Stitching Wednesday - August 30, 2017

Whew!  Life has intervened in the last couple of weeks and I missed last Wednesday entirely!  I've been quietly working on some stitching projects tho, so let me catch you up on things.

I put in 6 days' worth of work on my Chatelaine, the Desert Mandala pattern.  I'm still working on the first section, which is the center of the design.

I'm stitching this with the called-for threads, DMC and various hand-dyed silks, as well as some Petite Treasure Braid.  It's stitched on a 28-count Jobelan from Picture This Plus in the colorway Calypso.  I added in the trunk of the tree, another one of the sunset colors and extended the lightning bolt down.  I also finished the interior (magenta-colored) border, and the 1 over 1 coyote howling at the moon.  I'm really enjoying this project and it'll be coming back out for another 6 days over the first week of September.

Next up, I finished the second in a pair of holiday ornaments from Hands On Design.  This is Serenity and it's a companion piece to Solitude, which was featured as a finish a couple of posts ago.

I stitched this 2 over 2 on a hand-dyed Wichelt Jobelan fabric called Twilight Mist.  The floss is mostly Gentle Arts Threads, but I did replace one color with a sparkly Petite Treasure Braid (the snowflakes and the letters), which I like very much.  I also FFO'ed this with a scrap of cotton fabric I had in stash. 

I also worked for 6 days on Block 4 of Village of Hawk Run Hollow, which is the boarding house block.  I finished up the house (except for a bit of backstitching on the curtains) and the fence this rotation, and I started on the signpost there on the right.  I'm hoping when this comes back out in September that I'll be able to finish up this block!

This one is being stitched 1 over 1 on a 22-count Hardanger from Picture This Plus in Legacy using the DMC conversion provided for in the pattern.

Finally, I'm working on Star Weaver, which is the storykeep sized piece with artwork by Tom Cross and charted by Heaven and Earth Designs.

I've got a couple more days to work on this and I am really trying to get a page finish in!  This would then complete page 2 of 3, and I'll have just 1 more page to finish this one up.  This is being stitched on 28-count Monaco, 1 over 1 with DMC threads and a wee bit of Petite Treasure Braid.  Absolutely loving how this one is coming out!

I decided that I'm going to do the Year of WIPs 2018 being hosted by Melanie at the Soulful Stitching Facebook group.  I've got several things that were Maynia starts in 2017 that I'd like to get finished up in the next calendar year and I think that'll help motivate me to do that!  More details on that as we get closer to the year's end.

Stitching Wednesday - July 26, 2017

A fun week of stitching things.  I worked on Village of Hawk Run Hollow, block 4, for my 6-day rotation on that.  I'd say I'm perhaps just under halfway through the block?

This will be the town's boarding house and while I haven't stitched the modifications on this one for personalized details, I will be changing up the sign to reflect my Gram's name.  This one is on hold then until August.

Yesterday I then started the final 6-day rotation for July, which also was a new start I've been saving to work on as a birthday treat for myself (technically tomorrow, the 27th, but I'll be working on this for 6 full days as well) - Chatelaine's Desert Mandala.

Not a great photo as it's a download off the Chatelaine site of the mockup, but this is what it will look like when it's finished.  I'm stitching mine on a 28-count hand-dyed Lugana fabric by Picture This Plus in the Calypso colorway.  I thought all the desert-y colors would really pop off this fabric.

I've started in the center at the tree and lightning bolt. The colors are plain DMC threads and the silver bits is sparkly Petite Treasure Braid.

I'm really enjoying working on this so far - lots to keep you interested and fun to watch the picture take shape.

Stitching Wednesday - July 19, 2017

This week I've been working on my Under the Sea SAL from Lakeside Needlecraft, and I started and finished up the July clue.

I made some changes to the original design of the mermaid.  I wasn't thrilled with her face - her eyes looked a little odd to me - so I turned her in profile so she's chatting with the cute little green fish and altered her hair to make that work. This finished up my 6-day rotation on this piece, and I'll be waiting for the August clue to work on next month.

I also have been participating in the Dog Days of Summer SAL through Cross-Stitch Finish Line for the last week.  The SAL ran 07/14 through 07/19 (today), and I worked for 30-60 minutes on different projects for each day to correspond to the themes/prompts.

07/14 - S: Seashore.  Under the Sea SAL. (You can see that above).

07/15 - U: Umbrella.  A Stitching Shelf.  I added in a few hundred stitches of confetti on this piece and no, you can't see the umbrella in the area I worked on, but there is one in this design further down.

07/16 - M: Design name beginning with M.  I started Mabon by The Primitive Hare.

07/17 - M: Munchies - something to do with food.  Welcome Autumn (which has a pumpkin).  See below also for R.

07/18 - E: Eternity - a piece taking forever.  I changed up my project choice and worked on the Under the Sea SAL since that's a year-long project (which feels like an eternity).

07/19 - R: Red - a project with the color red in it.  I also decided to stick with the Welcome piece since it had red in it and it was still on my Q-snaps.  I worked on the lettering this morning since that is in a pretty wine red color.

For the next 6 days, I'll be working on block #4 of Village of Hawk Run Hollow.  I'm hoping to make some decent progress on this block this rotation. Here's my current status on this piece.

Stitching Wednesday - June 28, 2017

At some point, I will finally be caught up on the bulk of my deadline knitting projects and can perhaps show y'all some of the knitting things, but until then..... I bring you Stitching Wednesday.

I've got a handful of projects on the go and I'm participating in the Ivory Needle Challenge, which is to work on 5 projects with some focus, dedicating 6 days each month to work on those.  So while I am doing that, I'm also spending a bit of time on some other projects that I'd like to get finished for various reasons.

First up, right now, my 6-day rotation (which will take me to the end of the month on June 30th) is working on Village of Hawk Run Hollow by Carriage House Samplings.  I've finished blocks 1 and 2 of the 12-block pattern, and I'm working on block 3.  I'm making some tweaks to the originally charted design, and adding in some family information from my mum's side of the family - my grandmother's family, many of whom still live in Centre County, Pennsylvania.

These blocks take a deceptively long amount of time.  The brickwork/stonework sections in this are amazingly time-consumptive, but I'm plugging along on it.  I've got the city hall building bricks and foundation left to finish, the flag, the birds in the upper left-hand corner, and then I have to go back through and stitch in the lettering in the sign.  I'm not 100% sure I will have this finished by the time Friday comes and it moves out of rotation, but I'm putting some time in on it every day.

I've also been working on a full-coverage piece: Star Weaver with artwork by Tom Cross and charted by Heaven and Earth Designs.  This is one of their "storykeeps", i.e. bookmark sized pieces, so it's relatively small (ish) for a HAED.  I finished page 1 up earlier in the month and since I'm focusing on finishing this one this year, I'm trying to put in an hour or so on it in the evenings when I can.

After slogging thru almost an entire page of mostly the same color, I'm finally on to some different colored blues and am going to try to get at least to the middle of this page by the end of July.  The entire design is 3 full pages and then 1 row of approximately 720 sts or so to finish it up.

Finally, I've been working on a Mill Hill kit, the Pike's Peak Santa a bit here and there.  I've just finished all the plain cross-stitch parts, so I've got beading left to finish up on this.

Planning to gift this to my DH as an Xmas gift this year, and I think I'll be able to get it finished up over the next month and have it ready to go when we get to the end of the year. 

Stitching Thursday: January 19, 2017

This week, I've been working on my Decorating the Wreath/Heaven and Earth Designs project.  I'm going to be switching up my weekly rotation a bit, as I've decided to participate in Terry/Stitching Petunia's challenge #2, and will be working on this full-coverage project a bit every week.  I calculated that I would need to work about 325 sts every week from now until the end of 2017 in order to have this project finished (which I really want to have happen!), so I'm going to put this in at the beginning of every week's rotation and try to stick to that.  I'll then work on whatever other project I have earmarked for rotation that week for the remaining days.

So... Decorating the Wreath now looks like this, and I'll be focusing on it for the rest of this week - thru Saturday.

Last week, I finished up the 2 clues that were released for the Tempting Tangles Welcome SAL, so that is caught up until the next clue releases in another week.  I'm loving the thistles!

I also finished up block #1 of the Village of Hawk Run Hollow, and I recharted the bits of block #2 I wanted to personalize, so I'll be ready to start that in February.

For next week, after I finish up my 325 +/- stitches on Decorating the Wreath, I'll pull out my Winter Garden piece from the Drawn Thread and put some time in on that one.  (Here's where I was when I put it away in December.)

Stitching Thursday: January 12, 2017

Last week, my New Start for the New Year piece, Village of Hawk Run Hollow was up in my rotation to be worked on.  I started this New Year's Eve, and worked on it pretty steadily for the first week of the year, to get me to this point on block 1.

My plan was to try to stitch up one block a month from this piece (there are 12) over the year, but this is one of the simpler blocks and I wasn't able to finish it, even with a lot of focused attention, in a week, so I may have to rethink the plan for this.

This week for my rotation, I opted to work on my 2 SALs - Lakeside Needlecraft's Under the Sea and Tempting Tangles Welcome mystery SAL.  Under the Sea started on January 2nd, so I had the pattern downloaded and ready to go.  This month's motif is a little octopus chasing a fish.

I'm using the called-for DMCs, except I substituted a handpainted cotton from Colour and Cotton for the lightest green, and for the backstitching color.  I also added a blending filament in with the DMC for the seaweed vine to give it a bit of sparkle.  This block is essentially done.  The only thing not completed are some little white "bubbles", but I think I'm going to place those out with clear or white/pearlized size 11 beads.  I'm going to wait and see what the other blocks look like before I decide on that.  I can always go back in and add those.

For the rest of the week, I plan to work on the Tempting Tangles SAL and get caught up on that.  (I've already got clue 9 and clue 10 releases on Friday.)  If I've got time left then between now and Saturday, I'll go back to working on Village and see if I can get that finished up before rotating on to my Decorating the Wreath project.

One thing that I have decided to do is personalize the Village piece.  I am going to be changing out the names of things in the Village to match names of my grandmother's family in their little area of central Pennsylvania, including changing things from Hawk Run to Moose Run (as that's the creek that runs through the area, and the name of the road they lived on).  So I need to plot out the changes for block 2 to customize that before I get there in February.