Another bittersweet finish

When I started Chatelaine's Rose Lights back in January, I was finally feeling better after a couple of really bad years dealing with my mom's health decline and death in 2024 and then her estate in 2025. Last November, a year after she passed, I was able to close her estate and put that chapter behind me, and that was the start of the depression lifting. Then about a week after I started Rose Lights my sweet Callie was diagnosed as having late-stage kidney disease and sadness became my constant companion again; stitching is the only thing that can take my mind off of things for a while, so all of the love and sadness I've been feeling for the past four months is woven into this piece. On the last day of May, Callie let me know that she was ready to go, and five days later I finished Rose Lights. It's a beautiful piece and I know in time I'll look at it and just feel the love for my girl that's in every stitch.

The fabric is Wichelt's French Country 32ct linen, which is a beautiful neutral similar to DMC 3042; it allowed both the cream and black threads to show up well without either being too stark, and it was a great tonal match with the pinks and greens. Unfortunately, it looks like this fabric has been discontinued; I contacted 123Stitch to inquire and they said it had been, so I've been buying some pieces from eBay when I see them. I did buy a piece in 28ct (not sure if it's been discontinued as well, but it's still in stock at 123Stitch), but the color is darker and "drabber" and I don't care for it.

I've been focused on getting this project done for so long that I'm now having trouble deciding what to work on now. I did end up signing on for another SAL, Welcome to the Circus by Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery. I'd been looking at it for a couple of weeks but wasn't sure if I wanted to buy it, then just decided to go for it a couple of hours before the first part was released--it was on sale for $11, so it's not like I'm wasting much money if I don't like it. This is the photo from their site:

I really liked the little rabbit in the hat and the hippo in the tutu, and thought that a bright, cheerful piece was what I needed right now. As a Leo, I was happy to see that part 1 was a lion; I worked on him over the weekend and should be done either today or tomorrow:

There will be 10 parts, with one released each month and ending next March. If each part is similar in size, they should only take three or four days to stitch, so I'll be able to keep up pretty easily. Once this is done, I might pull out the IMAKE kit, choose my own fabric for it and get it on the Qsnaps, though right now I'm not quite feeling up to starting it. 

I'll close with my favorite picture of Callie, little spotted paw pads on full display, laying under a lamp on a table in my craft room with love in her eyes:

If you have a furbaby, please give them an extra dose of love in Callie's honor. 🐾❤️

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!

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!