On the way to a finish

I've made pretty good progress on Rose Lights in the past week, and I'm now hopeful that I'll have it done within the next couple of weeks, well ahead of the July Chatelaine retreat. Here's my stopping point from last night:

It's funny how this point in any design is often the most difficult for me to get through--I'm close to a finish, but it also feels like a lot left and I'm just anxious to get it done so I can work on something new. Hopefully by the end of the week I'll have pushed through that and moved on to just being excited that it's nearly done.

I finished up part 5 of Tiny Modernist's Poison Garden SAL last Monday:

The final part is due to drop June 15th, so Rose Lights should be (better be!) done by then and I can finish it up within a few days of the release. I'm not planning on taking on any more SALs right now, but I suppose that could change if one comes out that I can't resist.

I was excited to be contacted by IMAKESTITCH again on IG, offering to send me another kit of my choice from their catalog of designs. This time I chose one of the full-sized designs, Aster Courtyard, which will be close to 12" x 12" when stitched:

It came nicely packaged in a cardboard box, and contains everything needed to stitch it, even beading thread and tapestry and beading needles:

I'll be starting this once Rose Lights is done, and I'll probably take it to work on when I travel to the Chatelaine retreat.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week! 

The border is done (almost)!!

Last Thursday I finished the majority of the border on Rose Lights--woo hoo!! 🥳

There are ten squares that need to be filled in with flowers and some beads still to add, but I'm thrilled to have the bulk of it completed. 

Oops! Just looked at the closeup photo and realized I missed a bit of a motif on the right side. Thank goodness for pictures--it'll be fixed by tomorrow!

In a bit of good timing, part 5 of Tiny Modernist's Poison Garden SAL dropped last Friday, so I was able to start that without having to interrupt the border stitching. In a bit of bad timing, this part includes a black border! 😅

I couldn't quite complete it in a weekend, but it should be done today. Since the top part of the left pillar mirrors the right, I think I'm just going to stitch the entire thing that way instead of waiting for the final part to see the bottom of the pillar. Then when part 6 comes out, I'll be that much closer to a finish.

Planning to get back to Rose Lights tomorrow with renewed energy now that the border is done, and hoping for a finish in the next two to three weeks.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Border blahs

Why is it that borders often feel like such a chore? I'm having trouble motivating myself to work on Rose Lights because that border seems never ending; I finished the inner black border, but then still had to do the outer cream border--ugh!

I'm almost done with one of the two cream silks, so hopefully getting the first one done will help motivate me, but it has definitely been a slog for the past week. It was also frustrating because I found what I believe are errors in the placement of the motifs along the bottom: the heart shapes start anywhere from two to four spaces down from the black, while the other shapes start from one to three spaces down, with no repeating pattern that makes sense. I didn't discover this until I had three of the "hearts" stitched, so then I had to frog two of them. 

While this isn't a truly symmetrical design, I have made quite a few changes to make areas within it more symmetrical. I don't see any of them mentioned on the errata page of the Chatelaine site, but perhaps some of them have been addressed in the digital chart (I'm working from a paper chart from 2004). Regardless, I'll muddle through--I know once the border is done my enthusiasm will return.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Always a good feeling...

...to add the last Qsnap extensions to a WIP, which is what I did on Saturday:

I finished the center medallion last week, which was fun to see come to life:

Once it was done, I couldn't resist setting the heart treasure in the center to see how it would look:

Turns out, I'm not very happy with it, for a few reasons: it doesn't fit in the space very well (it's squishing a bead and looks lopsided), the color is too yellow compared to the cream silks and the shape just doesn't seem right in a symmetrical opening. So, I went through my stash of treasures and found one that I like much better:

Better fit, more symmetrical, better color and it's a rose, which is perfect for a design called Rose Lights! 🌹 I might see if the heart can be used somewhere else in the design, but if not, I'm okay with not using it.

Here is my progress as of last night:

I'm going to focus on the border until it's done, then move on to the more fun part of filling in the center area. I was getting a bit worried about whether I was going to have enough of the gold beads used in the black border (and elsewhere), so I counted the remaining beads and found I have 88 left, 84 of which are needed to complete the border. I had to order more for other areas, so I'm hoping the dye lot isn't too different, but at least I have enough to complete the border, because a dye lot difference there would be harder to ignore.

I also want to mention that last Friday night I hit 1,000,000 page views on my blog:

Many thanks to everyone who takes the time to stop by, and for leaving encouraging comments; it's a wonderful feeling to belong to a community that shares my love of needlework. 🧵🪡💙

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!