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Thursday Thirteen: WIPocalypse planning
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• Thursday, June 02nd, 2011

I actually have quite a few things to post about but have just been really busy, so there may be several blog entries over the next few days.  To sum up what’s in store:

  • It’s time for the Totally Useless Stitch-a-Long update.  I had it in my calendar to post yesterday, but between the wild weather we had in New England yesterday (including confirmed tornados in western Massachusetts) and the Stanley Cup game (go Bruins!), I got a bit distracted.
  • Erich and I started the updating process for two more rooms in our house over the weekend- our bedroom and the bathroom.  So story time about that adventure (and some helpful tips for others with old houses) will come this weekend
  • Updates on the round robin stitching front
  • Another Caturday post on Saturday.  :)  Any specific cat requests?
  • Some gardening updates
  • Warhammer painting updates
  • Monthly stitching goals – my updates and my new goals for June
  • Wanderlust drive musings.  It’s summer, which means I start wandering back roads in New England.

I finally got the Google Friend Connect working on my blog (hooray!) so all of you Blogger folks who prefer to follow that way (honestly, I do too… Google Reader is glorious) –  I’m up and running.  Let me know if there are any problems.  You should see it on my sidebar just above the Project: Do Me graphic link.

Today’s entry, though, is for the Thursday Thirteen.  A few weeks ago, I made a semi-joking, but semi-serious post about declaring 2012 my WIP apocalypse year.  (for those non-crafters, WIP stands for “Works in Progress”).  I’m a chronic serial starter with my stitching.  I love beginning new projects.  I love the journey of stitching projects.  But I’m not particularly good at finishing projects.  So now I have a glut of them.  I’m starting to get the itch to really get through them, too.  So what started as a joke is now really going to happen.  2012 will be my project clearing year.  :)  Any crafty folks (regardless of what you do) who want to join me and use it as a sort of Stitch-a-Long are most welcome.  I’ll set up a signup/discussion page in October.

For now, my brain is going to the projects I really, really want to finish.  So for this week, here are the Thirteen Projects Riding on the Measi WIP-ocalypse Train.  The links go to the Flickr photo  set I have for the piece.

1.  Apache Wedding Blessing – this is a gift for my friends Ivanna and Joe for their wedding, which um… happened several years ago.  Thankfully Ivanna’s a fellow crafty person and understands how these projects can go into a black hole.  But all the same, it’s annoying me.  Right now I have this out on a round robin to give it some extra oomph, and it does actually look like it’s going to get finished before the end of 2011.

2.  Witchy Washy – It’s so damn cute.   I want this done and framed on the door to my laundry room.

3.  Floral Bellpull – I’ve had this for years, and it’s absolutely gorgeous.  I just need to focus on it.

4.  Legends of the Dragons – I started this as part of a stitch-a-long in the beginning of 2010, and it just started to fall off my radar as I got into robin stitching.  It’s not a particuarly big piece, and definitely doable to finish.  Again – I just need to focus on it.’

5.  Cats on a Staircase – Right now, this is my longest running WIP.  It’s a Christmas stocking.  I think I’ve had it going for ten years now.

6.  Witches Wheel - I adore this piece.  I have a ton of energy to work on this piece.  I simply have too many commitments with the robin to stitch on it right now.

7.  Walk in the Woods – This is the second of the WIPs I inherited from my late mother in law.  The first I finished last year.  This one will get done next year.  It’s not a particularly difficult piece to stitch – but again, it’s just been a time commitment issue.

8.  Astrology Sampler – for YEARS I wanted to start this piece, and when I do – I’ve barely gotten anything done.  It’s not a particularly large piece.  It’s just stitched on black fabric, which makes it a bit more difficult to work on.

9.  Elemental Dragons – Two of the five are done (Fire and Spirit).  I have three more dragons to do (Earth, Water and Air).  I’ll take getting one done next year, but getting all three done so I can frame the project would be wonderful.

10.  Magical Night – I sent this out on a robin in 2010, and the wonderful stitchers who worked on it made tremendous progress.  It’s now about half done.  I don’t expect to finish this in 2012, but I’d like to make a good dent on what’s left.

11.  Egyptian Sampler – I adore this piece and the fabric I chose to stitch it on.  I don’t get why I struggle so badly to stitch on it, because I absolutely love it.  Hopefully in 2012 I can get into a zone and finish a good chunk of it.

12.  Noah’s Ark – this is a piece I adopted from another stitcher.  I haven’t done a particularly large amount of work on it since I got it, but I’d like to get some more of the animals around the border done.  The problem is that they’re done in petit point, so the work is so tiny and intricate that it goes very, very slowly.  My goal for 2012 on this one is to get one of the remaining side borders (left, top, right) done.

13.  Book of Ink Circles – I don’t have a photo of my WIP uploaded yet, as it was a new start in May (one of my other entries for this weekend to do).  It’s my first attempt at recoloring a design from someone else.  It’s a fabulous piece when completed, though.

 

Thanks for stopping by!  I’ll be catching up on blogs this weekend between my own writing.  :)

 

 

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Category: Rotations & Goals, Stitching, Thursday 13   Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,  | 10 Comments
Life, the Universe, and Everything
Author:
• Wednesday, March 03rd, 2010

Where the HECK did February go?!?

(oh yeah… I spent them in front of the TV watching the Olympics and stitching…)

Ready for a long post? :) I haven’t done one of these in a LONG time. It feels good, actually.

I started this post on March 2nd, by the way, but saved it before heading to lunch and forgot about it.  Since I’m still not as familiar with how WordPress will post things, I’m curious whether it will show up before or after the photo I just posted.

Anyway…

Crazy, crazy month. It flew by entirely too fast. BUT – it was productive, in many ways. I’ll talk about stitching in a sec – but I’ll start with the general life stuff.

Erich and I have *gasp* finally gone bowling. It’s a bit of an in-joke, really. I mean, we’ve been together for nine years this May, and we’d never gone bowling. We’d talked about it – and we live within a mile of three separate bowling alleys (although one’s duck pin only, so that may not count), but we’d never gone.

Our best man and his wife thankfully changed that when they invited us to the Sunday morning bowling hangout they’re doing up in Brockton. So… 9:30 on Sunday morning, we’re now hanging out with them at the lanes, bowling a few games since there’s a special to rent lanes by the hour and bowl as many games as you can. Cheap morning – gets us up and moving (and getting some slight exercise, at least!)

We’ve also decided to start doing one other night of bowling per week down by us – the lane in Cranston just down Rt. 1 from us does dollar per game nights on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday after 8 p.m., which works perfectly for us. So tonight we’ll go after we eat dinner at home and bowl 4 or 5 games.

I’m still playing pretty badly – the last time I’d been bowling was at the end of high school, and 17 years and about 140 pounds more weight (yeah… seriously *hangs head in shame) have completely thrown off my approach in every way. I’m rebuilding it from basics – right now focusing on the swing itself to get my accuracy, and then I’ll add steps into it. Right now if I do a step-approach, my swing gets thrown off because of the width of my hip, and I swing my arm diagonally across my body just as I do while walking. If I do a stand and swing, I have far better accuracy.

The plan next paycheck is to buy our own bowling shoes – just a few times at the lanes will pay them off (and they’ll be ours, not the worn out rental ones that god knows who has used). I’m seriously debating buying a pair of tri-color bowling shoes… because they’re bowling shoes - it seems like it’s a requirement! I’ve honestly always thought the rental shoes at the lanes were cute in a ugly rebellious sort of way. :)

So… hooray for hobbies as a couple!

Other stuff… Doctor Who is back on air in the UK on Easter weekend, staring here in the States on Apr. 17th. So my weekends will now be full of geekery again. I’m nervous but excited about the new Doctor. I will miss Tennant a lot in the role, but hopefully Matt Smith is fantastic, too. Steven Moffat is amazing, so if nothing else – I know I’ll enjoy the storylines.

Work’s been busy – quite a bit of overtime lately. Some parts of it are still annoying as hell, but meh, that’s work.  I have a job and for the most part, I enjoy it.  I work for a good company.  The things I do in my job are enjoyable, and most of the people I work with are, too.

Oh… and since I’m in New England, I saw no snow in February. No. Really. All of that crap that dumped on the Mid-Atlantic? Never saw it. We had a decent amount of rain, but that’s all. The first storm that gave Washington almost 30 inches or whatever? The weather forecasters up here actually apologized on air for their bad forecasts because they wound up being absolute duds. Everyone called off school and declared snow emergencies, and we barely got anything that day. Boston even offered to reimburse fines and towing fees for cars that had parked on the street – THAT was how badly off they were!

Stitching Stuff

I’ll get my final Stitching Olympics photos up late this week once I know what our weekend schedule is. The final tally, however – 10 projects worked. I managed to put stitches into all but two of my UFO projects (which I define as anything that has sat untouched for 6 months or more), plus a couple WIPs, plus started a piece for an exchange for the Life’s A Stitch board called “Hush Hush.” That’s due to be mailed out on the 15th, so I’ll be focusing on that piece until it’s done and ready to go.

Two projects are now within a couple hours of finishing – Home is Where the Cat Is (finally!) and Elemental Dragon:Spirit. Both essentially have maybe 90 minutes to two hours of backstitching each. They’re both on my radar for March.

So I’m very pleased… even if my goal list for February went extremely askew:

For February, my goals were

1) Rotate through all of my WIPs and UFOs at least once  No.  I was a few projects short.  But I DID get through 10 projects last month, so I’m very happy with the progress I made.
2) Finish Home is Where the Cat Is  So close – I just ran out of time at the end of the month.  I’m 4 hours away from finishing, max.
3) Finish Spirit  All but the backstitching.  So I’m about 90 minuts max on this one from finishing.
4) Put together the individual progress pages on my website  One of these months, maybe I’ll get to this.  But it hasn’t happened for 3 now.  So… yeah.  I’ll just focus on some stitching and call a mulligan on this.
5) Finalize my rotation that will start in March  Yep.
6) Remember to photograph the TUSAL this month.  OMG I finished one of my goals this month!

Seriously though, I’m pleased with what I did this month, even if it didn’t match the goals.

For March, I want to…

1) Finish Home is Where the Cat Is
2) Finish Spirit
3) Get my Hush Hush exchange out on time
4) Get my UFO RR mailing out on time
5) Rotate through my new rotation once by the end of March

Rotation for this month will be:

Hush Hush project (finish and mail by 3/15)
Cats on a Staircase (for Yoyo’s Christmas SAL)
Elemental Dragons: Spirit (will finish)
Egyptian Sampler
Apache Wedding Blessing
Home is Where the Cat is (will finish)
Legends of the Dragons (for the TW board SAL)
UFO Round Robin – Round #1

Ah yes… the UFO Round Robin. I’m seriously excited. Our first mailing date is on March 15th, and it’s looking like it’ll be a fantastic robin. Lots of diverse projects that are going around. We’re stitching as one group of eight, and the robin will take nearly a year before it’s over.

And I’m modding this shindig. Heh. I never thought experience with modding friendship book and slam swaps would come in handy!

I’m sending my Magical Night piece, which I adopted from (I believe) Annette back in 2005 or 2006. Due to the proximity to my wedding, it didn’t get the work hours I’d hoped it would. And since I have a glut of Teresa Wentzler pieces (being insane as I am), I decided sending one of them around was probably the best choice. This one’s probably the least far along – so sending it for a robin will give it a very nice push.

Here’s where it currently stands:
Magical Night - 13 Feb 2010

Like I said… it’s not far along. But next year, hopefully it will return with a nice amount of forward progress!

Until next time…

- Mel.

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Category: Family & Friends, Life, Work, and all the Rest, Rotations & Goals, Stitching   Tags: , , , , , , ,  | Leave a Comment
Project Planning for 2010
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• Wednesday, December 09th, 2009

With December speeding by, I’m trying to get a sense of the things I’ll be doing project-wise next year.  I’d like to get a general plan together before Christmas hits, purely for that part of me that’s a type-A personality.

In my previous entry, I listed the random Stich-a-Longs I’ve joined in some form.  Today I put together a full list of my cross stitch patterns (excluding magazines, which are mostly there for reference & round robin ideas).  I honestly didn’t think I had quite THAT many pieces in my stash… eep!

So now I’m planning my “attack” on all of it.  Obviously I can’t do it all next year.  I couldn’t do all of it in 10 years.  But I definitely want to make a good push at it, and it all depends on the method of my rotation plan.

Based on past experience, a firm hourly or goal-oriented rotation just doesn’t work for me.  Nor does stitching pieces in a particular order.  One thing that does work is designating a theme for a slot (a designer, a piece size, or a focus slot, for example).  So I’m going to be doing a modified blend of a screaming, hourly, and goal rotation.. if that makes sense.

The rule is that I can stitch these pieces in any order.  This will allow me to be flexible for when Round Robins come in and such.  I must put a minimum of 5 hours on any one piece before I can move onto another piece.  I may stay on a project for as long as I’m feeling in a groove on it – progress in any form is a good thing!  I must stitch on every piece in the rotation before making any adjustments, such as included pieces, slot themes, starts, etc.

Right now, I’m thinking about this as my beginning rotation for 2010.  I expect to have a decent amount of time for stitching this winter. 

TW SAL:  Floral Bellpull
Small/Commute: Home is Where the Cat Is (will finish this round)
Small/Commute #2: Elemental Dragons: Spirit
Backstich Focus: Egyptian Sampler
Christmas SAL: Cats on a Staircase
TW/DD/BS SAL: Legends of the Dragons (new start for 2010)
Free Slot: For Round Robin
Open Choice: Apache Wedding Blessing
Open Choice: Astrology Sampler

I’m crazy, aren’t I?

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Egyptian Sampler – Rotation progress
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• Sunday, October 04th, 2009

I’ve completed my goals for Egyptian Sampler this rotation round.  It’s now being put away, and I’m moving on to Cats on a Staircase.  I did approximately 15 hours on her.

Beginning of rotation on September 27th:

Egyptian Sampler - 27 Sept 09

End of rotation today:

Egyptian Sampler - 4 Oct 09

I feel very good. :)

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October Stitching Goals
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• Sunday, October 04th, 2009

I’m plugging away and already feeling much more relaxed. I’d forgotten how sinking into the stitching groove really helps me feel better. :) My monthly goals for my projects are as follows:

September goals were:

I had no set goals for September other than to get stitching again. :)

For October, I’d like to:

1) pick out and finish an ornament for the TW Ornament exchange
2) Finish the over-one cartouches on Egyptian Sampler DONE!
3) Update my stitching website pages with photos and progress
4) Stitch 10 hours on Cats on a Staircase
5) Stitch 10 hours on Floral Bellpull

The last two cartouches took me all afternoon yesterday, but they’re done.  My eyes were NOT happy yesterday afternoon!  I do use a magnifier lens with my floor lamp, but I have difficulty finding just the right angle to use the thing.  Maybe it’s because I’m wearing my glasses, and the two sets of lenses play tricks on my eyes.  *shrug*

Anyway, today I’m going to finish the scarab on top of the central panel of Egyptian Sampler, and then put it away for this rotation.  I’ve done about 12 hours on it, and the goal for this first rotation was 5… so I’ve definitely made progress!  Photos will be coming – I’ve misplaced my camera connection cord… again.

Other than stitching, not much is happening.  I’m still fighting off this stupid headcold – now firmly into the coughing up crud stage.  I’m sick and tired of it 10 days in.  Erich is, too.  Friday I thought I was doing much better (slept through the night without a coughing fit), but then Saturday I felt cruddy again.  Today so far seems like middle of the road.  Hopefully it’ll knock it off soon – I’d rather not go to King Richard’s Faire next weekend still hacking and coughing.  :(

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Stitching Updates/SBQ #’s
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• Wednesday, September 14th, 2005

I’ve been neglecting my questions, so I’m doing some catchup today on the SBQ’s for the past few weeks.
But first, a couple updates on stitching, sans photos… (the photo below is not mine… it’s a downloaded image for complete project reference)…

I finally am wrapping up my rotation on Egyptian Sampler this week. The center three figures (Horus, Osiris, and Isis) have all of their basic stitches completed. The eyelet stitches in the headpieces are not done– I’ll do those when I do a backstitching rotation. Over the weekend, I began working the over-one cartouches in the center panel. I’ve never done over-one work before, and I’m finding that doing them on raw-style linen is very, very tricky, since the individual squares are so uneven.

I’m at a bit of a decision point. I’ve completed my goal for this rotation (which was the stitches on the three figures). I’m thinking that perhaps, since I’ve taken so many weeks to complete this rotation, maybe I should hold off on the cartouches, and focus just on those next round. With how many counting mistakes I made just making the left-most cartouche ring, I imagine that the four cartouches might actually take an entire 10-hour block of time.

I think I have an organized approach to how I’ll go about completing this piece, which makes me feel very good. Since I’m working this piece on a scroll frame (which is driving me insane, but that’s a rant for the SBQ below) due to its size, I’m going to work horizontal sections of the entire piece. So both birds will be done at the same time, and matched sections of the border will be done together. Now that I have those three figures done, I can appreciate how big the final piece is really going to be. Each of the god figures is just about the length of my hand, from middle figure tip to wrist joint.

In any case, I’m happy with what I’ve done so far. And it’s going to look amazing when done. :)

For the trip to Maine this weekend, I’m going to bring along The Castle. I’m stitching it on-hoop (what I feel most comfortable with), and despite all of the blended threads, it’s an easy piece to port around. I do have a very good chance of finishing it by the end of the year, which would thrill me to no end, so I’m pushing to really get some work on it. Other than Ivanna’s wedding sampler, this really is the piece I want to focus on. Depending on what happens in the next month or so, I may drop my rotation for a bit and just work between those two pieces exclusively until The Castle is done.

We’ll see…

Anyway, onto the Stitching Blogger Questions…

9/14/05: Do you stitch for events like weddings, engagements, or other things that might not last? If you have been unlucky and the two people broke up, what happened to your stitched gift?

Ivanna’s wedding sampler is the first special celebration gift I’ve ever stitched. Thinking about a break-up to me is a bad-luck thing, and I simply don’t do it. I realize such events happen in life– both Erich and I are children of divorces (both sets of parents married at least 20 years), but I’m not going to focus on the negative because it’s counter-productive and just seems… wrong… to me. If anything, as I stitch her sampler (and next year, my own), I’ll be trying to infuse the stitches with good tidings for the years to come.

9/07/05: Which way do you stitch (/// and then \\\ or \\\ and then ///)? Can you (or if you haven’t done it before, do you think you could) change the way that you stitch temporarily if it is asked of you?

I stitch /// then \\\. If I were asked to change my stitching for a specific project (like a stitching round robin) to match the owner’s stitches, I know I could. I’ve stitched both ways, and really only stitch the way I do because it was the way I decided to align my stitches to keep them going the same direction. If I were asked to change, it would probably be easier for me to just turn the fabric 90 degrees so I’m stitching sideways. I’ll stitch in my normal direction, but the end result would be reversed. *shrug*

8/31/05: What do you use to hold your fabric while you stitch? A hoop, a Q-Snap, a scroll frame, something else, or do you stitch in hand? Have you always used just the one thing or have you tried one or more of the others? Which do you like best? Why?

I prefer a hoop. No discussion. It’s what I learned on, and I simply feel more comfortable with it. I was thrilled… THRILLED… to take the plunge and try plastic hoops this year, rather than the cheap balsa wood ones from Michael’s that I’d been using. I even have an old metal hoop that my mom gave me when I first started stitching. But I keep it more for my stitching history’s sake and as a novelty, since I haven’t seen one on the shelves in years. Due to how nasty metal hoops stain fabrics, I won’t use it.

But I have about a half-dozen plastic hoops in different diameters, each a different color so I can quickly tell them apart. They’re durable and easy to tighten. I love ‘em.

I bought a scroll frame and lap stand, after seeing Michelle’s work on her frame. As I mentioned above, I’m using it for Egyptian Sampler, but I’m finding it very awkward to work on. For one thing- the fabric does NOT stay tight on the frame. It’s constantly loosening, and amounts to really being stitching in-hand with the assistance of a frame to hold it up. I’ve tried rolling it in different ways to see if anything helps, but it’s just not working.

And sadly, the lap attachments for the frame are just BARELY wide enough for my hips to fit in. I have a fat ass, and the lap stand really forces me to stay in ONE position as I stitch. I’m debating a floor stand because I know there are many larger projects, like Egyptian Sampler, that would work better on scrolls so I don’t have to wrestle the extra fabric out of the way. But I need to figure out how to keep the fabric on the scrolls better.

I’ve never tried Q-snaps. Since my hoop works fine, I haven’t had a reason to try them. I have tried stitching in-hand before. For really small projects on stiff Aida cloth, I don’t have problems with it. But otherwise, I’d find it difficult to keep my stitches clean.

Gotta get back to work…

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Stitching happy dance
Author:
• Saturday, August 06th, 2005

I’ve finished my first piece since 1996. :) It’s little, but it’s quite cute… and the photo honestly sucks… I’ll have to redo it in the morning when I have better light. New photo added. :)

Fire Elemental Dragon by Dragon Dreams. It’s a freebie pattern on their website, and the first of five in the series that I’ll be stitching. Air, Water, Earth, and Spirit are the other four.

It’s so nice to have a finish. Adding some really little pieces into my rotation was definitely the right idea. At this point, I may finish all five by Christmas, which would be fantastic. And with The Castle coming along nicely, too, it could be a very big year for me stitching-wise.

—-

And since I didn’t get to my Stitchers’ Blogging Question on Wednesday due to an absolutely horrid day at work…

8/3/05: Have you hand-dyed your own fabric? Why or why not? Would you like to try to do so? No, I haven’t. Until a month ago, I really wasn’t in a living situation where I could have even thought of doing so– renting an apartment doesn’t lend itself to a lot of creative fabric work. :) Now that I’m in my house, it’s more of a possibility, although I don’t expect to do my own anytime soon. I’m enjoying the professional work in my fabrics-of-the-month too much!

—

I’ve been working furiously on Egyptian Sampler this week. I should be finishing my current “official” rotation on it sometime next week/weekend, but I think I may work on it for about 20 hours to really get some work done on it. I’d like to get the center three figures done (save backstitching), and possibly the outline frame. I’ll get a photo up of it sometime after I finish its rotation round.

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A plethora of stitching stuff…
Author:
• Thursday, July 28th, 2005

Yay! I found my uploading cable for the camera. This is a good thing. :) So lots of updates tonight…

First off, I have two weeks of Stitchers Blog Questions to answer… for some reason, I’m not getting the questions in my mailbox, despite being set up for individual mail on the group. Gotta love free email sites. *sigh*

Anyway… July 20, ’05: Have you ever done a color conversion? If so, what did you think about your results and would you do it again? If not, would you like to try
someday? I have not yet done one, but definitely want to. Being a bit isolated in my stitching hobby until this year, I didn’t realize it really was possible to do them. But then I saw variants of The Castle by Teresa Wentzler, and absolutely loved them. While I doubt I’ll get around to it for many years, I’d love to do a conversion copy of The Castle someday on a dark fabric. At some point, I’ll definitely be trying it on some project.

July 27, ’05: What is your most unique/interesting stitching quirk? (This could be
something concerning the way you stitch, how you organize your stash, etc.) Since I really have nothing to compare it to, I’m not quite sure what my most unique quirk is. I suppose in the age of q-snaps and scroll frames, my preference for old-fashioned hoop stitching, perhaps? Or maybe the fact that I almost always stitch patterns upside down, and then flip them right-side up to backstitch (out of instinct). I don’t have a real method to my organization yet, given that we’ve only been in the house for a month. Perhaps I should readdress this question come December or so. :)

Okay… thus endeth the questions for this week… now onto photos of my last rotation, which lasted from March 1st until the end of May… and then I had a “floating” session on The Castle, which lasted all of June.

Egyptian Sampler restart after one rotation. The linen looks a lot better (and more authentic) than my original start. I’ll be working on this again come next week. Stitching on extremely uneven linen is tricky, but this piece is going to be worth it when complete!

The Castle after my normal rotation in April, but before the June floating focus. I’m now working on the rocks at the bottom. They dragged on this rotation.

The Castle after the floating focus in June… which included a 10-hour backstitching stretch, plus a lot of little color fill-ins in the rocks. The rocks didn’t seem quite as bad this time… but I didn’t have a lot of stitching time, either. The rock line is now down to the spine of the dragon tail in a few spots. I’ll be completing the rest of the rocks above the dragon tail in my next rotation round.

Cats on a Staircase after work in May. The stairs are the trickiest part, since it’s stitching white-on-white. I’ve been having a ton of problems with miscounts on this piece, and spent a good portion of the last round frogging stitches that I did four years ago. *sigh* Thankfully it didn’t destroy the whole piece, but it wasn’t fun.

Smoky Mountain Cats after work in May. Stitching this project is easy– it’s large swaths of the same color. However, the thread is craptacular and keeps breaking. And unfortunately no DMC options were given with the kit. So this might wind up being one of those frustration pieces due to the materials.

That’s the last rotation round. I started my new rotation on July 15th, and decided to get a couple small pieces into the rotation so I could perhaps see a finish sometime this year. It’s a bit disheartening to be in July of these rotations without a complete project to show for it… particularly since I technically haven’t had a finish since 1996 (eep!).

So this rotation, I’m doing this:

1) NEW: Elemental Dragons- Fire (Dragon Dreams)
2) Egyptian Sampler (Teresa Wentzler)
3) Cats on a Staircase (Bucilla)
4) NEW: Astrology Sampler (Witches Stitches)
5) The Castle (Teresa Wentzler)
6) Home is Where the Cat Is (Leisure Arts)
7) NEW: Apache Wedding Blessing (Kooler Design Studio)

The last piece is a wedding present for my friend (and sorority sister), Ivanna. It won’t be done by her October wedding date… but I’m going to be working as fast as I can on it so she can hopefully have it sometime next spring.

The Elemental Dragons are a freebie set of patterns on Dragon Dreams’ homepage (located under samples). I decided to work on the Fire dragon first, but have kitted all five. To my delight, it has stitched up extremely fast. This is eight hours of stitching, as of the end of my commute time tonight:

All of the cross-stitches are done. I’m now doing the backstitching, and should have my first finish by the end of the weekend. (yay!) I’m stitching this on Silkweaver’s 28ct. Golden Promise cashel linen. The rest of the dragons will also be on 28 ct. fabric… some evenweave, some linen, but all are Silkweaver.

Onto the next rotation! :)

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Broken thoughts on a Saturday…
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• Saturday, July 16th, 2005

I finished Half-Blood Prince yesterday afternoon. Around 4 hours, which makes sense since OOtP took me a bit less than six. I enjoyed it. Still digesting it, since there are the plot turns like all of the other books that need to be thought about. I’ll probably start putting some comments behind a spoiler filter on LiveJournal tomorrow (and can email discussions for anyone who isn’t on LJ but wants my views…)

But without giving anything away– I really did enjoy it, and so far, I like how the story is progressing.

(I can say safely, at least!)

+ + + + + + +

I did a bit of work last night on the revamp of my journal. Blogger’s tags are a bit confusing to me, and my knowledge of CSS is at a “if I cut and paste this, it seems to work…” level, so it’s going slowly. By no means is it finished, but here’s my working copy at the moment. I have a lot of .div tags to add in there, as I improve the text colors and such.

Hopefully by next Friday, it’ll be ready to go live.

+ + + + + + +

We have a D&D game starting around noon today. Erich’s running his campaign. So while I’m not busy in combat, I have plenty of backstitching to do on The Castle. Once I get the backstitching rotation done (probably today… since the game will go for at least 10 hours), I’ll start my new stitching rotation…

1) Egyptian Sampler (TW)
2) Cats on a Staircase (Bucilla OOP)
3) New start- Astrology Sampler (Witches Stitches)
4) The Castle
5) Smoky Mountain Cats (Pegasus)
6) Home is Where the Cat Is (Leisure Arts)
7) New Start- Elemental Dragons (Dragon Dreams)
*) Backstitching: The Castle (floating slot for whenever our next game is)

#6 should go quickly… I expect to get it nearly done in one rotation round. IT’s very small. Once that’s complete, I’ll most likely start on the wedding sampler for Ivanna & Joe.

Oh… and I received my fabric-of-the-month from Silkweaver yesterday. My pieces were two of the new colors they’re releasing in August: Poltergeist (a grey swirl, with just a hint of purple to my eyes…) and Coral Reef (which is, as it sounds, coral pink). I’m on the “random fabric” plan, so this month, I received 32 ct. fabrics… the Coral Reef is Lugana, and the Poltergeist is Belfast Linen.

Not sure what I’ll use the Coral Reef for yet. Poltergeist I have a plan for– that fits the season, of course.

+ + + + + + +

Thank Goddess for the inventor of portable air conditioners. I wouldn’t be sleeping otherwise. It’s rather muggy up here on the 2nd floor.

Off to game…

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Mid-rotation Stitching Update
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• Tuesday, May 10th, 2005

I’m having a very difficult, emotional day today and really don’t want to talk about it because I’ll start crying again. So instead, I’m going to post craft pictures and talk about something that doesn’t involve chewing me out because I don’t think in the same mindset as males do.

*sigh*

Anyway… onto my work over the past two months or so… my rotation’s been going much slower due to the house purchase, but I have managed to get through three spots on my rotation since early March…

(I had trouble with the camera and fabric here– hopefully I can fix it in Photoshop later…)

Egyptian Sampler, restarted. I put about 20 hours into this to catch it back up to roughly where it was before I realized my fabric size fuckup back in January. The new fabric is 28 count antique tea-dyed *unevenweave* linen from a great little stitch shop in Plymouth, Mass. It was a bit tricky at first to start stitching since the squares are slightly uneven, but I’m liking how the uneven stitches give it even more of an authentic “ancient” look.

This will, by the way, look like this when it’s done.

The Castle, after another 10 hour rotation. I’m working on the bottom, developing the rocky cliff below the castle. It’s not the greatest photo, but taking a full picture of the work at this point is much better than focusing just on the rocks at the bottom, which are a bit of a mottled brown, grey, and green mess. :) My prior updates are here.

In a couple weeks, I’ll do another backstitching rotation on this. During that, I’ll finish outlining the dragon’s head, anything left on the castle, and the small wing.

If all goes well, I’m still hoping to have this finished by the end of the summer. But the house restorations will really determine that.

I just finished my rotation on this tonight, working through hours of white on white stitching (UGH!). I’ve had to make some corrections for miscounts, but so far I’m going to be okay. I’m not sure where my head was when I started this pattern because there have been miscounts all over. This rotation wound up being a lot of ripping old stitches… but I did make a good deal of progress over last time.

Anyway.. there are my stitching updates. Hopefully I’ll have another set before the end of the month to share. After that, stuff needs to get packed up for a good portion of June…

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Gaming segway…
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• Thursday, March 10th, 2005

We had our monthly World’s Largest Dungeon game last night. Things went well. In our allotted four hours, we did some good scouting and mapping, as well as re-equipped ourselves with weapons. Since there are only rare opportunities to purchase things (technically not part of the game, but Derek’s cool and has some joint sessions with all groups to trade, discuss, and purchase things), these types of discoveries are key.

I find that I actually am fascinated by the dungeon crawling. It can be tedious at times, but the constant discovery of new rooms and being the mapmaker is fascinating to me. This place is huge. We’ve barely scraped the surface of it, even though four separate groups are scouting. I have to wonder if any of the other groups have left the area we are in and are adventuring elsewhere in the dungeons. I think there are around 12-16 sections or so. We’ve been on section one for the entire time.

(that might be changing soon!)

I need to catch up on my notes and personal mapmaking for the adventure. There’s a lot going on, and since I missed one session, I have been lax at cleaning up my notes into a final archival form. I’d put the updating as one of my spring cleaning goals anyway, so hopefully I can get that caught up in the next few weeks before we play again.

And I leveled my character (yay!)

Erich’s game is on Saturday. We’ve made a plan to clean up the sty that comprises our apartment between tonight and Saturday morning (since tomorrow evening we have a birthday dinner to attend).

I’m trying to figure out what I’m going to use for my itch-avoidance during the 12-hour gaming stretch. I just can’t sit still and concentrate for that long, so I use my backstitching projects to keep my mind off of the starting itches of hives (which have been so bad this winter with the cold air). The problem is that after the last session of Erich’s game (two weeks ago), I finished a LOT of the backstitching on The Castle. I don’t know whether I’ll have enough to keep me occupied all game. I guess I’ll just do whatever I do have, though, and then just stop for the day. Egyptian Sampler (which is my current rotation piece) is just too complicated to stitch on AND concentrate on the game.

Back to work…

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Category: Dungeons, Dragons & Dice, Geeky Stuff, Stitching, WIP Progress   Tags: , ,  | Leave a Comment