Tuesday, June 30, 2015

June/July goals!

The usual stuff. :D

June goals:
- stitch Mirabilia RR - about halfway done!
- finish angel #1 on AP - finished AP!
- finish angel #3 on AP - finished AP!
- no stashing! zero, zip, nada! - nope!

Whatever, I finished AP so I'm awesome no matter what. 8D

July goals:
- stitch/send Mirabilia RR on time
- finish Espressioni
- redo messed up beads on Beaded Dragonfly Tile
- reach one corner of Beaded Dragonfly Tile

I know I promised pictures but I only have one!


I'm adding the Lily of the Valley pixie for the Mira RR. The kreinik covers surprisingly well on the 28 count fabric! I generally avoid 28ct and opal fabrics, but this one has been very easy to work with, so I'm pretty happy about that!

Oh, wait, I can show where I left off with Beaded Dragonfly Tile!


I still need to remove and fix a row of beads, but I think I'm just going to turn them 90 degrees to get around the issue of them not fitting properly. Yeah. That sounds good...

I should probably get off the computer and go stitch...

Friday, June 26, 2015

Stitch from Stash - June report!

Month: June
Spent: ???
Earned: $12

June finishes:
- Angel Procession (about 144x116 stitches = $12)
Counting half of the design since about half was stitched before 2015.

Not even going to do the math since I was over last month and didn't finish enough to catch up, and I'm not sure if I should count the birthday gifts my wife insisted that I purchase for myself. I feel like claiming a gift exemption is kind of cheating when I was the one who did the shopping, instead of receiving actual surprise gifts. Thing is, tastes in stitching are so personal, it would be hard to buy me something that I want without getting my input, so I dunno.

Anyway, this is my final SFS report so I won't get caught up in the details. :)

I've decided to leave the group for now as I would like the flexibility to pick up wishlist items when I have extra money in my (household) budget, and to sell old/unwanted supplies in order to purchase new ones. SFS is wonderful, and Mel is great to work with! It just doesn't fit with the way I want to manage my budget at this point in time.

My next post will have fun things like pictures, honest. :D

Wednesday, June 24, 2015

finish of the century!

Okay, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration, but this is a BIG one and I'm going to admire my own awesomeness for as long as I can get away with it. :p

Pics or it didn't happen, you say? FINE. :D


 

 


 For some reason, the sparkle in the wings wouldn't show up unless I turned the piece upside down and held the camera at an angle, so these are a bit weird...


Ahhhhh. I think I need a nap after all that!

Oh, and Esmeralda asked why this was a UFO for so long. Fair question!

It was mainly a lack of skill, and partly a lack of interest. I started this back when I was in high school, when a project like this was WAY out of my league in terms of skill level. That, and I was a teenager - I had lots of other things on my mind. As I got older, I was busy with college, living on my own for the first time, moving halfway across the country, finding my first "real" job, getting work experience, buying a house, getting married, etc etc!

I got back into stitching about five years ago, but this was still beyond my skill level at the time. I let it sit because I was afraid it would be impossible. Fast forward five years, and I've stitched tons of pieces, including a few Chatelaines. Angel Procession was suddenly a cakewalk!

If I worked on this steadily, at my current skill level, I'd estimate that it would take about 4-5 months from start to finish. But that's assuming I didn't work on anything else, which is unlikely.

Then again, I enjoyed working on just one project for a long time, so maybe I'll keep it up!

Monday, June 22, 2015

stitching done!

Just in case this explodes or something when I dunk it in water, I'm posting a picture NOW of Angel Procession with ALL STITCHING COMPLETE. :D


Time for a bath, a good ironing, and beads. The nice pictures will come later.

I still can't believe this.

Sunday, June 21, 2015

sooooo close! (and IHSW)

I haven't participated in IHSW in ages! To be honest, I didn't really hermit or stitch much this weekend, and a lot of this was done earlier in the week, but I DID get in a good amount of backstitchng today.

As of this moment, I only have a bit of backstitching left to do on angel #2.


I don't really believe it yet, but I could finish in the next few days.

FINISH. This project that I've hauled around for the past 20 or so years could be FINISHED this week. Are you serious? There must be something I'm missing!

There's still backstitch, lazy daisy embellishment, and a final check of stitches. Then a wash, a good ironing, another check and then the beading. That will be it!

Nope, still not feeling the excitement yet. Maybe tomorrow? :)

Wednesday, June 17, 2015

hey hey hey

hey hey I only have WINGS and BACKSTITCH left to doooooo


Okay, then a wash, checking to make sure all the specialty stitches in the border look okay, and the small amount of beading (well, small compared to my usual Mira or Chatelaine stuff) but STILL.

Oh wait, and the lazy daisies that are on some of the cuffs and stuff like that.

but...

IT'S REALLY CLOSE NOW AND I'M GETTING EXCITED

It's way too early to be anticipating next moves BUT here's what I'm thinking:
  1. Mira RR
  2. the last pattern from Espressioni
  3. finally go back to Beaded Dragonfly Tile
I may stay a one at a time stitcher for a while. Really liking the progress!

Thursday, June 11, 2015

not a slacker!

Posting this to remind myself that I AM making good progress, even if I feel like I'm procrastinating like crazy. I'm starting to think I might be afraid to finish this since I've been "working on it" for so long. (translation: since it's been neglected for so long.)


I want to work on it, but I keep avoiding working on it. Maybe I'm just bad at managing my time during the day since no one else is around to make sure I'm staying focused on anything...

Tuesday, June 09, 2015

long time no post!

Oops, I keep forgetting to update here! I'm not stitching as much as I'd like, but progress is being made. I finished up a square on the Mira round robin, and I already have the next piece in hand and waiting to be stitched on.

I added a part of Fairy Idyll to Paula's RR:


Angel Procession has been ridiculously slow due to massive frogging. I think I'm done with that for now, though I wonder if I'll regret not completely frogging the first angel. There are still a ton of awful knots on the back (I can't cut them, the thread is somehow not tucked under anything else so if the knots go, everything will unravel) and I'm not happy that I did 3/4 stitches right next to 1/4 stitches, instead of doing everything as 1/4 stitches... which would be much easier to backstitch.


Anyway, here's how it looks right now. I redid all the skin, the cuffs, the hair, the wings, the bells, and even the shoe and the shadow at the bottom! I don't want to do a halfway job on anything, but part of me wonders if leaving some imperfections would be a nice way to show how I've progressed?

I dunno. Maybe I'll be sitting there with the seam ripper again in a few weeks.

Monday, June 01, 2015

May/June goals!

Time for goals again! (kinda late, of course!)

May goals:
- finish my square on the Mirabilia RR - yes!
- finish one angel on Angel Procession - completed TWO!
- assemble Floral Fifteen - yes!
- stitch the last pattern in Espressioni - deferring until AP is done

I've decided that I'm not going to work on anything else (except the RR) until Angel Procession is done! So Espressioni will have to wait until then.

With the progress I've been making, it may not be too crazy to set a very tentative goal of finishing AP by my birthday, July 15. But I'll let June roll by first and see how I do!

June goals:
- stitch Mirabilia RR
- finish angel #1 on AP
- finish angel #3 on AP
- no stashing! zero, zip, nada!

#1 is the in-progress angel on AP. Angel #2 is nothing more than a bit of skirt right now, and I'll need to stitch a bit of #2 in order to finish up #3, since they're touching. Nothing's worse than doing backstitching before all the surrounding cross-stitch is finished!

Here's how it looks so far:


You may notice that I've made negative progress yet again, this time on angel #1 (which strangely is the angel on the far right). I'm a bit annoyed with past Rahenna right now for making my life hard by not following directions. Instead of quarter stitches, I did three-quarter stitches in a lot of areas, which is going to make backstitching a nightmare, so I may end up frogging even more. But the wing, hair, and face absolutely had to go... so they went.

There was also some blending filament in the angel's robe, which seemed really odd to me. It looks like it was there in the original version of the chart, but not the redo. So I frogged that too. Luckily it was all stitched on top of the base color, not held as a blend with the DMC, so it was possible to rip it out. Still have some work to do on that front.

I figure that since this has taken me so long to stitch, I'm going to make sure it's perfect!