Monday, April 30

Fairy Hill Update

Have been struggling to figure out a good rotation system for myself for awhile now and I finally think I have got it. Heres Fairy Hill before:


















And heres Fairy Hill after 10 hours of work:














I finished up on it last night and today I started on Mythical Muses 10 hours in the lime light... so far I have managed to do about 20minutes of work on her and it's already afternoon.  Hoping to at least have another hour of work this evening after all duties are done.

My daughter decided, after I started Cinderella mind you, that she wanted the fabric pink... so I dyed it and unfortunately some of the lighter threads have picked up the dye and so I am having to frog alot of her.  This is what she looks like as of today.














After frogging, all that will be left is the purple and pink of her dress and then the tiny little bit of her hair.

Currently Reading:  Confessions of a Demented Housewife by:  Niamh Greene

Monday, April 23

TUSAL Update April 2012

I may need to get a bigger jar for my threads as I don't think this will last a whole year.
















Unfortunately Bothy Threads never did answer my email so I am using the threads that Joy sent me.  This is a really fun stitch and it keeps you interested because there is always something different to be working on.

The first pic is just after I finished gridding and wow is it a big piece.















I have decided to work it page by page and hopefully in the next few days I will complete page 1 and move onto the next one.

Monday, April 16

A Huge Thank You To Joy

Awhile back I saw Joy (of http://joyus-place.blogspot.com)offering a kit she had started a long time ago, but she realised that her daughter had outgrown the fairy stage and so she offered it on her blog.  I did a google pic search and I fell in love when I saw it.

Cut-Through Fairy Tree Hill (Bothy Threads)










She sent it really fast and it got to me awhile ago, but due to no internet at home (and no idea when hubby plans on resolving this issue) I have not been able to thank her.

So Joy I thank you very much on been so generous and sending it airmail, which I am sure, was not cheap.  My daughter came with me to the post office to fetch the package and she got to open it in the car on the drive home.  Let me just say she loved it and keeps asking me when I am going to finish it.

I don’t feel so bad about making her wait though as Mythical Muse is for her as well as Cinderella and I have been told that Sleeping Beauty and Rapunzel will be expected too.

There is just two things holding me back from putting all other work aside and doing Fairy Tree Hill…

  1. Mythical Muse is driving me nuts.  Now I love JE and want to make a huge amount of her designs but this design is probably one of the hardest things I have ever done.  (Okay I am sure all you TW fans out there are laughing at me as her designs are the ultimate in difficulty and time consumption).  One of the things that makes JE’s work so lovely is that she uses so many different shades of colour as it adds so much depth to the work but the constantly changing colours, the ribbons floating all over the place and we won’t even really mention the HAIR are enough to make me want to bury my head in the sand and hope that the fairies will come and finish it for me.  The only thing that is keeping me going is the fact that I know she will be super stunning and one of the pieces that I will be the most proudest of.  Now before all of you feel sorry for me I best point out the fact that I still plan on making JE’s other Mermaid which looks just as complex in design and colour…  I am nothing if not a masochist.  So I am using Fairy Tree Hill as my treat for finishing MM.

  1. I have tried working on 28 count before because of a TW design that I want to make and as it has so many fraction’s it just would make life a lot easier.  But due to eye problems I had, my eyes grew fatigued working with it.  I kept making mistakes because I couldn’t see right.  I bought myself a magnifier that is x2 but it is not strong enough to help and I just am not in a place to spend the huge amount of money on a stronger one.  Now Joy did mention that she has not worked on the 16 count that came with the kit but had changed it over to 32 count.  I talked myself into believing that because she had already done work on the piece it would make life easier as it had already been started.  I was wrong and now I sit with a problem.  I want to make the design on 16 count and then (if Joy says it’s okay) pass along the Kit.  I already have Theorie in mind as the recipient as I know she will do Joy’s work justice, but that also means that I cannot use the threads that came with the kit, so that the person will not have to worry about finding the threads themselves or dye lots been different.  I do not have the colour key and the thread cards only have symbols printed on them with no colour numbers.  I am hoping to convert the colours to DMC and have emailed Bothy threads to find out if they could possibly just give me the colour key.  After MM I will definitely need a fun design that is lots of blocks of colour.
Now Joy I just want to let you know that you have started an obsession with me.  I went to Bothy Threads website and saw that Amanda Loverseed has a whole collection of Cut-Through designs and I want them all!!!!

I have a set amount of money put aside every month for Cross Stitch so that I keep myself in line with the spending.  This means that on any given month I can either get an item framed, buy fabric or threads.  The kits are too expensive for me as they are round about 30 pounds, which works out to be over $70, and that when changed into Rands is somewhere round about R630 a kit excluding postage.  This would mean that I would have to save up two months of my money just to purchase one kit.  I was sad to see that the Chart Packs are discontinued and that when the shops stock runs out then there will only be kits available.  This means that I won’t be able to get all of them but for the next few months I will be purchasing two chart packs a month and hopefully on my birthday month, I will get a bit of extra cash and buy a few more.  I just love how whimsical and fun they are.

I do have a finish to show off:

AN Lady (Lesley Teare) is finally finished.  I didn’t have the exact colours of beads that the design used but I am happy with the way it turned out.  I was going to get her framed this month but she will have to wait a few months for when I am finished purchasing the Cut-Through designs.

















I also want to thank Mirabillia Stitcher for showing how to make scroll rods on her blog.  I spent about five hours the other day in hubbies workshop making myself different lengths of scroll rods and I made two lengths of spacer bars and I also make a stand.  It’s far from perfect and I learnt that I can’t drill in the middle of a dowel to save my life.  The stand is wobbly and the bolts I used are far too long.  But I am so pleased with it.  I can’t believe that I made it myself and every time I look at it I feel all giddy inside.  Can you believe that a girl who has (other than Barbie furniture) never done woodworking before, made herself a cross stitch frame.


Tuesday, April 3

TUSAL Update March 2012

I wonder if one can do an update so late but we went away for the first half of the school holidays and before that I just couldn't manage to get to the internet cafe so here is my jars.  I did take the photots on the right day but just havn't had a chance to upload them.














I framed Perfect Pets and am pleased with how the simple frame really works with the design.














I have also started two new projects.  I am sure that none of you who read my blog will be suprised to know that they are both Joan Elliott designs.

The first one is her Cinderella out of Cross Stitch Gold.  My daughter requested that I do the "pink" conversion and so she looks like this so far:















The second one is her Fancy Fairy out of Cross Stitch Crazy and as I havn't done much on her (since I started her last night), I have included a pic of what she will look like:



























I have completed two new projects and it has made me realise just how nice small projects are for the soul.  They make you feel good in knowing that you have finished something when all your big projects are taking forever.  I will add all the details onto my FO page.

Firstly is Story Time Bookmarks out of Cross Stitch Crazy 154.  I am not too pleased with the way I cut the felt and I will see how much it bothers me and will then think about doing it again.  But honestly my daughter is happy with them so I don't think I should do anything.














Festive Decorations were the free gift with the January copy of Cross Stitch Crazy.  I am not a pink person but I absolutely love the way they turned out.  Shockingly this is my first hand made tree decorations and it has motivated me to make more.














I also wanted to speak about a package that just arrived from overseas from another blogger.  It was a kit that she had started and didn't want to finish.  I put up my hand when she offered it and luckily I was generously accpeted.  It is such lovely work that she did and I just hope that I can maintain the rest of the design to match her work.  I wanted to do a whole section on it but my time here is running out and I still wanted to email her to thank her, find a pic of the complete design to upload here and I forgot to put the pic I took of her work onto my usb.  Hopefully I will be able to get back here in a day or two and then thank her because it really bugs me that I have to leave now and havn't managed to do it yet.  Amazing just how long blogging takes.  Well hopefully my next update won't be so long in the making as it's sad to see my blog so empty of posts.