CTC #1 - Introduction

Introduction > Please allow me to introduce myself > Sympathy for the devil > Rolling stones

Four degrees of seperation between the prompt and the final product. Not bad for me :)



Finished during an epic appointment with my hairdresser today. Chris, I love you.

CTC and other interesting things

Okay, so here's the May goals. And yes, I know it isn't May yet. And no, I don't care. 

1. Quiltlet: theme is Mother
2. Secret birthday xs - finish before said birthday.
3. Finish 4 ornaments
4. Magdalene - all square symbols on new section of chart
5. Outlines on Candlewick pillow
6. Draco bookmark
7. Get all the colours to finish the lorikeet
8. Start the 100 themes challenge.

And the 100 themes challenge, hereafter referred to as the CTC, is something missy-tannenbaum posted in her journal over on deviantArt. 100 prompts. Here's the list.

1. Introduction 2. Love 3. Light
4. Dark 5. Seeking Solace 6. Break Away
7. Heaven 8. Innocence 9. Drive
10. Breathe Again 11. Memory 12. Insanity
13. Misfortune 14. Smile 15. Silence
16. Questioning 17. Blood 18. Rainbow
19. Gray 20. Fortitude 21. Vacation
22. Mother Nature 23. Cat 24. No Time
25. Trouble Lurking 26. Tears 27. Foreign
28. Sorrow 29. Happiness 30. Under the Rain
31. Flowers 32. Night 33. Expectations
34. Stars 35. Hold My Hand 36. Precious Treasure
37. Eyes 38. Abandoned 39. Dreams
40. Rated 41. Teamwork 42. Standing Still
43. Dying 44. Two Roads 45. Illusion
46. Family 47. Creation 48. Childhood
49. Stripes 50. Breaking the Rules 51. Sport
52. Deep in Thought 53. Keeping a Secret 54. Tower
55. Waiting 56. Danger Ahead 57. Sacrifice
58. Kick in the Head 59. No Way Out 60. Rejection
61. Fairy Tale 62. Magic 63. Do Not Disturb
64. Multitasking 65. Horror 66. Traps
67. Playing the Melody 68. Hero 69. Annoyance
70. 67% 71. Obsession 72. Mischief Managed
73. I Can't 74. Are You Challenging Me?
75. Mirror 76. Broken Pieces 77. Test
78. Drink 79. Starvation 80. Words
81. Pen and Paper 82. Can You Hear Me? 83. Heal
84. Out Cold 85. Spiral 86. Seeing Red
87. Food 88. Pain 89. Through the Fire
90. Triangle 91. Drowning 92. All That I Have
93. Give Up 94. Last Hope 95. Advertisement
96. In the Storm 97. Safety First 98. Puzzle
99. Solitude 100. Relaxation

I'm going to start with cross stitch cos its easier and I don't have to think. but I reserve the right to move into other fibre art if the muse bites me. I'm also going to do them in order.

And in other news, my wonderful husband bought me a whole bunch of aida and stuff off trademe yesterday. It should arrive this week. w00t!

 

Weekends that suck

I have finished April's goal for the candlewick pillow. Pics later. That's everything done for April, 3 days before deadline. I am Legend.

Heaps done on the secret birthday xs which looks shit hot, I have to say.

Thinking about changing the pattern site over to a paid server because sooner or later my isp's gonna realise that my 3mb homepage has 50mb and well over 2 gigs of traffic a month. We'll see.

Tomorrow I will unveil the new project, because I'm too tired to do it tonight. Suffice it to say missy has a lot to answer for :)

What else. Um, new patterns and new gallery pics on the site and the leaky cauldron is linking to my HP patterns. w00t!

In other news, I had to put my dog down on Saturday. And I miss his warm head against my leg as I write my blog at night.

Ok, that's all.

Of mosquitos and megaman

I just got bit by two mosquitos. Thought you might like to know that. I got one of them. The other one is still humming around somewhere. I'll get that one too.

New patterns on the site - Megaman today. Lots and lots of megaman.

New pix on the blog. Yay! Enjoy.

 
This is the Magdalene with April goal completed. She's looking good.


Candlwick cushion with two daisies and poppies done. This one is killing me.
The thread keeps fluffing and shredding. Grrr.

Haven't stitched anything yet today. Off to do that now. Six days left in April and I'm a long way from finishing the goal on the secret birthday cross stitch. 

Wednesday is hump day

I know I said there'd be pics but there's not. I have finished the April goal for the Magdalene. Yay me! So no more about her until next month. I am mostly done with the daisies on the candlewick cushion. Haven't touched the secret brithday xs, because of the secret birthday person being around. Dug out another ufo that has been status-upgraded to wip. W00t!

So. I am off to watch Death note, vols 1 and 2. Unfortunately I do subs, not dubs, so I can't stitch while I watch. *sad face*

Ah well.

Catch you on the flip side.

Ooh, before I forget, I bought some plastic canvas today. No idea what I'm gonna do with it. Just bought it.

And updated the pattern site.

What is it about libraries?

The kids and I walked into town today. The weather turned to shite and we had two hours to kill so we headed for the library. I love our local library, it's modern and airy and has heaps of nooks and crannies to sit and read. The kids area has computers and toys and magazines and fabulous artworks. It can be packed but still has that quiet, very sensible feeling that libraries have.

So we chose some books and we sat and we read and boyo played on the computer and I almost fell asleep in the comfy chair. My daughter's friend turned up and they sat down and had a little giggle-fest, and you know, there's a reason they call it the living-room of the city. You walk in there and its like all the stress just sloughs off at the door. 

Libraries are special. There is nothing like a good library. Nothing at all.

So, I managed to get everything accomplished today that I needed to (apart from folding the washing). I am about fifty stitches away from the April goal on the Magdalene, and I have put the first 200 stitches into the secret birthday xs. No pics, cos its a secret. Magdalene pics tomorrow. 

Busy days with nothing much to do

Tidied a bit. Had a few visitors. Looked after one of the kids' friends from school. And suddenly its ten past seven and I've achieved 3/5 of SFA today. 



Here's the progress on the Magdalene. Which would have been more if I'd ever learned to count. The left hand side is a stitch out, from way way back when I was fed up with this and stopped working on it. I had to fudge a bit all the way up through the middle to make everything fit and not look too fragged.

Wonderful.  Having said all that, any day without backstitch is a good day ;)

Tomorrow I take my son to the hospital in the afternoon, then off to the craft shop to get the ingredients for the secret birthday xs and the other secret birthday thing. Which will be tricky given that one of the birthday people in question will be in attendance.  I am mother, see me multitask :)

Yay me!

Finished the wedding sampler. Backstitch damn near killed me. Grrr. Anyway, done now. Pic is crooked. My bad. 


I play a little game called "could have, would have" with finished pieces. Goes a little like this:
I could have used one strand of thread to do the back stitch, would have made the lines and grids a little clearer. But the grey was too light to see with only one strand. Solutions: could have used a darker colour, or could have used a lower count fabric - two strand might have looked better on 12 or 14 count. If I was going to do this pattern again, I'd probably choose 14 count white aida, and still use two strand of the grey. Not that I'm ever doing this pattern again. Ever.



Finished one ornament, mainly to see how long they are going to take. Did the machine sewing on the other four I had cut out. Looks a bit funky in the pics, but it's done with a variable colour thread that looks divine irl.

Website update

Holidays make me happy.

Elisabeth sending me pictures of cross stitches she's finished from my patterns makes me happy.

missy-tannenbaum sending me a new pattern to host on the site makes me happy.

Kirby... well, Kirby makes a lot of other people happy. That counts.

Holidays and Saturdays and Elisabeths and missys and it is a good day.

TGIF

Progress on the wedding sampler. It's starting to look pretty good.



In New Zealand, it is the end of the first school term. We now have two weeks break before term two. I have never looked forward to a term break as much as I have this one. Expect lots of progress updates, some new patterns and a much nicer mojo to have around.

April Quiltlet

On the theme of New Beginnings.

Read the whole story here

Short version: visualisation taken from Media Player.




Some more backstitch done on the wedding sampler.

Thursdays are hard.

Rhymes with pictures

Okay, so I remembered to bring the camera home and have taken some pix of my wips. Now we try le grande experiment and see if I can get the pix from my 'puter to my blog...

This is the pattern front of the Candlewick pillow and where I'm at with it. I'm a bit disappointed that so much of the white outline shows thru, but not disappointed enough to go back and rip the stitches out. :)



The wedding sampler. I finished the borders in the car today and am onto the backstitch. I hate backstitch.


The Magdalene. By the end of the month I want to have finished all the way up to the line. Lots of work to do on the left hand side there. She's so beautiful.


And lastly, my ornaments. I only have 45 more to cut out, then sew together, bead and make loops. Piece of cake.


So. There's the pix. I will post updated images as I update the pieces.

In other news, I now have a thread list for the secret birthday xs. Can't tell you what it is tho -it's a secret.

Long days

During my commute today, I finished most of the full stitch border on the wedding sampler.

I have about 100 stitches to put in and then it's onto the backstitch. I hate back stitch.

Still no photos. Still no colour chart for the secret birthday xs.

On the Anime xs front, I got three requests today - pokeballs, which I uploaded tonight, and two characters from Gravitation - Hiro and Tohma. I found the coolest pic of Tohma to chart up. Still looking for a decent ref of Hiro.

I might be liking this blogging business.

Mondays always suck

Started the little wedding sampler yesterday. No pics yet but  this is the pattern.


This is Devotion by Janlynn - the one I call the Magdalene. I've done the bottom half to just above her eyes. She uses 6 shades of brown on black aida. I can't work on her for more than a couple hours at a time cos she makes my brain hurt. I'm about halfway through April's goal for this pattern.

Haven't looked at the super secret birthday thingee yet. I'll get there. I need to convert the thread numbers to DMC and I'm stalling. 

April quiltlet all but finished. I am so in the zone.

I will remember to bring my camera home from work this week to take some shots of my progress. I really will.

April Goals

I'm hoping it gets easier to do this because, to tell the truth, this blogging thing feels kind of dumb.

Anyway, mojo's blog has exactly one goal. To reduce my UFO pile and make sure I get things finished on time. I imagine that there'll be a fair bit of editorialising along the way. 

My current WIP list is displayed at right. By the end of April I plan to have:

*Worked 500 stitches on the Magdalene. (It isn't really the Magdalene, it's a kit that's called something like Serenity, but to me, she's always been the Magdalene)
*Finished the fourth flower set on the candlewick cushion
*Worked at least 1000 stitches on the secret birthday xs (green)
*Completed the weding sampler
*Finished April's quiltlet

Pictures coming soon.