Summer doily

During the summer I spent a lot of time practising crochet. It was a nice change. I have reached a point where cross stitching seemed tedious, and that is never a good sign. Crochet was new enough to intrigue me but familiar enough to seem easy and relaxing. Here are a few minor projects I managed to finish. I still have a bigger one in progress and a large white piece I gave my mum before snapping a picture.

Candyfloss finish

Still dirty and wrinkled and snapped in poor light, but Candyfloss, the first of the Ink Circles Roll Your Own mandala series is finished. I am so fed up with mandalas I just signed up for the next series. Here is the link in case you are interested.

Christmas-y finish

Some three years ago I joined a stitch-a-long for a "A Mon Ami Pierre" pattern. I had a lot of obsticles to overcome along the way, I messed up calculating the fabric size, lost my hand dyed floss once, ran out of it twice, considered giving up several times. Three years and perhaps six or seven skeins of WDW later I am happy dancing around the Christmas tree. Yeah. It was definitely worth it.

Happy dance at The Wedding

As you may remember, I had this super secret project that I have been working on for two years. It was Lavender & Lace's The Wedding which I have tweaked a bit to fit my parents' 50th anniversary. I have finished in time too, except for the beading. This summer I took a deep breath, washed and ironed the piece, and then I spent two days beading, but it was worth it. Last week it finally came back from the framer's and went to live with my parents. I am very satisfied with the result, although I do not want to stitch anything white for a while. :) I changed the letters to numbers, and modified the hair colour of the young couple, plus I thought the veil wasn't enough so I added a blackwork in Kreinik's gold blending filament. In retrospect, I wish I would have placed the numbers a bit closer to each other, but it still turned out fine. Here is the end product, with some details for the veil.

Mini finish

I have recently finished this mini kit by Riolis, it came with the ribbons, the card and sticky paper for finishing. A rather simple design, it was done in one afternoon. The petals aren't exactly looking like they are supposed to, but this was my first real go at ribbon embroidery, so I am trying to not be too harsh on myself. 

 My daughter loves getting letters, so I mailed it to her and she loves it! She keeps it on her table and on the first day she has already spilled milk on it by accident, but who cares. What's important is that she's happy.

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

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.

More Tree of Stitches photos

Finally downloaded the close up photos I took of Tree of Stitches in progress! Here are a few, and at the end, you can see the beaded beauty. She's already off to the framer's. Can't wait to get her back!

Under a spell

Tree of Stitches by Abi Gurden

You might know me as the Queen of Procrastrination and the Knight of Many Projects, so it is highly unusual of me to start a design and never touch another 'till it's done, even if we are talking about something tiny. But Tree of Stitches by Abi Gurden is not tiny. It is breathtakingly beautiful though. I joined Abi's Yahoo! mailing list, The Stitch Specialists, specifically for this design after I saw it being stitched by some of my blogger friends. I had the chart for months, but I kept delaying the start with different reasons; mainly because I have so many WIPs already, but also out of fear if I will be able to do justice to the design. I have never used so many specialty stitches in one design. I am a near perfectionist, I put the bar real high for everyone and even higher for myself. In the TSS group I regularly marveled at the beautiful stitching of others and while on one hand they have inspired me to join their ranks as a ToS stitcher, they also made me worried if I was good enough. Correction: they had me worried if I am as good as I imagine I am or am I just conceited? I have seen several versions of the tree, different fabrics and colours and sizes, and I wanted to make mine a bit different. I wanted it to reflect my own personality, the way I like to think of myself. And some of the adjectives I like to flatter myself with is versatile, complex and diverse. So I whipped out all of my hand dyed floss and tried to arrange them to form and represent the full colour spectrum. Took me weeks to decide which ones to use, but it was worth it! I started stitching five days ago and hardly stopped since! Tree of Stitches has allowed me to experience the flow of creation, making me forget the time and everything around me, forget mundane things, such as eating and sleep, kept me up 'till 3 a.m. and still leave me with more energy than I had before! And behold the magnificent sight now! The beading is still to be done, but she is already a breathtaking beauty! Is it a sin to be in love with your own stitching? Well, guilty as charged!

October in November

It's time for the October edition of the WIPocalypse report. Do not adjust your clocks and calendars.

Kit by Vervaco

Finally, a finish!

This is a kit I started about a month ago, called Doves by Michael Powell, and it was a pleasure to stitch. Even the backstitch bit was enjoyable, and I hate that part. All it needs now is the two dove shaped buttons to be stitched on somewhere, but I haven't made up my mind about where they should go. Then again, I'm not in a rush.

Colourful plans and a finish

First of all, yes, I am very happy to report that I have my first finish of the year, and it is a big one: I have put the last stitches in the Lady of the Thread! Hurray! She is every bit as stunning as I thought she would be.

Finished and ready to be framed

This is what the working copy of the chart looks like now.

By the way, the chart is available for sale or trade. :)

Second: I started planning my next project. One more finish and I will be kitting up Rose of Sharon.

I'm not sure I like the colour of her dress though, so I started to look for alternatives on the net and found some pretty impressive projects. Some are on blogs and some are on the Mirabilia stitchers BB, but I wanna wait for the stitchers' permission to post the images before I display them all. Until then, here is one of the versions stitched by Anka, who graciously agreed to share this photo of her amazing stitching. She had not only changed the colour of the dress and the flowers, but stitched the column completely.

Ankaa's Rose of Sharon

Finish update

As I have promised, here are a few photos of the finished Ink Circles piece. It looks even better in real life. Here you can see two totals and a few close ups. Most of the pictures can be seen after the jump.

This is going to be a beautiful pillow.

Happy dancing in circles

Yay, not 10 minutes ago I have finally finished Cirque les Cercles! I will upload scans later today, I just couldn't wait to share the news! I am literally happy dancing around the room!

Eye of the tiger

I'm finally done with this beautiful Dimensions Gold kit too! Looks like July is the month of finishes. I cannot tell you how happy I am to have finished the backstitching and see this noble beast look right back at me. This kit is amazing, look at the glint in her eyes, who would have thought that two french knots would add so much to this design?

Here is the interpretation of a relevant poem, one of my personal favourites.

This video is here to show you the playful sides of these majestic beasts:

Another finish coming your way

I finally managed to finish these mustangs for my girl. I have completed the cross stitches quite a few months ago, but I was too annoyed with the backstitching, so I put it aside for a little while, and it got lost in the throng of WIPs I have in my stash. I completely forgot about it until recently, when I was going through my stitchy stuff to see if I have any kits or charts I could sell, either because I have an extra copy or just don't like that much any more. I am planning to set up a sale/trade album on Picasaweb some time soon, I will keep you posted on that. Meanwhile, here is the finished picture. It's a Dimensions Gold mini kit.

Minor finish

I just managed to finish this small Lanarte kit. It wasn't very challenging, except that I had to once rip out most of the sky and it was rather annoying, so I had to put the project aside for a few months. I found it again in May and decided to complete it. I think it turned out to be really pretty.

The World of Cross Stitching free kit finished

First finish of the year

My bigger pieces are growing slowly so I decided to do a smaller project so I can brush up on my happy dancing. And here it is, a small Lanarte kit that has a sister (with poppies) and took me only a few days to stitch start to finish.
I took a deep breath and started stitching the hair on my ballerina. If you recall, the kit has floss for brown hair but I wanted her to be blonde. Most of the colours I have chosen I'm satisfied with, except for the darkest shade. As it were, the darkest colour takes up most of the hair, and it is more brown than blonde. It would be okay if it would only be a shade here and there, but it's too much, it makes her look like the girl was the subject of an unsuccessful bleaching experiment that went horribly early 80's. So I will frog that colour and probably blend a lighter shade with the original floss to make it work. I will keep you updated.
I worked on Feasting Frenzy too, I will give you details when I'm done scanning.