Her Special Place: First Post

Long time no see.  Sorry for going dark suddenly, but I have a reason this time, and it's not a good one.  Shortly after my last post my laptop crashed... and hard.  This is the first time I haven't been able to get any information off of the disk.  I took it to a professional to try to get the data for me, but they're still working on it, so as of right now I have no idea what I lost.  So I I'm still waiting, and in the words of the immortal Inigo Montoya, "I hate waiting."  Gotta love The Princess Bride!  Yesterday I finally got a new drive and started rebuilding my laptop, at least with my programs.

Anyway, this post was supposed to be about Transcendence, I'm about 50% through page 22, and that's where I still am.  I should post a pic, but it's mostly dark colors so very hard to make out, and I wanted to finish the navy blue before I posted, but the way I stitch is off my laptop.  I don't print off the charts.  I like having the pdf up on my screen, that way I can zoom in or out as much as I want.  Of course this also means I no longer have my chart.  Actually I currently don't have about 90% of my HAED charts.  I might have a few on an old desktop hard drive, but I'm hoping they'll be part of the recoverable portion of my hard drive, but waiting is definitely the hardest part.  Depending on how many I need I hope Michele will be willing to send them to me, hopefully, at least, the five I've already started on.

Which leads me to today's post:

This my fifth HAED that I'm working on.  I started this project at a time when I swore I wouldn't start any more.  This is Her Special Place, art originally by Selina Fenech.

I just love the colors and the simplicity of the design.  And the lack of a background makes me hope it will go a bit faster than most.  When I started it I justified it by telling myself I wanted to see what the coverage would be like on 28ct. one over one.  However, I think I did a bit more than I needed to in order to get the idea.  I actually haven't worked on this for a while and have been slacking on posting because I wanted to be able to post decent stats, but I give up for this post.  Maybe I'll fix it later on.

So, this is where she sits for now:

Project Stats:
Pattern: Her Special Place
Original Artist: Selina Fenech
Pattern by: Heaven and Earth Designs
Started Stitching: October 16, 2012
Fabric: 28ct. White Evenweave
Floss: DMC 1 over 1
Percentage: XX.XX% complete
Stitches: XXX out of 64,595 complete

So, for now, I'm going to be working on some actual kits I have with physical charts.  Like Little Snap Dragon, and I started on a small and simple Dimensions chart of Dolphins.  I'll probably work more on the Dolphins because it's small and easy.

Anyway, happy stitching, and my theme for this post is, Back up your hard drives!  We all think it won't happen to us... but it does!

Colombina: Fourth Post - Complete

Finally complete!

As I mentioned I got the thread last week, Wednesday, I think.  This morning, well, Sunday morning since it's now technically Monday, I went to the Aquarium with my family, my cute little nephew just loves "ish", so I was able to pick up the piece from my mother.

As I was plugging away at the 79 remaining stitches, the far right curl, the long one with the filament around the eye, wasn't matching up.  After spending about 10 minutes counting and recounting I finally realized I missed two rows causing the whole curl to be two stitches low and one stitch left.  And the curl I was working on literally ran into it.  So out it came. :(  Well, about 100 more stitches came out.  All in all it took me about an hour and a half of counting, stitching, frogging and cursing.  But it's finally done!  I just have to focus on that.

Project Stats:
Pattern: Colombina
Pattern by: Fire Wing Designs
Started Stitching: September 28, 2012
Finished Stitching: January 13, 2013
Fabric: 28ct. hand-dyed Evenweave
Floss: Caron Waterlilies 2 over 2, or 3 over 2 with silver filament

My next Signet project will be Samurai for myself to join Paladin on my wall.

Little Snap Dragon: First Post

It's a new year and I have a new start.  This is Little Snap Dragon by Kustom Krafts.  There appear to be a few ways to get this chart.  You can just get the chart or you can get the whole kit, I bought the whole kit many years ago.

I'm considering this a "small" project.  It's mostly empty space, so there's not a whole lot of stitches, but it is a rather large piece on the included 14ct. Aida, it's 13" x 18-3/4" (33 x 47.5cm).  If the kit hadn't come with the fabric I probably would have stitched it on 18 or 16 ct.

I started working on this because my eyes were upset with me stitching black on black.  Also, I found a pretty big mistake in Magical Arrival that will require me to pull out some stitches, so that bummed me big time.

I think this is actually the first project I'm working on by Kustom Krafts, but I love this little guy.  I've done two colors since I started working on him Friday, they're kind of hard to differentiate in the small pic, but trust me, there are two colors there.  I think I'm going to do two more colors before I go back to my black on black.

Project Stats:

Pattern: Little Snap Dragon

Pattern by: Kustom Krafts

Started Stitching: January 11, 2013

Fabric: 14ct. Khaki Aida
Floss: Kit Floss 2 over 1
Percentage: 13.44% complete
Stitches: 1,626 out of 12,098 complete

Last week I finally got the thread to complete Columbina for my Mother.  I gave it to her at Christmas anyway, but now I need to get it back to complete.  So I should be posting a finish soon on that.

I also have another start that I'll post soon, but it won't be one of my main pieces for a while.  I really do seem to have quite a few things I want to work on and the days just don't seem long enough.