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.

3rd Week in a Row

So I've managed to work on two projects this week. The first is a Permin kit - I think it is called Summer Horse but there is no name on the actual kit packaging. I call it Sion because it looks like the little Welsh cob I used to own.

The other project has been the HEAD BB SAL piece Blue Moon. Managed to get around 300 stitches in Blue Moon over the weekend - doubt I'll be seeing anything like that for a while now that I have my next Essay Question for Uni.

The snow has now gone, think we must be the only part of the UK that didn't get all that snow over the weekend. All of the horses now look rather unimpressed that the snow has changed back into mud.

In the last week I made more progress on my Enchanting Pegasus than I expected. Ended up making a few mistakes and throwing a load of floss away. This is probably a very bad thing because lots of Dimensions Gold Kits seem to run out of one or several colours before completion  even if you don't mess things up. I wonder why that is? They charge enough for the kit you'd think they could at least ensure there is sufficient threads to finish the project.

In other news I went to see friends at the weekend the two hour delay meant that the trip up was not the best but worse travel chaos was to meet me on my return. Snow. Last night was too snowy for my mum to give me a lift back from the station, which came as something as a surprise considering in Carmarthen it was poring down with rain. Mum booked my into a hotel so at least I had somewhere to stay but not the best thing to arrive home to. The road to our house managed to clear by morning but it's trying hard to snow again now.

Snowy view from my bedroom window

Looks like I forgot again!

So looks like I haven't published one of these in a while. During that time I managed to complete my Unicorn Valley QS and made some progress on the other HAEDs I was working on.

I'll post pictures of the other HAEDs as I work on them using my incredibly complicated rotation system I have in place. I have managed to start even more HAEDs as well as some non-HAED pieces. One of these new starts replaced Unicorn Valley and is my focus for the year. It's called Eternal Promise (a.k.a Arwen and Aragorn) by Matt Stewart and is now retired. 

Enchanting Pegasus 1 day in

Yesterday I started two new things. The first is a new Dimensions Gold Kit called Enchanting Pegasus. The other new thing is signing up to the Totally Useless Stitch A Long (TUSAL). It basically involves taking a picture of your ORT jar every month. An ORT jar is the jar you out cut off ends of threads and other stitching bits in. More info can be found here.   

TUSAL 23 Jan