Been a long time ...

After an entire year of not putting a single stitch into any of my HAEDs, I am happy to say that I completed page 3 of Catch a Falling Star by Julie Fain.

This one is going away for a bit (I have a new start or two coming soon), but hopefully I will get back to it later this year. It's a very easy (and slightly boring) stitch right now … thank goodness I decided to tent it.

My First Retreat

Just got home from my very first stitching retreat. It. Was. Awesome.

It truly felt like Christmas - I stayed up late the first night talking, laughing, and stitching, then got up early the next day, stayed in my jammies, and went running out to the main room to stitch again. It was better than Christmas because it didn't end after one day!! Big shout out to my partners in crime - Caroline and Tracey!!

So much progress - oh my gooses!

The first night I worked like a madwoman and completed page 4 of Drama Queen. That's 6 pages completed now or 32, 582 stitches or 42.2%.

I stitched every day from 8am till 2am - barely stopping for meals. It was a blast! I will admit that my attention wavered a bit, so I changed projects frequently. Luckily I brought quite a few with me. The only one that didn't get any love while I was at the retreat was Elizabeth by Mirabilia. She'll come out to play once I have a few other WIPs finished.

Definitely made some progress on Cirque des Carreaux. I think I've finished about 2.5 pages of the 6.

I finally put a few more stitches into Rules For Life by Kincavel Krosses. I love this piece. I'm hoping to finish it sooner rather than later.

I had a few new starts as well.

I started Ice Blossom by Just Nan and it was a bit of a disaster. Not only was I stitching white on white which is challenging, but I was converting the recommended threads to HDF silk and DMC perles. I did quite a bit of frogging, and I still have more to frog because I stitched one part without the sparkly metallic it needs. *sigh* It looks okay though. I like the textural differences I've added.

I also started Sunflower Bee by HAED for my Dad (he doesn't know about this though). I gridded the first page and put in 100 stitches. It's 88,900 stitches in total, so bigger than Drama Queen, but I'm stitching it on 28 ct white lugana so it should be roughly the same size. No idea when I'll actually get this one done, but the chart is full of big blocks of colour for the first few pages. It should be an easy stitch for now.

I also managed another start/finish!! I worked on the February design in the SotW hardanger SAL from Mabel Figworthy's Fancies. I didn't follow the directions for colours and I changed the beads to French knots (I can just see the beads being ripped off by my nieces within hours of getting it), but I think it looks pretty good. I forgot how time consuming woven bars are to do! It felt neverending. I also found the bead edging stitch to be fairly difficult and quite annoying. I referred to it often as the "stupid stitch." It turned out all right in the end.

Overall, the retreat was amazing. I am dead tired, and yet I feel refreshed, re-energized, and more like a real person than I have in a long time. It was good to take a few days for me without any guilt and with little thought for school and my responsibilities there. I didn't even check email!! (I dread going to check it now though.)

I've already put in my deposit for the October retreat!!

UCJC Wrap Up

It's hard to believe that 2012 is almost over! What a year ... what an array of projects! I remember last December when I was prepping and kitting up for 31 different projects. The planning was so much fun!

January was a bigger challenge than I anticipated. The frustration of having to put a project down every night and pick up a new one in the morning, the exhaustion from stitching and blogging daily, and the ridiculous pressure I put on myself to make decent progress every day that month. After a while, changing projects stopped bothering me, but I had no clue what I'd stitched in prior days or weeks. It all blurred together.

Throughout the year, I did a pretty good job of primarily working on my UCJC projects and I did finish  quite a few of them. I only had 3 non-UCJC finishes: Music Montage and two Tree of Stitches (one at the beginning of the year and one at the end of the year) with only 2 of those being new starts. I did manage some progress on Drama Queen as well, but only in the latter half of the year.

Let's have a look at what I managed to do for UCJC:

Finishes!
I had a pretty good finish ratio I think. Out of the original 15 projects on my list, I finished 10 of them (one of them was a page finish, but that counted for this challenge).

1. Snowflake - 2009 Ornament (Tor Rhuann Designs)

 
 3. Hardanger - Clover (Mabel Figworthy's Fancies)

4. Tribal Butterfly (Sparklies)

5. NATO Phonetics Subversive Sampler (Kincavel Krosses)

6. Swirly Snow (My Big Toe Designs)

7. Weiniec Korona (Penelopis freebie)

8. Metamorphosis (Ink Circles)

11. Austrian I (Bleu de Chine - JCS Jan/Feb 2010)

13. Diamond Holiday (Mill Hill)

15. Cirque des Carreaux (Ink Circles - page finish)

Out of all 31 projects, I finished 17 projects (two of which were page finishes). The rest of the finishes were:

17. Carolyn's Garden Poppy (Serendipity Designs)

19. Oh Bugger Subversive Sampler (Kincavel Krosses)

21. Catch a Falling Star (Julie Fain - HAED - page finish)

23. For Beauty Kimono (Joan Elliot)

24. Carolyn's Garden Violet (Serendipity Designs)

25. Carolyn's Garden Sunflower (Serendipity Designs)

28. Christmas Eve Flight (thesamplergirl.com)

Abandoned
Around October, I finally had to admit that I hated the pressure of trying to finish stuff for UCJC. I had included a bunch of smalls in my line up, so the challenge would be a tad easier to meet, and I just hated stitching them! I decided to abandon a few of the projects, and I sent them off to new homes around the globe.

12. Stained Glass Pansy (Solaria Gallery)

22. Snowflake Tree (Mill Hill)

26. Imperial Irises (Serendipity Designs)

29. Sapphire Snow (Mill Hill)

In early December, I decided I hated stitching on black fabric, so 31. SK Oriental Courage was abandoned as well.

Works in Progress
While I didn't finish everything, I did put stitches into a LOT of projects. The following projects were worked on during the year, but are nowhere near finished. They will end up on next year's WIP or UFO list.

9. Elizabeth (Mirabilia)

10. Rules For Life (Kincavel Krosses)

18. I Stitch Therefore I Stash (CSC magazine)

27. QS Blue Butterfly (HAED)

Untouched
A few pieces never saw the light of day again after they were started. They have all ended up on my UFO list for next year. I doubt any of them will get touched next year either, but maybe the year after! LOL

2. Fractal 284 Bookmark (Cross Stitch Collectibles)

14. Welcome Sampler (Kincavel Krosses)

16. Woodland Enchantress (Dimensions Gold)

20. Oriental Orchid (Dimensions)

30. Lickle Bit Shy (DMC)

I can honestly say that the Ultimate Crazy January Challenge was definitely a challenge - both mentally and stitching-ly. I am proud to say I've attempted it and done quite well, but I will never do it again. Too much pressure (even if it is just in my own head) and not a lot of room for adding in new and exciting projects. It amazes me how much my tastes have changed over the year, and charts I was dying to stitch before, now bore me to tears. We'll see how many of the untouched ever get touched again!

Regardless, I look forward to another (more relaxed) stitching journey in 2013!!

Thank you all for reading my ramblings and encouraging me throughout. Cheers!!

Page Finish = Happy Dance!

I decided I needed some mindless, non-challenging stitching, so I worked on Catch a Falling Star (HAED) and managed to finish page 2!! You can see the beginnings of a big star!

This one is getting tucked away for a while. Not sure what's next though.

TUSAL Time, Parking Progress, and More Charts

It's TUSAL time again! My mason jar of orts is getting incredibly full. I keep having to squish them down to make room.

This month there is a bunch of blue silk in there from ripping out the lettering from my NATO Subversive Sampler (which I replace with purple silk). On top of that are a ton of reds from Drama Queen.

Speaking of Drama Queen, I finally have a page finish!!

This was by far the most stress-free and enjoyable page I have done on this project so far. Parking is definitely the answer for me when it comes to complex, confetti-heavy projects. Now I just have to decide if I work on page 7 (the one below the page I just finished, which is more poppies and confetti) or page 4 to finish the top row (which is mostly blocky background). I'm leaning towards page 4, because I might just get another page finish in before the end of December this way.

Shamefully, I must admit to purchasing a few more HAED charts during the 50% off sale. I don't know what I was thinking, or when I'll ever get around to stitching all of these charts. Oh my goodness my stashpile is huge!! Here's what I just couldn't live without ...

China Lake (Gordon Fitchett)

Ice Palace (Ciro Marchetti)

Magikal Moment in Time (Ciro Marchetti)

I resisted buying Marchetti charts for so long, but I caved -- now I'm in trouble!

Progress, Framing, and Dyeing!!

For some reason, I just could not put Cirque des Carreaux down. I not only finished the first page, but managed to get almost 1/4 of page 2 done too! I had to literally take it off the q-snap and bundle it away so that I would work on other things. Since CdCx is a multi-page pattern, this counts as a finish for my UCJC! Yippee!

I think it looks great and this picture does a good job of showing off the true colours of the fabric and silk.

I got Jasmine Pixie (by Nora Corbett) back from the framers over a month ago, but I only just got around to hanging it up. I'm pretty proud of this piece, to be honest. It's my first piece that had both fractional stitches and a ton of beads. She's just lovely!

Two weekends ago I got the dyeing bug again, so I popped over to my LNS, picked up over a yard of 32 ct lugana plus a spare piece of jobelan, and went to work! I picked up a few more dye colours as well, so I got to try new things.

I learn a lot each time I try dyeing, and this time wasn't quite as succesful in my opinion. In order to have more pieces to dye, I cut up my yard of fabric into smaller pieces (15x18). As a result, less fabric in the dyeing containers means the patterns on the fabric look different. Important to learn, but dissapointing too. I did get a few decent pieces though.

This piece started as 32 ct ivory jobelan.

I washed it 4 or 5 times after dyeing and colour was still coming out. Red is so hard to dye. :( Definitely not a colourfast piece of fabric. LOL. I almost wish I hadn't washed it so much ... the red isn't as vibrant as I would like.

This piece was originally 32 ct antique white lugana.

This is my favourite piece from this dye session. I'm not quite sure how I managed such awesome mottling with the blue and the teal. It makes me think of mermaids ... hrmm ... might have to go searching for some Mirabilia patterns.

These two started as 32 ct white lugana.

They are pretty, but not overly exciting. Again, I washed out more of the colour than I would have liked. I have a thing for bold, vibrant fabrics I guess.

CaFS Page Finish

I've been working on Drama Queen quite a bit lately, but because it is such a complicated, confetti heavy piece (even though parking helps tremendously) I needed something simple to work on that wasn't so taxing. So I decided Catch a Falling Star was the perfect simple project.

Lo and behold, a page finish!!

This is my first big project using tent stitch, and while the speed is really nice, I'm not in love with the coverage. This project is stitched 2 over 1 tent on 25 count light blue lugana. Considering how much 939 (dk navy blue) there is, doing full crosses might have driven me insane. :)

This is one of my UCJC projects, and since it's a huge HAED, a page finish counts as a finish in the challenge. Yay! I haven't had a UCJC finish since June. I believe this is UCJC finish number 13.

Drama Queen!!!

I put this project aside for the longest time because the confetti was killing me. Recently I finally got in the mood to work on it, and I plowed through and FINALLY finished the fourth page. So I've done 21988 stitches, or 28.46% of the project. It looks fabulous (even though the reds don't photograph well).

I did wonder if it would be the death of me though. See that whitish/blueish section in the middle of the poppies? There were 21 colours in the last 58 stitches. Must have been 75-80 colours just in that section. I can not explain the pain that the confetti caused me. I think the worst part was finding symbols that I knew I already stitched, but I managed to miss just one or two. Sigh.

I'm excited to start the next page because I'm going to try parking for the first time. I'm pretty nervous about it, and I'm very worried I'll get annoyed and give up on it. However, if I can make it work, then I think progress on this piece might pick up a little bit. Fingers crossed and wish me luck.

Drama Queen - A proper page finish

Several months ago, I almost finished page 5, but I left 40 or 50 stitches of pure confetti hell for a later time. I really did need a break from such a confetti-heavy, complicated piece. So I tackled page 6 and it's gigantic chunks of red.

I haven't touched Drama Queen since the end of November.

This week, I finally had the energy to stitch DQ again, and so I took advantage of that energy by tackling the unfinished confetti on page 5 and working on some of the white/off white stitching on page 6.

The confetti is so strange to stitch because the colours (when they are in your needle) seem to make no sense - reds, browns, purples, blues, greens - all blend together to make the picture come alive.

It is slow, painstaking work, but I'm glad I have a real finish on page 5 finally (and 84% done page 6). I need another break now ... LOL.