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.

Crochet On

I've mostly been crocheting away and while it's lots of fun it doesn't make for interesting photos. But it's the WIPocalypse so here's what it looks like now:



This month's question:
It’s halfway to Christmas. Do you start your holiday stitching this early? If so, what do you hope to accomplish this year?
I'm a chronic late starter. I always start something too close to the actual day. Take for example this year's Canada Day project: I started it on June 30 the day before! Needless to say it's not finished. On the plus side, I'll have next year's project finished extra early ;) On the negative side, I'll have forgotten by then.

I'll probably start my Christmas project sometime in November. I'm vaguely thinking of Jim Shore's 12 Days of Christmas, but we'll see if some other Christmassy design steals my heart before then.

Metallics Galore

Deco Spirits looked like this last time I posted:

Now they look like this:

After the larger fabric sizes of Ohm and Egyptian Sampler 32ct seems positively microscopic!

And this month's WIPocalypse question:
Have you ever been to a stitch gathering such as a retreat or a festival? If so, tell us about it!
Sadly I've never been to a stitch gathering. I'd love to go to one but it seems to one of things where you think about it but never get around to it.

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.

April WIPocalypse

Right now Egyptian Sampler looks like this:

I don't want to jinx it by saying so, but I think I'm pretty close to a finish :)

This month's question: How do you keep your stash organized?
Since I skipped last week due to shame at the slovenly way I keep my room I thought I'd share the somewhat disorganized way I keep my stash. Almost everything takes up three drawers in a chest of drawers.


All my unused fabric is in one drawer. Everything is labelled with the size and count. Anything earmarked for a project has the project written down (because the number of times I used to get confused over why I had a particular piece of fabric cannot be counted). Little scraps that I'm convinced I'm somehow use are in a corner.

All finishes are in another drawer. This one is getting pretty full.

DMC is in five boxes. It felt like to took forever to get every colour on a bobbin but I'm so pleased that I did it. I actually have one giant set of floss that I work out of. I used to pull the colours for a particular project and keep them separately, but after I bought the same colour six times because I couldn't remember where it was I gave up and consolidated everything. Occasionally a dyelot changes and things go horrifyingly wrong, but mostly I never have to wonder where a particular floss is or whether I've cannibalized it for something.

All my books, magazine, charts and printed freebies are in a shopping bag. I keep everything by the same designer in one giant ziplog bag so they take up a little less space than if they were in individual plastic sleeves.

Everything else is in the last drawer, piled in controlled chaos.

The upper left is where I keep all non-DMC threads. The red is for my other Cirque projects, there's some anchor threads from Maia, The Shepherd's Bush thread-holder is leftover thread, there's some leftover Dimensions thread on a floss ring. Threads from the companies like Week Dye Works, Dinky Dyes etc are on their own floss ring. Next to that is my pile of ribbons. The two boxes in the bottom left contain all my Kreinik. Next to them is my tiny collection of pearl cotton.

The upper right box has all my trims.

All extra skeins of DMC are in bags corresponding to which box they would be in.

All Mill Hill beads are on floss rings in numerical order in their original packaging.

Oh and I forgot to take a picture of my WIPs, but they're all rolled up in a bag next to the bag of charts. It's a bit messy but it's organized enough for me :)

March WIPocalypse

I missed last month's WIPocalypse since it was in the middle of the Olympics when I had my mini-break. Since this blog continues to be mostly Egyptian Sampler I thought I'd post about the difference two months makes.

From January's WIPocalpyse:

To March's:

That's 130 hours by the way.

This month's question: Show us your favourite places to stitch.
Hahaha no. I stitch in my bedroom where there are clothes all over the floor and the nightstand and the bed is never made. There's no way I'm posting a picture of that chaos.

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.

August Wrap-Up

It's a blue moon!

For the

I knocked off two WIPs: Maple Leaf and Japanese Octagon Box.

Maple Leaf was my Theme-a-licious piece for Altius August, where I interpreted "embrace the Olympic motto" as embrace the Olympics and be patriotic. Next month is September Smalls, for which I have no plans.

Goals for August:
1. Finish Japanese Octagon Garden. Yes!
2. Restart Maia. No.
3. Finish Maple Leaf. Yes.
Pipe dream: Make a new general use bag since my current one is getting ratty. The inner and outer shells are done. I just need to attach the straps and stitch it together.

Unexpectedly This Month:
1. Started Cirque des Triangles.
2. Started Sweeping Cobwebs

Goals for September:
1. Work on Ganesha.
2. Work on my Granny Stripe blanket.
Pipe dream: Finish Sweeping Cobwebs.

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):

Trio of Dragons

Another

Another finish!

Legends of the Dragons was my 2010 New Year start. It's now midway through 2012 and I've finally finished it! It's a three-parter with each dragon designed by a different designer. All three are now out of the business (although I believe Jennifer of DD still occasionally puts stuff out for retreats).
Magic by Dragon Dreams was the first one finished. I remember being very gung-ho at that point. I was going to stitch a dragon a month and finish the whole thing in 4 months. Ah, those were the days... I finished the border next. I was going to use an overdyed since I didn't want to tackle the border (it's all TW), but I never managed to find one I liked that was in my budget. So I eventually sucked it up and stitched it as charted. I'm glad I did that. And then it was Teresa's Wisdom. This is where I got stalled. I can't remember why, but I probably wasn't in the right mindset for a TW. That was a long hiatus. I didn't touch it during all of 2011. And then one day I just had to finish it. And the last one is Majesty by Black Swan Designs. Looking at my numbers this took the shortest time to stitch, which is surprising because I thought it would have been Magic. I was a bit nervous about the lettering because it's over one. The last time I had to stitch a small over one part in a larger design it didn't turn out too well. Too much puckering. But this turned out excellently. I owe everything to my Q-snap. And the fact that I stitched all the lettering over two days.

Title	Legends of the Dragons
Designers	Black Swan Designs, Dragon Dreams, TWDesignworks
Start date	January 1, 2010
Finish date	July 4, 2012
Total time	102.5 hours
Fabric	28 ct antique white lugana
Floss	As charted

Grab The Confetti!

Because we're celebrating a finish this

The Great Escape by Bee's Needleworks is almost entirely composed of specialty stitches, some of which were great fun and others were mind-numbingly boring.
The next project is a Hardanger-A-Long. I'm still debating whether to sign up or not. I've had zero luck finishing any of the HALs I join.

Title	The Great Escape
Designer	Bee's Needleworks
Start date	September 21, 2011
Finish date	June 4, 2012
Total time	18.5 hours
Fabric	28 ct white jubilee
Floss	DMC 317, 318, 413, 414, 415

Full Moon Frenzy

Tons of progress on Japanese Octagon for this month's

Japanese Octagon Box Panel
32ct white lugana
I'd just a tad obsessed with this one. I've also made so many changes that I haven't written down that I don't want to put it away in case I forget any of them before I get to the last two panels!

The over-one "clouds" gave me fits. At least half of them are in wrong places, but luckily it doesn't make much difference. I am not looking forward to the over one birds.

Progress Is Progress

And we actually have the appearance of my "real"

project today!

Ganesha hasn't seen a needle since 2009! And this is how he was then

I decided on a two pronged plan of attack. An hour of tackling the boring background (which stitches up pretty fast) and two hours of the main design (which is a confetti filled monstrosity that does not seem to progress!)

Modifying WIPocalypse Plans

*Scrolls over the last month to see what happened since the last

*

As far as WIPs from last year go, apparently I managed to finish Namaste.
And that was it. So I'm making the executive decision to count anything that was started before the previous WIPocalypse as an applicable WIP (that makes a lot more sense in my head).

Taking that into account, I finished off Lily of the Valley's head. Explanation about that: when I was trying to convert Lily to a brunette I couldn't visualize how the shading flowed. So I went ahead and stitched the head and then made the conversion. Instead of frogging I added the beads and I now have her head and shoulders (and headpiece) as originally charted. No idea what I'm going to do with it. Possibly a needlebook. I'll add that to the growing list of finishes that I plan and just can't be bothered to do.
Lily of the Valley
32ct White Lugana