It's can't possibly be...

...June? Already? Where did May go?

It's been a busy week. It was my birthday on the weekend, and I had a wonderful visit at the LNS and treated myself to a couple of new charts I'd been eyeing - Courtney Collection's Garden Fair and Prairie Moon's Red and the Black II. How could I resist? Brenda was working on it and I could fight it no longer. :) They had a cake for me and everything. I was absolutely touched. I got some stash money from my mom and which I'm using to pick up supplies for MMG2 ver 2.0 and AL version 2.0, and thread for my brother's Christmas present. AND I got a GC from Jon's mum so I ordered the Cricket Collections Spring, Autumn, Winter and Summer (thanks to Karen and Wil for their enabling) and Glendon Place's Sleepy Hollow. When will I stitch these? Lord knows. But I thought they were so cute! And Sleepy Hollow is just plain cool. I'm not usually one for Halloween stitching, but I love that story - it terrified me when I was kid!!

Speaking of MMG2 (My Mother's Garden II for those of you who are new to my blog), it's June 1st and that means that the new issue of The Gift of Stitching is available. I'm soooo excited because Tracy Horner has an amazing new design in this issue. I know I have to do Growth Rings first for my brother (I can say that here because he doesn't read my blog!), but this one will be hard to resist.

I'll be away for the weekend, having a little getaway with my mom. We're going up to Bancroft to relax and visit my aunt who I never get to see anymore since my grandmother passed away. It'll be wonderful to visit! Mom has already ordered to bring ALL my models. And I'm sure she'll insist on a bunch of other things too. I should just let her pack them all then! lol

And another small note - I'm having no end of problems with my email of late. Things I send aren't getting to their destinations and I'm also not receiving messages at times - yet they're not going to spam either. It's extremely frustrating. If you have sent a message and not heard back, it's because either A - I didn't get it, or B - I replied and you didn't get my reply. If this has happened, try sending again. I've been back and forth with the gmail tech support (who aren't all that helpful I'm afraid) and I'm looking into alternatives.

And finally, a little shout out to my new followers - I'm up to 49!! I might have to have a little draw when I reach 100. Thank you to all of you!

One month later...

I'm soooo completely overjoyed at finishing the centrepiece. It took a couple of weeks to finish, and between cross stitch, pulled backstitches and eyelets was around 25,000 stitches. OMG!!

I was going to continue on with this piece until I finished it, but to be honest, I need a break. I'm suffering from burnout!! I could have finished what I have a lot sooner, but I'm not one to work solidly on something for such long stretches, so my concentration level has not been great this last week or so. So I figure I'll take a "mini-vacation" from model stitching for a week. I'm way ahead of schedule so it's okay, right?

Now to decide what to work on. I thought about starting the next flower model but I'm torn between doing Rose, Marigold or Iris. So I put that thought away for now. I also thought about starting the alternate model for My Mother's Garden II in the sampler colours, but I need to order thread for that first because I'm not certain that one skein of each will be enough, and I don't want multiple dye lots. So I forgot about that too. Then I thought about starting Growth Rings (I'll be stitching it twice, once for my brother as a Christmas gift and once for me because I must have it for myself too!!). Bro picked out colours he liked for it, I just have to pick the fabric. He likes Gloriana's Antique Black and Holly Berry - so I'll do the majority in the black with the red as the interior. I'm thinking a light tan fabric for it - and I'm sure I have something in my stash that will suffice but I haven't gotten that far yet. And again, I need 2 skeins of the black and only have one on hand and would rather have matching dye lots... so that'll have to wait too. And Rosewood Manor's Past and Present has been constantly niggling me since I bought it, but I'd like to convert that one to NPI and will likely have to order some colours for it. So it too shall wait.

Of course I have multiple WIPs I could work on too. I'm leaning towards Strawberry Sampler but Alpine Garden is yelling at me. Might end up a close my eyes and pick one situation.

I finally decided on colours for the long version of Antique Lace, with the help of bro and mom. Fabric will be either Silkweaver Heritage or Lakeside Vintage Pearled Barley. I decided this time I'd like a softly mottled linen. I love both of these, but I have both in 40ct and I know 36ct tends to dye darker so I'm not sure which I'll like better when I order those in. For floss I'm going simple with Gloriana Ecru. Much more tone on tone this time. A Sassy's colour or two may yet sneak in there before it's time to order too - if her 36ct order arrives before then. I really want to go 36ct this time. I like 32 for Mirabilias but I really do prefer higher counts. Heck I'd use my 40ct but then the pearls won't fit. I've spent way too much time obsessing over this one I think.

I think it's time to do some stitching now. :)

Lots of little tidbits...

But no pictures today, I have lots of stitching to do before I update again!

Yesterday was floss tossing day. And I'm still very undecided. Instinct tells me that light floss on light fabric is the way to go because it's traditional and classic and elegant and very much in the spirit of antique lace.... however, the adventurer in me tells me that it's my design and I can go with the classic or I can be adventurous. And honestly, there are merits to whichever I choose to do.

Classic and Elegant - read cream on cream, white on white or natural on natural - It's beautiful. It's a chance to really show off the different textures in the threads. I looks very cool. The two drawbacks for me are that I don't want to do white again - I know I'll be bored of it and thus will likely not be motivated to stitch it quickly. And second, it's very hard to photograph. Up close and personal, the textures and designs are very apparent and look wonderful but showing this off in a photograph is difficult.

Midway between - I could stay close to the classic, choose a pastel colour and still use a neutral fabric. A beige pink for instance, or a silvery blue. It's still light enough not to be over the top bold, but the hint of colour adds some fun and depth to the piece and makes it much easier to photograph.

Fun and Bold - In this instance I'm thinking of reversing the original colourway and going red on natural or a deep rose on natural. It would be lots of fun to stitch, and it would look lovely. However, it's about as far from lace as one can get! But it would photograph well.

Currently, I'm leaning towards the classic because it's the safe option and thinking that I'll just have to come up with more new designs so I can stitch one in red. ;)

In other news, it's May, so the new issue of The Gift of Stitching is here! This issue features some absolutely lovely smalls, and of course, part four of My Mother's Garden 2. Kirsten has also put together kits for the design, which are available from her shop.

And some shameless self promotion, but I'm excited so you'll have to excuse me - the talented Tracy Horner of Ink Circles has featured my Cirque des Triangles on her blog! I'm honoured and touched at what she had to say. :) I'm also honoured that next month, I get to share a magazine with her, as she has a wonderful new design that will be June's feature in The Gift of Stitching! I can't wait!

And finally, I want to say a big thank you to everyone for your lovely comments. I do so appreciate them even if I don't always get time to answer them. Believe me, they are an incredible inspiration when it comes to getting things stitched and designed! So Thank YOU!

2 weeks in...

...and nearing the halfway point already. My hand is officially aching from pulling stitches all day. This section is going much more quickly than I'd hoped!

I've pretty much decided that I'm going to stitch the second version as well - though I might take a few weeks off in between the two. So I've been trying to figure out a colour scheme for that one. I've narrowed it down to raw linen with white floss, chocolate brown linen with cream floss, or possibly cream linen with a pale colour of floss (not sure what pale colour though). I'd love to hear any suggestions!!

While I'm moving the q-snaps

I figured since I had to move the q-snaps I'd post an updated picture of Antique Lace. I finished this section up last night - okay officially today, since it was about 3am... I'm really pleased with how it's coming along, this is six pages completed, or about 1/3 of the way through. :) The middle section will probably take much longer as it's more densely stitched, but who knows, that might go quickly too? I hope so!!

One week and four pages complete!

I have procured a camera so yay!! I can take pictures again. Be warned, I have some catching up to do today, so there will be a few! Except for the English Whitework Sampler, I forgot to take pictures of that!! I suppose I could take some now...

Okay, first the finishes. You may remember I had almost finished Sabrina a few weeks ago but ran out of beads. Well, here she is, beads and all. I wish I'd been more on the ball when I started her and done her hair darker. Audrey Hepburn was certainly not a blonde... but oh well. She's stitched mostly in DMC, the two waterlilies that were suggested I replaced with stuff I had here - the dark pink is Carrie's Colonial Red, and the green is Sassy's Olive Branch. The fabric is a solo from Silkweaver on 32 ct Jobelan, and though the picture doesn't show it well, it's mostly light pink but has spots of light blue, light purple, and light yellow through it.

This is Bluebell. She was an incredibly quick stitch, only taking four days from start to finish. I almost stitched her in HDF, as I had most of the conversion colours, but when I pulled the DMC to do an eyeball match for the colours I was missing I noticed the suggested colours were way off - in some cases 3 shades lighter than the original - so I just used the DMC. She's stitched on 32 ct Little Boy Blue Belfast linen - although in the picture it looks white, it's a very light blue

This little beauty is Turkish Delight by Ink Circles. It's stitched in 2 limited edition HDF colour - Delphinium and Ocean Pools and they're soooo gorgeous. This picture really doesn't show them off at all. It does however, show that my piece of Kingston Linen isn't an evenweave. That's not actually supposed to be an oval, it's a circle. But I still love how it's stitching up. It's 55 ct - yes, 55.

After a day or so with Turkish Delight, I wanted something with specialty stitches, so I worked on The Needle's Prayse English Whitework Sampler. It's stitched mostly in perle #12 on 40ct graziano linen. While it's really fun, and really beautiful, trying to pull eyelets and four sided stitches on Graziano linen is a nightmare. My fingers were actually beginning to ache after a night with this one! If you've never used Graziano, it's a wonderful linen, and great for cross stitch, but it is an incredibly dense weave, so it probably wasn't the best choice for this piece. But it is really beautiful and I'll keep working away at it. It's so very hard to photograph though!!

After that I decided to start a new Mirabilia (don't know why I've been on such a big Mira kick lately) and started on The Petal Fairy. I got quite a bit finished before fabric for AL arrived actually. I decided that I wanted to stitch her wings in silks with the metallics so I'm using Eterna for them and it's stitching up really beautifully. Pictures really don't do these threads justice, they're just so shiny. I'm using 28ct Floba for this piece - and I wish they still made this stuff. You can get it in 25 ct still but they don't make the 28 anymore. I have enough left to stitch The Bliss Fairy as well.

And finally, after one week and a busy Easter weekend with not a whole lot of stitching, I am finished four pages on Antique Lace. Actually after last night's stitching session I'm done the border down to the bottom too. I'm really playing with textures in this one, I'm using the HDF premium for the cross stitches, regular for the pulled backstitches, and perle #8 for the rhodes and eyelets. Hoping to finish the last two pages on this left section by the weekend, then the fun begins - the middle section is pretty densely stitched, so I'd imagine it will take a lot longer to complete.

And now off I go to answer some emails, go for my walk (as long as the rain holds off) and then stitch some more. :)

A quick pic...

...while it still fits on the scanner!! This is all most of page 1 and 2 complete. A very long way to go, but not bad for two days work. :) As long as I can keep up this pace, I'll make my deadline no problem, though the long haul will be when I get to the centrepiece.

I'll be doing the beading and ribbon last, so obviously there are some gaps, but I did leave a few of the beads in from my test stitching. Hard to see from photos, but the tiny little pearls are so pretty IRL.

Hoping everyone has a wonderful Easter weekend!