Stitching Daze

Tuesday, May 10, 2016

Sleepy Kitten, Maynia Start #3, and Tigers!

Hullo, all!

Here is my progress on start #2 - as a reminder, it's supposed to look like this:

The tea things and the daises are solidly stitched, but I didn't want to stitch all that white on white fabric. So, instead of doing in on 14 count white aida, I chose to do it on 28 count Glass Blue Monaco. Here's my start:

I finished all of the B5200 in the daises and have started on the other colors. I'm looking forward to working my way down the vase!

Here's start #3 - I have a lot of doctor appointments coming up and I wanted something small to take with me - it's still going to get its five days of work, but if for some reason I don't finish it, it'll go in my purse. (I finished the Love, Love, Love kit that was going about in my smaller purse, but I keep forgetting to take a picture!)

It's a free Fizzy Moon kit that came with an issue of World of Cross Stitch. It's called 'Friends' and is to be finished into a little card. I'll probably give it to my mom, 'cause she'll use it to decorate with :D

And now, another China kit :D :D :D

This one is a big one (yay!) and is called 'Tiger Family'. Here's the picture on the booklet.

And the pattern page layout:

Twenty four fairly solid-stitch pages. This is what came out of the package - a big, heavy piece of fabric with three packs of two needles each! I hope these don't make my fingers burn like the others did! Six extra needles is a nice thing :D

When I unfolded it, this is the floss pile I saw. It's all sorted, no worries there, it's just folded around the floss sorters. I think this one has 44 colors.

Then I unfolded the giant fabric - it's just shy of four feet long and about 30 inches tall:

Yeeks! This is going to take a while! But I think I'm going to love every stitch! I can't wait until my Dad has time to make my big frame so I can work on one of these giant kits!

Happy Stitching guys! I'll be back around the 15th with whatever I start next!

Tama

Friday, May 6, 2016

Progress on #1, Start #2, and Some Kits

Hello all!

I have very little progress to show you, and a very sad picture - my camera did not like the lighting or the color of the fabric for my 'A is for Anchor'.

I'm stitching it 3 over 2 on a piece of 28 count mushroom Lugana. It's a pretty, pale, brown-grey neutral. I made a mistake or two and had to fix them, plus got distracted by something else new, so obviously I didn't get far.

Here's my second start - I began it yesterday:

It's the kitten in the teacup on the cover, and it's for my sister. I had planned to do only the kitten and the cup, but when I showed it to my sis, she loved the daisies and the teapot and all of it, so there we go :D It's only going to be 8x8 so I maybe can manage to get it done for her Christmas gift. I've got most of two daisies done so far.

Here is what has been distracting me, though - I got this box in the mail :D :D :D

Yep, I got my first diamond painting kit! Whoo hoo! I've wanted to do one of these forever!

Here's the picture I'll be doing:

And I got the bigger picture off the actual site:

These are pretty much the same as a computer-generated cross stitch chart, so it will be fairly pixellated, but I think it will still be pretty. My sister has already asked for the finished piece but we'll have to see about that!

Here's the contents of the box - one canvas (12x16 for this one), a pair of tweezers, what I thought was one triangle tray but turned out to be two, a packing sheet/list, a pack of teeny ziplock bags, and a whole whack o'beads!

You peel back the paper to get to the sticky canvas, and put the beads on with tweezers. It's really just like a cross stitch chart, I swear! And the bead colors match DMC colors, which is pretty cool.

Here's where I was a day or so ago. I'm further now but I haven't taken another picture yet! Lots of pinky-grey for a white cat with blue eyes, lol!

I thought it would be slow and cautious with the tiny diamonds but it goes pretty quick! I really like it - I've ordered a smaller kit with the square diamonds, and another with the round diamonds so I can see what those are like.

I also promised to show some of my new China printed cross stitch kits and they've started to arrive! I think I'll show one a post until they are all here :D

The first one came with a pattern but no picture so once again I got the picture from the listing. It's called 'Beautiful Wolves', at least on the listing I bought it from. I've seen it with other names. I will tell you right now, it is not this big. I did realize that before I bought it, so I'm not upset like some people have been. These listings can be dangerous - the sellers just use photoshop or something like it to put the picture into a frame and show it in a room - no matter how small it actually is, it always looks huge! But you can find the actual size in the listing if you pay close attention - it's often in small print toward the bottom.

These wolves are the first kit I started to buy when I discovered these type of kits, but at the time (it was years ago) I couldn't figure out the site as it was all in Chinese, and they weren't on ebay yet. Translating it was no help. So I didn't get it and I was quite pleased to find them on eBay recently.

Here's the actual kit:

It's about 18x18 and there are 44 colors. Lots of purple, which I saw on flosstube videos of this kit so I was also not surprised. I don't mind some lavender-y wolves, though :D This may be the kit that gets started once 'Sunset Birds' is done.

I'll be back with an update on the new project (and maybe the cat) and another kit, somewhere around the 10th!

Happy Stitching :D

Tama

Sunday, May 1, 2016

Stitch Maynia Start #1

The rules for Stitch Maynia are very, very loose. There's an official sign-up in the Stitch Maynia group on Facebook. The original challenge was to start something every day for the first 15 days of May, but now it's just basically - start stuff in May. As many or as few as you want. I've decided on something new every five days, until I hit five projects.

Probably. There may be six :D

For my Start #1, I'm doing 'A is for Anchor' by Prairie Schooler. You would think that after April's A-Z challenge, I'd be tired of the alphabet, but nope!

I'm not stitching them on one big piece like a lot of people are - I'm stitching them on separate small pieces. This is the only one I'm starting during Stitch Maynia.

So I'll be back in a few days to show you progress and my next start! So far I only have about 20 stitches on this one, because today was busy. I started a Bigfoot amigurumi and went to church and a Christening.

Happy Stitching, all!

Tama

Saturday, April 30, 2016

Z is for Zebra!

So very late posting! But I have a reason, which you shall see :D

Z is for Zebra, first - there are some super cute zebras out there!

What I could not actually find was a realistic Zebra. It's one of the reasons that I wanted a horse pattern - I want to make a horse, and then mod it into a Zebra. So, yup! Totally bought this the other day:

(I bought the expansion pack, too, 'cause I wanna make a Pegasus). But someday, hopefully soon, you'll see a wee horse on my blog! And then a Zebra to go with him!

Here's the reason I'm late posting, though - my Turtle has lost his kitty friend (it stayed in my house about three seconds after my sister saw it) but has gained a new buddy to stand by his side :D

From this angle, you can see that Currently Nameless Dragon needs his wings and toes blocked, still. I didn't want to do it before sewing them on because you have to practically squoosh them to get them in place, and then I didn't want to wait to post about him while they dried. So that's on my to-do list.

But he's super cute and I'm very pleased with him!

So that's it for the April A-Z challenge! I'm pretty happy with how it went, and only three new patterns got added to my collection so far (although there are a lot more on my wish list). The horse was one, here's the other two:

I had no plans to add any but the horse, but these two were on my favorites list and went on sale for $1 apiece. Wasn't passing that up!

So tomorrow starts the Stitch Maynia challenge - there'll be a big upswing in cross stitch projects! A lot of people are starting one every day of the month, but I'm going to stick with five. Possibly six, but I doubt it :D

Happy Stitching, everyone!

Tama

Friday, April 29, 2016

Y is for Yeti!

Hi guys! Sorry it's late!

I know you've seen one Yeti before, with Bigfoot, but look at these cute ones!

That last one makes me want to say 'Why so sad, little yeti?' Lol!

PlanetJune's is probably still my favorite, though :D

Happy Stitching, all!

Tama

Thursday, April 28, 2016

X is for XRay

Yeah, I know... but there was only one animal I could really find that starts with an 'X', and no patterns for it. Poor Xerus. No one loves it :C

So X-Ray it is! and I only found one really cute picture for that :D :D :D

What I started to do was use 'X' for 'X is for eXtremely Strange!' and introduce you guys to MrFox on etsy. They do really sweet, cute things like Rawr, who you have seen before:

And the bee:

And more cute stuff but you guys NEED to go HERE and read the descriptions. They are awesome! Here's an example:

A Squid:

With this description:

'Many people fear squid due to their other-worldly anatomy and powerful tentacles. However, on the whole they're a gentle species and just float around the depths of the ocean with grace and serenity. Regardless, if a squid does happen to knock on your door you are advised to politely ask them to leave.'

They don't just make cute ones. They make ones that make my Mother shake her head and my Sister demand them. Now, I'm not going to put the really strange ones on here - you guys just need to go look! Horace Behr and Mr Bunnyford top my list of strangest amigurumi. :D I do, however, adore the Mandrake.