Very late TUSAL & Update

Here is a very late update, I just haven't felt up to blogging much lately... Here is my TUSAL jar for July, along with an update photo on the Sea Babies sampler. Obviously I didn't make my deadline on July 25th to finish it, but it turns out that my friend will be in the country for a whole month, so that leaves me longer to get it done :)

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

TUSAL and a trick

Here is for this month's TUSAL report:

Lots of lovely colors after a very busy stitchy month. Some blues and creams from Lily of the Valley's wings, variegated greens and blues from Falling Leaves, multicolors from Tiny Rose Mandala, and a riot of reds, oranges, yellows and blues from Celtic Fire.

While I'm at it I thought I would share a little trick with you. I'm not a huge fan of needle minders as I found that  the magnets are not very strong and my needle would fly away every time I flipped my frame or put it in a pillowcase. However, one does need somewhere to safely put down the needle, so I came up with this:

That is the lid of my TUSAL jar, in the center of which I glued a little magnet, and voila! As an added bonus, when I put everything away for the night I can just leave the needle on the magnet and screw the lid on, it stays very secure.

TUSAL & Lily of the Valley Update

Well today is a new moon which means it's TUSAL time!

The blue and gold metallics are actually Sulky Sliver, which I have been using to grid my next HAED start, Celtic Fire. I have so far spent 4 mind-numbing nights griding (and I'm just a little over halfway done), so I hope it's worth it in the end...

Also some lovely blues and greens from Lily of the Valley, which because of the aforementioned griding did not progress as much as I would have hoped. Anyway, you be the judge:

ORT ORJ

The lovely Daffycat came up with the awesome idea of the Totally Useless Stich A Long, TUSAL for short. Easy enough, just post a photo of your ORT jar at each new moon. Now that's something I (probably) should be able to keep up with.


Of course the old ratty jar in which I keep my old ratty threads jumped up and shrieked ''ME! ME! ME!'' at the prospect of maybe one day becoming a blogosphere celebrity. 
So without further ado, here is the first public appearance of ORT ORJ:

(you're welcome)