Herb Wreath

I have officially opened into the center of the wreath! In theory, that means that I should be using less threads at once, and each row should speed up slightly (hopefully). Two of the three bees are now done, as well as a good chunk of the butterfly. I'm looking forward to starting the big yellow bow, which I might be able to start on the bottom of before it's back to work on Wednesday!

Tree Frogs

Brought a small kit with me on Christmas, decided to get one last finish before the year ends. The bright colours were fun, and once again I'm reminded just how much backstitching brings out the picture.

Herb Wreath

One week's worth of stitching down and wow, I really need to zoom out more often because there's a lot more done there than I thought there was. Still going to take a bit to finish this one (it's almost 200 stitches tall and wide), but it might go faster than I'd originally estimated.

It's also been a while since I've stitched on 14ct, and my stitches feel HUGE. I'm trying my hardest to lay the stitches nicely, but there's always more whitespace than I like between the threads.

The pattern though. I think the printing is almost 20 years old. There are mistakes (you can tell because it both doesn't make sense and looks different from the picture on the cover), stitches under diagonal backstitches are hard to read a lot of the time, and THERE ARE NO GUIDELINES AT THE 10's!!! I ended up scanning it in and drawing guidelines on in paint in order to transcribe the pattern.

I think this kit's out of print unfortunately, because it's part of a set and I wouldn't have minded making the set (and I might have been able to request a more recent pattern print that was a little more readable).

Robin Redbreast

He is done!

And with plenty of time before Christmas.

I'm going to try to find an appropriately-sized oval hoop for this one for finishing.

Robin Redbreast

When I'm stitching, I'm so close to the piece that it doesn't look the best: I notice every little inconsistency between stitches, and the light I'm using doesn't help as it really makes it obvious where the threads aren't lying at precisely the same angle (read: all of them). I've got to remember to zoom out more often like this so that I can actually see the picture!

When I first tried out this method of stitching from a text file, I was able to stitch about 10 pages in a day. I think I might be getting faster at it though, because yesterday I managed about 14 pages, and it wasn't even a full day!

We're also almost done with this one, I'm hoping to have it done this week sometime.

Robin Redbreast

Got a good chunk done this weekend, and all the orange is officially finished, which means I can take it out of my pile of active floss to make it easier to find other colours!

It feels like I didn't actually do that much (only 24 rows!), but then I compare the actual pictures from the before the weekend and after, and it turns out there's a lot of picture in 24 rows!

Robin Redbreast

All the orange/red on him is done (I'm pretty sure). Now we've just got the bottom half, which is kind of uninteresting compared to the top. Oh well. Pretty sure I'm still on track to finish before Christmas, as long as I don't keep getting caught up with knitting projects!

Nap Time, Robin Redbreast

I started this piece in February - I know this because it replaced Blow Bubbles as my work lunch project. She's been done but for backstitching for a while now, and I finally decided this weekend I was going to pull her out and finish her off.

I got some work done on Robin this weekend as well, and he's half-way done! I think I'm only a couple rows away from being done with the oranges, then it's just going to be a lot of blues and browns to look forward too.

Pretty Roses, Robin Redbreast

I picked up a selection of magazine freebie kits from the thrift shop a month or so back, and they were perfect for making sure I didn't fall asleep at my work conference! I only ended up getting the one done, which I picked because it was the most aggressively pink of the lot and wanted to get it over with. I was having trouble getting a picture of the finished stitch that wasn't either very yellow or very blue, so this'll do for now.

Also got a bunch done on Robin this weekend. He's really coming along. I'm pretty sure I'm already done with at least one colour.

Robin Redbreast

And we're back!

Not too much progress in the last month, but that's because I've been working on something else for the last little bit. Now that that project's done though, back to the stitching!

I'm kind of hoping that this will be done by Christmas; DH actually likes this piece, so I thought I'd have it ready as a Christmas present. We'll see how it goes.

Robin Redbreast

Well, here's the top 30 rows of this piece. The nice thing about it is that there's no backstitching at least, so once all the crosses are done, that's it!

I picked up this pattern from the thrift store, and whoever had surrendered it had already kitted it up with floss (though no aida). I bought it because it was worth it for the floss alone, but when I brought it home DH said that he liked the piece, so I decided to make it for him.

Puss in Boots - Latch Hook

Took some time off after clearing out my WIP pile to play some video games, then picked up a mystery latch hook from the thrift store that I decided I wanted to do.

The colours were kind of annoying on this one actually: there were several colours that could have been interchangeable (what's the difference between vanilla, honey, and spice?), and the yarn counts were off for some colours because they included extra. So I did the best I could (especially considering it didn't come with a reference photo) and I think I got the colours correct.

I think the kit is from Caron, but maybe it's just not available anymore, because I can't find it on their website. 

And I've already got my next stitching piece gridded up and ready to go on the scroll frame. Wonder what it could be!

 

Elegance

She is done!
I hope!
I'm pretty sure I've got all the backstitching done and that I didn't miss any, but I always have a sneaking suspicion that I've forgotten some.

I feel like the belt could be better, but considering I spent an entire evening on just the belt itself, it's as good as it's going to get. The right side is a stitch too high I think, but oh well. Plunging that cording was hard enough the first time - pulling 20 strands doubled over through a hole in 18 count aida was not something I wanted to do more than I absolutely had to.

DH says that we're definitely going to have to finish this one and put it on display.

Elegance

Foreground is complete! Now all that's left is 35 rows of flowers and branches. It's all coming together now!

Elegance

Her face is done! Her eyes look weird though, just being a single pixel atm (technically, there's a white stitch next to each black stitch, but they're hard to see against her light skin): the backstitching should make them look less weird.

The dove is almost done as well, just the last couple of feathers on that front wing. Her hair's a mess of blue and black, then it's just a bunch of background flowers and branches before finishing.

Elegance

Ah, the organized chaos that is full-width parking!

This is the first 20 rows of the last page done, which is about 110 rows total (I say about, because I think there are a couple rows that have no stitches on them).

The half stitches on the flowers are kind of annoying because of all the switching colours. I'm still liking the look of the stitches with this technique though, so nice and consistent.

Christmas Village Ornaments

Well, that's all the crosses done. I'm not going to do the backstitches etc. until either all six have their crosses done, or I can find a frame for it that's not going to interfere with previous embellishments (either a small enough scroll frame, or stretcher bars).

I am pleased with how the stitches look though. It takes longer, but I think it might be worth it, at least for certain patterns. I'm going to see how well it works on Elegance.

I'm probably going to put this set away for a bit, as I really only started it to test out the new pattern program.

Christmas Village Ornaments

Only 10 more to go!

I was thinking that I'd finish this one off (backstitching and everything) before doing the next one, but I'm not so sure about the squishing/pulling that might happen if/when those sections go inside the q-snap. So it's looking like I'll probably get the crosses of all six done first.

Christmas Village Ornaments

Getting close to that right side now. I really do like the way the stitches look done like this, but for bigger pieces I'm not sure I'd have enough needles to hold all that thread! This is only 84 stitches tall, but I had over 30 needles going at once at some points. I'm thinking I may be able to cut up bigger patterns into diagonal sections and still have the stitches looking good.

Christmas Village Ornaments

Half done. Santa's pretty much done, and so is the lady.

I realized after I was quite far in that the darkest yellow in the windows was supposed to be three strands instead of two. I didn't want to switch it up halfway through, so this panel is going to use two strands for that colour throughout. I may use three on the other panels though.

Christmas Village Ornaments

Got another 10 columns down. You can definitely see the building now, as well as Santa's sleigh and some bags of presents. I'm hoping to hit halfway this weekend, especially since Monday's a holiday.

Parking always looks so messy, but I swear there's a system there!

Treble Clef - Latch Hook

Was browsing at my local Michael's this week. Unfortunately, their cross stitch selection is 1 - small and 2 - never changing. I've kept from caving and picking up a latch hook previously... but this time I wasn't strong enough!

These kits don't come with the hook, but I've got a half dozen picked up from various thrift shops, so that wasn't an issue (though I did have to spend a bunch of time to find where I'd stashed them).

One problem with this kit was that the picture on the front of the box was not the same as the pattern inside. I don't know how easy it is to see in the picture, but there are six colours: white, black, blue, dark turquoise, turquoise, and light turquoise. You can see on the bottom that they've got the turquoises fading into the white, with the lightest turquoise next to the white. At the top though, the pattern has the middle-turquoise next to the white fading into the dark turquoise, whereas on the picture on the box the top uses the light and medium turquoises. Not that big of a deal, but I prefer the colours on the box, and there wasn't enough of the light turquoise left to just go ahead and copy the box anyway.

Christmas Village Ornaments

I wanted to try out my new program on something a little smaller than Elegance, but something that still had a bunch of colours.So I decided on the Dimensions Christmas Village Ornaments kit that I picked up from the thrift store a while ago.

So glad I did, I've already found a couple ways to improve the algorithm.

I'm really liking how the stitches are looking though. I'm getting exactly the look I'd hoped I would when I decided to try this technique. I'll have to be sure to get a picture of the back too; there's a bunch of confetti because of all the greens in the tree, but so far it's looking very neat on the back which is an added bonus.

Elegance

Page 2 complete!

That took a lot longer than it should have, but in my defense I finished the Danish analysis program this morning! I'm going to try using it for page 3 of this piece.

I did some of the backstitching on the this page - the branch and flowers on the right. I felt like doing some backstitching, and that element was completely contained on this page and I wouldn't have to move the scroll bar halfway through.

Elegance

Got a lot of progress compared to the previous picture... I tried to get this page done this weekend, but alas it was not to be. It doesn't help that I've been getting basically nothing done during the week since I've been sick and basically crashing every night right after dinner.

This page should be done next weekend though - pretty sure there's less than 1 full day's worth of work left.

I'm considering taking some time to write an update to my current pattern analysis program to include a UI and add options for output using the Danish stitching method. On heavy-confetti pieces, my current shortest-path analysis works just fine for cross-country, but for pieces with large areas of colour, Danish is preferable and I have some ideas for how I want to perform the analysis. 

Oddly enough, I'm thinking that I may make a text-based output for the Danish analysis. I want to basically have an easy way of doing full-width Danish parking, and I think text would be easiest.

Elegance

Well, got a good chunk of pink out of the way, and then some more shading on the gold sections. There's going to be some background in this section, so the next step is a bunch of the branches in behind her. They're half stitches, so they should be relatively quick!

English Springer Spaniel

Made this as a thank-you for someone. It's still wet in the picture, and the thread ends are SUPER visible because the aida gets slightly see-through when it's wet. It will be hooped and hopefully dropped off sometime this week.

Elegance of the Orient

I think that's the rest of the blue shading on the robe. Not that I'm not having fun with all that blue, but filling in some of the other shapes is really looking appealing at the moment. Looks like the next colour is one of the pinks though, so maybe I shouldn't have wished away the blue so soon!

Elegance of the Orient

I didn't want to post a picture just after having done the white, because I didn't think it would show up very well on the cloth, so I did the next yellow as well... but after taking the picture, it looks like the white would have been fairly visible anyway. Oh well!

The next colour's a cream, which is definitely less visible on the cream-coloured aida.

Elegance of the Orient

A little bit of shading goes a long way. That's three colours complete in this section, and she's already really coming along. I should have loads of reference stitches now so that I should have an easier time counting... that is, of course, assuming that I haven't made any mistakes so far.

Elegance of the Orient

Well, that's the two biggest colours on this next page done. I think it's cool how you can already see the shape of the picture in this section.

This one should work up a little faster than Provence Market since it's not a full coverage piece, but it's a still a Dimensions Gold, so I'm thinking at least another month of work on it?

Provence Market

It's done! And I totally forgot to take a picture before the backstitching went in on the top half :(

I ended up working the last sky colour in rows, and I don't know about you, but it looks super obvious to me.

I'm glad this one is finally done though: I'm really looking forward to putting in some work on Elegance.

Provence Market

This is actually another 20 rows filled in. Other than the big blue path in the sky, the rest of the paths were fairly small and didn't take too long to fill in.

32 file down, 1824 stitches. Only 7 more to go!

Provence Market

Not much more to go now! The trees are mostly filled in, at least the green parts. Still have a bit of trunk. I am... hopeful(?) that it will be done by next weekend, maybe even the backstitching!

11 files down, 2545 stitches. 39 files to go!

Provence Market

And that's another 10 rows complete! Got a bunch more sky done, and a little more tree. Also, I'm pretty sure that the umbrellas are now all done!

31 files down, 2031 stitches. 50 files to go!

Provence Market

Ermergerd, tree! And I've hit the top of the piece finally!

There were sooooo many stitches in this last ten rows. There were the two tree paths at 800+ and 900+, and the white halves in the sky at 900+ as well. Those white stitches are a lot easier to see in the photo than in real life, oddly enough.

I like that you can see where the trunk is going to be on that left tree.

25 files, 3919 stitches. 81 files left!

Provence Market

And there's the  first tree! There's a little bit of yellow left at the top (not sure if that's supposed to be flowers or really light leaves or what), and a couple isolated green stitches. Math says that this top page is over 50% done!

31 more files down, 3511 stitches. 106 files to go.

Silent Treatment

I needed to finish something, so I did this one last night. "Quick" little piece that took me probably about 4 hours. Yes, cross stitching takes a bit of time!

Provence Market

Another ten rows down. The next row is 800 stitches of green (I assume, I didn't actually check the colour) in the right tree, so... yay?

22 files down, 1312 stitches. 137 files left.

Provence Market

I think I must have been fighting a bug or something this week, as I couldn't get the energy to stitch during the week after I finished work for the day. Plus, there were two paths that were >600 stitches and two more that were >400, which were really daunting! But, it also means that there is now a LOT of the two buildings filled in, which should make it feel like it's going faster now, right?

33 files down, 3812 stitches. 159 files left!

Provence Market

I admit, I didn't do any stitching this past week. I kind of got in the mood to play Rift and ended up spending some time with that. It may have partly been that 400+ stitch path of white on the left side that was daunting, but I don't know.

The umbrellas are coming along. I'm particularly fond of the blue one in the middle.

22 files down, 1604 stitches. 192 files left to go!

Provence Market

First 10 rows complete!

This half of the piece has a lot less confetti. I mean, the trees are going to be pretty bad for confetti, but the buildings and sky and the umbrellas are full of larger chunks of colour.

You can see pretty well where the bottom of the umbrellas are at this point. They're going to really get going in the next 10 rows. The purple patch in the center and the maroon on the left are the only parts of the umbrellas that are done yet. Other than their poles of course.

I'm looking forward to the large chunks of colour that the umbrellas promise.

40 files down, 1347 stitches. 214 files to go!