Beaded mandala progress

I'm still plugging away on a model (and will be for a while!), but I did take a day off to work on my beaded Ink Circles Ghostly Mandala:

It now has just over 2000 beads, so about 3100 to go. If I can get the model done in September, I should be able to finish this one before Halloween.

Tomorrow will mark two weeks since I dropped pieces off to be framed, so hopefully I'll be getting a call this week that they're ready to be picked up. I can't wait to see them!

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Not much stitching to share

I haven't had much stitching time lately; my birthday was at the end of July, followed by my son's a couple of weeks later. My mom came up for both weekends, so between the shopping, cleaning, baking, eating out and visiting, I didn't get much done. And now we are about two weeks away from the start of school, so there's registration, clothes shopping, supplies shopping and the general flurry of activity that the start of a new school year necessitates.

Unfortunately, I also ended up with malware on my trusty laptop, so I haven't wanted to log into my blog or any other password-protected sites for fear of losing control of those sites. Luckily, my sweet husband had gotten me a new laptop for Christmas, which I had slowly been learning to navigate (as it has Windows 8); I guess I will be making the switch complete now, since Geek Squad wants $200 to get rid of the malware! The biggest problem with making the switch is that none of my pictures are on this new laptop; I guess it's time to pull out a flash drive and get to work!

What time I have been able to set aside for stitching has been mostly devoted to working on a model, which I can't share yet. I did make a small start on The Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery's All Hallow's Eve while my mom was visiting:

For my birthday, my wonderful husband gave me a gift certificate to the gallery where I have my framing done, so this past Monday I took in three stitched pieces and a watercolor by Nora Corbett. The stitched pieces are Nora Corbett's Gigi and Red Kitten, and JBW Designs French Country Scaredy Cats; I will be sure to share pictures as soon as I get them home.

The watercolor by Nora is the third one I have bought from her, and is just gorgeous:

Once she is framed, she will join the other two paintings that I've already had framed:

I am really looking forward to having more stitching time soon, so I can get this model done and get back to some of the pieces I'm working on. I just bought season 1 of The Blacklist on DVD; I never watched it during the year, so I can't wait to jump in and binge watch and stitch!

Hope everyone has a great stitchy weekend!

Fun with beads

When I was looking through the Just CrossStitch 2014 Halloween issue, I came across Ghostly Mandala by Ink Circles and my first thought was that it would look so cool stitched with beads. I contacted Tracy, the designer, to get the actual number of stitches so I would know how many beads to order (5145, if you're interested), placed and received an order for the beads and some black floss from 123Stitch, pulled a piece of PTP Mire Cashel linen from my stash and I was ready to go!

Here's a picture of a small start, that shows the design:

And here it is as of this past Saturday:

The beads look black in these pictures, but they are actually called Rainbow; the colors show up a bit better in this picture:

I've now used just over one full pack of the beads (1000/pack), so I must be about one-fifth of the way done. I'm still working on a model, though, so it will be a while before I finish this one; it makes a nice break now and then from the model to play with beads.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!