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!

Some small finishes

As mentioned in my previous post, I've been doing some stitching for Judy Odell, who has un-retired and is back to work with a vengeance! Here are a couple of the finishes she has done for me in return for model stitching for her:

I don't think it will be giving too much away if I share pictures of what I stitched for the piece she's coming out with soon, and they're too cute not to share. The first is Lizzie*Kate's Spooky String:

The second is L*K's Tingles/Spooky:

Both of these are stitched on PTP Haunted Edinburgh. 

I'm also sending a piece I finished more than ten years ago, Just Nan's Honeysuckle Rose:

I never knew what to do with this pretty little piece, so it's been sitting in my "finished" bucket all these years. Now Judy is going to work her magic on it, and you can be sure I will post pictures of these finishes as soon as I get them back!

I'm also working on a fairly large sampler for Judy, but I did take a couple of days off to get caught up with The Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery's Mysterious Halloween Town:

This is also stitched on PTP Haunted Edinburgh (I must have had a large piece of it in my stash, as it's my favorite Halloween-stitching fabric!). Parts 1 and 2 are now complete, with two more parts to be released. This is a really fun stitch, as I have been raiding my floss stash and playing with the colors; I even did a bit of "architectural" work on the door frame!

I'll leave you with a couple of pictures of my poor little Chloe, who somehow ripped off one of her toenails this past Saturday:

Last night both the bandage and the cone came off, so she is completely back to normal now. :)

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Eight down, one to go

Blocks in the Frosty Forest series, that is. Last week I finally got around to stitching Snowy Reindeer:

As you can see, Gracie was less than impressed that I've been able to keep up with this entire series! I forgot to take a close-up picture of this block, so you can't really see that I made the nose on one of the reindeer red; I'll have to take a close-up of each block once it's back in the Q-snaps. The final chart should be arriving at my LNS this week, but it might have to wait for a bit to be stitched.

Judy Odell, the finishing wizard, has un-retired, and I'm currently doing some stitching for her. I can't talk about it yet, except to say that I will be the happy recipient of another gorgeous finished project when I am done. I'll be sure to post pictures as soon as Judy gives me the go-ahead.

After I finished Snowy Reindeer and before Judy's project arrived, I spent a few days working on Lizzie*Kate's Tingles, as the last three charts came in last week. Here is a picture of eight of the twelve designs, stitched on PTP's Cauldron Belfast:

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Can't put it down!

I am really loving working on The Gathering Place's Witch Hollow Tree Houses, so much so that I still haven't gotten caught up with part 8 of Frosty Forest, and part 9 (the final one!) will be out in about two weeks. Here is where I left it as of last night:

I'm going to finish the last piece of floss there, and then move on to FF this weekend; hopefully I can have that done by early next week. The last six L*K Tingles designs should be hitting my LNS any day now, and I want to be able to finish that piece up as soon as possible.

I also picked up another chart by The Gathering Place called Michael's Tree House:

I would have loved to have a tree house when I was little. I'm going to leave off the second little boy in this one and turn the other one into a girl; then it will be Melanie's Tree House!

Hope everyone has a great stitchy weekend!

Gigi is finished!

She's been finished for a while, but I was lazy and took a few days to get around to ironing the linen. Here she is, on an opal Belfast Silkweaver solo:

I think the fabric does a nice job of emphasizing the blues in the dress, even though the design uses more than one skein of black floss. I was going to start Luna after Gigi, but Luna also uses more than one skein of black, so I'm going to take a break for a bit. I've kitted up Nora's Azalea, which is extremely bright and cheerful, so I'll probably start that soon.

I also finished part 1 of The Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery's Mysterious Halloween Town Club, on a piece of PTP Edinburgh:

It has been fun playing with the colors in this one, and I even added the hollow in the tree with the eyes peering out. Frankie was originally charted with an orange jacket and purple pants, but as soon as I saw him I thought he looked just like Michael Jackson; thus, the red jacket, black pants and white sock and glove!

I picked up part 8 of the Frosty Forest series, but I'm having a hard time making myself work on it. I am really glad it's only a 9-part series, instead of 12! As long as I get it done before the last part is released, I'll be happy.

Instead of getting caught up with FF, I suddenly had the urge to pull an old piece out of the Bucket o'WIPs. I started this design when it was released six years ago, because I wanted to see if would look good on the fabric I chose, which is PTP Crystal Monster Mash Belfast. After deciding that the fabric worked, it disappeared into the Bucket, slowly getting buried in a mountain of WIPs; here is where I left it:

A few weeks ago, I was going through the Bucket, neatening up the folded pieces, and I found this again. It's been niggling at me ever since, so Wednesday I pulled it out and actually worked on it! Here is how it looks as of last night:

Isn't it cute? The window ledges are little "bones", and there are just all kinds of other neat details. I am really enjoying this, so hopefully it will never go back into the Bucket.

For those in the US, have a terrific (and safe) July 4th; hope everyone else has a great stitchy weekend!

Just Nan SAL for June

I didn't start stitching this month's JN piece until the 25th, because I had a couple of other pieces that I wanted to finish (Gigi and part one of Halloween Town are done, and will be posted later this week). I thought about stitching one of Nan's WhimZi designs, because they are small enough that I could have stitched AND finished it in time for this post, but ultimately decided to stitch Miss Kitty's Pin Cube. This is a fairly new chart, and I just really like it; it has pretty colors, and is finished into a cute little pin cube.

I was able to get all of the stitching done, except for a series of backstitched border lines that will be used in assembling the cube:

I'll be stitching the border lines tomorrow, but might wait to start the actual finishing; it will just depend on how adventurous I'm feeling!

For more entries in the JN SAL, check back here in a couple of days, and hopefully more links will be available.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

I just love Halloween stitching!

I was hoping that I would be done with Gigi by now, but I ended up not doing very much stitching this week. There was even one day where I didn't stitch at all, and that is a true rarity for me! However, she is still progressing:

Yesterday, though, I got distracted by the first part of a 4-part mystery design by a company I hadn't heard of before, called The Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery, which I discovered through a post on Facebook. The design is called The Mysterious Halloween Town Club, and the first part can be seen here. I started stitching it yesterday on a piece of PTP Haunted Edinburgh, using a bunch of different over-dyed flosses from my stash:

Isn't it cute? I'm really looking forward to seeing the remaining three parts! I should be able to finish up part 1 this weekend, then I need to get back to Gigi, and Frosty Forest part 8 will probably be showing up any day now...I just want to stitch everything!

Hope everyone has a great stitchy weekend!

Gigi's taking shape

I am really enjoying working on Nora Corbett's Gigi, and she is turning out to be a pretty quick stitch. This morning I did the beading on the top part of the chart, and then extended my Q-snaps to fit the rest of the design:

The fabric is a Silkweaver solo on opal Belfast, and I think it's a nice witchy, but still pretty, background for her. I'm hoping to have her done within a week or so.

I want to say thank you to all of you who have left comments; I had 11 on my last post alone! While I started this blog as a way for me to keep track of my projects and actually see progress, it is so much fun to share with other stitchers from all over the world. :)

Hope everyone has a great stitchy weekend!