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!

Getting Batty-er!

Last Monday the next two charts in Amy Bruecken's A Little Batty SAL arrived and I spent most of the week getting them stitched up:

It's such a fun design to work on that the stitching goes quickly and now I have to wait another two months for the final three charts to be released. If they go as quickly as these did I should still have time to get them done before Halloween.

On Thursday part 8 of Cecilia Votta's seasonal SAL came out, so after I finished Batty that afternoon I spent that evening and Friday getting caught up:

Then I should have gone back to Simplicity Vintage but I got distracted by the news that Heart in Hand will be releasing a new Tiny Town at the Needlework Expo next month, and it's the Halloween Tiny Town! Cecilia showed a sneak peek on a live stream she did with Fat Quarter Shop, and I absolutely love the design:

Since I was so excited but obviously couldn't stitch it yet I did the next best thing and started HIH's Doodles: Halloween which I had picked up at my LNS about a week ago:

I'm going to take two (or three) more days to get this done and then get back to work on the Simplicity kit--although I just remembered that the next part of the Dragon's Blood SAL will be released on Thursday so I'll probably do that first...

Also on the live stream they mentioned that Cecilia did a small free chart for the shop, which can be found here; it's a cute little Christmas ornament that would stitch up very quickly (you can actually see it in the screenshot from the live stream).

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Simplicity Vintage fun

I've now spent a week working on this Dimensions kit and am happy with the progress I've made. It's a bit slow going in places as I'm trying to smooth out some of the lines and not leave obvious blank spaces that seem to be a part of Dimensions designs since they don't use any partial stitches in their charts; this is how it looks as of last night:

Just for fun I took a couple of photos of the figure on the left before and after back stitching, because I always enjoy seeing the difference it makes:

I was a bit disappointed to realize that the fabric I chose must have been mislabeled--it says it's Edinburgh linen but it must be Belfast as I'm getting 16 stitches/inch instead of 18. If it had been Edinburgh the stitched design would have been very close in size to the paper pattern, but now it's going to be a bit larger; not a huge deal, but I might have picked a different fabric if I had realized this sooner. 

I did take a day to stitch part 16 of the Dragon's Blood Mandala so I could stay current:

The next two charts in the A Little Batty SAL were mailed last week, so hopefully I'll have them very soon and can get started--they'll make a nice break from the Simplicity piece.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

If I could only stitch faster!

There are just so many things I want to stitch and never enough time to do them all--the lament of stitchers everywhere! I would really like to get some of my current WIPs finished, but then the lure of a new start calls and I can't resist...

In this case I pulled an old WIP out of the bin that was originally started in 2008, then had a brief reappearance in 2014 before disappearing again for the last eight years; this is from 2008:

 Then before and after a week of stitching in 2014:

And as of last week after a few more days of work:

I am really enjoying working on it again, though the chart does not have darker grid lines marking squares of 10 so the counting is a bit harder than it should be. I was planning on making this my focus for a while in between SAL parts but then another project that I've had in mind for a few years started calling to me and I finally took the plunge and started it.

This is a Dimensions kit that is a replica of an actual Simplicity sewing pattern; when the kit came out in 2018 I started looking around for the sewing pattern with the idea that I would have them framed together. I did find a pattern but the cover wasn't in the best shape so I couldn't get too excited about it; then just by chance a couple of weeks ago I did a search for the pattern and found one in much better shape. Ever since then I've been excited to see my idea come to life so yesterday I pulled out the kit and made a start on it:

I am changing the gold dress to the original blue because it's supposed to show how you can get a "party-pretty look" by adding the "bouffant tie-on overskirt" to the simple sheath--I just loved the phrasing of that! So for now the plan is to work on this and the Witch Hollow piece in between SAL parts and see where that takes me for a while.

Speaking of the SALs, I am still current with all three (I finished The Rooky Woods but started A Little Batty so I'm still at three); the next two parts of A Little Batty should be out within the next couple of weeks and I am ready for them:

I'm stitching this one on 32ct linen Fragrant Lilac Collection by NicholasFlamelDesign on Etsy, since the called-for 20ct linen over-2 didn't really appeal to me. I also changed the checkerboard pattern from black and white squares, and then had to change a few other things to make that work.

Here is the Cecilia Votta SAL, into the summer months now:

And the final SAL, Dragon's Blood Mandala at part 15 of 25:

Last Friday I received the revision for the Mirabilia model and got most of it done on Saturday--just had to wait until today for a question to be answered. Now I have an answer and will be finishing it up today--hurray! Always a great feeling to send it off and have no current models in the house.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

The Rooky Woods SAL is done!

The final part in the Rooky Woods SAL came out last Thursday and I was able to finish it that evening:

Very happy to have kept up with this and finish it "on time", and I rewarded myself with a new start on the Amy Bruecken A Little Batty SAL that I talked about in my previous post:

I have the chart for the words in the center that I plan to work on this week, then on July 20th the other two characters in the top row will be released so I'm hoping to get the middle section done before they arrive in the mail. I did change the colors in the checkerboard pattern from black and white to a more colorful option, which means I'll need to make a few other changes so elements don't get lost in the new colors, which is always fun to do.

The Dragon's Blood SAL continues, with 14 of the 25 parts completed as of now:

I am relieved to say that I'm now confident that three skeins of the Waterlilies will be plenty, so I don't have to worry about dye lot issues becoming a factor at the end--phew!

Today I should be able to finish part 7 of the Cecilia Votta SAL, then I'll have over three weeks until the next part comes out:

I did finish the current Mirabilia model back on the 17th but Nora has decided to add to it so I am waiting for those changes to be sent to me, possibly this coming Friday. Hopefully the changes won't take more than a few days, then I can send it on it's way.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Mirabilia Tea

Mirabilia Tea (MD182) has been released so I can share photos now. I enjoyed working on this one with all the pretty colors and textures--I really like the effect the Waterlilies create on the table:

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!