Another Two-For-One

Exactly like last month TUSAL and Smalls meet again.

Most of the orts are from Ohm, but the pink and white are from this month's biscornu stitched for
And assembled:
This is half a pattern I printed out and can't remember where I got it from and half my own additions. I was halfway through the stitching when I realized that it wasn't symmetrical. The hearts mirror each other but the triangles do not. I thought about frogging and restitching but didn't feel like it. And I didn't want to keep going since I knew it was wrong (even if you can't tell at first glance). So I just threw on a bunch of buttons and called it a day. Possibly the laziest biscornu I've ever made. This can be my Biscornu of Shame (everyone has one of these right?)

Title	Hearts & Buttons Biscornu
Designer	Modified from an unknown pattern by me
Start date	May 26, 2014
Finish date	May 28, 2014
Total time	6.75 hours
Fabric	25 ct black lugana
Floss	Dinky Dyes Rosella

May SFS

I didn't buy a thing this month! But I'm out of a couple of DMC so I'll be picking those up soon.

Spending so far is $69.63
I have $55.37 banked

A current picture of Ohm as I put it away for a couple of days. I realized this morning that the last Wednesday of the month is coming up "soon" and I haven't started my monthly biscornu. Guess this one is going to be either tiny or a very simple design.

Ohm
25 ct Black lugana

More about Stitch From Stash here:

Stitching Up Pretty Fast

I'm really enjoying stitching Ohm, which is a bit strange because I don't usually enjoy having so many colour changes in such a short time. I think it's the colourfulness after Egyptian Sampler's beige. (I really should finish up Egyptian Sampler; I only have some backstitching and beading to do...)


Ohm
25 ct Black lugana

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.

Colour Everywhere

Yay I have pictures again!

Also: I started something new. This is Ohm by AAN and it's what I blew most of my Stitch From Stash budget on last month.

I was planning on stitching it on 28 ct black but apparently that's not being sold anymore. So it was either 32ct or 25. I went with 25 since 32 in black is a bit hard for me to stitch on. The colours in this are almost neon bright.


Ohm
25 ct Black lugana
I'm still putting Stitch Sampler I together. To be quite honest, I might just end up throwing the chart up and posting a bunch of links to other people's tutorials.

Devil In The Details

I've had a few people ask if I have any plans to post/sell the pattern for Stitch Sampler I and I am so flattered! I will most definitely post it, but I'm having trouble figuring out how to differentiate the different stitches (since they all just look like crosses and straight lines) and about whether I need to include stitch diagrams (probably) and how detailed those should be.

Give me a little bit more time to poke at it and then I'll have it up. Feel free to nudge me if I don't have an update by the end of the month.

ETA: Apparently I've exceeded Photobucket's bandwidth allowance for the month (it rolls over on the 11th). It's just a picture of Stitch Sampler I, so you're not missing anything. I wonder if I should look into other free photo storage websites...

Twofer

Two things in one post!


The blues and greens from this month's Smalls.




Stitch Sampler I, which was posted yesterday, and Round Bargello Biscornu:
I was halfway through assembly when I realized that I had forgotten my usual flat view.

Properly speaking there isn't an actual pattern for this. I used the stitch shown in the last image here, added Rhodes stitches in the middle, half eyelets along the sides and quarter eyelets in the corners. I actually stitched both sides for this because I was having so much fun. It's the exact same pattern and colour scheme.

Title	Round Bargello Biscornu
Designer	Therapy by Thread
Start date	April 22, 2014
Finish date	April 26, 2014
Total time	9.5 hours
Fabric	28 ct unknown brown fabric
Floss	Waterlily Seaglass, Waterlily Oasis

Playing Around With Stitches

I woke up one day and wanted to stitch specialty stitches. I wasn't sure how long the yen would last and I didn't want something massive in case I lost interest.

So I designed a sampler. It was exhausting. Trying to make it interesting and getting the spacing right was frustrating. And it was just a mathematical/geometic design; nothing fancy here. I have no idea how designers do this!
I have creatively named this Stitch Sampler I and used green and white for contrast.
I made some changes while actually stitching. What looks massive on a chart actually comes out incredibly tiny on fabric, so something that looks like it's taking up a lot of space turns out not to do so. If it looks like you have too many of the same stitches it's probably still not enough.
I threw in as many specialty stitches as I could. Some I knew very well and some new. There's a lot of Rhodes variations in there.
It turns out I'm very bad at visualizing in 3D, so I have "high" stitches and "flat" stitches scattered with no rhyme or reason.
All in all, designing my own chart was an interesting experience.

Title	Stitch Sampler I
Designer	Therapy by Thread
Start date	April 16, 2014
Finish date	April 25, 2014
Total time	10 hours
Fabric	28 ct Prairie Green
Floss	DMC 3345, B5200

April SFS

I signed up for IHSW and failed horribly. I watched too much random tv and ate too much junk food and stitched about five stitches. It was a weekend best forgotten and I intend to move past it asap.

I also went on that shopping spree I've been threatening to go on. In anticipation of my birthday, which is next month, I shopped so that I would have everything ready to start on that day.

No pictures because it's all still on it's way. Hopefully it'll be here before May. Canada Post blah blah blah atrocious service blah blah blah.

Items	Cost
4 skeins DMC, 1 spool Kreinik, 25 ct black lugana 26"x26"	38.19
Ohm by AAN	24.18

Previous spending $7.26
Spending so far is $69.63
I have $30.37 banked

More about Stitch From Stash here:

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 :)

More Border

I picked up that missing DMC and it's back to the border. I also did a bit of the papyrus background in the centre panel; it was a bit annoying because I kept getting lost on which "stalk" I was on since many of them are a little different since the figures cut off parts.

Down to the Border

The pharaoh is done. I've run out of one of the yellows in the border. Montenegrin Stitch is fun. Egyptian Sampler continues to chug along.

Second TUSAL Of The Month

Those bits of orange are from this month's biscornu, Morocco. The blue-grey is from finally frogging a long abandoned piece. Now I just need to find something other design to fit the fabric...

A Very Citrusy Biscornu

A couple of days late, but worth it I think.
I started a blackwork biscornu for this month but it was taking a lot longer than I thought so I started something else. This is Morocco by Olga. She has a bunch of gorgeous freebies if you want to take a look.

I wasn't sure what colours to use and decided to go with one side in spring colours and the other in wintery colours (yes I was going to stitch both sides since I like the design). But I impulsively went with an almost neon orange. I'm so glad I did! Combined with the green and yellow which make me think of a cut lemon it's so sunny and bright. And the contrast with the blues would've been too much so I just went with the citrus theme.
Since I was keeping the same colour scheme I didn't end up stitching the entire second side. So one of the things I'm trying with these smalls is to use up left over floss. I had a bit of a panic at the end when I thought I was about to run out of the orange and green and that I would have to buy more, thus defeating the "use up old floss" part of the plan. It turned out that I had another skein of the orange lying around but I did run out of the green and had to make a change.
The Jessica Stitch in the middle was so much fun. The fabric ended up puckering a little but it disappeared after assembly so it's all good.
I think the middle of the green circles was supposed to by an eyelet but I went with a Rhodes stitch instead. And I have no idea what that arrow-like stitch is called, but it was fun too.
I just really like that arrow.
I had this lovely orange button I was planning on using for the middle but it would've covered up most of the Jessica so I went with some beads instead.
Whenever I stitch something with specialty stitches I remember how fun they are. Sometimes I think I should take up canvaswork since those designs use so many. But then I remember that they also use all sorts of specialty threads that are outside my budget and I come back down to earth. Still I think I'm going to stitch some more of Olga's freebies to satisfy my yen.

Title	Morocco
Designer	Olga
Start date	March 26, 2014
Finish date	March 27, 2014
Total time	10.75 hours
Fabric	25 ct antique white lugana
Floss	Crescent Colours Lobster Claw, Dinky Dyes Lemon Lime, Weeks Dye Works Emerald
Beads	Mill Hill 2002

A Frugal Life For Me

Where did the month go? It feel like it was yesterday I was watching the Olympics and cursing the snow. Well, the snow is still here...

I spent a whopping zero dollars since my last Stitch From Stash report, so that's good. I feel like I've been exceptionally frugal these few months (because I have). Now I'm resisting the temptation to go on a celebratory spending spree.

My total so far is $7.26
I have $67.75 banked

More about Stitch From Stash here:

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.

Border Journey

As hypothesized last post, this is just more of the border filled in:

Egyptian Sampler
28 ct Antique White Monaco
I'm tackling the papyrus panel next and then it's on to the pharaoh.

Back To The Border

I had a lovely follower ask about how Egyptian Sampler was doing and there's been a fair bit of progress since the last picture so here we go:

Egyptian Sampler
28 ct Antique White Monaco
Please ignore that this was taken on a not-flat surface. It was the only non-blurry picture and I'm too lazy to go back upstairs to take another picture. The next picture will probably be pretty boring. I'm going to fill in as much of the border as I can.

First TUSAL of the Month

I missed posting this yesterday and almost forgot today! Thank goodness for everyone on my feed who posted and thus reminded me :)

The yellows and beiges are from Egyptian Sampler which has been my focus piece for the last two months. The little bit of red is from last months biscornu.