Woodland Creatures Afghan

This guy looks much better in real life. The stripes in the background are a lot more noticeable and the spiky stripes on the hedgehog himself stand out a lot more, I think because the lack of coverage in the brown isn't quite as stark as under this light.

Next up, owl!

Woodland Creatures Afghan

Number four down!

The other animals looked pretty derpy. This one so far is the derpiest. I'm not sure I like that orange ring around his rosy cheek (that's how it's supposed to be, I double checked), and the orange running stitch around the outside doesn't really have that much contrast with the pink background. 

All in all, I think this is my least favourite out of the four I've done so far.

I'm really liking the act of stitching the backgrounds though. They're all pretty much regular shapes (lines and squares... a few are dots like on the turtle), and I can just zone out a bit to stitch them. It's very zen. Plus, they're almost all done only with one strand of floss (except for those gingham ones, and maybe there are some I just haven't come across yet), which means I don't have to worry about railroading or forcing them to lie nice.

Woodland Creatures Afghan

Frog on a lily pad for the third one. I like the gingham-look of the background (also, while stitching this I realized that Weird Al should totally do Gingham Style, and all the costumes in the music video would be made of gingham). Next up is a really derpy-looking deer.

Woodland Creatures Afghan

Here is the second of 28 blocks done. I've decided to do the bigger 'full coverage' blocks first (14 of them), then the faster blocks after those are done. There are 14 different big blocks, but there's only 5 different small blocks, and they're repeated, so I was thinking that I might mix those ones up by doing different colours at the very least, and of course how am I supposed to know if I have enough floss to do that, unless all the big blocks are already done?

The background on this block is interesting: it's kind of hard to see in the picture, but it's a checkerboard pattern (3x3 stitches per square). Each block is the same colour floss, but the squares alternate between 1 strand and 2 strands. It's a subtle effect, and the photograph doesn't do it justice (much like metallic thread, it gains a lot when you look at it from shifting angles.

Unfortunately, my Q-snap ripped some of the afghan fabric! Probably when I took it off. I'm going to try fray-checking the pieces back together, but from now on I think I'm going to have to use a hoop instead.

Woodland Creatures Afghan

First block on this afghan is done. This took a lot longer than it should have.

First, I started working on it, and thought that maybe the instructions were wrong, since a lot of the stitches are only one strand (over 2 on 18 count, so 9 count), and didn't seem to have any coverage. Plus, there were no finishing instructions for the back, which seemed odd. I asked on reddit if anyone had done any of these afghans before, and didn't really get much of a response, so I decided to try the first block, see how it looked, and then switch to a framed piece on 18 count if the coverage looked horrible.

Then, I get halfway through the orange part of the background (not the spots), and realize that I miscounted when centering it in the block: 88 holes in the block, so 44 stitches over two, the block is 38 stitches wide, and I left a border on the left and top of 6 stitches instead of 3.

So, I restart. I do a bunch of the first line, then count the rest to make sure that my borders are the same... and they're not (at least I've only the bottom legs of the first 17 stitches this time). Triple check my counting (in 2 for the rounded corner, 17 orange, 6 yellow, 10 orange, 2 blanks for the rounded corner) and I can't figure out where I went wrong... except if you noticed above I said that the block was 38 stitches wide... but 2+17+6+10+2=37. So I needed 3.5 stitches (7 holes) on each side of the block, not 6.

So I undo the stitches and start again, moving right one hole to start. Get those first 17 stitches done again... and realize that the height would also be 37 instead of 38 stitches as well (and I checked the pattern to be sure). So undo those stitches once again, and move down one hole to start.

Triple checking all my counts the entire time, I end up centering it properly this time. Yay! I finish the background, then start on yellow-green for the turtle's head and feet. I almost finish that colour... and realize that that symbol was only supposed to use one strand of floss instead of two (I shouldn't have assumed that all the backgrounds were 1 strand and animals were 2). So after undoing all the turtle skin and redoing it... the rest of the block went without incident. Even the French knots went oddly well.

Anyway, I was worried that the lack of coverage would make this not look very good, but it actually turned out looking okay. So I'll be gifting the afghan for Christmas after all.

I actually saw the companion piece for this at Michael's the other day, and I'm not sure if I want to go back and pick it up or not. That striped background looks kind of fun though. Maybe I'll ask someone else if they want to pick it up and I'll stitch it and then they can gift it.

Belle Fairy Tale Dress

All the DMC crosses are done! Now I just have to wait a couple of weeks until my shinies show up to finish it off!

In the mean time, I've decided I'm going to make a baby blanket for a Christmas present as well, so I'm going to get on that.

Belle Fairy Tale Dress

Three more colours down:

I'm so glad that I counted right for the distance to the light swirly under-skirt section. I believe the bodice section is done now but for beads (and a short bit of back stitch).

That darker gold colour under the poufs makes that bright yellow not look so out of place. Still a little odd, but I can see now that it's probably going to turn out okay in the end.

There are only two more DMC colours left on the dress (white and yet another yellow-gold), then the last four colours are on the rose, and that should work up pretty quickly. I really should have gotten started on the next colour today, but I spent a bunch of time playing WoW (read the Blizzcon news, and got excited enough to play around on some trial sub-20 toons).

Belle Fairy Tale Dress

Three DMC colours down, nine more to go. I have a feeling I'm going to be finishing off the regular floss sections before my specialty threads show up. I mean, if I get some good stitching time in this weekend, I could maybe even finish them off before Monday.

Those bright sections underneath each of the poofs, they don't look quite right, but they're going to be the shadows underneath the ribbon sections, so they'll be more or less covered? Hopefully?

Pretty Princess Dress Up!

So I don't have much to show for this past week as I was transcribing The Guardian into the computer so that I could run it through the Traveling Salesman program... and then doing a bunch of work on said program so that it could handle quarter stitches (wheeee!). I started working it cross-country like I had started so many years ago, and after a couple lengths of thread I was like Nope! So I spent a week drawing on the computer.

Anyway, now that that's done I was going to start finishing the dragon, when I finally decided to pay for the Fairy Tale Princess Dress Up set of patterns from Brooke's Books on Etsy. I've been eyeing them for a while, but I also finally had a reason to start on one (Christmas present!), and since they were on sale for 50% off for the set, I picked them up.

So I started working on Belle:

That's the first (biggest) colour down, and there are actually not that many colours in this one, since her dress is just a big mass of yellow. The Mill Hill beads and Kreinik threads are currently on order and will apparently be shipped in about two weeks (since the red hot wire wasn't in stock atm, but they're going to order it in just for li'l ole me!), but that should leave enough time before Christmas still to complete and then finish the piece. It should look so sparkly when it's done.

Speaking of finishing, the Inspiration Dragon Slayer piece is currently at Michael's to be framed. We'll see how that turns out, but the guy I ordered the frame from seemed to know what he was doing. Custom framing is pretty expensive though: I think I'll have to figure out how to do it myself for the future (except for Hidden Harbour, which I've promised will be done professionally, since it's such a huge time investment).

Also, sweet dollar store find:

Just in case you can't read the sticker on the corner of the kit, that says $4... for a Dimensions Gold Collection. And one that's on my Christmas wish list to boot! I've already started transcribing the pattern.

Huh, I should probably be updating my queue page. I don't think it's currently accurate.