Sunday, June 23, 2013

making a list/plan...

OKAY.  I admit that I haven't been stitching much because of Torchlight II other hobbies, but today I went to the LNS to get fabric for the new PR SAL!  Here it is, Calypso Belfast by the ever-awesome Picture this Plus.  The fabric is much prettier than their website shows, the color is deeper and super-blue!


This time, I'm going to keep up!  I'll do part one, then I'll go back to working on the small I started this week, another Sweetheart Tree design that matches the By the Sea Sampler I finished two weeks ago.  Oh, I guess this is where I admit that the third (of four) STree ocean designs also came home with me from the LNS.  And, uh, three other STree designs...

Oh, hush. :p

But starting something new made me think about all my other sad, neglected WIPs. :(

I need help!  If you look over on the right, I have my WIP list... I'll paste the relevant portion here so peeps reading on mobile or an RSS reader can see it too.

- Air ACEO - Butcher (HAED)
- Angel Procession (Wentzler)
- Beaded Dragonfly Tile (Chatelaine)
- Bluebeard's Princess (Mirabilia)
- Gypsy Mermaid (Mirabilia)
- Spring Knotgarden (Chatelaine)
- Transcendence - Sessler (HAED)

Soooo.  After I finish part one of the SAL and my little STree fob, I'll go back to my main WIP, which is Butterfly Garden by Drawn Thread.  But Butterfly Garden drives me CRAZY for some reason.  I think it's the silks, I hate NPI.  They're all squeaky and rough and thin and why do they cost so much?  Ugh.

Anyway... to preserve my sanity, I'll have to work on something else.  But which should it be?

Any thoughts? :)

Saturday, June 15, 2013

sparkling twins!

My phone camera wasn't syncing with Dropbox correctly for a while, so I wasn't able to get at my pictures easily.  I guess that's okay because now I can post a bunch at one time. :)




And the twins... Sparkling Shamrocks and Sparkling Heart:


Sorry for the fuzzy pics, I got some goo on my camera lens and didn't notice until I was cropping the pictures!  Oops!

Back to Butterfly Garden...

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Sparkling Shamrocks

You know... I don't have any pictures of this one!  I started Sparkling Shamrocks last September as a travel project while on vacation in Ireland.  Yes, cue groaning about shamrocks.

By the way, did you know that the official symbol of Ireland is a harp, NOT a shamrock?  See, blogs are educational!

So, putting Charmed Hearts aside for now (forever?) and back to an enjoyable Sweetheart Tree project.  I have a thing for STree lately, it seems!  I had maybe the bottom part of the heart done when I picked this up tonight.  About eight episodes of classic Doctor Who later, the center was complete! :p

With and without flash...


As an extra bonus, this matches Sparkling Heart, which was one of the first projects I completed when I got back into stitching in 2010.  I think the picture for that is missing so I'll have to take a picture of them together once this one is complete. :)

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

charmed hearts #2

I finished the hearts yesterday, so all I did today was the bit of border you see here.  Not great progress, but I have to admit that I'm not really liking this project.  The colors are too muted for my taste and I'm not really a big fan of cutesy heart stuff.  And I'm not looking forward to the huge outer border that's outside the cream colored border (just begun in the top left).

Well.  I'll just keep going anyway.


Sorry for the terrible pic, cell phone camera plus artificial light = blah.  It's actually a lot paler in real life.  Interesting that you can actually see the texture of the white border here, it just looks like a jumble of random stitching on the actual piece.

So that's kind of a boring post.  Maybe I'll have a giveaway soon... I have a bunch of extra / finished charts that could use a good home and I don't like whining in my blog so much.  Think happy. :p

Sunday, June 09, 2013

Charmed Hearts #1

Day one of Charmed Hearts by Shepherd's Bush.  I'll probably finish the heart I'm working on before going to bed.  There's a total of nine hearts in the center, so if I can keep up the pace, I'll finish that part by the end of the day tomorrow.


There's two specialty stitch borders AND a huuuuuge floral border around that, so it'll probably be slower going once I get to that last border.  But maybe I can finish by the end of my vacation anyway. :3

More hearts tomorrow!

Saturday, June 08, 2013

by the sea

Just finished By the Sea Sampler by Sweetheart Tree. :)


Didn't take very long when I actually took time out to stitch.  A couple of tiny modifications were made - I used a real pearl instead of the plastic one provided (in the large shell near the top) and the wavy line under the text was originally the same color as the words.  I changed it to ecru so it wouldn't look like it was running into the letters.

I was a badass and did most of the motifs over one as suggested in the instructions. *flex*

I do have the chart for the matching fob, but my next "small" project will be Charmed Hearts by Shepherd's Bush.  It's a little bigger than I'd normally choose for a small, but since there's so many individual motifs it should feel like it goes by fast.

We'll see if I'm crying about it in a week. ;)

Sunday, June 02, 2013

a tiny revolution!

I got tired of trying to make progress on all my big projects... and they're ALL big projects at this point.  Sure, I'd make visible progress, but it seemed like such a little bit when compared to the grand scale of the whole project.

So I said THAT'S IT, I'm starting something small!

I finished it too. ;)

Here's Wild Violets by the Sweetheart Tree.  I started on Friday night and finished before bed on Saturday, so this was less than 24 hours start to finish... and those 24 hours included a lot of sleeping and errands too!


What really kills me is that the chart photos and even the STree website have AWFUL pictures of every single design.  Why have a promo pic for your work that's only 300 pixels wide, and that 300 pixels includes the decorative junk surrounding the finished object?  If I didn't know how nice these looked stitched up, I'd dismiss STree designs as crap.  That's just sad. :(

So... as a reward for finishing, I'm starting another tiny STree design!  It's a kit called By The Sea Sampler, and it's a teeny band sampler with all sorts of ocean motifs.  I wonder how far I can get today...