May Wrap-Up

May Memories was a complete failure since I didn't even touch Ganesha.

For June Jumanji, which is when you work on something animal themed, I plan on tackling Legends of Dragons. An oldie that hasn't seen a needle for about two years..

Goals for April May:
1. Work on Japanese Octagon Box. Yes, but then I reached the point where I can't look at it anymore.
2. Work on Ganesha. No.
3. Finish No Late Knight Snacking. No. I ran out of one colour and never got back to it.
Pipe dream: Finish Japanese Octagon Box. No.

Unexpectedly This Month:
1. Finished Adriana.
2. Re-started Blue Moon.

Goals for June:
1. Finish The Great Escape.
2. Start Tulip Praise.
3. Work on Legends of Dragons.
Pipe dream: Finish the "Wisdom" Dragon.

Edited: Those were May goals! Ah the woes of copy-and-paste.

All Done With Adriana

I first saw this ages ago on Kielrain's blog and fell madly in love with it. And I still love the colours in it. It's really the backstitching on the birds that makes them stand out. And strangely my favourite part is actually these frond-things.

Title	Adriana B
Designer	AaronArt
Start date	January 7, 2012
Finish date	May 29, 2012
Total time	86.5 hours
Fabric	18 ct white aida
Floss	I used the DMC conversion provided

This was stitched with the Sticklounge group.

Long Weekend Shenanigans

This IHSW was the Victoria Day long weekend! Strangely I thought it was next weekend, so I was caught a bit off guard. For those not in the know, Victoria Day is a federal holiday celebrating the birthday of Queen Victoria. It also celebrated the birthday of the reigning monarch regardless of that monarch's actual birthday. While it is a federal holiday, depending on what province or territory you live in you may or may be given the day off and you may or may not be paid for it. Yeah, I don't know either.

I was marathoning away on Japanese Octagon when suddenly I wanted to just chuck it across the room. Q-snaps and all. Taking that as a sign that I was burnt out on it I picked up Ganesha, put him back down (and thereby failed the first Theme-a-licious update) and ending up working on Adriana's backstitch.
Prior to the IHSW:
And after:
So far I've managed to backstitch most of the birds, and am about a third of the way through outlining the green bits. Which isn't really that noticeable.

Adriana B is designed by Aaron Art, and stitched with the Sticklounge group.

May TUSAL

Just scraping this in with less than an hour left of the day.
It's interesting using a sphere because the threads inside rotate as the ornie rolls around, so what ends up visible doesn't always correlate to what colours I've been stitching. Those oranges are from Adriana, but I finished all the orange bits months ago. And the blue along the bottom is from when I did some marathon frogging, maybe in February?

That's Cirque des Cercles in the background. I'm thinking of starting either Triangles or Carreaux after my next finish...

A Bit of Confusion

I was plodding along on part 14 of The Great Escape. And I mean plodding. The signpost is composed of Van Dyke stitches which gave the Wheat-Ear stitches (wings) a run for the title of Most Boring Stitch. Well, the stitch isn't boring, it's just having to do a billion of them that made me lose interest.


The Great Escape
28ct white Jubilee, DMC 317, 318, 413, 414, 415
Eventually I got to the text and that's when I got confused. I wondered why there should be a sign if the town was a metre away. Because to me, "1 m" equals "1 metre". "1 mile" would be "1 mi". Adding to my confusion was my belief that the UK is metric (apparently Mousehole is a place in Cornwall).

A bit of research later: Apparently the UK still uses miles for distance, and "m" as an abbreviation. And it's illegal to use "km" for distance! The mind boggles!

For my own sake I'm wondering if a bit of modification to "mi" isn't called for...

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.

April Wrap-Up

Amazon April was excellent since it resulted in some serious progress on Ganesha.

----->

May Memories, which commemorates something from the past, will be devoted to my oldest WIP, Ganesha. The more things change XD.

Goals for April:
1. Catch up on TAST and The Great Escape. No.
2. Work on Ganesha. Yes!
Pipe dream: Finish two pages of Ganesha Hah! No.

Unexpectedly This Month:
1. Finished Elemental Dragons.
2. Started and finished Christmyth Wyvern.
3. Started and finished Christmyth Giant.
4. Started and finished Christmyth Mermaid.
5. Started and finished Christmyth Salamander.
6. Started No Late Knight Snacking.

Goals for May:
1. Work on Japanese Octagon Box.
2. Work on Ganesha.
3. Finish No Late Knight Snacking.
Pipe dream: Finish Japanese Octagon Box

A Christmas Dozen

I present the entire set of Christmyth freebies by Dragon Dreams.

I'm a tiny bit more partial to the unicorn, pegasus, phoenix, griffin and mermaid. Anyone have any favourites?

Quick Finishes

My new finish isn't my new start. No, it's my other new start. The first is No Late Knight Snacking. I'll get back to that soon and I should be done in maybe less than 10 hours. But I wanted an even quicker finish.

So, Christmyth Giant:

Title	Christmyth Giant
Designer	Dragon Dreams
Start date	April 25, 2012
Finish date	April 26, 2012
Total time	3 hours
Fabric	14 ct white perforated paper
Floss	As charted

And because it was right next to the giant, I also finished off the Wyvern. A wyvern is different from a dragon in that it has two legs, whereas a dragon has four.

Title	Christmyth Pegasus
Designer	Dragon Dreams
Start date	December 18, 2011
Finish date	April 25, 2012
Total time	2.75 hours
Fabric	14 ct white perforated paper
Floss	As charted

I'm actually going to go and backstitch the hippocampus after my coffee.

I've had some questions about Ganesha: He is available through PINN as a kit. There are several more religious charts as well. I believe that HAED also has a Ganesha chart, but I have not looked further into that.

Grey Weekend

This month's IHSW was devoted to Ganesha and I managed to fill in more of the grey.
Ganesha
14ct white aida
I thought I'd share my thread sorter for this project since I'm very pleased with it. I don't use thread sorters because I'm too lazy, I just rewind the thread on the bobbin. But about 3/4 of the symbols are blends and it's way too much trouble trying to keep track of them. So this:

It's just a piece of 14 ct plastic canvas with the key taped to it. It took two tries to get the key sized to the right size so that one symbol=one square. As I said, I'm very smug about this XD.

I'm also a bit bored with all (16!) of my WIPs so maybe I'll start something small today...

April TUSAL

It's a bit blue for this month's

That's Bluebell by Nora Corbett presenting this month's orts, which feature a ton of blue frogging. That's from How Does Your Garden Grow (In The Dark)? I grabbed it out, realized that the called for number of strands was too thick, frogged everything, stitched one hour and then switched to Japanese Octagon.

The Fine Art of Fudging

Japanese Octagon Box Panel
32ct white lugana
See those octagons? They're all wrong! And it's a combination of several factors.

First I stitched one octagon and then I stitched the rest looking at the first one. Several of you are already shaking your heads.
Then I went ahead and filled all the spaces with Rhodes rectangles.
Then I did all the black stitches for one lantern counting from the octagon.
Then I stitched one row for the second lantern counting from the octagon and rest counting off of that row. (With me so far?)
Then I realized that the first and second lanterns were not the same.

Going back to check where the mistake was, it took me a while. I had stitched an extra line for one of the boxes on the octagon. What was mean to be a 2x2 square for a bead had become a 2x3 square into which I'd stitched a Rhodes. The whole octagon was wrong.
Having stitched and filled in six octagons I'm not crazy enough to frog them.

Instead there will just be extra space around the lanterns and bonsai trees, and that Rhodes will replace the bead. In fact, I'm toying with replacing all the beads with floss. From what I can tell they only appear around the octagon and near the top frame...

And it's only the six frames because that fits in my Q-snap without any moving. So I'll probably finish off these panels before I get to the last two.

Herculean Work

Amazon April, aka largest project. Stitch count-wise I think I might have some bigger projects, but physical size-wise Ganesha takes the cake.

And now that I've finished off Elemental Dragons, He is also my oldest WIP. With this picture I have now stitched more on him in this month than I had in the last two years.

Apparently starting those HAEDs have given me a better handle on how to handle serious confetti. Since He's fully gridded I'm going with a combination block by block and cross-country.
It doesn't look like much change since last time, but I've finished off all the black and a good chunk of the background.

A Change

I dragged out the sewing machine a few days ago and cut into one of my favourite fabrics to make a holder for my colour pencils.
It was supposed to be a 24 pencil holder and I did all the calculating and cutting correctly. But sometime during stitching something went wrong. (I probably used the wrong seam size) But it's all good since I ended up with 25 slots XD

I'm very pleased since this worked out with a minimum of fuss. Maybe I'm getting better at this sewing thing?

Sadly I can't remember the exact tutorial I used (I apparently forgot to bookmark it), but there are tons out there on how to make these.

Farewell to the Oldest

Lousy pictures ahoy!


I actually finished off my oldest WIP! Why was it a WIP?

*FLASHBACK IN FILM NOIR STYLE*
It was January of 2009. I had only recently discovered the online world of cross stitch. That's when they appeared. Four designs by Dragon Dreams. All gorgeous and they begged me to stitch them.

So that's what I did. I finished off all the DMC stitching and then I realized that each part had 2 Kreiniks each. This was in the early days. I didn't have any Kreiniks. I didn't want to buy so many for such few stitches. I decided to wait until I collected enough through buying them for other patterns.
*END OF FLASHBACK*

On a yen, I grabbed the dragons and checked my stash. While I still didn't have any of the required metallics I had enough relatively similar ones that I could fake it.
I realized the folly of going with a black fabric when I doing the backstitching. The dragons are almost fully outlined except you can't see that! Also, see that faint silver swirl in the water of the third dragon? That's the exact same colour as the blue in the belly of the second. Crazy how much the colours around it make it look so different.

Title	Generosity/Elemental Dragons: Earth, Air, Water, Fire
Designer	Dragon Dreams
Start date	January 06, 2009
Finish date	April 08, 2012
Total time	63 hours
Fabric	28 ct black lugana
Floss	DMC as charted, 415 for the border
	Kreiniks 001, 003HL, 009, 015, 031, 684,

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!)

Setting the Scene

I finally got caught up with parts 10-13 of The Great Escape. It's all background all the way. I had no idea that I'd fallen so far behind.


The Great Escape
28ct white Jubilee, DMC 317, 318, 413, 414, 415
The only new stitch was the Star Flower stitch, which is that giant square stitch on the left. It's a modified Jessica stitch and was easy to stitch.

Some of the straight stitches (the grasses) are ridiculously long. I stitch this in-hand and it was such a pain trying to make sure they had a decent tension!

March Wrap Up

March Madness. I think I can conclusively call it an utter failure. I planned to work on Blue Moon. I managed to put one hour into it over the whole month.

----->

Amazon April, aka work on the largest project. I'm not actually sure what my biggest WIP is, but Ganesha is massive enough and I'm hoping to focus on Him for most of the month.

Goals for March:
1. Keep up with TAST and The Great Escape. No.
2. Finish Parts 4 & 5 of Adriana B. Yes! And I even started part 6.
3. Work on SK Blue Moon. One hour is still one hour.
4. Start something for the leap year.I started the main panel from Japanese Octagon Box.
Pipe dream: Get caught up with Blue Moon before the next part comes out.Well, since the next part actually comes out next month I might still be able to do it.

Unexpectedly This Month:
1. Started and finished ABCD by La-D-Da.

Goals for April:
1. Catch up on TAST and The Great Escape.
2. Work on Ganesha.
Pipe dream: Finish two pages of Ganesha

Long Legged Birds

I caught up on my goal of finishing upto part 5 of Adriana. Now I just have to print part 6 and then backstitch everything. The backstitching should be interesting because the lines are in colour but my printer only does black...

Adriana B
18ct white aida
Adriana B is designed by Aaron Art, and stitched with the Sticklounge group.

March TUSAL

This month's

is presented by Prairie Schooler's When Witches Go Riding.

Using a sphere is interesting because it tends to roll around (I don't have a base for it) making the ORTs roll around and the newer colours pile over the old ones.

A to Zed

The big success story of this week's IHSW is that I finished ABCD.


All these pictures are in no way what the actual piece looks like! Grr. The white doesn't actually contrast that much, it's almost difficult to see and the fabric is a lot more green. Oh well, c'est la vie. Actually the last one is probably the most accurate. The pattern next heads off to Middle Earth New Zealand.

Title	ABCD
Designer	La-D-Da
Start date	March 7, 2012
Finish date	March 17, 2012
Total time	14.75 hours
Fabric	32ct Waterlily jobelan
Floss	DMC 327,3837,208,209,210,211,154,B5200

This! Is! Madness!

Well, yes. It is March.
Heather suggested working on a different project each day or creating one's own definition of "madness". I went with the second and defined "madness" as working on a HAED. It's only entirely appropriate therefore, that I don't get anywhere near my HAEDs. *snort*

Instead I drove myself crazy with a travelling pattern. Organized by Jennifer, it consists of Peggy Lee's ABCD by La-D-Da. It's been stitched by a bunch of people (Jennifer has links if you're curious) in silks and overdyed.


ABCD
32ct waterlily lugana
I was going to share the epic tale of how this design has been driving me crazy, but have decided to spare everyone XD. Maybe next time.

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

Leap Day Start

So I'll start by confessing that while I think Chatelaine's mandalas are lovely and that I love to look at people stitching them, there's no way I'd ever stitch one for myself. Simply put: I can't get past the fact that there are upside-down parts. Can't get past it.

Some of the band sampler type designs are very pretty, but it's Japanese Octagon Box that has stolen my heart! Specifically the main panel. It's got that weird panel/spaced-box look and it's just lovely.


Japanese Octagon Box Panel
32ct white lugana
I'm only stitching the main panel and I plan on framing that. My finishing skills are nowhere near enough to tackle the box and I'll get more mileage out of a framed picture than I will of an accessory box.

I'm stitching this with the DMC conversion provided by Martina. The only problem is that there are some varigated colours that don't have an equivalent, but I'll tackle that when I get to it.

It's also progressing faster than I though it would. I've always had this image of Chats as monstrously epic works that take decades to finish. Perhaps most people just get stalled a lot? Or maybe it's because I'm only stitching half of the whole design... At any rate, this being a leap year start, I'll count it a success if I finish by the next leap year.