And there's the dragon that is to be slain! And all the accessories with which to slay it!
The dragon's scales (the outline, not including the belly), are done with two strands, a dark green, and a copper blending filament to give it a bit of sparkle. There's still some yellow, orange, and red in the piece, which is why I chose the copper; I figured that it would be an okay match with all four colours. A gold probably would have worked too, but I figured that if the colour was going to stand out against any of the other colours, the green would be best, plus green and copper scales would probably look cool.
The dragon's eye is going to be a red sparkly bead, and I'm hoping to find a few more charms and beads and sequins to scatter around, as there are some gems and coins in the original piece.
Left and bottom borders are done (yay!). Right side border mirrors the left, except it's got the year in its bubble.
You can see now why I've called it Inspiration Dragon Slayer!
Took a couple tries to get the French knot right in the O in Dragon (and I'm still not 100% happy with it), but I'm operating under the assumption that I'm the only one who will care :)
Change of plans! My black linen showed up in the mail yesterday, so I'm turning my attention to this piece until it's done (it shouldn't take too long).
This is a piece I charted out based off a shirt that we got from work for a recent event. When I saw the design on the shirt, I thought it would make a good blackwork piece. It's going to be a slightly-elongated square (100x110 stitches), and the part that I've already done marks off the entire 100 stitch width. So you can roughly see how big it's going to be based on the top border!
It's a little bit wonky looking atm, since I didn't get the piece perfectly straight in the q-snap, but it should straighten out when it comes off the frame (hopefully...).
I'm hoping to have this done by Saturday at the latest, at most imposing on one 5-day sprint. I might even get some Autumn Tree done in this sprint.
Right half is officially done (as always, except for the backstitching and French knots)!
It would have been done earlier, except I didn't stitch at all on Thursday or Friday, and then I spent a bunch of time on the weekend playing a bunch of Factorio instead of stitching. So instead of getting started on the left half, I only just barely finished the right half in time.
Back to the Autumn tree for the next five days!
This one (and by extension, I'm going to assume the other stamped pieces) instills a lack of motivation, and my theory is that because the design is stamped on the fabric, it's hard for me to tell just how much progress is being made. Next up though is Twilight Silhouette, which should be a lot more motivating (and which also spans two weekend days).
Another free kit from a magazine. Here he is without the backstitching...
And here he his with the backstitching! Makes such a difference.
Only had weekdays to work on this one unfortunately, so only the first colour got done: it was the biggest colour so that's good, but it was also only half stitches so... yeah.
Next up, back to the pink Autumn tree. And it gets a full weekend, so we'll see just how much of that gets done in the next five days.
Well now, there appears to be a kitty silhouette defined in there!
I've decided to do all the half-stitches first and fill in the pillows and blankets before filling in the cat in the middle. Of course, there's still some kitty that's going to get stitches, but most of him should be kept until the end.
When working on these, I'm always up so close, and you can't really see what the picture's supposed to look like, and it looks bad because you can see all the little mistakes that you've made where the stitches aren't lying quite like. I'm constantly surprised when I zoom out to look at the piece in its entirety how much better it looks, and that you can actually make out what the picture's supposed to be when you couldn't see it close up.
That ends this rotation, and next up is another new start: Provence Market.
Hard to see because the first couple are so light, but that's two symbols complete. Still have another two days to devote to this, so should have at least one more symbol complete by the end :)
So I've decided to try something new. As is obvious, I did not in fact return to hidden harbor, instead getting a BUNCH of Twilight Silhouette done (there's a fairy now!). There were 7 full rows (across both the left and right sides) that were entirely made up of black cross stitches, as you can see the thick black line across the left. There were 10 full rows of black X's on the right side. The black is officially done on the right side already though.
I'm planning on trying a strategy that I read on a different crafting blog a while back (I don't remember which one, else I'd link it). Basically, 5 days per WIP, then switch to another one (splitting each month into equal sections, getting a bonus sixth day on the 31st, and losing a couple days at the end of Feb). I made a list of my WIPs (plus some pieces I haven't started yet), and rolled randomly to see what order I'd do them in, rerolling if I ended up with the same one twice in a row. I planned out to December (because why not), and I'll just remove pieces and move them back should I finish one and it's still got scheduled time.
So, long story short, for the next five days, I should be working on Cat Comfort.
