Transcendence: Ninth Post - Page 23

I've been working on Transcendence quite a bit.

He finally has part of his left hand and a few more of his butterflies here:

And finally the greens are in!  So here's the entire row finished!

YAY!  I'm so excited.  He's looking so awesome.  This is the first row I've completed in any HAED.  Next I'm going to go up a row starting with page 13 then work my way right.  But I have a few other things I really need to work on before I should continue with him.  I'll be posting progress on those projects as well.

Project Stats: Pattern: Transcendence Original Artist: Adele Sessler Pattern by: Heaven and Earth Designs Started Stitching: March 7, 2012 Fabric: 20ct. Black Lugana Evenweave Floss: DMC 2 over 1 Percentage: 19.18% complete Pages Stitched: 6 of 36 complete Stitches: 27,487 out of 143,296 complete

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42

Transcendence: Eighth Post - Pages 23 & 24

I did go back to Transcendence and started working on pages 23 and 24.  I was trying to find a good place to post mid pages.

Page 24 only had about 300 stitches and 9 colors so I decided to do all of those colors first and finish off the page.  So page 24 is complete and page 23 is a little over 60% complete.

I'll take a picture of the whole row after I complete page 23.

Project Stats: Pattern: Transcendence Original Artist: Adele Sessler Pattern by: Heaven and Earth Designs Started Stitching: March 7, 2012 Fabric: 20ct. Black Lugana Evenweave Floss: DMC 2 over 1 Percentage: 17.92% complete Pages Stitched: 5 of 36 complete Stitches: 25,672 out of 143,296 complete

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42

The rest of the page contains a lot of different colors so it will probably take a bit of time with so much changing of threads.

Yesterday I went and ordered three of my projects to be framed.  When I get those back I'll post their final looks.

Transcendence: Seventh Post - Page 22

I finished page 22, and here it is (with the rest of the row):

I need to work on not taking fuzzy pictures.  I think he's looking good.  I'm getting excited.  This was a very dark page, the next page has green and more butterflies.

Project Stats: Pattern: Transcendence Original Artist: Adele Sessler Pattern by: Heaven and Earth Designs Started Stitching: March 7, 2012 Fabric: 20ct. Black Lugana Evenweave Floss: DMC 2 over 1 Percentage: 15.19% complete Pages Stitched: 4 of 36 complete Stitches: 21,767 out of 143,296 complete

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42

I'm going to go back to Little Snap Dragon for a little bit before moving back to pages 23 and 24.  Those two pages have less stitches, but more colors than page 22.  Should be fun.  Depending on how fast Little Snap Dragon goes I may finish it up.

Transcendence: Sixth Post - Page 22

I'm happy to say that, between the recovery people and my own stash, I am only missing two charts.  Her Special Place and Water Dragon, my two latest purchases.  I think everyone broke the site with the 40% off sale because I can't get on the site to get to Michele's e-mail to see if she'd be so kind as to send me those two charts.

But in the mean time I was able to work on Transcendence, yay!  And let me tell you the time has been difficult.  Rahenna finally started working on hers and is on page three already, she's tent stitching on 28 ct black fabric with two threads.  It was Rahenna's start that got me started on him again.  Also, Thea has been making excellent progress on her Mini Transcendence, so that doesn't help me in trying to keep him in the drawer either.  It's fun, all three of us are working on the same artwork, but we'll all end up with different results.  Keep up the good work ladies!

I just still really love this piece.  I can't say enough good things about it.  Adele Sessler did such a wonderful job with the colors and it just makes this a complete joy to stitch.  I love working on it, but I want it done now so I can hang the finished project on my wall!  With that said, I do have some goals for this year, but with this project I'm not going to keep myself limited to goals.  If I want to stitch him I will.  I think I'll mostly be putting him down during the times that I want to give my eyes a rest from working on the black fabric.

Here are the pics, only of page 22.  Both pics are heavily lit to allow you to see the progress since I've only done dark colors so the color isn't completely true.  Currently I'm over 50% through the page.

Here's where I was when my hard drive crashed:

Here's how far I got today:

Project Stats: Pattern: Transcendence Original Artist: Adele Sessler Pattern by: Heaven and Earth Designs Started Stitching: March 7, 2012 Fabric: 20ct. Black Lugana Evenweave Floss: DMC 2 over 1 Percentage: 12.96% complete Pages Stitched: 3 of 36 complete Stitches: 18,575 out of 143,296 complete

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42

I think I might work on Little Snap Dragon to give my eyes a rest and I stopped in the middle of a color which I don't like doing.  Never fear, Transcendence won't be put away for long.

Transcendence: Fifth Post - Pages 19 & 20

Finally!  After days of procrastination, which was odd because I really wanted to finish these two pages, 19 & 20 are complete.  This means I've completed a total of 3 pages. Yay!  And a 2012 goal has been completed!

I had a little bit of "fun" and made a little chart of what pages I've done, or aren't stitched, compared to those that still need to be stitched.  By the way, if you're reading this through a reader it looks much cooler on my blogger page.  Okay, much cooler might be overstating it a bit.

Project Stats: Pattern: Transcendence Original Artist: Adele Sessler Pattern by: Heaven and Earth Designs Started Stitching: March 7, 2012 Fabric: 20ct. Black Lugana Evenweave Floss: DMC 2 over 1 Percentage: 10.06% complete Pages Stitched: 3 of 36 complete Stitches: 14,452 out of 143,296 complete

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42

So, away he goes. :(  I'm waiting on some thread for a Christmas present for my mother.  I already have the fabric which I hand-dyed, first time I've ever tried doing that, so no laughing when I post it.  The patterns should be easy to stitch, and, since she doesn't know how to check this blog, I will post my progress on those.  Obviously since they're easy they're not HAEDs.  I think I'll try working on Friends Forever until I get the thread.

I'll be posting a completed project that will be a tie in to the project for my mother in about a week's time.

Transcendence: Fourth Post - Pages 19 & 20

Over Labor Day weekend I was trying to get another project finished.  However, when I did the math, I found out it would be pretty much impossible to complete it in the amount of time I had to complete it.  So, I went back to Transcendence.

I was hoping to be done with both pages by now, but life and other things got in the way.  But I really wanted to share where I'm at so here we go:

The picture's a little fuzzy, but I'm sure you get the gist.  I've completed all the blues and purples.  Which means you can see the butterflies in all their glory.  All I have left now are the browns and greens.  After this picture was taken I completed one green and am halfway through another.  There are 34 different greens and browns, so lots of changing of colors, I think that's why these pages are taking so long.

With this much done I'm almost positive that the black will not be stitched, so I've changed the project stats a little.

Project Stats:
Pattern: Transcendence
Original Artist: Adele Sessler
Pattern by: Heaven and Earth Designs
Started Stitching: March 7, 2012
Fabric: 20ct. Black Lugana Evenweave
Floss: DMC 2 over 1
Percentage: 8.39% complete
Pages Stitched: 1 of 36 complete
Stitches: 12,054 out of 143,296 complete

Transcendence: Third Post - Pages 19 & 20

I promised a post on Transcendence and here it is.  Isn't he looking so lovely?  I'm so glad I'm working on this chart.  Sometimes when I'm done for the night I'll just drape it on my legs and stare at it.  Okay, maybe I'm just a bit strange.

This upcoming Monday is a holiday in the States so I hope to be able to finish the two pages by then, but we'll see.  After that, I think I'm going to have to lock him in a safe that I can't get into.  Pages 19-21 were my goal for him this year.  I have lots of other things I need/want to get done by the end of the year including some Christmas gifts.  However, he looks so good I'm sure I'll have a terrible time resisting the urge to work on him.

Project Stats*:
Pattern: Transcendence
Original Artist: Adele Sessler
Pattern by: Heaven and Earth Designs
Started Stitching: March 7, 2012
Fabric: 20ct. Black Lugana Evenweave
Floss: DMC 2 over 1
Percentage: 7.16% complete
Pages Stitched: 1 of 36 complete
Total Pages: 7 of 42 complete
Stitches: 10,279 out of 143,296 complete
*Just a note, my project stats for this project will always refer to stats without the black background, if I decide to do the background I will update the stats on a post when I announce that I'll be doing the background. Hopefully that announcement will never take place.

Transcendence: Second Post - Page 21

I've been working on finishing page 21 of Transcendence.  There are two reasons for this, one, I'm sick and tired of black from Friends Forever, and the amount of confetti† on page 21 is driving me nuts so I needed to just suck it up and do it, the rest of the pages in this row are going to be easy.  Pages 19 and 24 are almost all black background, so very few stitches.  My goal this year is to get pages 19 through 21 completed, but I really want to finish the whole row.  But that's dependent on getting my other goals for the year done.

So page 21 is finally finished and it looks awesome.  I was worried as I was working on it, but when I finally got that last color in it was incredible the way the butterflies just seemed to finally pop.  I do think that the picture got a little washed out.

I'm tempted to continue with pages 19 and 20, which I'm going to do together since 19 is a small stitching page without all the black to stitch.

But, I think I'm going to finish up the color I'm working on with Magical Arrival before coming back to this one, or moving back to Friends Forever.

Project Stats*:
Pattern: Transcendence
Original Artist: Adele Sessler
Pattern by: Heaven and Earth Designs
Started Stitching: March 7, 2012
Fabric: 20ct. Black Lugana Evenweave
Floss: DMC 2 over 1
Percentage: 5.09% complete
Pages Stitched: 1 of 36 complete
Total Pages: 7 of 42 complete
Stitches: 7315 out of 143,296 complete
*Just a note, my project stats for this project will always refer to stats without the black background, if I decide to do the background I will update the stats on a post when I announce that I'll be doing the background. Hopefully that announcement will never take place.

† To my non stitcher friends: Confetti is a term used when a there aren't large blocks of color, just a bunch of different colors thrown together, like a bunch of confetti.

Transcendence: First Post - Page 21

Okay, I think I should make a confession at this point, I love Fantasy.  It doesn't matter what it is, books, pictures, movies, castles, dragons, princes, princesses, I pretty much love it all.  And this picture has gotten my Fantasy bone tinglin'.  I just love how he seems to be stepping out of the picture, his cloak transforming into sparkling butterflies.

I have decided to either be lazy or make this guy look really cool.  This is why:  In total there are 288,900 stitches in this pattern, and 153,571 are black, that's over half of the pattern.  53.16% of the pattern to be exact!  There are six full pages of nothing but black!  So my plan is to not stitch about 95% of the black, only keeping the black that is integral to the picture, like his clothing/cloak, hair... bits here and there that should probably still have the stitches.  If my calculations are correct, I have eliminated just over half of the stitches needed to complete this project.  If I counted correctly, yes, I'm insane for doing so, the total number of stitches is down to 143,296 with 7966 being black.  So yay, I'm halfway done?!

As a drawback, I'm stitching him on 20ct Black Lugana Evenweave, and, as any stitcher knows, stitching on black isn't nearly as easy as stitching on white.  I'm hoping that not only will I finish him faster with less stitches, but that he will pop more on the fabric without the black background stitching.  On the plus side, if I hate the way it looks I can always go back in and add all the black.  I'll be cursing probably every minute of it, but it's always an option.

The original pattern says that it will end up being about 22.5" x 32.6".  I'm not sure what my plan will be.  Since I am not stitching the black, I'm just going to stitch him and when the time comes to frame him, I'll figure out how much black around him I want to show.

HAED recommends that you start with the first page and just keep going until you reach the end, which means starting in the upper left hand corner.  Now this is odd for me.  I was always taught, and have always, started in the middle, but with the size of these designs and the way the pages are laid out I completely understand, so pretty much all my other HAEDs are started in the upper left hand corner.  But not this one.  I bought a piece of fabric that will fit him perfectly, it's 36" x 27" so I get, almost, two inches around the sides and more than two inches on the top and bottom, which is the amount of extra fabric I like.  So to make sure he's centered I started in the middle... on his crotch to be quite honest.  Sorry, I had to mention that, I thought it was kind of funny, out of all the places I could start... why did it have to be there??

Anyway, moving on, here's what I have so far, about half of page 21 finished:

His...um... shirt is almost complete on this page, with just most of the cloak and butterflies left.  I also did all the green background which, for some reason, I think looks awesome even though it's just a mess of greens.  His belt buckle showed up a lot better in the image than I've been able to see in person, but that's probably due to the fact that I'm looking at it up close and the photo forces me to look at it from a distance.

Project Stats*:
Pattern: Transcendence
Original Artist: Adele Sessler
Pattern by: Heaven and Earth Designs
Started Stitching: March 7, 2012
Fabric: 20ct. Black Lugana Evenweave
Floss: DMC 2 over 1
Percentage: 2.74% complete
Pages Stitched: 0 of 36 complete
Total Pages: 6 of 42 complete
Stitches: 3940 out of 143,296 complete
*Just a note, my project stats for this project will always refer to stats without the black background, if I decide to do the background I will update the stats on a post when I announce that I'll be doing the background. Hopefully that announcement will never take place.


I'm really tempted to work on him, but I'm watching my parent's house again so it's back to Magical Arrival, after I put together my mother's Ottlite since I left my portable one at home.  It never gave off enough light... especially since there's a FULL sized light in a box on the other side of the room!  I'll probably have an update on Magical arrival by the end of the week.