Nic pointed out to me today that I hadn’t updated in a while. I have been meaning to but well that whole work thing keeps getting in the way. Even with the long hours at work though I have managed to squeeze in a little stitching. So I have piccies

First is St Nick.. Last week was his turn in the rotation, unfortunately I wasn’t able to get page one finished but I am very close. I figure if you add in the 300 stitches I put into page 2 a while back it is as good as having page one finished. lol. I will get back to this one in the fist week of July and shoudl polish off this page and get some serious work into page two… or at least that is my dream.

People over at the BB were discussing thier HAED 2006 goals that some of us set at the beginning of the year. Eeeep. I had set the extreme goal of 8 pages of St Nick, failing a miracle I don’t see it happening but it sure will be fun to try. hehe. I think I will make my other goal though.

It was a more realistic goal of the 4 pages (lge format) across the top of the devil. I am over half way on that one and really see it as being possible, maybe even finished in the next two or three months. The other piccie is my progress on Fire-ACEO for the SAL. I only got somewhere around 200 stitches in this week but I am really happy with how she is coming together. I filled a few more of the holes I left in the first page as well which always feels good. Coming up next entry….pictures of my Hermit wip

Ok I have to come up with a decision as to what I am working on for the next week of my new rotation thingy (thingy because it is still under development). So…. I thought I would ask the masses, or few of you who actually read my little blog.

The choices are between:

• Dragon Lore (Daniels)
• Metamorphosis (Wolk)
• Hermit (Lisa Hunt, CC not HAED)

Yep I’ll jsut keep it to those three for now… suggestions?

Well I am trying a new rotation. It is basically a weekly rotation with a focus project which gets worked every second week (the focus being St Nick). I will post more details once I have it all sorted but The devil was my first wip out in the new rotation and I seem to have gotten a nice amount done. It also just happened to coincide with the new Tarot SAL dates for the HAED BB.

My Post Box had a surprise for me! The silks for Chatelaines Japanese Garden from Victoria Clayton have already arrived. A week to the day since I ordered them, now that is service! They are all so pretty too, I’ve been sitting here at work fondling them for the past hour. If I could just make up my mind which fabric I wanted to order I could start my first Chatelaine but I am way too indecisive. I am still thinking a grey… but there are so many nice ones that I think would work. I’m going to have to go back to the fabric viewer for another play I think. Although the last time I did that I just got more confused.
In other stitching news I have put Dragon Lore aside for a bit to focus on some of my other wips. So I have a piccie of the small amount I got done. It is the top left had corner and really the picture does nothing to show you the depth in the background with the shading from the browns and black. This is just over 1200 stitches, I will get back to it as soon as I meet a few more of my goals. I have decided to re jig my rotation but am still trying to figure out how exactly.. lol.

I am rather annoyed at myself today too, I have two packages to send off (one to nicki in NZ and one to a friend in melbourne) and I keep forgetting to bring them to work.I only remebered because I was standing at the post office checking the PO Box. Grrr, hopefully tomorrow a brain cell will decide to fire in the memory portion of my brain and help me out.

Ipromised an email of all the thread I needed to my floss fairy too and I am still trying to work out what I want. I am figuring that I don’t want to make anyone go to a store and select out almost 500 skeins of DMC *faint* let alone the poor person behind the counter that would have to scan them all. So I have to scale down my list quite dramatically.

Quick update with some wips. Firstly Fire-ACEO from the SAL on Wed. I only manage about 400 stitches on her this week. Some larger blocks on her face and a tiny bit of hole filling on page 1. I keep hating my stitching on this becasue it is 2×1 on 25ct I can never seem to get it as neat as I would like.

The other is an update on St Nick because I got asked for one (last weekend actually ooops). I am about 3/4s of the way through page 1 now and have 300 stitches done on page 2. I had taken it to work with me last week when I was working late but forgot my chart so I had to print out some pages again but decided to go with one I hadn’t worked on so that I didn’t mess up any counting and have to frog. I am still hoping to haev this page finished this month for sure. I just keep loading myself up with other stitching because I am nuts :p

I am part of a Tarot SAL on the BB now too for the 1st and third weekends of the month. This is not a restrictive SAL but we will be posting progress on the mondays after each of these weekends. Maybe it will motivate me to get those last two pages done across the top.

I am being taken away this weekend as my final birthday surprise. It is a long weekend here so it should be loads of fun. I don’t know a great deal but I did finally find out where I am being taken. It is up at Mt Tambourine which is in the Gold Coast hinterlands I guess. The place we are staying is a cute little B&B with private cottages called the Mountain Edge . There are a bunch of wineries and a distillery up there too. I think saturday we are taking a wine tour thing through a bunch of them. I’m packing my stitching too (probably Dragon Lore) so I will hopefully have some decent progress to show when I get back.

I promise I will stop posting soon…honest. This is the most active any blog I have tried to maintain has been, it is all rather freaky.

Anyway, seeing as this is a stitching blog (well mostly) I thought I would share some stitching *gasp*
First of all my “guilt free” birthday start from Sunday (it has now been replaced with “dragon Lore”). I need opinions on whether or not you think I did the right thing in deciding to not continue. The design is the Blackwork Dragon from Dragon Dreams here. I was orginally inspired to do this piece when I got sent a skein of caron wildflowers thread in “emerald” by mistake in an order once and I got to keep it. I thought the colour was perfect. What I didn’t think about was the thread type. On sunday after deciding that this would be a small enough new start I pulled out my chart and thread and went looking for fabby (decided on wandering Ivy from silkweaver) and got stitching…. I love the colour combination between thread and fabric but the stitch definition is leaving me somewhat lackluster. My apologies again for the poor quality of the pic. When I was stitching I noticed that the thread was quite thick on the 32ct fabric and became a little worried so I went from the two stranded outline and tried some of the patterns in 1 strand. the single strand simple pattern fills are fine but as soon as there is any detail within the pattern fills they jut look like blobs

Having seen the silkies fudgey sent me and compared them I think the finish would be much better using a silk thread. Does anyone have suggestions for one that may work on the wandering Ivy. I liked the rich green of the emerald and would like to have a similar effect I think. That or I am just going to cave and stitch him in purple. I have had one opinion that I should just continue with it as is (mind you from a non stitcher) because the thickness of those stitches gives the overall desired shading effect but I am not so sure.

There were a few other things I got in packages too but I decided to give them a post of thier own. I got a funky package from Adam (aka:my floss fairy and bestest friend). It was filled with all sorts of wonderful goodies (except floss) hehe. I apologise early for those of you that are bored already:p and also for the large number of piccies I am about to put in my blog. To the left you will see my shiny new Tarot Deck. It is a black and white deck that consists of suits and imagery taken from the Victorian era. I absolutely adore it and it even came with its own plush velvet bag in midnight blue. Looking through allthe pictures has made me want to start working on my victorian dress project but that is really going to have to wait until after the PhD. I also got Stationery! I am such a paper junki and this has cute little stickes of lenore … Lenore! *bounce* (those of you who don’t know who lenore is should go here). Because Adam rocks he also got me Lenore pvc action figures, which I have happliy been playing with and taking lots of photos of. (as per the one below). Are the not adorable… From left to right is Mr Gosh, Ragamuffin (with pooty on his head) and Lenore with her monkey stick and kitty!

(more…)

Ok so it was my birthday last sunday (the 4th), I had been trying to keep it kind of quiet this year (heh more fool me). My plans were ignored though by a coupld of mischievous little pixies… aka Fudgey, Nic and Nacy. They conspired against me tis true *pout*.

So since I was spoiled rotten by these three (and Sue) I thought I would post some piccies of the wonderful things I was showered with for my birthday. The packages started arriving friday morning and only just stopped yesterday.

You will have to forgive the poor quality of the pics they were taken with flash seeing as one of the lights in my lounge room has blown and I keep getting home late so lighting is atrocious. This is Nancys contribution to the mayhem. I got some lovely stitches and spice 32ct jobelan in celtic. It is gorgeous and I had oggled it the whole time I was stitching her Round Robin Mermie… now I have a piece of my very own *bounce* I was also lavished with some gorgeous little fairy oracle cards which will go nicley into my collection of cards ( Tarot and fairy oracles alike), Two prints from one of my fave artist (Stephanie Pui-Man Law) and from the Tarot series too… “Two of wands” and “Ace of Pentacles”. I even got An old out of print HAED chart “Athena” by Michael Parkes thank you so much Nancy you rock! Oh there were choccies too but they didn’t make it into the photo just my tummy :p

Fudgey the adorable little kitten spoilt me with some of her favourite things *glee* so there was funky artwork , sexy silks and fabulous fabby. The print is “lost but not Worried” By Jasmine Beckitt-Griffith and is just adorably cute. I will be more suspicious of fudgey asking me what my favourites are now… hehe. The silkies are Vikki Clayton silks of course and they are simply devine. I have fondled them loads and even ordered a bunch as of today (but that is another matter entirely) The colours are… umm blackberry, hearts content and I can’t remember the last one (fudgey?). The fabris is a lovely piece from silkweaver “sand” in 32ct Lugana. The card is a really pretty Shiela Wolk card too mmmm pretty. See why I am all over myself in shock at such wonderful gifties.
The last piccie for this post is the uber special Pressie that Nic found for me. Nic gets to hear me prattle on about Brian Froud and Books and all things dark and sometimes gothy on up until recently a daily basis. It is a miracle she can put up with me really. Well in all her amazing present findy ways she tracked me down and Original Printing (american edition) Of the Brian Froud illustrated Kids Book *bouncy bouncy joy* I am rather stoked and the card rocked too.. who can say no to adorable cards made for 3(1)yr olds with PIRATES!

To top off all of this I woke on sturday morning to find I had been rak’d in an outrageous fashion by Sue (*hugs*) I had been sent three HAED charts they were  Srar Butchers “Friendship”, Stephanie Pui-Man Laws “cats” and Ian Daniels “midnight Orchard” Talk about blown away. Really you could knock me over with a feather with all the generosiity and wonderful thoughts being shown to me this past week it has brought tears to my eyes more than once. Thank you all, I am lucky to have such wonderful friends… I don’t know what I did to deserve such special attention I just hope I can pay you all back in kind *hugs*

Stitching on Dragon Lore won .. Back tomorrow :p

(I did upload all the piccies though so I can update from work)

Back to stitching I go… wish I could make that needle go faster.

Well my WIP list is… way … out of control.
I thought I was getting it back on track but then Michele went and released all those lovely new Daniels charts *faint* Now I am in BIG trouble.
I had decided to give myself a guilt free birthday start… It was going to be Return of Spring but my floss fairy forgot to put the floss in my most recent package.. lol. So I started the Dragon dreams blackwork Dragon instead (more to come on this one along with piccies). Things are not working so well with it though so I was going to restart but then I bought Dragon Lore.. and really who could blame me. I have pulled what thhreads I have for it over lunch today and put in about 10 stitches, so I guess it is now my guilt free start and the black work will have to go on hold.
The problem is I really like victory too and I haev a few other planned starts (aredhel and the lovers dragon tarot) plus some obligation stitching to do.
I need to slim down my wip pile I jsut know it isn’t going to happen hehe.

I got my stash from Stitching bits and Bobs last week too and it is all so pretty. I got the new Stitchers Habit cute polar bear chart and two stitchin’spirations charts and my halloweeny skeleton crew! I have promised to start a blackwork piece and I really want to all those lovely silks to fondle *sigh*

There will be more updates tonight i have loads of piccies too from all the pretties i got sent for my b’day from the naughty pixies :p