I'm Back!

Well, I’m back, and stitching with a vengeance! After quite the cross stitch hiatus, I've finally dug out my old WIP’s (and of course started some new projects.) I've been knitting and crocheting away for years and that’s taken most of my crafting time. But every now and then I get a little bored with knitting and want to try something a little different.  Not that cross stitching's "different" since I've actually been doing it longer, but you get the idea.

Strangely enough this renewed interest actually started on a knitting get-away. Angie and I drove down to Baltimore for the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival in May and made a long weekend of it. We discovered something interesting over the weekend though – we are really not “yarn festival people”. We lasted about 3 hours at the actual festival - it was hot and crowded, and everything starts to look the same after a while. So we switched to what we actually like best, and shop hopped! We had stopped at a number of stores on the way down to MD (one in each state I think), and after the festival we googled yarn stores in the area and ended up at Cloverhill Yarn Shop. After not buying ANY yarn at the festival, I did at least buy some yarn there. Next door to the yarn store was a cross stitch store, The Stitching Post. For old times’ sake I wanted to just check it out and Angie ended up buying the cutest little knitting hedgehog pattern (I may have been a slight enabler in that decision). Over the rest of the weekend I helped her get started on her project and the itch to get back to my old projects totally kicked in.

So out they came – I realized I hadn't done any stitching in years, but I had kept everything, knowing the desire to stitch again would come back eventually. I had to decipher a bit where I was with the rotation that I had been using, but was able to figure out where I was. I realized that some of my WIP’s went all the way back to the end of 2001! Yikes! The great part was I was pretty close to finishing a couple of Mirabilia projects. So in no time at all I finished:

Gathering Eggs © Mirabilia

32 ct bay leaf jobelan

started 1/22/03, finished 5/20/14 (103.5 hours)

The funny part with this one is that everyone who I showed it to asked why I didn't finish the lower left corner. The pattern left that unstitched, and it didn't bother me at all. Apparently most people think it looks a bit unfinished. Oh well, I like it.

I also finished:

Touching the Autumn Sky (c) Mirabilia

32 ct wedgewood blue lugana

started 12/23/02, finished 5/25/14 (102.75 hrs)

This one has a slight problem. A long time ago I wrote about how I had snipped a fabric thread near her hand. You don’t really notice it (unless you look close or I point it out), but I’m a little nervous about what will happen when (if) I get it framed and they stretch it. All I can imagine is it running like a run in nylons! The helpful lady at Thistle Needleworks suggested I pull out the snipped thread and then anchor and weave in another thread from the edge. This makes me a little nervous as well, so we’ll see what happens.

This brought up another kind of sad point, in that quite a few of the projects I had finished back then as well as some of my WIP’s had been started when Marley was very young and intended for a little girl’s room. Seeing as she just turned 13 (!) things in her room have changed a bit since then. So now I have to figure out what to do with some of the “little kid” projects. I've already picked out a spot for Gathering Eggs in my hallway, but I’m not quite sure about Autumn Sky. I don’t have much free wall space, so I’ll have to think about it a bit.
My latest finish this year is:

Punkin Season (c) Full Circle Design

32 ct cream lugana

started 3/18/07, finished 6/15/14

I officially started this in 2007, but had only completed the border. In the past I had shied away from small finishes because I didn't know quite what to do with them (as far as framing, etc.) Luckily I've discovered some great cross stitching blogs like The Twisted Stitcher and Stitching Dreams, where they show a lot of “smalls” and Vonna at The Twisted Stitcher also has some great finishing tutorials. So I think I want to try making this into a cube. I’ll have to raid my MIL’s fabric stash and see how it goes.
Whew – well I guess that’s enough for my first post back. I have some new (and old) WIP’s to show you, but that will have to wait until another day. I updated the pages listed on the left with all of my knitting finishes (Ravelry links), a page for each cross stitch WIP and a page for each year’s cross stitch finishes. It took forever one night, but I like having everything in one place to see (even if some of the early pictures are really awful!)

Touching the Autumn Sky - 100 Hours

This is actually my oldest WIP - started on 12/23/02 (yikes!). It is by Mirabilia, and I was pertty scared of her patterns for awhile - they just seemed so intricate. But after starting this and one other (Gathering Eggs), I realized that they weren't really that difficult - just kind of big. Her shading and the way she can make the fabric in the dresses look like it's really moving is just amazing. But she also has quite a few large blocks of color in her designs which make them much easier - nothing like the constant starting and stopping in Chat Noir. I find that when I'm working on this for a while I tend to lose sight of the big picture - the colors in the shading don't really work, but as soon as I step back a little, it looks wonderful.

I almost had a complete disaster with this piece. You know how when you decide to do something, and even as you're doing it you realize it will probably lead to disaster? Well, the other night I was looking at the skin in her hands and face, which I had originally stitched "over 1". This means for every one of the "normal" stitches you see here there are actually 4 little stitches instead. I read somewhere that it made the skin look more "delicate" or some such nonsense. Well, I was never really happy with it (the shading just didn't work for me) so, in a fit of absolute lunacy, I decided to undo it. Now unstitching or frogging regular XS is a pain in the neck, but taking out those extra tiny stitches is all but impossible. Instead of picking it out, you actually have to snip it with scissors. Figure out where this is going? Yep, while snipping the floss on the first hand I accidentally snipped through the background fabric. I just kind of sat there for a minute, kind of numb, trying to figure out if I had actually done what I thought I had. Now I've done a lot of crafts, but for sheer disaster, this sort of takes the cake. I had already logged almost 100 hours on this piece - just starting over wasn't an option. AND, I had the other hand and the whole face to go - a million more potentials for disaster. But I figured at that point I had nothing else to loose, so I would keep going and see what happens. I was able to unstitch the rest with no problems and then restitched it with "normal" sized stitches. Now most people who know me realize I am a perfectionist in such things - and even I can barely tell where the problem is. It's here - to the left the backstitching around her knuckle:

See that little bit of weave that looks like it's missing it's horizontal piece? (No idea what that's called in the weaving world - Melissa? Any idea? Ask Gene...) But this picture is waaaay zoomed in. You really can't see it at all in the big scheme of things. My only fear now is that when the piece gets stretched for framing it will be kind of like a run in your nylons and just zip all the way across. So I think I'll have to discuss this at the XS store where I get it framed beforehand. I already have a sort of solution in mind - a little key charm she looks like she's holding in her hand, a la The Secret Garden - my favorite kid's book. Doesn't it look like a scene right out of the book? All in all, I'm very pleased that the disaster was mostly averted.

And I had to post this - my parent's ridiculously spoiled cat Izzy, playing Apples to Apples, Jr. with us - thank God she wasn't as competitive as my brother was!