Joining SALs like there's no tomorrow

Being addicted to Abi Gurden's Tree of Stitches it was obvious that I would sign up for anything she had planned to throw our way. I have already stitched the original tree twice, and I'm in the process of picking colours for the third one. So when she announced the SAL for her Summer Tree of Stitches, I simply yelled "shut up and take my money" at the computer screen and joined up before even looking at the design. Which, by the way, is stunning and unique and calls out to me. I invite everyone to sign up and join us. Just click on the link above and get stitching! Here is the image to get your mouth watering:

The second SAL I signed up for is a special Inc Circles mandala design. We are invited to pick our favourite colours and stitch this beautiful design. You can get all the details by checking the designer's blog. There is also a Yahoo! group where we can share ideas and progress.

These are the colours I picked for this design, but I cannot make up my mind about which fabric to choose. Also, I don't wanna make the dividing line black but I cannot decide on what shade to use, plus, there is the difficulty to assigning colour families to shape families, so it is not as easy as it bloody seems and every time I go through this I have more and more respect for designers and all the hard work they put into their projects.

FYI the colours I picked are:

(from light to dark)

3608, 917, 915,

963, 962, 335,

153, 209, 3837

800, 813, 825,

I call this version Candyfloss. :)

Finished frenzy

The crosses were done for over a year by the time I forced myself to finish all the pesky backstitching on this one, but I did finish just in time for my mother's birthday. Here it is all finished and framed, and now I cannot stop happy dancing.

Feasting Frenzy by Dimensions

Back to blogging

I missed blogging, but due to recent rearrangements in my job I just couldn't find the time and/or energy to do it. It's been a long winter and I missed my sunshine. I mostly run on solar power. Also, I have more and more problems with blogger, so I started to experiment with Wordpress. I may move my blog there. I will let you know if I do. Here is a brief recap of important things that happened, told mostly in pictures. 

Tree of Stitches 2.0

I have finally managed to hand over the last of the xmas presents last week! :) One of my best friends was very busy and then she had a holiday. She never knew what I stitched for her! She fell in love with my first version of Tree of Stitches by Abi Gurden when she saw me stitching it, and I immediately decided to stitch it a second time for her. This time I added more warm colours because I know her to like those, and experimented with the hand dyed threads on the double layer stitches. I stitched the bottom layers completely before going on to the top layer, to add colour variation to the individual stitches. I also added more beads instead of some x stitches. I made her owl brown and left the bunny because I wasn't sure she liked it. I'm very satisfied with the way it turned out. And yes, I am getting ready to stitch it again, this time for my parents. ;)

Photos after the jump.

Look back at Xmas

These two boxes are gifts I have made for stitchy friends because I knew they would appreciate them. Now that they have their presents, I can show you all! The chart for the fall leaves is a downloadable freebie from the DMC site, the other one with the blackwork, or in this case, bluework, is a chart from an old World of Cross Stitching magazine. Sorry for the bad quality, these are cell phone pictures.

2013: The Year of the Frog, apparently

So, as we have previously promised to each other on a drunken night of cross stitch admiring, on the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve, some friends and I have all started to stitch a new Mirabilia project, as we agreed. And although I have only been working on it for three days, I already had to frog at least five times, which is annoying, but it will not put me off! I am stitching Stargazer on Stephanie's beautiful opal fabric called Midnight Tryst and this scan was taken after the first day. I promise to finish this one before the year ends.

Temporary silence

When I am not stitching like a maniac to make sure every x-stitched present will be done before the end of next week, I am working, working out and/or preparing for the holidays. So excuse me for not blogging, I will probably post pictures after Xmas, but no promises. Who knows, the world may as (Mayas?) well end by then. ;)