Finishing the Year with a Finish

It is done!



'Nautical'
A sampler (those flags are the alphabet & numbers) by ColorCharts
Stitched with DMC on light blue 14ct
Appx 14x14 inches
Started a LONG time ago.

Isn't it pretty?

And my tradition is still going strong - finishing up the year by finishing up a project.

Tomorrow I have to be very good; family tradition is that what you do on New Year's Day is what you'll do all year long. So I'll be starting something (Crazy January starts tomorrow, after all!), possbily finishing something, doing some self-improving, and spending some time with family.

And posting some stitching resolutions here :D

Happy New Year, everyone!!!

Two More Colors for Nautical

I have stitched all the blue and all the white. The white is a little tough to see but the backstitching will show it.



Only red and black to go!

More Goodies

I got two gift cards for Christmas - one is reserved for a trip to JoAnns for floss.
The other I was specifically told to get patterns :D
I'm very obedient - yes, I am!
So I got those HAEDs in the last post, and I've spent the last on these:

Julie posted about this site, and I decided to try them out and see how good their patterns are, because they are beautifully cheap! They're all shown in virtual stitches so as long as the color blends turn out, most of them should be very nice. Some are a little too patchy and pixellated for me, but I liked these (and put about eight more on a wishlist)

Snowing



This looks exactly like my cat Audio!

Night Hunter



The Goth Chick will try to steal this one


Looking West



I love these colors!

Then patternsonline.com was having a sale, so I got the last four of the EMS Animal Babies that I wanted needed. Now I have the whole collection of the animals, but I still need two of the Snowbabies. I got most of them when they used to be free; I've had to buy very few.
I got Snail Baby, Moose Baby, Parrot Baby, and Catepillar Baby.



I'm in a very happy-stash place right now! I need to get some fabric, but I'm hoping for a little Christmas bonus from work for that. JoAnn's doesn't have very much of the smaller counts, which is what I want, but I will be getting a lot of floss on my trip!

I also made a small payment on the HAED layaway I had... now my gift card is allllll gone.

I'll show you my progress on Nautical tomorrow! Thanks for reading!

Christmas Presents & TUSAL

The Goth Chick bought me a HAED!

Disarmed by Sessler


And my brother got me this:


And I used a gift card to get these:




Captive Heart and Bluebird Masquerade, both by Sessler. It's possible that she's my favorite :D

Hope everyone got exactly what they were hoping for this holiday!!!


PS - Almost forgot the TUSAL! Already late XD

One jar full to the brim thanks to a final total of 11 hats!

The Juliet Dress (almost done)

I still didn't get a very good picture of the Juliet dress - my house is just not bright enough, even in daytime with the lights on. And there was no way I was taking it outside!

Anyway, this is the original Juliet dress - remember?


My sister, The Goth Chick, fell in love with those sleeves. She just wanted the dress 'a little longer'.

Which eventually became floor length.

I was almost done when she asked how difficult it would be to make it flare out... sort of like this:


No problem, not really. Just some increases, I thought. Then I realized regular increases wouldn't work with the stitch pattern, so I made it into five evenly-spaced sort-of flares? I don't know how to describe it. Here's what they look like:


Then Goth-y asked me about adding a bit of a train, like this:


I told her I could, but not that long because it would get filthy and torn unless I made some sort of lining for it, and the stitch pattern for Juliet is not sturdy enough to attach a lining. So as of early this morning Juliet looked like this:


The Goth Chick wants it to flare out below her knees, which it does because I made her try it on so I could see where to start the train. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera, but it was too dim in my mum's house for pics, anyway. As of right now, I need two more rows to finish the train, then two more rows around the bottom of the whole skirt for the trim. Then...

It's done. And I will be so very happy.

And the Goth Chick will look like she's wearing this:


a la Morticia Addams.

And she'll be so very happy. I promise pics!

More Hats

I waited until too late in the day to get a good picture of the Juliet dress, so it'll have to be tomorrow for that post.

In the meantime, here are some more hats.

Another for my SIL (sister in law)



This one is for the Goth Chick



And this one is for the Goth Chick's Husband

(I apparently deleted the front view of this one, and it's already wrapped. But it's very cute. In a, um, manly way. Really.)

IHSW

Right - it's been a loooooooooong time since I posted!
I've been working extra hours at my job and this month - I have barely cross-stitched at all.
All my extra time has been taken up with the Juliet dress and the HATS! that my family must have :D

So for IHSW I made sure I had exactly enough time to sit and stitch all the yellow that was left on my Nautical sampler.



Not much, I know, but at least some!
I'll be able to get this done as soon as my presents are finished and they alllmost are.

I did this for the weekend, too - turned this stack:



Into this:



I made a hat earlier this week:



So here's the set. This is for my SIL



I'll be showing more hats and stuff as the week goes on! Don't want too many pics in one post! Tomorrow I'll show you what's going on with Juliet.

The Oldest UFO SAL

EvalinaMaria is hosting an SAL for stitching your oldest UFO - you can get info here. I am very much joining this one, although I may not be able to start until 2012. I really want to get Fred done so he's going to take up most of my stitching time after I wrap up the few presents I have left.

I have a problem with this SAL, though - I don't remember which of my UFO's is the oldest! I was sure it was this one:




Then I went rummaging through my craft room while looking for something else and pulled out this one:


And I distinctly remember that they were bought at the same store, somewhere in the same time period, and therefore were probably started about the same time.

So now I have to pick - which horse? I don't know if I should take a wild guess, let someone else pick, pull a name out of a hat, or what? But either would be fun to work on, though that Gentleman & His Lady is a heck of a lot more complicated. Which one would you guys pick to do first?

Shelves and Sailors

That's what I've been working on all week - well, except for holidays!

Fred has much more shelving done - last time the boring shelves were what made me put him away - actually, both times that he's been put away, it was because of the shelves. So I'm pretty happy that they're getting much closer to being done! The middle shelf is completely finished.



And I stitched tiny sailor men for my Nautical Sampler





Four of 'em. I also backstitched the ropes on the anchors and I like it a lot better. Since I knew the white wouldn't show up well, I backstitched the sailors' hats and the edges of the collars after I put the little black thingie on the top. (What would you call those things, anyway? I think they are a tab or a loop to hang up the hat? Or just for show?)

I am so in the home stretch with this one! Just some flags and border left! And a lot of black backstitching. But it has to go aside for a day or two since I need a November update pic of Rapture for the HAED BB and I actually haven't touched it this month. Oops.

TUSAL

This would have made a better pic closer to Halloween - if I had thought of it. I guess... is Lizzie Borden macabre enough for Halloween?

Here's my collection of orts in front of part of my more morbid collection.



I'm determined to someday have every book about Lizzie Borden that there is. Some of them are old and/or hard to find.

IHSW for November

I decided to keep working on Fred for the weekend - I still have hopes of finishing him off this year.
*crosses fingers*
Anyway - Fred now has a complete bum!



And I've started the work on those six red books in the bottom corner. I'll be going back and forth between them and the dreaded shelves for a while, possibly with a bit of the bird thrown in to keep my interest. We'll see how it goes!

I also finished two crocheted hats. These are for my dad for Christmas. He's bald, and on blood thinners, so his poor head gets very cold. I usually make him one of these, at least, every year, and by the next Christmas he's needing a new one. Last year, however, I made him a balaclava, so now he really needs a new hat! His old one has shrunk so much from being washed that it's halfway up his forehead, lol!

Here's the first - a slightly loose stitch with a nice ridge pattern to make it fit snugly. This is for when the weather is a little warmer or he wants to wear it during the day. I put a crab-stitch edging on it which looks like picots in the pic, but won't when he's wearing it. The finished hat was a little loose at the edge, so I added the crab-stitch to make sure it would stay on snugly.



The second one is a much thicker, plain double-crochet stitch. It's for cold days or to sleep in at night - yes, he sleeps in them at night. He used to have a quilted one that originally went under a helmet or was for hunting - I don't know - but it wouldn't stay on his head at night and he'd wake up with a head cold. So these are much better!



And that's two more prezzies off the list, which is lovely! On to my nephew's much more complicated hat!

How to Join the HAED freebie SAL

**Edit**
I completely missed the info that the HAED board is not accepting new members right now. Sorry about that! Thanks for the info, Rachel! So I guess no one new to the board can sign up. But there's always the next one!

**Edit Again**
I think sign-ups will be accepted again after the first or the third of December... I'll have to check but Yuku isn't letting me sign back in right now.

If you're already a member of the HAED BB, the post with sign-up info is in the General Discussion. It's tagged to stay at the top.

Rachel - good choice! I think that's the prettiest, though the tiger came a very, very close second!

PS - I found this pic in some vacation photos - it's a little road in the country where a huge, ancient willow tree has been trimmed so that you can drive under it - we thought it was really pretty. Most people would have cut it much further back or even down altogether. I'm glad to see this lovely old tree only got a bit of a haircut!

2012 HAED freebie SAL - yay!

The lady who usually does the Freebie SALs has retired, and won't be doing them any more. I was really worried that there wouldn't be one for 2012 but the pics were up yesterday!

I was really undecided between two of them, but I finally settled on this one just because of the rarity of there being a guy in the pic :D


QS Lovers

Also I really, really like his hair. He looks very elvish to me, and I love that.

These were the other choices, which I will earn if I post six different WIP pics in 2012.



The tiger is the other one I almost chose. But I want to work on one of my tiger kits for the WIPcolypse, and two tigers might have befuddled my barely-working brain. Or my nonexistent patience. So I will earn that lovely thing, and start it in 2013.

This will make my fifth freebie SAL and my third year of joining the freebie SALs.

Surprise Stash!

Look what my mailperson brought me :D



I had no idea these were coming - they were found at an auction house by a relative and mailed to me O__O

I didn't even know this particular relative knew I stitched! Or that I loved these kits! I am in happy-stash-shock!!!

Two Trees

I really, really, really wasn't going to start anything else this year, and I think I lasted an amazingly long time (for me, anyway) in sticking to that.

But it couldn't last forever.

I love a SAL, and I've been wanting to expand a little into specialty stitches, so I decided to try out the Tree of Stitches I've seen on so many blogs, and Julie's showing pics. Luckily I made it in to the group before it was removed. It's supposed to be for sale soon. I'll be honest, at first I didn't like it much when the pics started showing up, but I think I was affected by the fact that the first two I saw were in really, really icky color combinations. Or at least, icky combos to me. Someone must have liked them, obviously!

But then I started thinking about cherry trees. I love a cherry tree in full bloom. I love eating the cherries later, too, but that pink-white-red against a blue sky - or better yet, a stormy sky - is one of my favorite things. Odd, since pink is not nearly my favorite color. So anyway, I thought I'd try out ToS as a cherry tree.

Here's my inspiration: a cherry tree rumored to be 400 years old!



Here's my fabric - it was an experiment to see what tie-dyeing would do to cross stitch fabric. The Goth Chick says it looks 'violent'. I liked it but never had any idea what to do with it until now. I think it makes a fairly decent disaster-storm sky.



Here's my basic floss toss - there's an owl, a bunny, and some flowers to be decided on later. I'm using DMC varigated since I'm poor right now XD



And here's my start; one dark-wood cherry tree trunk.



I'll be stitching this on Tuesday only, and I don't expect to finish it until next year.

My other tree was started out of the vast need I have to carry some sort of stitching with me. I only have two projects left that I'm determined to finish this year, Nautical and Frederick, and they are both fairly big, so I wanted something small to take around with me.

I chose The Drawn Threads freebie 'First Snow'



This is my start. I changed the colors a bit and also how many threads I'm using. The wee white stitches are Smyrna crosses, and I didn't think about how they would need to be stitched when I started on aida, but they've been surprisingly easy even if I am having to poke through threads. This one I plan to finish this year, just it will be slow since I don't always have much time out and about!



I really like that little Cardinal!