Happy President's Day!

Hello Everyone!  For those in U.S. Government jobs, I hope you're enjoying your day off.  The husband is taking me to lunch in a little while. :)  I have to admit, I have not stitched on Persephone hardly at all this week.  I've finished all of part two of Deep Blue Sea, minus the Jessica Shells with Topiary Princess perle.  I'm also trying to get caught up with Part one now that all of my Glorianas are in.  Here is Part Two completed as of Saturday morning:

I really love the fabric!  The more I use it the more I like it!  Here is a picture as of this morning:



While I really love the Blue Grass and Blue Hawaii, I don't really like the Deep Blue Sea Gloriana.  According to the chart supply list and a couple of other websites, Deep Blue Sea is supposed to be a dark teal similar to DMC 3806.  Mine is exactly DMC 500.  I could have saved myself $7.50 on a skien of silk because it is exactly the same color as the DMC 500 with little to no variation.  I think I'm going to take a trip to the LNS this afternoon after lunch to find something a little more teal.  I just don't love the green and I don't care for working with Glorianas in general so switching the thread would be better all around. 

In other happy news, tomorrow I'm going to pick up my Shimmering Mermaid from the framer!  Super excited to get her done and on the wall!  I choose a thin gold frame similar to one of the kreiniks and I thought it looked great for her.  yay!

I'm close to 50 followers!  Yay!  When I reach 50, I'm going to give away a stitcher's eighth of my hand-dyed fabric to one of my followers.  Not sure what color yet.  I've been experimenting and I have several wonderful colors.
TTFN!

Updates and Ideas

Hello Everyone!  I made a lot of progress on Persephone this week.  I've finished the top half of her tail.  I'm almost done with the plastic surgery and the color conversion.  When she's closer to being done, I'll post it for anyone who wants it.

I really love how she's coming out.  I'll probably put her aside this week to work on a small project and play catch up on Deep Blue Sea.  Speaking of Deep Blue Sea, here it is:

Only 4 more tiny starfish to go!  And my Blue Hawaii Gloriana came in this week so I'm going to start filling it in.
This week, I found a beautiful hand-painted teacup from Thailand at Good Will.  Some of the treasures that end up there make me sad.  I'm planning to turn it into a pin cushion using a small design from Joan Elliott.  I dyed a scrap of linen to match the teacup and I think I got pretty close.

I wish the pics were better this week It is a dreary and cold day here in San Antonio and I didn't have very good light.  Well, TTFN!

A UFO Invasion!

Hello everyone!  Hope everyone had a lovely week!  I got a little stitching done on Persephone but mostly worked on Deep Blue Sea.  I spent two nights in the Urgent Care with sick little boys so I got a lot of stitching done in the waiting rooms.  I'm still chugging away at Persephone.  She's slowly getting the rest of her tail.  I think once I'm past this part I'm cutting out, it will be faster because I can follow the chart instead of improvising as I go.

I got a quarter of the way through part two of Deep Blue Sea.  It's slow going because there is a lot of over one stitching in this part and I'm stitching on a 32 dark colored opalescent. 

Thanks to Deborah, I now have the petite silk lame so I'm filling in the gray curlyques.  They are VERY sparkly and the picture just doesn't do them justice.  And here's a close-up of my tiny over one starfish. 

Aren't they cute?  And only 12 more left to stitch!

My friend Jule is making me pull out a UFO and stitch on it once a month.  It is Shores of Hawk Run Hollow by Carriage House Samplings and I'm stitching it one over two on 40 ct linen.  She's just started this one so a group of us are going to meet once a month to work on this one or other UFOs. 

The fabric is not as yellow as it seems in the picture, I just had terrible lighting today.  It's hard to tell from the picture, but I substituted all of the NPI silks for overdyed cottons.  I really like the way it is coming out, but it is rather boring to stitch.  TTFN!

Wow! It's Been Awhile...

... since I posted!  Over a week!  I'll try not to do that again.  I've spent the last week trying to finish up a commissioned piece so I could get back to Persephone and Deep Blue Sea.  Also, my favorite LNS closed its doors for the last time Friday night and I was spending a lot of time there this week.  But, I have some pretty great updates for you!

First, Persephone.  I LOVE LOVE LOVE the fucshias I've converted her tail to.  I think I've officially decided I don't want to include the back fin or all of the ruffled streamers so stitching her is slow-going because I'm slowly working out how to exclude them. 

While that picture shows the overall affect, I also wanted to include a picture that shows the different fucshia and wine toned threads.

It's kind of blurry near the bottom, but you can really see the different colors a lot better.

I've also made progress on Deep Blue Sea.  There is only a little bit more I can finish without my backordered silks on Part One.  I plan to finish that tonight and start on Part Two tomorrow.

I really love the way this fabric came out when I dyed it.  Such a pretty blue.  And speaking of dying fabric, I dyed two really pretty pieces this week.  First, I took a long quarter of Blue Dynasty 32 ct. by Zweigart and I added some darker blues, pinks, and purples.  Then I soaked it in some hot water so the colors would blur.  I think the effect was cotton candy.  The fabric really looks just like cotton candy. 



I think I'm going to use the fabric for Venetian Opulence by Mirabilia.  When I did a partial floss toss, the colors really popped on this fabric.  I also dyed a very pretty piece of purple linen.  It is a 28 ct. fat quarter. 

I think I will end up using this one for Joan Elliott's Sea Goddess.  I'm not sure yet.  I really love the way it came out though!

Until next time.... TTFN!

Persephone and Deep Blue Sea Updates and Some Questions about Floss Storage

Hello Everyone!  I finally got to the tail on Persephone!  The more pinks and reds I put into it, the happier I am with the conversion.  And I've mostly put in pinks.  Hoping to get more reds into her this weekend.

I really love the fucshia Kreinik!  I can't wait to get more of it stitched in.

Now that my fabric is dyed and dried, I've started on Deep Blue Sea again.  I have to be honest, right now some of the colors blend.  But they are surrounded by brighter colors that won't blend as much.  I still have four Glorianas, 2 Waterlilies and 2 Dinky Dyes on backorder so it's kind of a waiting game on the brighter colors.

Finally, I'm constantly trying to figure out how I want to store my threads.  At the moment, all of my floss is in plastic baggies that is filed in plastic shoe boxes.  When I take them out for a project, I put the baggies in a big plastic bag and root in it for the thread I need.  I hate this system.  Since I realized I was going to need a binder to hold all of my charts and directions for Deep Blue Sea, I've been brainstorming a way to keep my threads in the binder with it.  I've decided to try out business card binder inserts.  So far, I'm liking it but I'm only 18 hours in.

If this works well for me, I'm thinking about changing all of my threads into binders like this.  So, my question to all of you is: How do you store your floss?  Is there any perfect system?  I'd really love to hear how other people store all of their floss so I can get some other ideas for mine.  Thanks!





And I'm Back!

Well, after 5 days of the stomach flu and 3 days of stitch-ins and kids' birthday parties, I'm finally back to blogging.  I have lots of fun pictures to show!  First, most of my silks for Deep Blue Sea came in!  Yay!  There are still 4 or 5 back-ordered.  I've heard a little rumor saying that everyone is having problems getting Glorianas.  Even a certain website that sells the Chatelaine kits.  If your kit from them is running behind, it's probably a problem with Gloriana themselves.  I started mine on January 1st on 32 ct. Black Lugana.  But that was not the color I really wanted.  I really wanted a navy/royal blue, possibly an opalescent.  So I found a wonderful home for the black lugana (Thanks Cassie!) and I bought a half yard of 32 ct white opalescent linen and several blue dyes.  Last night I mixed a royal blue with a navy blue dye and I think the color I achieved is perfect!  Here it is after rinsing:

The lighting is kind of odd, but the bottom half is a more accurate picture of the color.  I like to bead with a color matching the fabric, so I dyed a skien of DMC white while I was at it.  Tomorrow, I'll soak it in retayne and hopefully, I'll be able to post a floss toss and progress picture later this week.

Friday, I went to my LNS for a stitch-in.  I drove all the way there (35 miles) just to realize that while I had brought Persephone with me, I had forgotten the pattern.  So I looked through my bags for fabric and I looked through the patterns that my friends had with them that I knew I had in my stash also and I decided to work on Pretty Peacock from the Joan Elliot Ultimate Collection.  This pattern is the main reason I got the book.  He's so handsome!  So I started him on 28 ct. Dusk by Zweigart.  It is a beautiful overdyed fabric with splotches of pink and blue.  I have decided that Zweigart's fabrics are my favorite to stitch on!

So this is about two days of stitching here and there on Pretty Peacock.  Since I cannot have a project without a name, I've decided to name him Argus.  Sounds odd, but hang with me.  You know I have a story behind the name!  In Greek mythology, Zeus was infatuated with a young woman named Io.  When Hera, Zeus's VERY jealous wife (and his sister, silly incestuous gods), found out about Io, she got very angy.  So Zeus turned Io into a beautiful white cow to protect her from Hera.  In an effort to make Zeus admit his adultry, Hera tricked Zeus into giving Io to her as a gift.  She put Io into a pasture under the protection of her most favored and faithful servant, Argus.  Argus was a cyclopes, but he was a very special cyclopes.  He had eyes all over his body: his hands, feet, 3 on his face, etc.  Zeus, in an effort to reignite his affair with Io, sent his demi-god son Hercules to slay Argus and return Io to him.  Hercules succeeded (this quest was one of the legendary Labors of Hercules) and Hera was heart broken over the death of her friend and servant.  To honor Argus, she placed his eyes into the feathers of her favored bird and sacred symbol, the Peacock.  That is how the peacock got the eyes on its feathers and how my Pretty Peacock got the name Argus.



Thursday night, when I was finally back to normal, I got back to stitching Persephone.  Here she is with her skin all done:

Now I get to start the fun part, her tail!  I've been looking forward to trying out all of the colors I've put together for her!  Hopefully they look great together.

And finally, I have a couple of non-stitchy finishes.  I've been working on Q-snap covers and I got a couple done before I ran out of elastic.  I sell them for $10 each which includes shipping.  I'm going to be posting pics of more over the next few weeks because I need to liquidate my inventory of them before our possible move.

Please feel free to email me if you're interested!  I have most colors of fabrics and can accomodate most size/color requests!  TTFN!



A Huge Apology!

Hello everyone!  It's been awhile since I posted last and I'm sorry for that!  I had a nasty stomach flu and it just kept me tired and drained for almost a week!  To my silk winners, I'll try to get your floss in the mail tomorrow, Friday at the latest.  I just have not had the energy to even walk down to the mailbox!  I'm so sorry for the delay! 

I'm anxious to start stitching again.  Five days is too long to go without a needle in my hands.  I've considered picking something up to work on tonight, but I know I'm still a bit too tired and would likely have to frog it again tomorrow.  I'm actually irrationally worried that my hands won't want to cooperate after 5 days of inactivity!  I promise to post some update pics of Persephone on Sunday.  I also hope to have made more progress on Rose Pixie by Sunday as well.
Night All!