Stitching Diva

well not too many thoughts.. the sinus monster has gripped my brain again…

sick of the sinus monster , he is horrid ( it must be a boy i am sure)
i scanned my lady in the Meadow Qs.. not sure it looks like i did much but i spent ages doing all the gaps, so i spose you will just have to compare pictures to see the real effect

next is my tranq sampler… which is late cos i had to wait until late sunday night to get the chart, but i won’t have that problem anymore cos i have a printer now.. bounce bounce..

i had one of those funny moments in it when no matter what i did i kept mucking up the same 8-9 stitches.. took about four goes, ie correct on the fifth go i think to get those few stitches to go right, had a real block… made me quite cross actually

here is the link if you want to see a bigger picture

next is a little bit of enabling for the quaker girls.. this was highlighted on the HDF message board and i went and explored, they only charged me a pitance for postage so i decided to order it.. i think it would be perfect for my friend vix ( aka the bag lady) for xmas.. i think especially Cathy will like this one

The Quaker Bag  i will move a motif over slightly whe i stitch it.. and i think i will go and find the bag fab before i choose the silk for stitching

i had another thought, but it has escaped me all i can here is my beetle girl crying at the door, so i spose i should go and make my lap available to her for the afternoon..

i owe emails.. i know … sorry sue…

amazingly i think i am actually on the home straight to getting my Jane Rees sampler started..

I know the fab count.. 48 ct , and i just have to decide on a colour as i learnt that Lakeside linen does dye some of legacy’s 48 ct linen.. woohoo not many colour choices but it is a monochrome trad sampler so i don’;t need many choices..

and thanksd to heaps of help from karen at dragonfly dreams i have found a silk that is perfect for 1×1 on 48 ct thatis not varigated, anyone who has followed my progress to this point knows i love the way clourwash silk stitches up 1×1 on 48 ct , but it is varigated and therefore not suitable, so after i explained all that to her she suggested a silk  her customers use for blackwork, soie 100/3 and it works fine.. thing is i have to commit to a colour now and then the treasure will order it in for me .. but it will be about a month away
so i am thinking the 48 ct in Magnolia or lentil you need to scroll a bit, and for silk.. my head hurts… this is a link to a page that if you scroll down has a pdf with all the colours, the page i like is page 4… the colours i am pondering are 222, 524, 133, 521, 447, 623… and i need to decide soon… i am hopeless at decisions, yes i know not exactly a earthshattering statement!!
a lethal discovery was that gloriana Luminesence is soie 100/3 overdyed as i was getting the links just then.. i think this is a bad thing to know… just when i thought i had my head around it,

and in breaking news… i just had my second finish for the week…
i know.. what is going on.. ihave had a good weeke sttiching in the mornings on little things
below is my version of JBW’s Country French Cat stitched on 34 ct legacy linen devonshire cream 1×1 with HDF regular Enchantress… which as you can see is a wonderful red/pink varigate

hope no one was on whilst i tried 5-6 in a row!! you will be all visually messed up…

i know pretty scary..

i also changed my theme again and did a colour change from red to blue..
but i notice the font is not that big so i might try another one, darling nic tried to work out how to change the fluro green one and i might be brave and try and follow her instructions , but it is only a blog and i do not want her head to explode walking me through it , i would rather she use her time for fun stuff

anyway back to my finish..

i saw this stitched on th HDF BB and thought it looked perfect for a stitchy friend or two.. 
not sure which stitchy friend that is yet to be determined.. but i present

The Stitcher… chart by X’s and Oh’s , fabric is legacy 30 ct in custard cream thread is HDF black iris bud.. and of course it is 1×1
the shame is the silk is stunning in sunlight, i truly recommend you check it out in sunshine if you have not done so..  but does not translate to a scan all that well…

oh and i forgot to say i stitched most of her during my epic journey the other day, i just had to do the back stitch and the thing she is leaning against yesterday to finish her , and no i jhave no idea HOW to finish her.. maybe a needlebook, but maybe not.

 other things that have grabbed my attention in the last  36 hours or so…
has anyone ever sen this chart before?? i can’t believe i missed it at the Silver Lining.. they look like gargoyle dragons to me… Villa Borghese Dragons  this site is having a sale on all their dragon charts….
but the thing that got me all in a flap was these scissors!! Purple swirly scissors

oh and as i was running outthe door this morning a parcel from a fairy arrived..

it had Belle soie silks, needleprint charts, a mag and a kitty chart such a sweet fairy… ((((hugs)))
i have lovely friends

ok so i do not especially like this layout but i figured we would go coast line as i live on one

Nic how do i change the colour of  the  fluro green one, remember i am html challenged
so anyway ,i have a silly internet .. some times it takes me 20 mins to get a page to work other pages work immediately… all luck of the draw, but i say lots of bad words..

i whizzed through my page of the tranq sampler yesterday , but it took until mid morning to make my photobucket work.. i am image deprived atm, as always online albums are the hardest to load up.
 

as always if you want a bigger image, go HERE

i have ordered some new silks to test for my 48 ct 1×1 Jane Rees sampler Karen at Dragonfly dreams is helping me search for something as thin as colourwash silk which is not varigated..
I have ordered a reel of Soie 100/3 to test stitch.. there are hundreds of colours she can oerder me so i look like actually moving forward on that sampler atm…
next a few things that have caught my eye lately..
i really like this and it is very suitable for all of us.. i am guessing especially Cathy and Nikki will like this one.. Of Female Arts  from the primitive needle
and i really like this, i would never stitch it  but i really like it.. Cranberry in Pines from Rosewod manor they also did it in rows for the neat freaks.. lol  Cranberry Row

oh and picture this plus is finally online ..BUT they conveniently do not say how much international postage is.. won’t tell a buyer until the order is ready and that is not on
and i have been burnt too many times before to trust any seller who does that

so now my internet provider crashed their system..

spose at least it wasn’t just us they were picking on this time..
todays theme reflects the air temp out side as i set forth on my journey ..
and trust me it will only get colder as we head further south.. i lived in hobart for 12 years… it is at the foot of a snow covered mountain… and is even closer to antarctica than where i live now….

lets hope i still have a service provider when i get back..
i am aiming for a quick stitchy finish along the way….
NO one will guess what i am stitching, i can say that in confidence!

i am trying on new backgrounds..
to see if any fit..
so be warned who knows what you will see whe you click on my link for a while
I did some of Sugar Magnolia for the SAL. She looks a lot more complete now, i filled in al the random little sttiches through her fringe and the side of her hair, and did a lot of glissen gloss sttiching… but the glissen gloss does not show up so it does not look like i did all that much..
i am going to exclusively stitch her on wednesdays and the SAl challenge until she is done..

it was hard choosing between her and maggie, but such is life i think i can really finish her by the end of the year.. THEN i will give myself a blinkie.. which reminds me.. i Love my new avatar button thingy in my sigline on the BB the dear and sweet Ching chou made it for me ,i let her choose which artowrk of hers to do , cos it was hurting my head trying to choose
 

tomorrow i have 10-12 hours on the road ( depending on frost/snow/how many times we stop for coffee/traffic etc) going to hobart for an appointment and returning. I have been explaining to muffy all week that we will be leaving her in the house on her own for a whole day ( she has her own section of the house) but i know she will be very sad..
we will not really even have tiome to shop , late lunch, appointment then home again.. we will be out of the car about 3 hours …
yes i am describing my worst nightmare
i have the ipod charged with books to try and distract me..
i joined Audible online on the weekend, i spend stacks of money on audio books and i did the maths and it is a lot cheaper than itunes and many of the itunes books come from audible anyway. So currently i am having an Early Elizabeth George fest
as i said to Terri in an email , it is fun revisiting old reading as an audio experience you get a chance to revisit old friends in a new setting

random pictures and thoughts..
Annie has painted the most amazing picture.. it was fun seeing her painting process along the way..
Night Wish
i dio not know how i missed this at Volarium.. it made me giggle.. when i next order from there i MUST have it

 Beescornu   giggle ( i like plays on words)

and my SBand B order arrived… so it really did take close to a month to travel here… must have been one heck of a stiff head wind!!

hmmmm, been a bit quiet lately…
sorry

i trudged through my tranquility sampler page this weekend, i just could not get myself motivated to stitch at all… i wanted to stitch Sugar magnolia , which in theory means i should have breezed through my sampler piece, but it just did not happen that way at all for some reason
anyway here is the picture, i am not 100 % happy with that section colour wise but i wasted over an hour stressing about it and decided i think i can fix it in the next page with choosing a specific colour for what ever the next motif is there

here is the link if you want a bigger picture

No picture of Sugar yet i want to try and get a few hours of sparkle thread sttiching in, i filled in single sttiches for 3 hours last night and really it does not look as if i stitched anything ..
i made a momentous decision too, i am packing away all my other qs/sk until i have finished Sugar.. so i will work on her on wednesdays  as well as the monthly sal in a bid to finish her this year

My Belle soie from needle little Love arrived along with my heritage alphabet sampler ( AMAP) the faith Hope Love band from The Workbasket and ummm another chart… what was it… can you see me sitting here with the little cogs being turned in my head by hampsters as i try and remember the chart without getting out of my chair….
oh i know the summer SANQ with the col redwork pincushion thingy on the front cover…
anywa how lovely is Grape Juice IRL!!!! like YUM and rouge is a stunner as well, actually rosebud is pretty cool too..

but i love grape juice

I think my SBand B order has been lost it was supposedly posted on June 19th , my needle little love parcel took 4 days , nothing except a land mail package i had onec has taken more than 2 weeks to find its way to tassie, so i am not hopeful

and in closing an observation or two..
its sad when artists decide they do not want their work charted anymore… but it is not the fault of the designer in most cases, and definately not this time..
that artists reach a point in their careers when they think they can dictate what artists a licensing company will licence is unbelieveable, do they not remember  when they were emerging artists themselves hoping a company , any company would give them a chance..
well done HAED for sticking by emerging artists and not being bullied and no i am not saying that cos i am friends with management i am saying it cos i am friends with a lot of emerging artists and know their pain as they try and make it in the scary world of licensing, especially when there are some less than scrupulous people out there pretending to be their allies

RIP Jan Houtman master designer

Nic asked a question..

Looks great! So what do you do about colours? Do you have a set of colours for the whole thing and then pick out certain ones for certain motifs, trying not to put the same one too close to each other. Or do you try and use a different colour for each motif? And what makes you choose one colour over another for a motif? Yes, I like asking weird, hard questions

so here is the answer…

 with this sampler i decided i wanted all HDF just .. well because..

once i had decided that i was doing that i had to decide what colour scheme and after spending a ridiculous amount of time looking at the combo packs vikki used to have i then went and looked at all the conversion packs she has on her site and i really liked Just nan’s Mermaid Heart Conversion  and when that arrived i used it as the base..
i quickly realised i needed an orange or a yellow to give it a lift and replace the natural in the pack , amazingly  the lager turned up just when i was ready to stitch the first crown, so i decided to do all the crowns”gold. I knew there were going to be a lot of motifs so what i then did was take each colour from the pack, i went through the site and tried to add at least a darker and a lighter from the colour group. I didn’t want to use a different colour for each motif as i would not have been able to stick to the same families.. the one time i have broken away from the colour groups i started with is adding in the Velvet midnight/ heartbreak blue group and that was because i needed a dark dark colour to balance it and then i needed a few shades to go  with it to keep my weird theme of 3 ish shades of each colour i used.. except the yellow.. which again makes it stand out as the only rogue colour to break up the colour pattern which i always think is essential as it stps the eye from just glossing over the piece
and there you have it…
it makes sense to me , but probably does not make sense to anyone else, i have done a reasonable amount of trial and error too to make sure the colours balance, i have stitched 30 stitches of a colour , stood on the other side of the room and gone blech, and frogged.. the turquoise band started of bright pink as an example of this

i think it is really important to step away from your work when winging it with colours so you get the big picture rather than your focus being narrowed..

I learnt that as a patchworker and helping the knitting designer i used to work with putting together colour packs for stitchers

so there you go Nic a complicated question topped by an even more complicated answer

i think the big challenge is going to be keeping the colour balance even in the last 2 and a bit rows and i am already hitting walls a few times

congrats anyone who made it to the end of the scary insight into the world of fudgeys brain..

i recommend chocolate, long walks and sleep to recover from the trauma

oh dear it looked a bit boring so here is a picture to brighten the post up!!

Given i was being bugged this morning about why i had not posted her here i spose i had better rectify the situation
here endth row three well actually i did not do about 10 stitches cos i really need to know more about a new motif before i commit a colour to it

or if you would prefer a bigger picture

so a new row starts next week