SK Phuan

 Ok this is my second attempt at this today. Pictures went crazy in the first one. This week I have been working on last years HAED SAL piece SK Phuan. Quite confetti heavy in some places this one. Managed around 600 stitches this week did well the first few days but by Friday I only managed 50 all day. This one is quite hard going. As well as all the confetti I have the additional problem of stitching 2 over 1 full crosses on 28 count because when I started I was convinced the fabric count was 25. It's not too bad but getting the needle through for the last stitch in a very confetti area can be a nightmare. Think I could pull off 2 over 1 on 28 it it was a design with a few less colour changes.

Didn't get anything worth taking a picture of done over the weekend. Partly because my Daylight bulb gave up on me at the end of the week making my room a bit to dark for any decent stitching and partly because of my trip to TORM on Saturday. TORM is The Original Re-enactors Market. Bought myself a knife ready for show season and a tile with a happy looking squirrel on it just because I could! Didn't have much time for anything else after that though.

Eternal Promise Page Finish

As the title of this post suggests I have just finished my first page of my Eternal Promise. Only manage to get 450 stitches into it last week so I'm please that was enough to get the page done. I think I'm now at about 3% complete. This one feels like it's been very slow going the last few months. I'm hoping now that I've got less work to do and hopefully more stitching time I'll feel like I'm making better progress on this one. Also hopefully less confetti on the next page, the little patch below the middle flower at the bottom of this page seemed to take forever to get done! 

The weekend project I worked on was a Design Works kit called Southwest Cat. I've been working on this kit for a while now. This week I have mostly been working on the yellow and black decoration on the table and all of the green below that. Just have the other half of the table and the pots/plates etc in the background to do now. I'll try to remember to post a picture of what it should look like complete at some point.  

Pegasus Week 2

So I'm back to working on Enchanting Pegasus again. Been working on the wing/mane and don't think I've made as much progress as I could have. It's a Dimensions kit and uses a lot of blended colours which seem to take an age to sort out. Really liking the colours in this one, but I think I'll enjoy it more when I get onto the bigger blocks of colour in the body/background.

My other project has been the HAED BB SAL Blue Moon. Have put in about 150 stitches over the weekend which was very disappointing. On the plus side my uni assignment is due in in 10 days so once that is gone I hope to have a bit more time. Also this weekend I lost a big chunk of time having to take a cat to the vet. He had a big patch of flesh exposed on one back leg where all the skin had come off. Luckily the skin had just peeled back so the vet was able to stitch him back together so he's now shut in the utility room to recover. He's one of our barn cats so not impressed at being shut in.   

Blue

I have been working on two projects again in the last week. The first is Pharaoh's Hound, a chart from Couchman Creations and the second is a Dimensions kit called The Wave. I started Pharaoh's Hound a year or so ago having already completed the companion piece Pharaoh's Pet. Took me a while to track down the Hound chart as Couchman Creations appear to have been out off business for a while now. I had to get the chart sent to me from Germany after contacting shops in both Australia and the USA. Didn't get as much done on Hound as I would have liked - think it was about 800 stitches which is pretty poor considering it was all one shade of blue.


The Wave is another re-start. I ordered the original kit from a shop years ago. I started it, did a little before realizing I had the fabric the wrong way. I restarted it then and then forgot about it. When I came to work on it again a while later I found I had lost a whole load of floss. I tried to match the Dimensions floss to DMC or Anchor with no luck so once again I put the kit away. Eventually I tracked down a cheap new kit of it on ebay and have started it again from there. One thing I have noticed is that the colours of some floss from the original and the new kit are quite different, which makes me worry what happens if you run out of a colour and ask Dimensions for more. Only stitched on The Wave for a couple of hours and I can't really tell how much I've done, I just know it was mostly blue.

TUSAL 2

So today is the 21st of Feb and the new moon which means I have 19 minutes at the time of writing to post my TUSAL February picture so here it is :

Ta-da TUSAL

At some point I will need to attempt to take some much more stylish TUSAL pictures without my collection of Dr Who DVDs in the background. Not much in the jar for a month of stitching either.

In other news HAED have a 35% off sale so couldn't resist getting a few new charts. Came away with Some Enchanted Evening by Laura Prindle, Posky on Oriental Rug by Ivory Cats ans Computer Wizard by Spangler.  Had a bit of a panicky moment when my Computer Wizard chart wouldn't save after downloading it so I emailed Michele at HAED and had the chart in my in box incredibly quickly. Really can't fault them on their customer service ever! Now just to find the time to stitch all of these HAEDs - not sure why I have to go for all the massive/complicated designs.

Feeling Feline

This week I have been working on some cat themed stitches. The first is a newish HAED start called Tickle my Tummy by Penny Golledge. This has been my second week working on it and I am at around about the 1% mark on it. I some how managed to get in just over 1000 stitches, I'm not sure how. It's stitched 1 over 1 on 28ct rater then my usual 2 over 1 25ct. the flash on my camera has made all the colours go funny as well as making the white show through even more obvious. It does look better in real life.


My second cat project has been a DMC UFO called Little China. I started it once years ago as my second ever cross stitch. When I came back to it last year I didn't like my old stitching so I restarted it, plus I now do all of the top of my Xs in the opposite direction now. Got very little done over the weekend despite not doing much else. My Saturday morning combat training got rained off so I should have had loads of time. I have now been working on the restart for about 4 weekends. Think I will need about twice that at the rate I'm working to get the same amount completed as I had managed on the original.

Doing better in 2012

Well I've managed to beat the number of posts I made in 2011, which really wasn't that difficult. Other than that I don't have much to update. Made some progress during the week with Eternal Promise. I put in about 500 stitches which averages out at 100 per day which is pretty rubbish compared to most people who stitch HAEDs I think.  I think I need to stop watching TV while I stitch. Close to my first page finish on Eternal Promise now, hope to have it done by this time in April.

Speaking of April I now have tickets for all three UK Placebo shows, as well as my hotels. Just need to book some expensive train to go with them now. Spending a lot of money on a band I claim not to like anymore. I'm telling myself the only reason I'm going to the Edinburgh show is so that I can go to the zoo the day before to see the Pandas.