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!

I thought I had plenty of time

When I started Rose Lights back in January, I figured I would have no problem finishing it before the Chatelaine retreat in July, but my confidence is slipping a bit now that I have less than three months left. While I love to stitch models, they do interfere with a nice flow in my own stitching; I'm hoping that no new ones come in for the next month or so, so I can really focus on Rose Lights. I got back to it this past week and made some progress on the center medallion:

It doesn't help that my stitching time gets cut back in the spring, as I start walking more and working in the yard as the weather improves, but I'm still hopeful that I can get this done before July. 🤞🏻

I spent the week before last stitching a model for Heart in Hand, making a few adjustments to the Mirabilia model that I had mostly completed in early March and getting them both sent back--yay! Then I took a few days to complete part 4 of Tiny Modernist's Poison Garden SAL, which now has two parts remaining:

I have to say that while I really like this design, I don't like the fact that partial stitches (as defined by back stitching) are not charted as partial, they are just shown as full stitches. I realize that the designer is stitching them that way, and it probably doesn't make much difference to the look of the finished piece, but my brain doesn't work that way--if there's a diagonal back stitch line, I don't want the stitch crossing that line. 😅 Other than that, it's a very fun stitch.

I made my first (and, most likely, last!) Flosstube appearance recently, as Deb Draeger (The Traveling Stocking Stitcher) put together a video of the Q&A I did at the Mirabilia retreat last October. I've watched it once and that was pretty uncomfortable; it confirms my belief that I would never want to have a Flosstube channel, so I'll stick with my old-fashioned blogging!

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Took almost a week off from stitching...

...to hunt for eggs, and it was totally worth it because I won a $250 gift certificate! Lima Beads hosts an egg hunt on their site every year in the week leading up to Easter, where the top 100 hunters each get a $20 GC and the top 25 are entered in a random draw for a $250 GC; every time I've played, I've gotten into the big draw but never won--until this year:

While the site is geared more towards jewelry crafters, they do have a good selection of TOHO and Miyuki beads, and I also find smaller pieces that can be used in my stitching, so I'm looking forward to shopping soon.

Once the hunt was done, I suddenly got into the mood to do some organizing in my craft room. The chair behind my table had become a catch-all ever since the Chatelaine retreat last July and my stacks of floss boxes were growing higher, so I finally put together a cube storage unit that I bought several years ago and got things put away in an organized fashion. I have a couple of bankers boxes filled with things that I need to either sell or give away, and I'm sure I'll find more that needs to go when I go through my binders of patterns, but I'm not up to dealing with that yet! 😣

After that, I finally picked up Rose Lights and started making some progress again, getting to the center motif last night:

I have a Heart in Hand model arriving soon, which should take about a week to stitch, and part 4 of the Poison Garden SAL will be released in a day or two, so Rose Lights will slip away for a while again, but I'm looking forward to completing the center when I do get back to it.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Enjoying Rose Lights...

...especially now that both dragonflies are done--those wings were intense!

The center medallion also has a lot of back stitching, though I think it will be easier to keep track of it there than it was in those wings. I've extended my Qsnaps and completed the border within the framed area, so now it's on to more of the center portion:

Still easily on track to finish this before the retreat in July. 🤞🏻

I did complete part 3 of Tiny Modernist's Poison Garden SAL last Monday, which is also a fun stitch and makes for a nice little break once a month:

It's halfway done now, with the next part dropping mid-April; I'll have to see if I can fill in the rest of the framed portion of Rose Lights by then.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

A pretty little finish

It took me a day longer to finish IMAKE's Courtyard Pearl Mini than I had thought it would, for two reasons; first, doing 108 eyelets took far longer than it seems like it should, and second, the beading also took longer than I estimated. The eyelets consist of 16 stitches, or the equivalent of eight cross stitches, which means that they took about as long to complete as doing 864 cross stitches, i.e. most of my stitching day last Monday. Here it is after all the cross and specialty stitches were completed:

I started beading on Tuesday, thinking that it would take a day, but it ended up taking two. I did go through each bead twice, so I suppose that's why it took twice as long as I estimated; with Mill Hill beads I just go through once, but cylindrical beads look better to me when they're oriented either vertically or horizontally as opposed to being slanted. So, I ended up finishing last Wednesday evening and I am really pleased with the finish:

Here's a side-by-side with the original model:

I did sub out one of the kit threads, switched to black Cashel and ended up using different beads for the outer border, but otherwise I used the materials from the kit. This is a small design, just about 4" x 4" on 28ct over-2, but it is really packed with detail and bling. I am already toying with the idea of stitching it again in a different colorway, though not for a while.

Last Thursday I started working on part 3 of Tiny Modernist's Poison Garden SAL, which is now ready for the back stitching:

I'll get it done later today, then I'll probably pull out my Rose Lights WIP and try to get back into the mood for it. I'd like to stitch Hands on Design's Night Light, but the Chatelaine retreat starts exactly four months from today so I'd be better off making more progress on Rose Lights now.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

I'm back

It turns out that the Mirabilia model I thought might take six to eight weeks to stitch only took three, so it's been mostly done since last Monday. I sent a question about five stitches a couple of weeks ago, so it won't be officially done until I get a reply and then hopefully approval from Nora. 🤞🏻

While I wait, I decided to pull out Hands on Design's Christmas Beetle and design a back for it so I could do the final finishing. A few days later I had a finish:

It joins Ladybug Picnic and Botanical Bee:

I just received the chart for the fourth bug in the series, Night Light, and I have it kitted up and ready to go:

I probably won't start it right away, but I might design a back for it now so I can stitch both parts at the same time when I'm ready to work on it.

In a bit of good timing, since I had just finished the model, I received a free kit from IMAKE, who contacted me through Instagram and offered to send me one. I'll confess that I had never heard of them, but it turns out they design mandalas in a style similar to Chatelaine designs, in both mini and full-sized versions. I chose their Mini Courtyard Pearl kit:

The kit arrived on Saturday and was very neatly packaged. It contains everything you need to stitch it: charts, fabric, threads, beads/crystals, beading thread and both tapestry and beading needles:

While it did come with a piece of fabric, I decided to use black Cashel instead, as I thought the colors would glow on it:

It's always difficult to get the colors to show accurately on black fabric in photos, but IRL they show up better than this progress photo shows:

I did switch out one of the threads from the kit; it was a silk perle that just seemed too thick and twisty, and I didn't like the way those stitches looked. I replaced it with three strands of a Caron Waterlilies and am much happier with it (it's the lightest color that forms the inner part in the photo). 

I should be able to finish this today or tomorrow, then I'll probably work on part 3 of Tiny Modernist's Poison Garden SAL, which was released on Saturday. We've gotten about 20" of snow since Saturday and are still under a blizzard warning, so I guess I'll just have to hunker down in my craft room to ride it out. ❄️🥶

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

A Tiny Town model and a SAL update

Heart in Hand is releasing a new Tiny Town at Market, called Needleworker's Tiny Town:

I stitched this for Cecilia, to be finished into a drum which should be shown on the chart cover when it's released:

Faye Riggsbee did the drum finishing and posted a couple of photos on FB yesterday:

I can tell that this is the one I stitched because one of the tomatoes has a few lighter pink stitches at its bottom. 🍅

Last Tuesday I finished part 2 of Tiny Modernist's Poison Garden SAL; here it is before and after back stitching:

And the full piece so far:

The next part drops around March 15th, so I'll be working on the Mirabilia model until then. It's on the smaller side for a Mira, so I'm hoping it won't take more than six to eight weeks to stitch. I may not post for a bit while I work on it, but I'll be back when I have anything that I can share.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!