October Achievements & November Goals

Goals for October:
1. Finish Beautiful Bird DONE! Now I just need to mail it out
2. Finish Think on These Things I just have the entire border to go
3. Start and stitch everything except the beading on Nora Corbett's Bluebell Almost, just the backstitch left. So I figure it counts...
4. Stitch at least 20 hours on Ganesha Nope. Somehow I'm just not inspired
5. Stitch Sweetheart Tree's Shamrock Biscornu Started, but I'm getting annoyed with the central Celtic Knot

Other things I did that were unplanned:
1. Started Prairie Schooler's When Witches Go Riding
2. Started to finish Arabesque S as a bag

Goals for November:
1. Stitch Space Invader Sampler and finish as a bag
2. Finish "S" bag
3. Finish Shamrock Biscornu
4. Stitch at least 20 hours on Ganesha
5. Stitch and finish a few floss tags

I won! I won! I won!

Oh My God! I'm so excited. I'm the Day 12 winner at Missy's contest!
I'm floating about two feet off the ground. (Can you tell this is the first time I've won anything? ever?)

And since I have no willpower whatsoever I'm waiting for Missy to put the picture of my winnings up!

Again: YAY!!!

ETA: The picture is up at Missy's, my very own Bunnicula, with really nice pins, a set of fangs and magnets! Now to spend the next week stalking the mailman...

A red house and a few pumpkins

is all I got done. I've been stitching with two threads and I have to admit that the coverage isn't too good for the witch or the house...



I think I'm going to finish all the pumpkins and their stems and then put this away for a bit. It'll be that vast amount of brown ground, the two cats at the top and their orange background and that frame. I'm loosing my gungho-ness for this piece so I need to move on before I start to hate it.

Halloween has always been a bit odd for me. I came to Canada too old to go trick or treating, none of my little cousins go trick or treating and I've always lived in apartments or condos, so no door-to-door treaters.
I think I'll spend tomorrow celebrating the true spirit of Halloween: by eating CANDY!

(Actually what is the true spirit of Halloween?)

Anyway, Happy Halloween, Happy Samhain or Happy All Hallow's Eve, if you celebrate any of them, and if not celebrate the candy!

More Witchy Goodness

Ok, so I haven't reached the witch yet. But I picked op the missing floss, finished off the moon (which I love, it's so awesome!), and am almost done the tree.
I never actually noticed that there were two crows in the tree! That was a pleasant surprise. (Yes, I've only actually stitched one crow, or maybe it's a raven?)



I think I'm going to seriously push to finish this by Saturday. Of course it won't be framed for ages, but it'll be done by Halloween!

I've been on a slightly insane rampage of reading and following new-to-me blogs. In the nature of things, this means I have about a dozen new patterns I MUST stitch. Topping the list for next Halloween (yes Mum, I can plan long-term!) are "Something Wicked" by La-D-Da and "Sleepy Hollow" by Glendon Place.
Actually I haven't seen a finish of Sleepy Hollow yet, but it looks so cool. Now I feel like reading "Legend of Sleepy Hollow"...

I'm off to Fabricland tomorrow to see if I can find some decent handles for my patchwork bag (Michaels has nothing) and then I shall share my magnificent marvel. I hope.

A Question:
I picked up a couple of those DMC floss rings because they were dirt cheap. And I want to make a few floss tags. The internet is filled with awesome tutorials, so I'm set for the "How-to" bit.
BUT, none of them tell me what size the eyelet should be. I was overwhelmed by choice: 1/8", 3/16", 1/4" etc. What size is big enough that the ring slides easily, but not so big that it...well, looks too big?

Kathy's Giveaway

What is it about Halloween that's bring out all these lovely giveaways?

Check out Kathy's 1 year blogversary here and admire her dog Rory!

Hey, I figure if I enter as many of these as I can, karma has to let me win one!)

April's Giveaway

A ton of mystery stuff including 5 Halloween charts, 5 Snowmen charts and, and, and... a whole lot more.

Check her out here

Craftymoo's Giveaway

"Alphabet Pumpkin", because she had an extra, WDW Thread and Silkweaver Boo 28ct Lugana, because she's awesome~

Here

Daffycat's Giveaway

To celebrate her 2nd blogversary is giving away two copies of Simon's Cat.

Visit and enter here

Witches, and cats, and pumpkins

Oh my!

This month I've been suffering from chronic startitis and a lack of desire to finish anything. I finished my "Halloween" piece for this year, Trick or Treat, ages ago, and wasn't planning on another till next year. Best laid plans of ...etc.

I dug up Prairie Schooler's When Witches Go Riding. It has only 7 colours! Only 7. I'm a bit used to ones with a ridiculous number of colours. And it so happened that I had a piece of Peach Whisper (the fabric I did ToT on) in the right size. AND I had 5 of the flosses. It was meant to be.

My needle was on fire and I started it today and got 7.5 hours in.



I'm missing the red and orange, which is why certain words are missing. I'll probably pick them up on Monday.

Just 10,000 ways that don't work...

I've always wanted to quilt/patchwork. Since my crafts are all self-taught, I've been trying to teach myself. Unfortunately I'm not good at spatial visualization, and can never get the seams right. I usually forget to add them or if I do I somehow miss them when I stitch. I have a few unfinished pieces(ie utter failures) lurking in a pile.

Today was going to be different. Today I was going to succeed!

I sort of did. I originally planned to make a bag about 14"x12". It appears that it will be about 10"x10" in reality. About an hour in I started making mistakes and so put it away. Still I haven't royally messed up (besides the unexpected resizing). I won't be able to work on it this weekend but I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this bag will come out fine!

Pumpkin Horror!

My entry for Cathey's giveaway.

I've seen many people rave about Twilight. I couldn't get past page 70... different strokes, I guess.

But I am a fan of the original Transylvanian. This is the pumpkin I'd carve if I carved pumpkins.



It took me quite a few tries. I'm particularly fond of his fangs (even if they aren't very visible)

It's not easy stitching green...

It feels like miles and miles of green. And most of it's backstitch too.

I got about 10 hours into Baby Shamrock Biscornu and realized that I hadn't taken a picture. I'm not working in any particular order. I do as much backstitch as I can handle and then switch for a short while and then slough through more back stitch.



The Celtic Knots in the corner are over one. And I kept on frogging the backstitch. There are parts where a faint green line is still visible... I haven't figured out to get the thread fuzz out yet...

Midterms and such things...

Mostly midterms.

I haven't had much time to stitch because of term tests and midterms. Hopefully the coming week will be better.

I did get all of the words in "Think on These Things" stitched. I just have a green motif and then the border. I think I will make this a pinkeep and start a pinkeep collection.



After saying that I would never ever ever stitch a HAED, I've realized that sometimes you just have to accept that the universe doesn't listen! My main reason to refuse/resist the HAED call is that either the picture isn't my style, it's too big for my goldfish attention span or that it looks better as a picture than as a cross stitch. Well, I saw this:



Autumn Winds.

Even worse (or better) I saw a finish of it on a red opalescent and was a goner. A quick check of my floss showed that I'm missing half, so I'm not starting this week (a good thing). However I'm close to a couple of HDs, so maybe Autumn's closer than I thought...

Goal!

Well, the Pixie Couture competition one anyway.
I finished off all the DMC. Since I actually managed to get my hands on all the metallics I'm going to do those too. Two of the beads are on order, so I'll have to wait to bead.

Somehow it doesn't seem all that different from yesterday's picture...



Now the pattern calls for Caron Waterlilies 204, which I don't have and keep forgetting to pick up at the LNS. I wonder if I should just sub in a random green DMC...

Hooray for long weekends!

Thanksgiving being something my family doesn't do, I spent the weekend stitching. I feel like I had a good bit of progress on Bluebell.



I'm almost done the DMC. I was originally going to stitch her without the wings because I thought they were too dragonfly-ish. But now that I've seen a few finishes with them...I'm leaning towards stitching them too. I'll admit that she looks like she has a really weird tanline!

I also picked up a few pieces from my framer. Pictures eventually. Since I live in a pretty small apartment, and there really isn't any wall space I can put them without being tacky...they're under my bed. Until I figure out what to do: move somewhere with more wall space, or give up and have all my walls covered in cross stitch. Very little of which goes with everything else.

More bluebell

I got most of her skirt done. There's a large patch of #800 that was just boring to stitch.



I also started The Sweetheart Tree's Baby Shamrock Biscornu, but there isn't enough progress to warrant a picture.

And, when I was coming home yesterday it was snowing! Giant clumps of snowflakes. And the roads were icy. It's still the middle of October! Where's my nice fall weather? *grumble grumble*

Peacock HD!

All done. It took me 43.5 hours. I finished last night. Now all I have to do is figure out how to mail it to London...



Now to work on Bluebell

Just the backstitch...

and the French knots. That's all that's left.

I slept through the weekend. Friday was wonderful. I fell into bed at 6 in the evening and woke up 5 the next morning. OK the waking up at 5 in the morning wasn't that great, but sleeping for 11 hours was refreshing!



The blue inside was tedious but it went pretty fast.

Bluebell

I'm stitching Nora Corbett's Bluebell for a contest on a board. Just the DMC. My LNS lady is on vacation, so I can't get the beads or metallics . I think her wings are too bright and if I can make them paler I will, or I might just leave them out.

I didn't get much time on her. I'm just been tired with midterms and assignments.
She's on 32 count Waterlily. As always, the picture is weird...