Monday 27 December 2010

The Eyes have it!


Faces of Faery 88



This is my progress after 2 weeks Faces of Faery 88I wanted to get two pages completed but this pesky thing known as Christmas kinda got in the way. But at least she now has 2 eyes and I don't feel so freaked out whilst working on her having this one baleful river eye staring back at me.

Had such an eventful Christmas - my car broke down on Christmas Eve. Luckily I was with my friend Lori Angel because those 2 hours turned into one of my most memorable and hilarious moments of my Christmas. Even the tow truck driver said that he has never picked up anyone from the side of the road that was so cheerful (nice word for lunatic maybe??). I guess our happiness was infectious because when we finally got home he stopped and posed for pics with us and didn't charge us a red cent for the tow. How's that for awesome Christmas spirit!! Thanx Andy from Metro Towing. Sometimes mine and Angels lunacy does pay off in a good way. I sorely wish I had photos of Lori pushing the car with one hand and smoking a ciggie with the other. She's only a tiny slip of a girl and this sight caused 3 young men to stop and once they finished laughing at her they pushed my car off the road. Good times, good times.

I hope everyone had a fabulous Christmas and Santa was generous. One thing I love about Christmas is all the time spent with family and friends. It's a magical time.

Now onto Craft business - this weeks rotation is Lost in You by Rachel Marks another HAED chart. This is my first monochrome project as I saw some completed in the gallery and thought they look amazing. I was a bit concerned I might get bored of it easily because I love working with lots of colours but surprisingly it's just as much fun to see the picture unfold. I'm hoping to get 3 full stitch days in this week, see how I go.


Lost in You
 

That's it for now and will probably be my last post for 2010.

Have a Happy and safe New Year everyone and will see you next year! xoxox

Saturday 11 December 2010

L for LOVE!


"L" - Selina Fenech

 

Well it's been a week and this is how much I have completed in the L sampler letter by Selina Fenech. I have decided to continue the Letters as a work project. The big blocks of colour make it easier to work at when you are required to frequently stop and start. Plus I want to get these finished ASAP and I can't wait the 13 weeks it will take to come back into my rotation. Although, I have used a sparkly Aida fabric I don't think it pops as much as it should. So I have bought the sparkly version of DMC 819 and will do a bit of the dreaded frogging on the pink background. I tried just using the sparkly on the top cross only to avoid frogging but it looks weird. But I will do this on the black letter and put another round of crosses on the border in some sparkly thread. The colours aren't very vibrant so had to add my Bling Princess touch.

Now for this weeks rotation it's Faces of Faery 88 by one of my fav artists - Jasmine Becket-Griffith. Below is the before pic. I have the next 4 days that will be devoted to craft and just a bit of cleaning when I need a little break so I'm hoping to get page 1 and 2 completed. As you can see I'm doing them simultaneously as there are big chunks of skin colour and parking was not required with this project. Makes it faster to stitch the 2 pages together. I'm loving the green in her eyes it really sets off all the purple in the background and the purple dragon that will be coming along soon.

Have an awesome weekend everyone. Good luck with your stitching or whatever will be filling your time. Just remember to always find time to do something you love no matter what!







Friday 26 November 2010

D'OH!!!

I have completed the weeks rotation for Golden Wood, and as it went last week I didn't get as much done as I anticipated. I'm either really slow or not spending enough time on them, or I'm just over ambitious with my quotas. Time will tell...


Golden Wood





    
Now for the confession. I purchased 4 new cross stitch charts from the HAED thanksgiving sale. But in my defence I have a very good reason and I am not sliding back into my old ways. I am reading "The Power" by Rhonda Byrnes and it's all about Love and the power of Love. In order to have an amazing life one must harness the power of Love.  Anywhoo as I was browsing only BROWSING mind you the HAED website I came across the Selina Fenech Sampler Letters charts and the thought hit me like lightning - how cool would it be to have a cross stitch depicting the word LOVE to remind me of its power and to use it throughout my day. As the Law of Attraction advises one to act upon every positive impulse it was completely out of my control so I bought the charts and will be starting on the "L" today.

You see my friends I have to do this because I don't want to screw with the Universe. It guided me to this website as I promised myself I wouldn't even go there for temptation sakes but something told me to do so that day and lo and behold there was a sale on!!! It's beyond my control. This is my explanation - please don't judge or organise an intervention. I'm okay. It's all good! Happy stitching stunners!


 
  


Tuesday 23 November 2010

Returning to the Golden Wood

     
    
The end of the rotation for Crimson Glomour and the return to the Golden Wood. This is another HAED chart by Ruth Sanderson. I bought it as a gift for Mrs. Dibble and loved it so much that I bought one for myself too. To make it interesting we are having a competition, whoever finishes first is treated by the other to a fabulous lunch at Doyles on the waterfront. It's kind of a win win situation but it's the principle of it all.

You can see Mrs. Dibble's progress on her blog, she has completed a page and half at this point, as for me weellll I'm not quite so far in. Anything can happen in a week! I'm using 2 strands over one on 22ct white Hardanger fabric and mounted on Q snaps as I'm running out of scroll frames and refused to allow myself to buy another one as I would only be indulging my naughtiness as it's my fault that all my scroll frames already have a cross stitch mounted on them. Anyway Q snaps make the cross stitch portable and I can take it to work to complete on those errr down times!

Everyone believes I will lose because I am an obsessive project starter but I believe that with my rotations I will be on a roll as I won't get bored and more importantly I won't start another cross stitch. Saying this when I first got Golden Wood and began working on it, I also started a Faces of Faery cross stitch but that was before this blogging started and my rotations which I believe has cured me of my evil compulsive ways.

Well that's my theory!

SK Crimson Glomour after one weeks rotation

 I haven't got as much done on Crimson Glomour as I would have liked. I was completing her hair and the confetti stitches involved was so hard going. Almost a new colour every stitch. So parking was required which helped but progress was still slow. I'm hoping next time she is on my rotation I will complete the first page.


Monday 15 November 2010

Crimson Glomour

Crimson Glomour
    


This week I am working on Crimson Glomour storykeep. The artwork is by Ching Chou Kuik and I purchased this from the Heaven and Earth website, I started it around August 2010. Since then I haven't picked it up again as I was busy starting other projects (hang head in shame). This is the first cross stitch I have commenced using 25ct Lugana using one strand over one. I wanted to test the coverage of this before I embarked on the bigger HAED charts. This is my progress so far and I will post a picture at the end of the week.

Getting started.

Hey there welcome to my blog. I was inspired to set up a blog page showing my progress in all my cross stitches and other craft work by another blogger The Crafty Writer. It was so cool to watch her progress on all her projects especially when she completed them. So I know that it is actually possible to finish these projects.


I have currently 15 cross stitches in progress as I am an obsessive compulsive project starter. I won't even mention how many projects I have in my stash. I will just say that I need to live for another 300 years to complete every project I have bought.

Due to my condition I rarely finish anything I start. So this blog has been started up to try and assist my compulsiveness of starting and never finishing my craft works. If I force myself to record and keep to a rotation each week then I will be compelled to continue working on current cross stitches and not just keep buying and starting new ones. We will see how well this goes.

I have configured a rotation consisting of 6 weeks. Each week I will work on a cross stitch according to their size and designer. These are Heaven and Earth designs charts consisting of 4 pages or less, Large Heaven and Earth design chart, Scarlet Quince or Golden Kite chart, Other (which are kits or charts bought randomly from other designers), Heaven and Earth Design quick stitch and finally a chart from Mystic Stitch. This way I feel that I won't get bored of one project and find myself starting a new one. Hopefully this will cure me of my evil ways.