I wish that Lotto 649 would be mine!

A bird and a birdbrain

More of the bird



Not much shows because I stitched all the flowers and they're white. They'll be visible when the bluish background is stitched, but right now they're faint.

The birdbrain part: As I was stitching I realized that I've been referring to the peacock as an "it". However a peacock is male, so I should be saying "he". I was proud of myself for all of a second... before I realized that I was an idiot for not remembering. And as a biology major, I should really know this. Not be proud I figured it out after a week!

After that disappointing realization about me and my brain, I came to a conclusion that made me feel a bit better. I really need to buckle down and stitch Ganesha. So weekends will be for him. And him alone. To the tune of at least 10 hours. This way I'll be done in an year (I hope). I mean, it can't take more than 520 hours, can it?

So the peacock is set aside for now and it's Ganesha for the weekend.

More of the peacock

So it's moving fast. I'm skipping around on this one, not filling everything as I go. Since it's smallish and pretty simple difficulty-wise that isn't a problem. I was, however, taken aback by the realization that there is a backstitch only chart. This is in addition to the main chart which has some backstitch. Looking at the tiny model picture I really can't tell that there's so much... but oh, well.

A dragon

So I didn't quite end up finishing Stretch on Sunday...but I did finish him off today. I decided to leave off the border. I took a look at a few finishes with the border and I think that there's too much border and it overwhelms the dragon.

Instead of another horrid picture, I tried scanning him and it came out quite nicely.


So stats:
Start date September 12, 2009
Finish date September 14, 2009
Total time 15.25 hours
Fabric 28 count black

and a peacock...

Rose of Sharon went back into deep storage and because I can only take Ganesha in small doses I had a new start. Technically it's an obligation piece. When I went to London in the summer I stayed with my aunt and uncle and they wanted something for their wall. And they told me they were fine with anything... Thanks for making my life easy! Much pondering later I decided on a peacock. It was going to be TW's Peacock Majesty. The one I've been waffling on starting since I got back. And I decided that TW has too much confetti. A search of peacock patterns drove me insane. There really aren't very many of them out there. Either they're way too big, or the focus isn't on the peacock. Then I found Dimension's Beautiful Bird.



Switched the fabric to 28 count so that it would come out bigger. (Originally called for 18 count over 1). And then I actually started it. Got about an hour done. And cross my fingers that I'll be done soon and it'll be mailed out to London.

I was undecisive

So I dug out my Red Rose of Sharon. I last worked on her in April.



But about 2 hours of stitching later, (no pic) I got tired of her.

So I went and dug out my stash to start Peacock Majesty. And found that I was missing the floss for the 1st symbol I was going to stitch. So I promptly put it back.

Then I waffled for a bit. And I just printed out TW's Stretch. We'll see how that goes. I really need a fun new stitch to get me out of my blues. (And yes, I started Ganesha last week...)

Stretch

So it turns out that I had all the floss for Stretch. And I started him and he moved fast. 7 hours later I took this picture... And learnt that it's impossible to take a decent picture of black fabric at night because the flash mucks everything up. The picture shows where I am, but is otherwise absolutely horrible.



I haven't decided yet if I want the border or if I'm going to leave it out. Either way the dragon itself will be done by tomorrow. It's too fun and going too fast for me not to finish!

This week...

I went back to college and my stitching time dropped horribly.

I got a bit more work done on Ganesha.



And then I got tired of all the thread changes.

Labour Day long weekend stitching!

Or not. My big plans were to do nothing and get some serious stitching done this Labour day weekend. I did nothing, and did not do much stitching. I spent about 4 hours gridding a piece of Aida for Ganesha.

There is a reason I don't grid and it's that it's a pain and takes way too long. But Ganesha needs it. He has too many confetti stitches and too many colour changes in small areas for me not to grid.

So the mindbendingly boring gridding later I started him and got 6 hours in. That six hours involved more colour changes and blended threads than any picture has any right to be. I think he rivals a few TW's for blended threads! And my god (haha) the confetti!!!



A horrible picture taken in the middle of the night with the flash glaring on the white fabric.

PINN Ganesha

At an epic 18"x18" and 250 x 260 stitches (from wall to wall) this is my largest piece to date.

Ganesha, also known by a horde of other names, is the Hindu god of new beginnings, obstacles and the removal of obstacles. He is one of the gods you worship regardless of which sect you belong to. And he's the one to pray to first before praying to the other gods.

After looking for ages for any cross stitch of Hindu gods I found him towards the end of last year. He was one of about 3 designs around at the time. Now PINN has released most of the very major gods of the pantheon... and I'm left wondering if I want a matched set!

Anyway he's definitely a long term project. And by long term I mean about 3 years. Anything longer than that is too long for me to plan for!

TOT finish

Yay! She's done! Well, she was done a couple of days ago...
I enjoyed working on her, but somehow she wasn't as much fun as I thought she'd be when I started. I think it's because of the spelling thing. (Mixing capitals and simples in the "Trick or Treat" part).

Start date Aug 20, 2009
Finish date Sept 2, 2009
Total time 43.5 hours



The fabric is 32 count Peach Whisper. The beads have been changed due to the following epic saga:
My LNS didn't have the requested orange beads, so I used a different one
The replacement orange beads were too similar to the required red beads
I replaced the reds with a darker red
I didn't have enough of the darker red
I used the darker red where they are near the orange at the top, and used the original reds at the skirt and the shoes.
WHEW!

Instead of backstitching with the Kreinik, I couched all of it. A habit I picked up after I couched the Winter Queen's hair and adored it way more than backstitching.

I think I'm going to take a break from Nora Corbett/Mirabilia. I feel slightly ODed on them.

September Goals

I didn't quite get to making goals for August, so depending on how you look at it, I either succeeded wildly by exceeding them or failed by not meeting them at all...

For Sept:
1. Finish TOT
2. Start & finish another Ty Wilson print
3. Start Peacock Majesty or Stretch (just one TW, thanks!)
4. Start Ganesha