June Achievements & July Goals

Goals for June:
1. Finish Bluebeard's Princess Done!
2. Get caught up on the Hardanger Bag SAL No. Got up to part 3, and then put it away.
3. Start Runekeeper Saga Done.
4. Work on whichever piece wins the poll Done. Quite a bit of progress too.
5. And now that I've discovered the poll options, go crazy with the power!!! No. Completely slipped my mind

Other things I did that were unplanned:
1. Started and finished the stitching on The Pink Bag. Now I just need to assemble it.

Goals for July:
1. Stitch Bent Creek's Shamrock Row
2. Finish another part of the Hardanger Bag
3. Finish at least two colours from Runekeeper's Saga
4. Finish Minx's skin
5. Work on Cirque des Cercles, if I can squeeze it in

Cerchio

I had some comments about how this was a piece unforgiving of errors, and I thought "Well, it's not like I make mistakes" and "I'm a careful counter"

Do you see where this is going?


Cirque des Cercles
32 ct Lemon Whip Lugana, DMC 115

The leftmost motif in the uppermost row is in the wrong place. It's should be the next left motif. Not a problem since I'll just switch motifs.
Then I stitched the "fixed" motif one row too low. Frog and redo. One row too high.

Two hours since last week and into the pile.

Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall. - KJV

Title: Italian

A Fantastical Start

I had a new start. BUT I was good. Sort of. It's one I've been planning for a while, so it was a WIP without stitches, right?

I've only ever seen this finished once, but as a fan how can I not stitch this tribute to all fantasy/RPG cliches?

Dragon Dreams' The Runekeeper Saga:


It's got it all: a Hero, a Wizard, a Princess, the Companions (Bard (although I think he looks more like a Thief), Elf, Knight), a Castle, a Dragon, a Unicorn (Ok, that's a bit uncommon), a Sword, a Crown and of course, the Evil!

I'm going to get the border out of the way first. I was going to stitch block by block and have 12 mini HDs, but I've decided to have some fun instead. I'm going to go by colour. And post a picture after each colour. It'll either be very interesting to see the pictures appear as colours increase, or we'll all get sick of seeing strange blobs!


The Rune Keeper Saga
28 ct Antique White Lugana
And I've made changes. You can't really tell from the model, but the inner borders are different for each motif. Except that you can barely see the light ones. I'm just going with my favourite (Bard's) for all of them.

Kreise

Since I'm going to be posting a picture every week, I can at least try to make the titles more fun. I have passed the halfway point. Woohoo!


Cirque des Cercles
32 ct Lemon Whip Lugana, DMC 115
Title is German for circles. (According to Google anyway. Any Germans out there?)

TUSAL June

With Yoyo (our host) disappearing due to computer issues(?), and me being too lazy to look up the new moon, I just wait for someone to post and then post mine. This is 3 days late:



The pink is from The Pink Bag

(In my defense the new moon in May was the 14th, so I thought it would be around then this month too...)
But July is 11th, and I shall be prompt!

Pink!

I spent most of this week working on The Pink Bag from Dutch Treat Design's Pink Collection. I won the chart from Paulina (who's kinda disappeared...anyone know anything?). She also threw in the required Anne Cloth.


The Pink Bag
18 ct Anne Cloth
It was interesting working on the Anne Cloth. It's 18 ct, but the stitching is over two. The fabric is very soft and distorts if the stitches are pulled too tight. And since my fingers are usually a bit dry, I kept getting caught on the fabric.

The design called for Perle cotton in various colours. But since my Perle collection is black, red, blue and ecru, and I wasn't going to buy them just for this, I used 4 strands of regular DMC floss.

Start date June 1, 2010
Finish date June 12, 2010
Total time 13 hours

Changes:
Where the pink lines cross is supposed to be eyelets, but the ones I did distorted the fabric far too much, so I just did Rice stitches. Rice stitches are new to me, but the instructions were good and the stitch itself is very easy.
I didn't like the called for 502 and used the softer 320.

Front:

Back:

Flap:

I won't be finishing this as a bag. I'm thinking a hussif or something similar pending a suitable finishing fabric.

Samedi de cirques

Kristen and I decided to make Saturday our day for sharing CdC progress. I was good last week, not so much this time.

Eerie Beauty

Now, this is probably just me, but I find that BP's face, that high forehead, her colours, the fabric, all add to give her a slightly eerie feeling. My brother says she looks unearthly. I even had the notion that she could be the wicked sea witch to my more innocent MotDB...


Bluebeard's Princess
32ct Laurel Linen
Start date March 11, 2010
Finish date June 6, 2010
Total time 62 hours

She has an insane amount of bling. I used everything as recommended except I switched out the (too expensive) gold beads for some I had in my stash.

When she first came out, I was bothered by her forehead and the border. I have moved beyond the forehead, but I still dislike the border. Also, my other mermaids are free floaters, so she fits in better by herself.

I think the sea pegasi are cute, and I'd love to stitch them separately some other time.

The votes are in!

And folks want red circles! (except for those who wanted something else LOL).

I give you:


Cirque des Cercles
32 ct Lemon Whip Lugana, DMC 115
I thought I'd been posting more pictures of CdC, but apparently not (I'll do better). This is it as of 10 minutes ago. I worked on the upper right motif today. Getting a mini HD with every motif increases the enjoyment factor.

I try not have a very dark stitch right next to a very light stitch, which is probably unnecessary but makes me happy. Right now that dark patch in the middle of the light red in upper rightmost motif in the house that Jack built is bothering a tiny bit me. The upper left of the motif is dark, and the lower right is light except for that patch. However in the big scheme it's not important, and shall not be tampered with.

Canada Post not at fault!

Way, way, way back in February(!) I had my first giveaway, which Angela informs me has arrived. And while I'd love to blame Canada Post, I can't. They actually delivered in less than a week. I, on the other hand, took way too long.

The tale is a tragicomedy, involving a sudden crazed dislike of the initial backing fabric and finish, a frantic restitching of the piece, a somewhat satisfying finish and a whole lot more angst. But I won't bore you with that.

Angela sent me the most wonderful email and has such a lovely post about it. I've just been smiling all day (and read that email over a dozen times)!

I suppose it's true that we are our own worst critics.

A couple of pictures of what I sent:



I had a lot of fun trying out new stitches for the finish. The initial is in outline stitch.


I've learnt a few things from this:
I should have the entire giveaway ready, and only have to write a note and put the address on the envelope. Otherwise I'd just procrastinate like crazy!

And there's nothing, nothing like finding out that the recipient likes what you made.