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.

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!

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?

Elegance of the Orient

Page 1 of 3 complete! Well, not counting the backstitching of course.

I waffled on doing the backstitching on this page before continuing, but eventually decided that I'm going to get all the cross stitching done first. For three reasons: 1, there's metallic backstitching on this section; 2, there was enough backstitch lines that continued up into the next page that I didn't want to start them in the middle; and 3, at least one of the lines from 2 was couched, which definitely can't be started and stopped in the middle.

Now I just need to decide if I'm going back for some more pages on Hidden Harbor. Probably.

Elegance of the Orient

About one week later... 

Actually, it was only worked on 4 days this week and only one of those was a weekend, since we picked up The Witness on Wednesday, and that's basically how I spent my Thurs/Fri/Sat this week. Still a good amount of progress, and much more than I would have been able to accomplish had I continued using parking.

Elegance of the Orient

Decided that I wanted to do some work on Elegance this weekend, to take a break from Hidden Harbor. I did a little bit of the cream on Saturday, but the bulk of the cream and all of the light yellow were done today. 

I decided to go back to go back to Travelling Salesman with this one. I wasn't liking the vertical lines I was getting from parking, plus this is a WHOLE lot faster. The pattern is split into thirds, so I've only run through the bottom third into this calculation. I've already finished off the largest two colours in this section. There were 8818 stitches (not including the stitches that I'd already finished by parking), and the top two colours make up 2053 stitches (23.3%)... did I mention how fast Salesman is?

You can make out where the large flower on the side of her robe is going to end up in the cream near the center. I'm stitching the colours with the most stitches first, so that I'm less likely to make mistakes while counting, so it'll be a bit before there's much more added to the flower.

Many things were worked on

So there was a new job started recently, and I've been crashing pretty early and not getting a lot done. The first week has officially been conquered now though, so time to show off the little bit that got done in the meantime.

The pokemon piece is temporarily on hold for now, since I really don't like that thread on the 28-count. It's too thick and making it too hard to get stitches in. I'm looking at either using different thread or different cloth, but for now there are other projects to work on!

The Autumn tree is starting to become more pink (down at the bottom). That will slowly take over the rainbow of the printed pattern.

Elegance got another column and a half. I'm going with 20-stitch-wide columns on her instead of 10, so each column takes longer, but I think it should end up going a bit faster in the long run. 

In person, the difference between the darker and lighter yellows is a LOT harder to see. Maybe it's just the light I'm using. Or maybe I just need to zoom out more often. The seams between columns are also less obvious in person. The backstitching should help hide that when the time comes.

When I got to the section where the entire row was just black cross stitches on Twilight, I checked the left half of the pattern and realized that that half had the entire row in black as well... so those rows I just continued across the whole thing. Only one more row of that though, and then I return to just the right half (the right half has 10 full rows of black, while the left half only has 7). It gives me an idea of how big the piece is going to be though. It seems like there's already a lot done on this one!

Elegance of the Orient - Day 1

My word, what have I gotten myself into with this one? Not only is it much larger than I thought it was (318 x 220), but when I opened it up to look through the chart, I realized that, in addition to the full cross stitch, half cross stitch, back stitch and French knots, there was also lazy daisy stitch, twisted lazy daisy stitch, and couching.

This will be quite the endeavor.

But it should look so good once it's done. The thread has really nice coverage on the 18ct. And the large smooth-looking fields of blue were what drew me to this kit originally.