Lily of the Valley - BG or no BG

Okay, maybe it is a bit of an obsession...

But this is pretty much magic, is it not?

This is, uh, significantly less magical.

But, oh well. This is where we're at for stitching today. It's been a rough few weeks for working on either project. Busy with life happenings and with training the dogs.

28-Feb-2015

Done all of page 1 (with its less than 30 stitches) and most of page 2, except for a few pieces of confetti. Still fighting with the Krenik. That's what I am actually currently stitching, not that you can tell on that stellar photo. Need to get out my decent camera in the daylight for new work in progress photos. My cell camera is absolute garbage!

Lily of the Valley - Feb 2015 Project Start

Once you start looking for patterns/charts etc, you end up finding a lot that you might like, then when they go on sale, it's very hard to say no. I find the best way not to spend is not to look either!

However, that didn't happen. So over Christmas I found a few new pieces I figured could be good gifts for people, so of course I had to buy them, right?! They've finally arrived and since I was sick to death of the confetti in Wreath, I figured I'd start rotating it with something that should theoretically take less time to complete!

One of the charts I ended up ordering was Lily of the Valley by Rachel Anderson, another Heaven and Earth Designs piece. I thought it would look just as nice without the background, so that's what I got and now I'm second guessing myself. However, the full piece (which I have also bought now) uses different thread altogether, so I can't cobble together the full and the no background charts. AND the full chart is also larger than the one without the background, so I'm going to hope that HAED wouldn't crate something that doesn't look nice when it's finished and hope this all turns out okay!

If I really hate it I can just stitch it again, from the full background chart. It just seems to lose some of it's magic without the strings of dew in my opinion, and I thought those would be included, not cut out as part of the background. 

I chose a antique white linen in 28 ct to stitch on, but I'm not sure how much I love the fabric. It seems much looser than 28 ct Lugana, which I do like better. There also wasn't much (any!) fabric choice at the big box craft store I got the fabric from and I bet I could have found something in a nice pale green if I had waited to start until I visited Traditional Stitches, a specialty needlepoint store to pick up the Kreinik. Oh well. That hindsight sure is 20/20.

Linen on L, Lugana on R - both apparently 28 ct

01-Feb-2015

The other thing I've discovered is that I dislike having to stitch with Kreinik on the fine fabric. Even using #4, it is still fairly significantly thicker than single strand DMC embroidery floss. I can't thread it through a #28 needle without a threader, which I find irritating to say the least.

Not so fun times. Pretty but not fun.

This isn't my only project calling for the Kreinik either. When I finally get around to it, Treasure Hunt Bookshelf uses it and I intend to stitch that on 28ct lugana, which will be even more of a pain. I think I may end up splitting the strands in order to stitch on that.

The Back Story ...

I'd like to keep track of the various crafting projects that I've been working on, so why not another blog?!?

I intend to use this for both the cross stitch projects and the other ones I toss in along the way just to keep things interesting.

I also should start figuring out what I am going to do this year for Christmas. More tree ornaments? This time with year "charms" attached? Hmm. Things to think about. Hopefully to figure out before the first week in Dec!

But since I started this blog to track progress for the cross stitch, it is only fitting for it to figure in the first post.

Several years ago I discovered House-Mouse, via a Dimensions counted cross stitch kit at Michaels, a big chain craft store.

I completed "Sew busy" that year while out on the usual 2 week camping vacation, and discovered that there are more patterns/kits in the "series." Since I tend to make some elaborate Christmas gifts for my sisters and Mom, I figured this year I would do the mice. One for each of us. Sew Busy was the largest piece, so I only needed to complete 2 smaller ones in time for Christmas, totally do able!

This summer in 2014 (some 4 years later) I FINALLY completed "my" piece out of the series.

"Make Lemonade!"

Now, where is this long, drawn out story going you ask? I really liked stitching the mice, and most of the patterns were very cute. I bought another pattern that I had thought was along the lines of the ones I had previously purchased. It was not.

When I got it, I was a little disappointed. It was complicated. REALLY complicated. The pattern was not one big folded sheet of picture, it was a whole bunch of 9x11 sheets of paper covered with symbols. How on earth would you read that?! 89 colors used to stitch this pattern? Wow, yeah that so isn't happening. So I shrugged and tucked the pattern into the drawer where crafts go to die and thought nothing else of it.

Fast forward.

In a Herrschner's catalog there was a gorgeous counted cross stitch pattern called Treasure Hunt Bookshelf. The colors, the picture itself, they were amazing. It was magical. I wanted it! However, in the fine print, again, this is not a kit. WTF.

I like kits. You buy it, and do it. No extra planning necessary. No hiccups of not being able to locate supplies etc. No spending $$$ on floss you won't look at again. So I started looking into it more in depth.

Treasure Hunt Bookshelf is a pattern by Heaven and Earth Designs, (HAED) they have a website, perfect! So I looked into it further. The chart uses 90 colors?!?

Hey, wait, where have I seen that before?! So I unearthed that pattern that is somewhere in the realm of 5 years old and looked at it again. It's also a HAED pattern, although not on their website anymore. After reading though the FAQ on HAED's site and trying to puzzle out the confusing mass of acronyms I figured that I should be able to muddle my way though it. After all, how hard can it be? It's cross stitches. A bunch of little x's on a page.

Ready to rock and roll!

I made myself a deal. If I can complete Wreath of Love, I could do Treasure Hunt Bookshelf, and that my friends was the start and my introduction to the world of Heaven and Earth Designs.

Wreath of Love is being stitched 1x1 (one strand over 1 square) on White 28ct Laguna. I started it Fall of 2014. So far these are the Work-In-Progress photos of it.

01-Feb-2015

It is a tedious project. SO MUCH confetti (for those who don't know the lingo, that is a lot of color changes with only one or 2 stitches in each color in a given space.)