TUSAL & IHSW: a finish and a new HAED start

Once again this month TUSAL and IHSW collided, but this time another very important event added itself to the jumble mix: my baby turned 2 years old today! Happy birthday Noah, you are and always will be the light of my life!

My TUSAL jar this month has quite a diversity of colors in it with lots of metallics from Lily of the Valley, Red Dragon bookmark, and gridding.

Speaking of Red Dragon: this is the ''secret'' project I was working on for hubby's father day. He loves dragons and his favorite colors are red and silver, so I combined it all in Dracolair's Red Dragon Bookmark. I stitched it as charted, except that I backstitched the whole design with Kreinik instead of DMC in order to incorporate the silver. It came out pretty good but very hard to photograph...
On a side note, never again will I stitch something from Dracolair if all their patterns are like that. Out of all the symbols used, every single one but one was a blend of two colors (one of the reasons why I won't stitch TWs), which I could have coped with for such a small design, but the worse part is that most of the chart was fractional stitches, in quite a few cases a single cross would be comprised of 4 quarter stitches in 4 different blends. Enough to drive somebody bonkers and IMHO unnecessary...
There it is in all its blended, fractional, blinged out glory:

Hubby's verdict: ''it's nice, but it's kinda hard to see what it is''. *sigh*

Anyway, once I finished it, I moved on to gridding in preparation for a new HAED that I have been itching to start, Dragonflies Whisper by Ching-Chou Kuik. I've been wanting to try tenting in order to speed up my stitching and hopefully manage to make a dent in my HAED wish list in this lifetime, so this project is the first one. I did some tests and it looks like 2 over 1 tent on 28 count would provide the coverage I like (I hate when the fabric shows through), but of course I didn't have a piece of 28ct big enough.
Patience is not my strong point when it comes to stitchy stash and I couldn't wait until receiving some fabric in the mail so this one is 25ct 3 over 1 tent.

Ireland is a needleworker's nightmare when it comes to stash :(

Happy stitching!
Maud

Stash and Mystery Sampler Sal

Hi all,

I've spent most of the week working on the ''secret'' project for hubby, which I will be able to show you after I give it to him on Father's Day, but I also have a small update to show you, the second part of the Mystery SAL organized by By the Bay Needleart:

Funny how things are sometimes, this is not something that I would have chosen to stitch on my own, but now that I am doing it I am really enjoying it. It is quick, cheerful and thoroughly enjoyable :)

I also got some new fabrics in this week, here is some stashy porn:

These are the goodies I won in a game on crossstitchforum.com (thanks again Sam!):

And this is the result of Melanie's giveaway:

She is such a sweetheart, she enclosed some extra goodies to help my rebuild my stash. Make sure to visit her blog here, she has some gorgeous projects going on.

And finally, I won two ebay auctions, where I got a piece of hardanger fabric and a smallish cut of beautiful purple mottled jobelan for dirt cheap. Obviously the photo doesn't do it justice, 'cuz that would too much to ask, right?

Oh, and this weekend is time to hermit!!! Don't forget to sign up for IHSW here.

Keep on stitching, peeps!

Maud

IHSW Report & New Start

Well this was my first International Hermit and Stitch Weekend and, although I didn't get to hermit as much as I wanted (hard to do with a toddler...) I did get a good chunk of stitching done.

First up was Celtic Fire, below are the before and after pictures.

 

Celtic Fire is pretty confetti-heavy and those over 1 crosses are so tiny that I needed a little break from it. I enjoyed so much stitching those few eyelets in the Tiny Rose Mandala that I went through my stash to look for something with specialty stitches and found How Does Your Garden Grow (HDYGG), which was the 2008 Papillon Creations SAL.

Here is the floss toss, it is stitched on 28ct antique white lugana and I chose to use DMC 935 & 3364 for the greens, and DMC 920, 926, 3779 & 3821for the floral colors.

And here is part one (out of 12) finished.

I. Just. Love. It. Although I love love love stitching and cannot get enough of it, those specialty stitches are a whole new level of delight and enjoyment! So much so that as soon as this one is done I'll move on to the next Papillon Creations SAL, Castle in the Air, and who knows, maybe I'll manage to catch up with the new one Around the World in 80 Stitches.

It's almost time to hermit!

Coming back this Friday night is the International Hermit and Stitch Weekend (IHSW),organized by Joyce at Random Ramblings.

What's all this hermit and crab thingy about you ask? Well, in Joyce's words: ''International Hermit and Stitch Weekend takes place every 3rd weekend of each month. In our very busy and hectic lives, IHSW is a chance for us to squirrel some time away for ourselves and "Hermit and Stitch." It is a time set aside to take care of us and our love for stitching.''

For more info, click on the little crab button on the right, and to sign up click here.

See you there!