Punch of Color Girls 4: First Post

I had mentioned this picture on my blog, a long time ago.  I honestly don't know when.  I had liked Hannah Lynn's designs, her choice of bold, bright colors against the stark black outline.  I had wanted to work on one, but none appealed to me enough to actually take the time to stitch it.  Until I found this one, Punch of Color Girls 4.

She's a little bit like me, a tomboy.  It looks like she's wearing overalls, like a boy, and looks like she has just about the same amount of paint on her as she does on whatever she was painting and doesn't seem to bothered at all.  However, she's still girly, which I find myself being from time to time.

I actually started her a while back, November of last year.  I decided I was going to do her all at once, extreme cross country, pretty much the opposite of what I did on my last post.  So I started with all the black and just started stitching...

and stitching... Ohh!  I found an arm!

and stitching... and... hair...

...and stitching... a hat!

...and stitching... more hair (she definitely has more than me)...

...and stitching....

There she is!  I did most of the bottom right hand corner after I finished page 2 of Planet Dragons.  I thought I had taken a picture just after I'd finished her eye which is where she actually sat for quite a while, but apparently I hadn't, so there's a big jump between the last two pictures.

I'm thinking I'm going to do the white next, which is over 20,000 stitches.  You might not see her again for a while.

Project Stats:
Pattern: Punch of Color Girls 4
Original Artist: Hannah Lynn
Pattern by: Heaven and Earth Designs
Started Stitching: November 8, 2015
Fabric: 28ct. White Evenweave
Floss: DMC 1 over 1
Percentage: 12.51% complete
Colors Stitched: 1 of 89 complete
Stitches: 8,839 out of 70,631 complete

Hmm... now what am I going to work on?

SS Planet Dragons MC: Second Post - Page 2

As I mentioned in my previous post I was going to do the HAED Facebook Challenge #3 with Planet Dragons, and it was the dreaded parking.  So here's how it went:

My first picture, showing the fabric before the challenge, you've already seen this, pretty much, in my previous blog.

We were allowed to do the whole 10 stitch row at a time, which made me happy since I'm pretty paranoid about the 10x10 squares becoming visible when I stitch, one of the reasons why I preferred cross country stitching.  I use a hoop and decided to keep my threads on the needle since I figured re-threading could cause more damage to the thread.  I immediately made a mess.

By the time the whole row was done, I'd made an even bigger mess.

But I told myself I would do this and maybe see if I began to like it the more I stitched.

So here I am at the halfway point.  By this point I've realized two things, one, it's not very easy to park with a hoop, I couldn't really extract my hoop from this project to work on anything else if I wanted to, and I like to take my hoop off each night after stitching.  This picture shows the one time I did completely remove the hoop.  And the second thing I'd realized is I REALLY don't like parking.

The hanging threads are constantly in my way.  Either they're trying to get trapped under the threads I'm stitching or they're hanging down right where I'm trying to stitch.  I've seen many parkers with multiple needle minders to keep things organized, however I own absolutely no needle minders.

I was having one heck of a time trying to get this done and stay motivated to work on it, but with the hoop trapped on the piece I could either take 20 minutes extracting and reattaching it, or just finish the thing.  I can't explain how happy I was to get to this last row, when I could finally put the ends of the threads where they belong.

And finally done!!

No more random threads sticking out, everything clean... hoop removed.  I'll call it a success.

An interesting note is that when I normally stitch I go from color with the most stitches to the least, I did it the other way around here.  I did the least amount of stitches in the row, then finished with the most.  I think I did this to try to get most of the threads at the bottom of the row and more out of my way.

Pattern: Supersized Planet Dragons Max Color
Original Artist: Rob Carlos
Pattern by: Heaven and Earth Designs
Started Stitching: May 31, 2016
Fabric: 25ct. Magic Guide
Floss: DMC 1 over 1
Percentage: 2.7% complete
Pages: 2 of 78 complete
Stitches: 15,382 out of 570,429 complete

Now that I have actually tried parking I can honestly say it is not for me.  I'll stick to my cross country, except for any other challenges that may come along.  So now my hoop is free and I'm going to finish off part of another project really quick.

SS Planet Dragons MC: First Post - Page 1

For those of you who aren't familiar with with Heaven and Earth Designs, SS and MC stand for Supersized and Max Color.  First off, I would like to say I swore I would never to a supersized chart.  They take too long... and I just don't stitch that fast.  Well that was until I saw that someone had requested this chart not only supersized, but also with max colors.  So this chart is 999 stitches wide by 571 stitches tall and contains 239 colors.

So it may come as no surprise to you that I love fantasy so stitching dragons is a no brainer for me.  However, what you may not know about me is that I love astronomy.  So this pattern puts two of my loves into one piece.  And Pluto is included!  <3 Pluto!

For this I actually requested the kit from HAED.  I had two reasons for this.  One; if I had to buy all the colors in skeins it's possible that there would be two different dye lots and that could make it look bad.  If I'm going to spend so much time on this I want it to look right.  Two; it's ALOT of floss in lots of different colors.  I thought having them do it would just be easier.  Lucky for me when I requested this kit there was a 20% or 25% off, I can't remember which, sale going on.  And the kit was ready to order long before the sale was over.

One thing I will say about the kit is it's very nice.

Kit Box

Opened Kit Box

It comes with a wooden needle holder and the needle.  I also got a blue and green needle threader, which are the perfect colors for me, even though I still haven't used it.  I also ordered 5 Bohin needles because many folks on the HAED Facebook page just loved these needles.  Most of the floss is on rings attached to laminated cards, I was putting it back in the bag at first, but that became rather tedious, so it's no longer in it's plastic bag.  The four colors with the most floss are in the second bag, they are still in that bag, correction, one is sitting on top of the bag, the other three are in the bag.

So I started this at the end of May, I couldn't keep myself from starting it.  I started stitching with the Bohin needles.  While nice, they did not work for me as well as I had hoped.  I went back to my DMC size 28 needles.  They are flimsy and the eye does tend to warp, but they're thin, and when you're using one thread that's helpful when trying to finish the thread off by running it under the stitches on the back.  I'll probably give the Bohin needles another try when I work on 14 through 18 count fabric.

On to the stitching.  I was a bit worried on doing a Max Color chart.  I wanted to do this one max color because of all the different colors in the planets.  I thought with more colors they'd be closer to the artist's color, and it would look better.  My apprehension was on the background.  Would the colors be added to the background and make it ridiculously filled with different colors, or would it be decent?

I was happy with the answer.  The first page only contains 20 colors, 16 of which are actual background colors, the other 4 are in the tip of Mercury's wing.

I took pictures one color at a time for a bit.

One color:

Two colors:

Three colors:

Four colors:

Then I just got carried away and just finished it off.

The bottom unstitched bit is the beginning of Mercury's wing.  I'll do that when I get to the page below it.

Pattern: Supersized Planet Dragons Max Color
Original Artist: Rob Carlos
Pattern by: Heaven and Earth Designs
Started Stitching: May 31, 2016
Fabric: 25ct. Magic Guide
Floss: DMC 1 over 1
Percentage: 1.37% complete
Pages: 1 of 78 complete
Stitches: 7836 out of 570,429 complete

The next challenge from HAED is parking a full page.  Blech.  At first I was going to skip this one, but I realized if I did that it would be the opposite of what the challenges are for.  To get you to try something different.  If you try it, you might like it.  I'm going to do page two of this pattern for the challenge.  I picked that because I wanted to take baby steps into parking, page 2 only has 11 colors, so I think that's the best way to approach it. And thankfully they're allowing lightly feathered pages.  I think mine qualifies as light feathering.

Wow, this ended up being a lot longer than I thought it was going to be.  I don't know when my next post will be, but I'm going to try to catch up.  I have much more to blog about.

A Night for Enchantment: First Post - Page 1

So I made a new start for the HAED Challenge #2.  This challenge was the way I normally stitch, cross country, one whole page.  My challenge was finding a page that hadn't been started at all, which was a requirement.  Since I feather my pages, the easiest way to do this was to make a new start.  This chart was one that I really liked and had wanted to start for a while.  This is A Night for Enchantment by Drazenka Kimpel.

So, since it was a new start I had to take a picture of the blank fabric, so I decided to post that as well.  Once piece of 28 ct. evenweave:

And now for my progress shots:

First color, the color with the most stitches, 939:

1 color

I was going to do the dark green next, but I couldn't find it so I just did random colors.

6 colors

I finally found the green, and decided to do the white at the bottom, the second most color:

8 colors

Now... I lost a whole bunch of colors.  I have absolutely no idea where they went, they were in my bedroom, then whoosh, missing!  So I just started working on the colors that I hadn't lost, which was probably about 20:

21 colors

I finally gave up on finding the thread, so I bought the rest of the colors again and did the higher numbered colors:

45 colors

Then I just started at the lowest numbered color and worked my way up:

63 colors

And the final 7 colors are in:

70 colors

A total of 70 colors completed for the challenge, completed well before the time limit of 6/15/16.  But let me tell you, those flowers were brutal.  There are so many different colors and the back is a complete mess.  But the front looks nice, so that's what's important.

Pattern: A Night for Enchantment
Original Artist: Drazenka Kimpel
Pattern by: Heaven and Earth Designs
Started Stitching: April 1, 2016
Fabric: 28ct. White Evenweave
Floss: DMC 1 over 1
Percentage: 2.86% complete
Pages: 1 of 45 complete
Stitches: 7840 out of 274,375 complete

I think I'm going to do this one a little oddly, kind of at a diagonal.  I'll probably go to the right, then go to the page under this one.

Now, off to complete back-stitching that I've been avoiding as much as possible.  I'm hoping to finish it today or tomorrow, so you may see another completed project in a few days!

Ophelia: Tenth Post - Pages 5 & 6

After quite a bit of a break, Ophelia is finally making an appearance.

These are the last two pages of the first row!  I stitched them together because the last page in each row are only 13 stitches wide.

First, the color that just seemed to take forever... well it was over 60% of the stitches on these two pages.

Then, continuing on, the rest of the colors.

I know, not nearly as interesting as the last few posts I made on her, but she needs a background to live in.

And, the money shot:

You can see how wide she's going to be.  I'm hoping to get through the next two pages and finally have two complete rows.  I'm more than likely going to stick with her through the next two pages, I might work on something in the middle of it if I get bored of purple, but I'm shooting for the end of next month to get them finished.

Pattern by: Heaven and Earth Designs
Started Stitching: August 15, 2009
Restarted Stitching: January 1, 2015
Fabric: 25ct. White Magic Guide
Floss: DMC 1 over 1
Percentage: 20.27% complete
Pages: 10 of 54 complete
Stitches: 68,595 out of 338,400 complete

Dragon Game: Third Post - Framed

Hi all, I know, I went dark again.  Between Christmas and my nephew's birthday, I had two cakes to make, one for his family birthday on Christmas Eve and the other with his friends last weekend, I've been rather busy.

But I have been stitching too.  I finished a piece for my sister that is in the process of being framed, I need to blog about that one.  I'm almost done with one for my mother, I just have to do back stitching, belch.  I did another challenge from the HAED FB page, so that was another start... oops. ;D

Anyway, the real purpose of this post is to show Dragon Game framed, and here it is:

I'd forgotten to mention that I'd altered it very slightly.  On the left hand side there was a leash of sorts coming out from behind his wing.  Without it being attached to anything else it looked odd, so I left it out.

Now I'm going to work on a few more posts that I really need to do.  Framed pieces that have been framed for over a year, Items I've started and quite a few I also finished but was too interested in moving on to the next thing instead of posting... I'm such a bad blogger.  I'll catch up eventually.

Storykeep - Magical Arrival: The Seventh Post

I mentioned last month I had been working on some pieces that were long over due to be finished.  I mentioned that Storykeep Magical Arrival was one of those.  On top of that, Michele Sayetta who creates the HAED charts, challenged us to do 100 stitches a week over four weeks, October 28th to November 28th, which really, is not much.  I entered Magical Arrival as my challenge piece.

Here he is before (left) and after (right)

19,736 Stitches

20,880 Stitches

And what should have been quick and easy wasn't since I started working on something else and got sidetracked.  But I did exceed the 400 stitches with 1144.  They were mostly in the stocking and wall.

I'm not sure what happened, but it looks like something was spilled on it, it's mostly not noticeable, but I'll wash it after I'm done and see how it looks, there's a few sections that I might restitch, but it's mostly okay.

Project Stats:
Pattern: Storykeep - Magical Arrival
Original Artist: Anne Stokes
Pattern by: Heaven and Earth Designs
Started Stitching: January 31, 2012
Fabric: 18ct. White Aida
Floss: DMC 2 over 1
Percentage: 87.82% complete
Colors: 56 of 89 complete
Stitches: 20,880 out of 23,775

Dragon Game: Second Post - Complete

The last time I blogged about this was over two years ago.  Wow, time flies.

It was stitching along quickly and then I started working on a dark brown color.  It wasn't until after I'd finished the color that I realized I used 3371 instead of 3031.  I thought I'd be able to just leave it and go on my way.  However the color was way too different.  So I had to frog all the stitches, 328 stitches.  Now the problem was I had also stitched the black, and it was very difficult to tell the difference between 310 and 3371.  I picked it back up about 10 days ago determined to get it back on track.

After I finished frogging and restitching I was happy that I had decided to redo it.

And since it was small, I kept going...

And going...

Until it was done.

Project Stats:
Pattern: Dragon Game (Retired)
Original Artist: Molly Harrison
Pattern by: Heaven and Earth Designs
Started Stitching: July 19, 2013
Finished Stitching: October 15, 2015
Fabric: 20ct. White with Gold Lugana
Floss: DMC 2 over 1
Percentage: 100% complete
Stitches: 5,121 out of 5,121 complete

The next long abandoned project is SK Magical Arrival.  I lost my progress on my chart back when my hard drive crashed.  I have no idea which colors I've stitched and which I have not.  I need to work it through and figure it out so I can finish him up.  According to my last post he's over 78% complete and I'd stitched a bit more after that post.

Ophelia: Ninth Post - Pages 9 & 10 (2)

Okay, warning: I got VERY picture happy.  I did a small project, which I need to post about.  A gift for a family friend, so Ophelia took a little bit longer to finish than I thought.

So this time I was finally able to keep myself on track and finished all the darkest colors on the left hand side of the two pages.

I found her lips.  Good.  Without them I could only think of Pac Man when I looked at her mouth, and she seemed a bit deformed.  Now she's looking much better.  Her eyelids are also starting to take shape.

I think it was around this point that I started doing colors from the least stitches to the most.

And one color left to stitch:

That last color is finally in!

Finally, here she is looking quite beautiful:

I was afraid that after doing her face the rest would be rather anti-climatic.  But I'm actually finding I can't wait to see how well her clothing turns out after seeing how well she's looking so far.

Project Stats:
Pattern: Ophelia
Original Artist: Jonathon Earl Bowser
Pattern by: Heaven and Earth Designs
Started Stitching: August 15, 2009
Restarted Stitching: January 1, 2015
Fabric: 25ct. White Magic Guide
Floss: DMC 1 over 1
Percentage: 17.69% complete
Pages: 8 of 54 complete
Stitches: 59,873 out of 338,400 complete

I really should put her down and start working on Christmas gifts.  We'll see what I actually end up doing.

Ophelia: Eighth Post - Pages 9 & 10

I kept working on Ophelia, with the promise of her face, I just couldn't stay away.  I decided to stitch both pages 9 and 10 at the same time, as you could probably tell by my post title.  At first it was a little daunting after only doing a page at a time.  However, I did not want to split the two pages because the split went right through her left cheek.  While I cannot see any of the seams between my previous pages I still figured it was better to be safe than sorry.

I did my usual trick of stitching the background first, which really was not all that much.

That big blank area in the middle just reminded me of how much I had decided to take on.

I was going to go through and do some of the dark areas because they were easy to see on the fabric, but I then decided to do the most prominent color on these two pages which was a pink in her face, it made an outline of sorts so next I just filled it in.

And then I just started filling in here and there.  I just did certain colors as I felt like it.  I really don't have any rhyme or reason to which color I do next.  I focused on a few colors in her tiara, then I got bored of that and who knows what color I went to after that.

See those two random pink stitches below her chin?  Those are the only stitches of that color in the entire chart, so... yay, I completed a color!

So now these two pages combined are 52% done.  I'm not quite halfway through page 9, and over halfway through page 10.  Even as I look at this I'm trying to decide what color I'm going to work on next.  I think since it's so late I'm going to work on her tiara a bit.

Project Stats:
Pattern: Ophelia
Original Artist: Jonathon Earl Bowser
Pattern by: Heaven and Earth Designs
Started Stitching: August 15, 2009
Restarted Stitching: January 1, 2015
Fabric: 25ct. White Magic Guide
Floss: DMC 1 over 1
Percentage: 15.49% complete
Pages: 6 of 54 complete
Stitches: 52,411 out of 338,400 complete