Not much stitching last week

I was able to finish the first three Polar Plunge designs from Hands on Design last Tuesday night, and now have to wait until May for the final three charts:

The boards that these will be finished on are arriving today and I already have the rick rack trim, but I'll probably wait until all six are stitched before I start the finishing; better to get it over with all at once!

That was most of the stitching I did last week as I finally bit the bullet and started clearing out the basement. Three trips to the dump and three trips to Goodwill later and we finally have a fairly organized space again! I still need to go through some of the individual plastic bins, but the worst part is over. Now when it warms up we'll have to tackle the garage--ugh!

I did do a little bit of stitching on Firefly Fairies this weekend, and am getting close to finished with the greens in the first fairy:

It seems like some of the greens in this just shouldn't go together at all, but the shading is so clever that they all seem to work as a whole. I'm planning to work on this one until the next set in the Gather Round club arrives, probably in two to three weeks.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Almost finished

I'm still working on HOD Polar Plunge and hoping to have all three of the current releases finished by tomorrow night. The Field of Greens floss finally arrived on Saturday and it is a really pretty color; I like how it pulls some of the greener patches of the fabric together into the whole design:

The fabric is Song of Sirens on Belfast linen from Nicholas Flamel Design on Etsy; I originally bought it thinking it would look good with a Mirabilia mermaid on it, but I really like it with this series. I don't know when the next three will be released, but I'll be ready to go when they are.

Last July I took six pieces in to my framer and I've been getting them back for the past month or so. Last week I finally picked up the last one, Jardin Prive's Au Fil des Nichoirs:

I like how the blue frame picks up the blue in the design and in the variegated floss I used to stitch the border. I also had Madame Chantilly's Cats in the Rain done:

And Blackbird Designs America:

I thought this frame was fun with the design; it comes in white, red and brown. It used to come in blue but that's been discontinued, which is a shame because I probably would have used that if it had been available.

When the woman called to say the final one was finished, she said the owner said to tell me that framing should be getting back to a more normal time frame and to bring some more over so I took five more in (I still have a backlog of gift certificates that my wonderful husband has given me); we'll see how long these take to get back.

For now it's back to work on Polar Plunge, and then hopefully I'll be able to get some more stitching in on Firefly Fairies; I'm trying very hard not to keep starting new projects and then putting them away for years at a time.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Taking the plunge...

...the Hands on Design Polar Plunge that is! I've been excited about this series ever since I watched Cathy's Market preview FlossTube and I ordered the first three charts as soon as they showed up at 123Stitch. They arrived Saturday, so after I finished A Honey of a Tiny Town I put all those supplies away and pulled what I needed for a new start, and this is where I am so far today:

My old skein of Tartan Plaid doesn't look anything like the chart photo/DMC 3768 reference so I'm going to use Chesapeake Bay instead, which is almost a perfect match for 3768. I haven't found the new floss color Field of Greens in stock yet, but I'm hoping 123Stitch gets it soon, and I'm really happy with this fabric that I had in my stash. I'm enjoying every stitch and looking forward to the final three designs--if I remember correctly they will include puffins, penguins and a narwhal. 

Yesterday I finished Heart in Hand's A Honey of a Tiny Town with A Honey of a Frill added to it, and it turned out really cute:

The fabric is probably a little light for the white in the design, but overall I'm happy with the way it looks. Now I have to wait until May for the Seaside Tiny Town, and then I'll send them both to the finisher so they can join my Tiny County:

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Everything must stop for a new Tiny Town!

Last Friday I was happily stitching away on Firefly Fairies when a surprise gift arrived in the mail--the new Honey of a Tiny Town by Heart in Hand Needleart. As this is one of my favorite series of designs, I promptly finished the thread I was stitching on FF and set about pulling floss and fabric for the Tiny Town. So, after a week of work Firefly Fairies looks like this:

I'm still really enjoying working on this one and I look forward to getting back to it in a week or so, but for now it's time to create a Tiny Town. I started it Friday evening but I didn't do a lot of stitching this weekend so I've only gotten this far:

The skein of Whitewash that I have that was used to stitch the house has a bit too much beige in it, so it kind of blends in with the fabric, which is PTP Crystal Legacy on 36ct linen. Instead of changing the fabric I've decided to use Snowball for the rest of the design, as it's a nice, bright white and should show up better. There's also a Honey of a Frill chart that I'll be adding into the Tiny Town as I did with the Halloween town. Speaking of which, last month I received the Blooming and Halloween towns back from Faye Riggsbee, who did another beautiful job on the finishing:

And in another exciting piece of news (to me anyway!) Cecilia has another town that will be released this May, a Seaside Tiny Town:

I think this might be my favorite of the seven so far, just so cute! 

I have the Honey Frill and a few colors of floss on order that I'll need to finish the Honey town; hoping they'll arrive later this week and I can have this almost done by next Monday. The weather has been getting a bit better here in Wisconsin and I'm trying to get back into a walking routine, which always cuts into stitching time. My husband officially retired on February 28th (even though he made one more customer visit on March 1st), so he's trying to figure out what his new routine will be. We're hoping to go through 20+ years worth of stuff in the basement and garage this spring, so I'll be less productive stitching-wise for a while, but it will be nice to have a good clear out.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

I fully finished something!

It doesn't happen often but I actually made myself sit down and finish a piece (actually three!) this past weekend. I finished the stitching on Hands on Design Gather Wildflowers Friday evening and was determined to not just stick them in a drawer for some "future" finishing (especially since the next set in the series will be shipping in April), so Saturday I got everything ready and went to work. The really nice thing about this was that everything you need to do the finishing was included in the kit (except for double-sided tape, a rotary cutter and cutting mat, none of which was absolutely necessary but which I actually already had), and Cathy's detailed instructions were very easy to follow. Here are the stitched finishes Friday:

And the fully finished pieces Saturday afternoon:

Of course, I can always see things I could have done better but overall I am really happy with how these came out. There are magnets on the back of the pieces that stick to the metal rounds, so you can change them out easily with the other seasons that will be released this year. Bring on the summer set!

As an inducement to finish these I told myself that once they were done I could start the newest Mirabilia design that came in the mail on Saturday called Camille in Bloom. Here is a photo of the chart alongside Nora's original art:

The black background within the frame is all stitched; I'm not a big fan of how black floss looks on light fabric since the fabric shows through too much, so I started going through my stash looking for a fabric that might work with the design. I thought about using plain black but it seemed like it would be too stark with the light-colored frame around the portrait, so I looked for a dark fabric with a bit more movement to it. I came across a piece of Belfast from Sweet Stash Fabrics called Medusa's Gaze, which wouldn't quite work with this design but it made me think of Lavender & Lace's Firefly Fairies, which I've had sitting around for 20+ years:

When I bought the chart there weren't hand dyed fabrics available; there are instructions included that tell you how to bleach your fabric to get that starburst effect, but of course that was always too scary to contemplate! Over the years I picked up a couple of pieces of fabric made especially for this design, HLCFabrics' Blue Clouds and Crafty Kitten's Starburst Blues, but I just wasn't in love with how "forced" the starburst effect looked on either of them:

Medusa's Gaze had a much more natural looking glow to it, and suddenly I just had to start this design! I could swear that I had pulled the flosses for this years ago, but after a fruitless search for them I decided to gather them again. I spent some time figuring out where on the fabric to start, and by Saturday evening I was ready to go:

The color of the photo isn't quite true, as it's bluer than it appears here. By last night I had a fairly good start; I had about half of the beads in the cap done, and I finished that area this morning:

This photo is a better representation of the fabric, and I am just so happy with how it's looking already! The chart photo does not do this design justice--there are so many pretty details and bling that don't show up in the picture. The entire top of her cap is beaded (which was not easy to do on 32ct fabric!):

My fingers are itching to get back to that sweet little fairy; hoping to get a lot of progress this week--maybe get close to a finish on the first fairy...?

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Blame it on Roxie

Last week I had said that I was hoping to finish Mirabilia's 2006 Christmas Tree before the end of this past weekend, but I couldn't quite make it--although if I hadn't had to spend almost seven hours with Roxie at the emergency vet last Monday I would have actually done it! This is how far I got by last night:

After several more hours of beading today it's all done, and it's so sparkly:

It's only taken me 17 years to get two of the six trees done, so in another 34 years the entire set might be finished. :D So far, the 2006 and 2011 trees are completed:

When I do start another one it will probably be either the 2007 or 2008 kit; I really like the doves in the 2007 tree but when I looked at the back of the kits I fell in love with the colors and bling in the 2008 kit. Such difficult decisions...

For now, I'm going to try to get the remaining two designs in the HOD Gather Round kit stitched up this week, and maybe even make an attempt at the finishing once all three are stitched--though that is a lot less certain!

And in case anyone is wondering, Roxie is fine. She had gastroenteritis and aspiration pneumonia; she has to have more Xrays done this Thursday to see if the pneumonia has cleared up (more Xrays in a couple of weeks if it hasn't), and she has to stay on the antibiotic for two weeks after a clear Xray so this could take a while, but she's back to normal otherwise. 

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Almost time for some reds

I spent most of last week working on the 2006 Mirabilia Christmas Tree, and I'm getting closer to the red skirt at the base of the tree--it will be a welcome change from all the greens!

I'm hoping to have this done by the end of this coming weekend but that might be too ambitious--a finish before the end of next week for sure, though. This will be the second of the six trees I've stitched and now I'll have to decide which one to do next, which will be a fun choice. Someone had asked for a picture of all of the kits so she could see which ones she had/needed, so here's a photo I took of all six:

The other one I've completed is the 2011 tree: 

I'm leaning towards starting the 2007 tree next as I love the little doves nestled in the branches, but I'll decide for sure once the current one is done.

I did take a bit of time to start Hands on Design's new Gather Round club design, Gather Wildflowers. This is going to be a set of four seasonal designs that are finished and can be displayed on the rounds that come with the kits (if I can ever make myself do any actual finishing!). I made a small start on Friday night because Cathy was hosting a Zoom meeting on Saturday morning and I wanted to stitch on the project while I watched. I made pretty good progress through the 3 hour meeting, so here's where I was after that:

I didn't get much more stitching done that day, but enough that I decided to spend a few hours finishing it on Sunday morning before getting back to my tree:

I'm going to finish the tree and then probably get back to these and try to get the next two in this set done before I start anything else. Cathy took a photo of the Zoom meeting while it was going, and while I hate photos of myself I figured this one was small enough that it doesn't bother me--I'm in the blue shirt towards the right side in the second row:

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Lady of Ice is finished!!

Okay, she's really Mirabilia's Lady of Mystery but when I created this conversion for her I thought that anything she touched turned to ice so in my mind she's Lady of Ice. I'm so happy with the way she turned out and I just love how the Kreinik looks on the dark blue fabric (a one-off from HLCFabrics), though for some reason it's hard to get the colors to show accurately in some of the photos; the second and third photos come closest to the actual fabric color, and I adjusted the first photo to try to get closer to the actual:

I've added a page to my blog with the conversion notes, in case anyone is interested. I reached out to Rensel Studio last Friday after I finished her but I haven't heard back yet; really hoping I can send her to them soon. I imagine it will take close to a year to get her back, so the sooner I can send her the sooner she'll come home!

Saturday afternoon I pulled out Mirabilia's 2006 Christmas Tree, which was actually one of the WIPs I posted about planning to finish when I started this blog 11 years ago. I'm not sure when I actually started it, but it's probably been more than 15 years ago now; here it is in the last photo from January 2012:

And here it is as of last night:

There is so much green to stitch! I did some on Saturday, then Sunday I decided to add some of the bling so I'd have something pretty to look at as I worked my way down more layers of green; it took most of the day to add the beads and treasures and I love the way it looks now. This one is also on a fabric from HLCFabrics, but it's been too long and I don't remember the name of it anymore. I'm hoping to stick with this one until it's finished now, but we'll see what comes up...

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Still here and still stitching

I've been stitching steadily since my last post, but I just haven't been in the right mood to blog about it as health concerns are still weighing on me. I'm still waiting for a definitive diagnosis, and the uncertainty gets stressful at times but stitching helps occupy my mind and keeps me from obsessing (for the most part).

I finished the Mirabilia model on January 7, then had to wait for an answer to a question and then had to wait again for final approval and was finally able to send it back last week. If it stays numbered as it currently is it should be released this June. For now, I'm taking a break from models until my health issue is a bit more settled; I'm hoping to take in another one around the beginning of summer.

Once the model was finished I spent a few days completing Mill Hill's Snow Fun ornament that I had started four days after my surgery. I had only gotten the hat and face done, then the counting felt like too much at that time so I put it aside. Now it's done and it's cute as can be--I especially love the little cardinals:

Once that was done I pulled out my conversion of Mirabilia's Lady of Mystery, which I hadn't worked on since January 2022 (can't believe it was that long ago!). Here is where I had left her:

I've been working on her steadily for a few weeks now and I should have her done sometime this week; just last night I finished the third of four skeins of DMC 823, and all of the Kreinik (11 spools) is done as well:

Just have one more skein of 823 left to do, and then fill in the rest of the beads in the skirt; can't wait to have her done! She's definitely going to go to Rensel Studio for framing, and hopefully she'll be ready to come home around the end of the year.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Nightingale released today

I'm excited to share the newest Mirabilia released today, MD185 Nightingale, Nora's tribute to nurses everywhere:

"Florence Nightingale revolutionized nursing with her round blue diagrams called blue roses. Her dress is a myriad of blue patterns that gleam like china. It is said that she gifted a friend a delft blue and white vase. She carried a lantern at night to attend to the sick and wounded. The same light that radiates in all nurses and caregivers everywhere."

Fun fact: Nora's original drawing had her holding a lantern, but she left it out when she created the chart. This is the first finish:

After seeing the photos Nora decided to put the lantern back in, and she called for glow in the dark Kreinik to be used:

It's a truly stunning design, and will bring people a lot of pleasure as they bring her to life.