Since it's not "too big"...

I received the new model last Monday and was relieved to find that it wasn't especially enormous--my imagination is almost always worse than the reality when it comes to expectations! Before I started i,t I finished the latest installment of C. Votta's SAL, so that's caught up until 9/21 now:

After that was finished I started the model and worked on it for a few days, but then Nora Corbett had to go and release a design for her Patreon subscribers and I was lost! She just joined about a month ago, so I'm not sure what kind of content she'll create going forward but she designed a dragon as a thank you to her supporters there. The chart she shared is hand drawn, as all of her charts start out, so to make it easier to work from I spent a couple of days with my Hobbyware software making a computer-generated version; as a side benefit I get an image of what the final design will look like (not exact, but close enough):

Of course, once all the charting work was done I just had to reward myself with a start on it, since that's the fun part! I might work on it for another day or two, then I plan to stitch the part of Dragon's Blood Mandala that was released last Thursday and then get back to the model. Although, Hands on Design has a Costume Party SAL that starts this Thursday, and the new Halloween Tiny Town should be here soon...my head is going to explode with all the possibilities!

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

While digging out the printer...

I am happy to say that the fix for our dishwasher last Monday was relatively quick (though not all that inexpensive for being quick!), and I got a great deal on a printer that afternoon so I am in a much better frame of mind today. The new printer is wireless, so now I don't have to connect a cable every time I want to print out a chart--love new-fangled technology! 

However, I did have to spend some time digging the old printer out from beneath a pile of WIPs, and I came across Just Nan's 12 Days of Christmas WhimZi. According to my blog I stitched the first block last December, so it's been in the pile for a while now; seeing it again made me want to take a break from larger projects and work on it for a few days. Yesterday I finished Day 5:

I'm stitching them on a piece of Tattersall linen; I like the way it's coming out, though I'm still playing with the idea of adding a border around them to fill out the squares a bit more. For now, I'm putting it away again, but I look forward to getting past the halfway point the next time I work on it.

Also yesterday I received the ninth part of the Cecilia Votta SAL, and have made a start on it:

It's the final part of the summer scene, which I should finish today; it's good timing because also today I should be receiving "a very large Mirabilia" from Wichelt, so that will be my focus for at least a few weeks. I'm a bit apprehensive about that description, as I'm not sure what they consider to be a large Mirabilia--hoping to satisfy my curiosity soon.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

At least stitching never fails me...

I'm sitting here waiting for someone to come work on the dishwasher that broke down at the end of last month (supposedly they'll be here sometime between 8-12), and while I'm waiting I'm trying to get my printer running again after the paper feed stopped working yesterday (and it's still not working after following the cleaning instructions, so I guess it's time for a new printer), so I am not in the best of moods this morning. Luckily, I have stitching to keep me sane, so it's time to think about that for a while!

Last Friday I finished Blackbird Designs Sunflower House, using the recommended materials:

I'm going to put the chart away for now, but someday I might stitch this again with some adjusted colors (especially in the border) just to see what it would look like. I dropped off six pieces at my framer about three weeks ago, so maybe when those get done I'll take this one over. It's funny because I have a pretty large amount of gift certificates built up for my framer (my husband loves giving them to me because it's a no-brainer gift), but during the lockdowns I couldn't do anything with them. And now I can get over there, but I have so many stitched pieces waiting that I get overwhelmed with choosing some to have done and I end up putting it off for another day!

After that was done I pulled out Dragon's Blood Mandala to stitch part 18, which was released last Thursday:

I'm getting anxious to finish this one, so once I've stitched the next couple of parts I might try stitching the bottom row by using the first five parts of the chart. If it gets too complicated I'll wait, but it would save about 10 more weeks of waiting for those last five parts if I could make it work, so definitely worth a try.

For now I'm going to go wash the printer ink off my hands and then figure out if I feel like working on Vintage Simplicity yet, or if something else is calling to me...

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Sunflower House is built

Even though I spent the better part of two days last week cleaning and running errands, I was still able to make good progress on Sunflower House. I just put the last stitches in the house itself this morning:

If all goes well I should be able to finish this in another week or so. It's actually been a bit strange to have no SAL parts to work on for over a week, though I'll be getting one this Thursday so I suppose that might affect when Sunflower House gets done--we'll see how this week goes.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Plans change

I had the best of intentions to get back to my Simplicity Vintage piece once I got caught up on current SALs, but I just received a chart for a design I've wanted to stitch for a while now so last night I made a(nother!) new start. The chart is Sunflower House by Blackbird Designs, and I just fell in love with the design and colors; here is my very small start:

I bought it with the threads and fabric on eBay, and while the fabric wasn't labeled I'm assuming it's the recommended color even though it looks much darker than in the chart photo. Of course, the photos are often misleading, and the floss colors look amazing with this fabric so I'm going to use it and assume it's correct!

I started it after I stitched the next part in the Dragon's Blood Mandala SAL, which now has 17 of 25 parts completed:

And before Dragon's Blood I finished up Heart in Hand's Doodles: Halloween, which was a fun little stitch:

I need to get some cleaning done this week so stitching time will suffer, but I'm hoping to make decent progress on Sunflower House, so tune in next week to find out.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!