The Importance Of Proper Planning

After finishing Ohm I decided to start Celtic Autumn, the companion to the Celtic Spring I finished three years ago. (I didn't realize that it's been three years!)

I was stitching along merrily and happy with my progress.

But then I wondered by there was almost five inches as the top border. My borders are normally three inches for things I plan to frame. I couldn't figure it out and went to bed.

And then I sat up and smacked myself on the head. I'm planning on only the stitching the lady and had cut the fabric for that. Do you see where this is going? Yep, I started stitching from the centre of the entire pattern. Cue almost two hours of frogging and then restarting. Luckily most of the ripped out area should be covered by the skirt. But I still can't believe I made such an amateur mistake!

Celtic Autumn
32 ct Antique White Lugana

Grab Your Dancing Shoes

Ohm is done! It took me just a little over 100 hours and I enjoyed every minute of it.
It's really a design that looks good at a distance but incredibly garish close up. So no close ups :)

Title	Ohm
Designer	Alessandra Adelaide Needleworks
Start date	May 7, 2014
Finish date	November 10, 2014
Total time	100.75 hours
Fabric	25 ct black lugana
Floss	DMC as charted

75% And A Bit

I finished the third lady from Deco Spirits and started on the last one. I think I might finish it by the end of the month. Definitely by the end of the year.

Deco Spirits
32 ct White Lugana

Squeezing In

Unlike my usual habit of finishing a biscornu a few days before posting I finished this two weeks ago, and almost forgot to post it today.

This is Papillon Creation's Magic Carpet freebie.
I like it, but I still feel like the colours all bleed into each other too much. You can barely tell that there's orange and blue in the flowers.
The overlapping fly stitches were pretty fun.

Title	Magic Carpet
Designer	Papillon Creations
Start date	September 27, 2014
Finish date	October 14, 2014
Total time	18.5 hours
Fabric	28 ct black lugana
Floss	Dinky Dyes Aquamarine, DD Cloudy Sky, DD Desert Sands, DMC White
Beads	MH 2002

October SFS

Another month without any spending but more through Michaels not having several colours of floss than my restraint. Ohm is on hold until they get restocked or I decide to head out to my LNS.

Spending so far is $73.48
I have $176.52 banked

More about Stitch From Stash here:

October TUSAL

I forgot to post my TUSAL jar yesterday.

The green is from where I mixed up 702 and 704 while stitching Ohm. While it's impossible to tell because of the design style I still felt odd about leaving the mistake in, so I went ahead and frogged it.

Continuing Ohm

I got a bit more done on Ohm. And I'm still enjoying it, so more Ohm pictures for the foreseeable future. yay?

Ohm
25 ct Black lugana
I took at all the smalls I need to finish today. There are so many of them and it was very disheartening. I have no clue how you frequent finishers do this! There's measuring, cutting, lacing, assembling and adding all kinds of ribbons/ricrac/buttons/pompoms. I get so overwhelmed just thinking about it and go back to stitching on my WIPs because it's so much less thinking and decision-making involved. What are your secrets? Tell me and save me from this growing pile of smalls-that-need-to-be-finish-finished.

More Ohm

I made visible progress on Ohm. I'm debating just sticking with this until I finish it. It's just so much fun to work on.

This is what it looked like when I picked it back up:

Ohm
25 ct Black luganaAnd this is what it looks like now:

Washed Out

I started October's biscornu last month and was about an hour in when I realized that it was October and I wasn't stitching a Halloween biscornu. But then I realized that I don't have any Halloween themed patterns suitable and continued on. This is Papillon Creations' The Magic Carpet (it's available under "Free Charts" on the right). It was when I went back to get a link that I realized that the pattern is from Scheherazade, which I finished two years ago!

The Magic Carpet
28 ct Black LuganaI'm using Dinky Dyes Aquamarine, Desert Sand, Cloudy Sky and DMC white. Unfortunately it's not just the flash washing the colours out. The colours do look that washed out in person. On the other hand, I'm already done one side!

September SFS

September was spending free. Mostly because the month flew by and it doesn't feel like I had an opportunity to actually shop. I can't even remember what I worked on this month other than a biscornu. I'm just losing track of time so much these days.

Spending so far is $73.48
I have $151.52 banked

More about Stitch From Stash here:

Late Biscornu Finish

I'm so happy this one is done!
I was so sure that I was going to run out of red before the end. There turned out to be just enough for one side so I had to use a different darker red for the bottom. I think it gives the sides a gradient look so I'm happy with it.
The colour variation in the green is a bit more noticeable in person.
I haven't been able to figure out the name or the designer, so this will just have to be the Unknown Biscornu ;(

Title	Unknown
Designer	Unknown
Start date	September 18, 2014
Finish date	September 27, 2014
Total time	17 hours
Fabric	28 ct black lugana
Floss	Dinky Dyes Aquamarine, WDW Cherry Tomato, Gentle Arts Cranberry

TUSAL and Small SAL Miss

Yay my TUSAL jar looks nice with all that white and the metallics that can't be seen.


Boo! My biscornu isn't finished. I actually thought there was another Wednesday this month and was congratulating myself on how early I was going to be done until I saw the posts today. Oh well, at least I was on point for 8 months, and I'll have this one done by the end of the week.
I will be honest and admit that I have no clue what the name of this biscornu is, nor do I know who the designer is. I apparently saved the image without noting the name or any information whatsoever and Google Reverse Image Lookup isn't finding anything. If anyone has any information I would greatly appreciate it.

Over And Done!

Granny Stripe Afghan is finished!

It's also incredibly difficult to take a picture of, so here are some pretty bad photos. I haven't measured it but it fits my bed and covers me properly when I'm on the sofa so it will suffice.

That giant white spot is something from the camera. I thought about putting it on my bed, but then I realized that my incredibly messy room would be obvious unless I cleaned half my room and I was not in the mood.

I'm happy it's done. I had a lot of trouble finishing off the border. Theoretically I know how to do it, but it just looked wrong when I did it. I fudged something. Not bad for my first non-scarf project.

I'm thinking of making a few coaster with the leftover yarn.

It's Been A While Since These Ladies

Put down my crochet for some Deco Spirits. I'm almost done the third one.

Deco Spirits
32 ct White LuganaI'm trying to decide between starting this month's biscornu and going back to my afghan. Decisions, decisions.

I Think I Can Almost See The End

It's been three years but I'm determined to finish my afghan before this winter! I've got about a foot left and then the border. Wish me luck!

Winter in August

This month's biscornu for the:
Winter Petersburg is done! It's by Olga, who has a lot of very pretty freebies. The blog is in Russian but pictures are a universal language :)

The three squares that repeat. I love the pattern and the combination of stitches. I really enjoyed stitching the squares and it didn't get boring even though I had to do each five times.
Assembly was tricky since 5 corners come together at the top and bottom and 4 at each side. I went across and back and forth to narrow the gap. There was still a pretty big gap at the top and bottom so I put a bunch of beads to cover that up.
It's actually pretty massive and I had to hunt for ages to find a needle that could reach from the bottom to the top and still go through a bead. The beads are giant so it wasn't too bad.
I'm not sure if it's something that happens with all 15-sided biscornus or if it's because I used aida but the corners aren't smooth and stuffed. They are even more pointy in person.
I really enjoyed working on this. I'll probably do a few more if I can find any nice 15-sided patterns.

Title	Winter Petersburg
Designer	Olga
Start date	August 8, 2014
Finish date	August 24, 2014
Total time	23.75 hours
Fabric	16 ct red aida
Floss & Bead	DMC B5200, MH 16603

August TUSAL

So much white this month! White Petersburg ate up so much floss and I had to frog a couple of times so those are in there too.

August SFS

August was spending free. I mostly worked on Winter Petersburg. The fabric was from a kit I swapped out and DMC is from my massive pile. I feel a little like buying some charts. It feels like it's been forever since I bought anything except DMC after running out. Maybe I'll put it towards some horrifically expense kit and then wallow in guilt...

Spending so far is $73.48
I have $126.52 banked

More about Stitch From Stash here:

Winter Petersburg?

I got a very early start on this month's biscornu. This is a 15-sided biscornu by Olga. I think it's called Зимний Петербург, which Google Translate says is Winter Petersburg (I would greatly appreciate any corrections from anyone who knows Russian.)

Winter Petersburg
16 ct red aidaThe original is on evenweave so I've had to make some changes since I don't want to keep piercing the fabric. I also just realized that I'm supposed to weave another thread through those running lines in the middle squares, so I have to go do that.

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.

Crazy Colours

I'm feeling the need to rotate! I haven't decided what's going to be in said rotation, but the first one is Ohm.

Ohm
25 ct Black luganaThis is a ridiculously forgiving pattern as far as colour is concerned. There's hot pink next to dark blue and red next to neon green. It makes no difference at all if I use the wrong colour. And I think I could probably stitch the motif wrong too, but as long as I mirrored it and don't go outside the shape of the overall design it wouldn't be noticeable either. It's very freeing to stitch something so forgiving.

Oh Canada

I'm late posting this for the Smalls SAL, but everything about this project is late. Oh well.

This was my project for Canada Day. (For the non-Canadians in the crowd that's July 1st which celebrates the British North America Act of 1867 which united the then-existing colonies into a country). I started it on June 30 and had no hope of finishing it by the next day, and I actually did finish it by the last Wednesday but then I didn't post it. I'm just late everywhere.

And assembled:

I had to restart this because I ran out of floss and the second skein didn't match the first. I was particularly shocked because it was DMC! And then the leftover fabric wasn't enough to stitch the whole thing so I had to leave out the border.

Title	Canada Biscornu
Designer	Antonia
Start date	June 30, 2014
Finish date	July 30, 2014
Total time	10.25 hours
Fabric	32 ct white lugana
Floss	DMC 321

July TUSAL

This month's TUSAL has a tiny bit of red from this month's biscornu. I really need to get cracking on that or I'm not going to have it done in time. But the heat is making me disinclined to do anything other than lie on the ground with a glass of water.

July SFS

Just a brief report on my Stitch From Stash activities this month. I spent $3.85 on DMC this month. I also pruned my wishlist down. Usually my wishlist goes down as I buy things, but I went through thinking "will I actually stitch this or do I just want to stitch it". It was rather surprising how many things I could take out. And then I added a few things but we won't talk about that.

Spending so far is $73.48
I have $101.52 banked

More about Stitch From Stash here:

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.