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.

2. 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.