Well, a few days late, but it was a holiday again!

I was actually almost done with this block when I took the picture of the other one, so I'm not as fast as it may seem.  This one has been done for a while, just hadn't done the "photo op" of it.

The next finish was Ice Queen - I changed the lettering from white to light blue because the white didn't show up enough against the fabric.  It may not look like it in this picture, but the blue is more visible than it looks.

Finally, an overall picture of where it stands right now.

I know the last time I talked about it, I mentioned a stitch count error on Snow Queen.  There is definitely a stitch count error on the individual pattern (it's 49 across, not 50, and one of the blocks is only 9 stitches across).  I e-mailed Lizzie Kate, but no one got back to me.  The good news is that the overall layout if you're combining all of them is laid out correctly - they only allowed 49 stitches across for that block, so no adjustment was needed.

Thanks for checking out my blog!

Next up - maybe in a week or so (Martin Luther King Day?  Valentines Day?  LOL) I will have another page of my Chicago HAED.

Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and New Years.....I am looking forward to 2013!  I actually got some stitchy gifts from my Dad - we draw names for Christmas (way too many people in our family!) and he got my name.  He gave me a Dimensions kit that is similar in style to one I stitched before (it's a winter scene), another funny one that says "If it's true a woman's work is never done, why bother starting", and one of the British cross stitch magazines.  When he asked me if I had any suggestions, I had just said a gift card, but he didn't want to take the easy way out.  I like what he picked out!

Finished another page of my Quaker

The nice thing about the long four day weekend with very little planned was that I was a stitching MACHINE!  I finished another page of my "Love Quaker Style"- it's actually a page and part of the next page.  As I stitch, I finish off any motif that crosses over onto another page so that I don't stop in the middle of a motif.  The flower motif and the top right hand motif both bled onto the page after the one I was finishing.

This is a fun stitch - only three colors, and very little of the red or the gold.  It's the first Quaker design I've stitched and I REALLY like it!

Finished one of the Snow Belles

Well, this first of the six Snow Belles has been finished other than three stitches for quite a while...

When I started the Snow Belles, I just grabbed my threads from stitching Six Fat Men, since the colors were the same.  I was fine except for the three stitches on her cheek - she is wearing a little blush on her cheeks, and the Six Fat Men didn't use that color!  Since this is my travel project, I kept forgetting to pull that thread to finish off.  So, I finally remembered to bring my stitching bag upstairs, make the three silly little X's, and take a picture.

Assuming I don't fall down on the job, there should be another update soon since I'm probably 3/4 of the way done with the SECOND Snow Belle.

Thanks for checking out my blog.

Finished Page 4

Here's what I have stitched so far - it's 4 pages out of 35.  It's slow going, and this will be a VERY long term project, but I am loving it.  It's called "Boulevard of Dreams" and it's a Heaven and Earth Designs pattern.  It's a Las Vegas sky line.  By the time I get to page 7 (the top right corner) there will be the very top of a building (It's the top of the Stratosphere, for those of you who know Las Vegas!  LOL)

This is where I am in the whole thing.  It's 7 pages wide by 5 pages tall, but the 7th page in each row is not a full page, and the 5th row of pages is not a full page.

Here are my statistics on the project so far.....I keep an Excel spreadsheet to track my time (doing that for this one and my other HAED I have in progress).


Page 4:

Started - 7/12/12
Finished - 11/23/12
Days Stitched - 35 Days
Time Stitched (Page 4 only) - 57 Hours
Time Stitched (Project to date) - 243 Hours
Stitches (Page 2 only) - 7,546
Stitches (Total Project so far) - 30,478
Percent Completed - 14.51%

Thanks for checking it out!

Finished a fun design

Well, I finished a travel project I was working on.....this was SO much fun to stitch.  I made some changes to the pattern - it called for the lettering and the border to all be stitched in a subtly variegated blue, and the flowers were more subdued colors.  I started it stitching it the DMC equivalents, and made a counting mistake that.  By the time I discovered it, I was too far gone to frog, so I decided to start over.  When I was going to start over, I decided to use some opalescent fabric that I had bought from Silkweavers (their Facebook sale) and then when I was at a new LNS I decided to look at their overdyeds.  I found this really awesome one from Threadworx called Bradley's Balloons.....variegated with all all these fun bright colors!

So then I converted the flower colors to bolder colors (to try to match the colors in the variegated floss) and made the border a solid color because I felt it would be too busy if it was multi-colored as well.  I am happy with how it turned out....

Oh, and by the way, the pattern is from My Big Toe Designs, and it's called "Normal Family".  It cracks me up because My Big Toe seems to focus on more religious themed designs, and this seemed rather sarcastic for them.

Thanks for checking out my blog.....

It is one of those "kind of" a holiday holidays! LOL

So - inadvertently following my "if it's a holiday, it must be time to post" I have a blog update today!  (For those who don't know - tomorrow is Columbus Day.  I'm not off work, but some people are and the post office and banks are closed - hence my description of "kind of" a holiday).

My local stitching group got together yesterday at our "list Mom's" house. Some people actually went to a quilting show first - I opted to just meet them for the stitching portion of the day because most of my day today was going to be taken up with football.  I worked on "Six Fat Men" and got so close to finishing it, I decided to continue stitching on it last night and this morning at home (even though it's usually my "travel" project). 

For those who don't know the pattern, it's a Lizzie Kate - the six patterns are sold separately, and could certainly stand alone, but Lizzie Kate puts together the layout, the addition of the bird house, and the wording across the top and it's available on their website.  Each square has a small snowflake button for embellishment.  In a couple of cases the embellishment is just one more snowflake, but in other squares it's a doorknob, a bunny's tail, a knot in a scarf, or an extra flower on a hat.  This one was a fun stitch.  I changed up a few colors in the lettering - "Snow Day" and the wording at the very top (Snowmen Melt my Heart) were both supposed to be in white - but there wasn't enough difference between my tan fabric and the white.  Even though the snow and the snowflakes show up okay, the lettering didn't.  I am waiting for the six "Snow Belles" patterns to come out - I already have a matching piece of fabric to stitch those on!

And while I was stitching a lot of white snow on that as a travel project, at home I was stitching mostly black.....

Here is my progress so far on "Love, Quaker Style" - it's an Aury TM Design.  It's stitched on 30 count white linen and I really am liking the contrast.  It's the first Quaker design I've ever done.  I've been trying to complete one page at a time, but also complete full motifs if they crossed over onto other pages.  However, it was kind of time to quit one night, and I just didn't feel like pulling out another project in my rotation, so I violated my own rule.  I would say this is somewhere between 1/4 and a 1/6th of the whole project - I forgot to look how many pages it was total! LOL

Anyway - thanks for checking things out.  It will be interesting to see how my travel projects go the next few weeks.  I work two jobs (one M/W/F and one T/Th) and my travel project gets worked on during lunch at the two jobs.  This coming Wednesday is my last day at my CURRENT M/W/F job, and then the following Wednesday is my first day at a new one.  I'm not sure what my lunches will be like at that job to know whether I'll be able to stitch....time will tell!

Thanks for checking out my blog - I do appreciate it!

Another Holiday, Another Blog Post!

 First - an overall picture of where I am as of now on "6 Fat Men".  This one is fun to stitch - blocks of color, no fractionals, no backstitching to speak of (there are a couple of straight stitches - still to be done - on the windows on the house to create panes), and only a couple of French knots (the owls eyes - not done yet).

Here is one of the two blocks I most recently finished - I think I finished this one either Tuesday or Wednesday.

 This one I finished a couple of weeks ago - just hadn't gotten around to taking and posting a picture!  The owl will get black beads (in place of French knots) for his eyes so he won't look quite so possessed!

I have another "finish" - this time it's page 1 of my second HAED (both of which are WIPs) - this one is called "Wonders of Chicago" and is all landmarks from my FAVORITE city in the US!   This time I'm stitching tent stitches - 2 over 1 on 25 count.  The coverage (at least to me) seems about the same as full X's over 1 with 1 strand.  But the stitching goes MUCH faster!  LOL

Here is Page 1 in perspective in the whole project - page 1 of 24 pages.



And finally - my new start!  It's a Big Toe Design - it says "Remember - as far as anyone knows we are a nice normal family".  I was looking for a variegated blue to do the lettering, and while at my LNS for a stitching day yesterday I found this really fun thread (well, I think it's fun) that has bright shades of all different colors.  I figured for a kind of tongue in cheek pattern, the thread would be fun.  My next step with it is to change out the colors for the flowers that go with it.  The original pattern has the flowers stitched in rather subdued colors, which just won't match up with the colors in this thread.  So I'm going to try to pull DMC colors that match each of the colors in this thread and use them for the flowers.

Sorry this is so long - been two months so lots to show you!  Thanks for checking it out!