Took a small break

I've been focusing on the model lately but this past Thursday through Sunday I took some time off from it to catch up on the two SALs I've been doing; I thought if I get behind on them now it will be that much harder to get and stay caught up again, and they would probably eventually disappear into the WIP bin so it was now or never. First I did part 17 of The Rooky Wood, which is now in the final row:

The border along the bottom is really pretty so far, though it doesn't show up particularly well here--I'll have to take a closer photo next time.

Then I worked on part 11 of Dragon's Blood Mystery Mandala, which is the first part of the middle row of this chart. This time part of the design reminded me of dragon scales so I pulled out some Kreinik to add some sparkle to them:

I am still a bit concerned about having enough floss of the same dye lot to finish this piece as well, so adding some Kreinik and using beads as I can might help me squeak through.

I finished that up late Saturday afternoon so I decided to take the rest of the evening to make a start on Heart in Hand's Round Red Sampler. This will be displayed in the red Heartware bowl that Cecilia offered at Market this year, so I went through my stash looking for a red floss that went well with the bowl. I landed on Forest Berries Silk'n Colors, which is one of my favorite "Christmas" flosses. I made good progress on Saturday, and then I couldn't sleep after about 4 on Sunday morning so I picked it up again and had a quiet few hours to work on it before the critters got up and needed to be fed and walked. By that time I realized that I could finish it that day if I kept at it so that's what I did, and now it's ready to send to the finisher whenever I get one more piece stitched:

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Another Tiny Town finish

Yesterday I finished HIH's Blooming Tiny Town and I think it is so cute--every time I stitch one of these it becomes a new favorite and this one is definitely no exception! And on 40ct linen it is pretty tiny, coming out at 1.5" high by 8.8" wide:

I'll be sending this to Faye to finish into another drum, but I'm going to do a couple of small round HIH designs first that I can use with the red Heartware bowl I bought and send those at the same time.

Yesterday I got caught up with the Rooky Woods SAL; I was able to change the word "for" to "to" without any trouble so now the quote is as it should be:

Just four more parts to go on this one, so I'm looking forward to a finish.

For now I absolutely have to make myself get to work on the model. Normally I would already be done with one after three months, but the last couple of months have been kind of tough so I haven't been running at full capacity and it's only about half finished. And now there's a bunch of yard work I need to get ready for, so I'm going to have to budget my time much better than I have been--tick tock!

Hope everyone has a great stitch week!

Blooming Tiny Town is here!

I was very excited to receive this chart last Friday and immediately went through my stash looking for the threads; I was missing four colors so Saturday I took a trip to my LNS to get them. In a marvelous bit of serendipity I was looking through the fabrics just for fun and found a piece of fabric in just the color I was thinking of using and in the right count (40ct) and size (and it's an odd size--about 6" x 15"):

 So yesterday I made a start and got the first tiny house done:

There's now a new FB group for HIH designs which just opened this morning (and already has over 500 members!), so now there's a place to share my progress there. I'll also just mention that my Gizmo needle minder came from a group called Minifig Minders on FB. Courtney converts Lego minifigures into minders, and they are so cute! I'm trying to be good and not go crazy, but I do have four that just make me smile:

Still keeping up with my current SALs, starting with part 5 of Cecilia Votta's seasonal design:

I'm thinking there's a girl on a swing coming in the next part (I see a leg and a foot), though I could be completely wrong--part of the fun of a mystery SAL!

Dragon's Blood Mandala Mystery has 10 of 25 parts completed now:

I started with three skeins of Waterlilies and I've now used one of them up; this means parts 16-25 will take another full skein (since it's a mandala) and I'm sincerely hoping parts 11-15 don't take more than one or I might run into dye lot problems if I have to add another skein. Fingers crossed the middle isn't too "floss intense"...

And the last one is The Rooky Wood, which has five of the 20 parts left to go:

I'm a bit torn on this one right now because the chart calls for the word "for" to come after "makes wing", but the original wording is "makes wing to" so I'm thinking I might change it. I need to see a bit more though, to decide on spacing; maybe seeing the next part will help me decide.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Thank you for the kind thoughts

Thanks to all for the kind words about my sweet Gracie; she was an important part of my life for more than 13 years so it's nice to be able to share with others who understand how difficult her loss is. I'll always think of her when I see Cats in the Rain, which I plan to take to the framer in the next week or two. I drew a winner for the chart this morning:

Leonore, please send me your address and I will get this in the mail this week; my email is rrowe @ new.rr.com (remove spaces). I hope you enjoy stitching this adorable design as much as I did.

I'm slowly getting back up to speed on model stitching but I did take a bit of time to catch up on The Rooky Woods SAL, which had part 14 of 20 released last Thursday:

Only 6 more parts to go and it looks like the quote will make up the majority of the rest of it, and maybe a border along the bottom.

Last Friday I received an email from Faye Riggsbee that my Tiny Town drums are finished and ready to come home:

I bought some JABCO pins to add to these when they arrive; I'm looking forward to seeing them in person and adding the finishing touch. Cecilia posted a picture on FB of the next one in the series called Blooming Tiny Town, which is supposed to be released late this month; Faye said that she was finishing the drum for the cover photo while she worked on mine. I think this might end up being my new favorite:

The weather here is still not very spring-like, but at least I can enjoy stitching spring.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Lost a stitching buddy

I've been pretty sad for the past month as my stitching buddy Gracie crossed the Rainbow Bridge on March 1. She was almost 14 and she'd been declining for the past year or two but it was still sudden when it happened and I wasn't as prepared as I should have been so it's been hard. This morning was the first time I felt able to look through some of my pictures (and now I'm crying again!) so I could share some of my favorites of my beautiful girl sharing her napping table with me:

 

So many good memories of time spent in pure contentment; I miss her so much.

I haven't really felt up to working on the model lately, though I'm going to have to make myself soon or there's going to be a problem meeting the deadline. I spent some time working on Tempting Tangles Dragon's Blood Mandala Mystery SAL because it only uses one color and that made it easier to work on when my concentration level wasn't really up to par; I got caught up with the releases so far and have now completed eight of the 25 parts:

I'm also still on track with Tempting Tangles Rooky Woods SAL, which has 13 of the 20 parts completed:

One other design I've been working on is a wedding piece for my friend's daughter who is getting married in August. I switched up the fabric and I'm still not sure how I feel about it so I don't know if I'll actually give it to her or just buy a gift but there should be time to finish it and decide well before the wedding. Would love to hear your thoughts on it:

And finally I just recently finished part four of Cecilia Votta's Seasonal SAL, which has moved into spring (even if this past weekend was more like winter here):

In honor of my Gracie I'd like to give away Madame Chantilly's Cats in the Rain--the gray and white cat she's holding was definitely Gracie in my mind when I stitched this:

The chart does call for yellow and blue instead of pink and purple, and I made a few other minor changes but you get the idea... I'll pick a winner next week and will mail it anywhere in the world; be sure to check back to see if you've won--I will include my email in that post so the winner can contact me. Until then please give your furbabies (or featherbabies or scalebabies or...) an extra cuddle.

Lady of Mystery is feeling neglected

I'm a bit sad to say that I haven't worked on LoM for the past few weeks, but I'm hoping to be able to spend a little time on her next month. I made a small start on a Mirabilia model that I need to get back to but I wanted to get caught up with a couple of SALs and I also took a week to stitch a small-ish model for Sue Hillis that will be released at Market in a couple of weeks.

Speaking of models and Market I see that one I stitched for Rosewood Manor quite a while ago will finally be released there:

I loved the colors in this one, which I think were Weeks Dye Works. The vase looks very cool, but it's pretty big and was a lot of stitching (though easy to count and fill in with only two colors, compared to all the colors and designs within the flowers).

I did finish Heart in Hand's Big-Hearted Tiny Town a couple of weeks ago. I'm not usually a big fan of pink but it does work very well in this design:

I wanted to get this one done so I could send all three to the finisher who will be making them into drums:

When I see all three together it makes me wish I had stitched Christmas on 36ct fabric like the other two (or at least 32ct instead of 28ct)--it looks so big in comparison! But as more are released in the series I'll try to get a variety of fabric counts in there so there'll be some of every size.

I almost got behind on The Rooky Wood SAL (which might have been the death knell for staying with this and getting it done on schedule!); I did manage to stitch part 10 right before part 11 came out last Thursday, and then I did part 11 right away so I've made it past the halfway point now:

Since I knew I'd be receiving part 3 of the C. Votta SAL this morning I didn't feel like pulling the model out for just a couple of days so I decided to play around with another Tempting Tangles SAL, Dragon's Blood Mandala Mystery. It calls for one color of thread; the model uses Dinky Dyes Fireside silk but I wanted to add a bit more color so I chose Waterlilies Arabian Nights, as well as a touch of braid and a few beads for some sparkle:

My plan now is to spend today and tomorrow completing part 3 of the C. Votta SAL, then getting back to work on the Mirabilia model for at least a couple of weeks of uninterrupted work.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

That's a massive skirt!

I didn't work on Lady of Mystery a lot last week (darn cleaning and errand running take up so much valuable stitching time!) but I did work down to the bottom so I can now see just how much work filling in that skirt is going to be--shocker, it's a lot! There will be about another half inch of dark blue below the lowest swath of medium blue, and the bottom right portion extends all the way over until it's even with the border frame. I now realize that there is no way that I can get this done before another model arrives, but I will keep plugging away a bit at a time. Here is my current progress:

I did spend some of my stitching time last week completing Heart in Hand's Patriotic Tiny Town, on PTP Feldspar Edinburgh:

When I first saw this one it didn't appeal to me as much as the Christmas town, but seeing it stitched makes me like it a lot more. It really is pretty tiny on the 36ct linen; I did Christmas on 28ct and it looks a lot bigger in comparison:

And Saturday I made a start on the third in the series, Big-Hearted Tiny Town:

I'm doing this one on 36ct linen as well, since I found this color that went so well with the design; it's from the Eggs Collection by Nicholas Flamel Design on Etsy. I've contacted the finisher who made the drums for the model photos on these charts and have arranged to send the three pieces to her when they're completed; I just don't enjoy doing finishing work, so I thought I'd have it done so I can enjoy seeing these in my craft room.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

The race is on!

I heard from Wichelt last week and should be getting a new model in a couple of weeks, so now it's a race to see if I can finish lady of Mystery before it arrives. I'm thinking probably not, but I'm hoping it's close enough that I can just wait to start the model until I do as I really don't want to put her aside and have her go unfinished for a long period of time. I would like to send her to Jill Rensel for framing, and since that can easily be a 6+ month process the sooner I send her the sooner I'll get her back. 

The border is now complete except for a few beads and I'm getting into the larger part of the dress so progress will look slower from now on:

I'm using beads for the scrollwork on the dress, because you can never have too many beads:

I do have to wait for some more Qsnap extensions that I've ordered to arrive so I can have the entire piece in the frame once I finish the part of the skirt in the first photo, or if they don't ship soon I'll have to take another frame apart to get some more extensions. I hate to do that though, because then the piece that's in that frame is more likely to get set aside and end up in the never-ending WIP pile...

In SAL news I did finish the next parts in two that I'm working on; this is part 9 of The Rooky Wood:

And part 2 of Cecilia Votta's seasonal SAL:

Yesterday I made a start on Heart in Hand's Patriotic Tiny Town:

I wanted to get this one started because the third in the series, Big-Hearted Tiny Town, will be arriving today and I'd like to try to stitch these as they are released. I really enjoyed Christmas Tiny Town and the other two are just as cute--in fact I think Big-Hearted might be my favorite of the three so far.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Lady of Ice is taking shape

I have been stitching like crazy on my conversion of Lady of Mystery; when you don't have a photo of what a final design will look like there's a huge sense of anticipation that makes you want to just keep going until the full picture emerges. I'm at three weeks of work now and I'm well past the halfway point, though her dress gets pretty big at the bottom and that's a lot of solid stitching that will take longer than the open scrollwork in the top half. Here she is as of last night: 

I went with blue for her dress, which is why I didn't want to say anything before I had some progress to show as I know a lot of people would think there needed to be more difference between the fabric and the design, but sometimes subtlety suits a design better than "pop". I think she looks like she's at one with the night and the frost garden around her, and am very happy that she's turning out pretty much as I pictured her in my head for several months. 

I did take a couple of days away from her to work on a couple of SALs; the first was part 8 of The Rooky Wood:

The second was the first part of Cecilia Votta's seasonal SAL:

Both of these have parts being released later this week, but until then I'm hoping to get a lot more progress on my lady.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!