Doctor Who Clock

A year or two ago, some old friends of mine introduced me to the joy that was British television. Doctor Who and Sherlock quickly became two of my favorite shows and I eagerly binge watched both of them (gotta love Netflix) in order to get caught up. Sherlock is a show that is one of my personal guilty pleasures, but my four year old son quickly fell in love with Doctor Who and eagerly watches it with me. His Doctor is the Twelfth Doctor and his favorite companion is Clara. My friends and I nicknamed him the Wee Ginger Doctor (since he's little and finally, the Doctor would be a ginger!), and last Christmas, he had a very Whovian holiday filled with a play tent TARDIS, a sonic screwdriver, and even his own little plush Dalek to fight. So when he saw this clock when I was exploring the Cloudsfactory website, he quickly and insistently "asked" that I make this for him:

How could I refuse? I have seen this chart on other blogs too and I fell in love with it, so I bought it, found the perfect fabric in my stash, and was ready to go! Here is where I got to yesterday:

I tried to capture the sparkle in this picture, but it does not do the colors justice! I'm stitching this on a 32-count Opal Lugana blue and white jewel from Under The Sea Fabrics because "It looks like it's in the stars, Mommy!"

Now, in the past, I have taken liberties to substitute out flosses for the patterns I've purchased from Cloudsfactory and Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery. I wasn't going to do that this time because this was for my son and I wanted it to be recognizable to him - not so many variegated threads, stick to the solid colors, etc. But when I got started yesterday, my son asked if I could use "shiny thread for your stitching, Mommy?" Well, with a request like that...

We went through the silks in my collection from Mo's Sale, and this piece when I'm through with it will have the largest number of silks in it that I've used to date! We couldn't find good substitutes for all of the colors - those we didn't will just use the recommended DMC. Despite that, this piece will eventually have more silks in it than any other piece I have worked on to date. We pulled out 23 different silks to use before this piece is said and done: Almanzo, Beetee, Claudius, Coal, Cornucopia, Daisy Mason, Elphaba, Gale, Galinda, Haymitch, Hunger Games, Katniss, Kyle, LuAnn, Mona, Navy, Noah, Sea Breeze, Seneca, Tom Branson, Tribute, Tulip and Waterlily. This will definitely be a "shiny thread" piece!

It's an icy day here in North Texas. School was cancelled and Hubby stayed home to work from home today - we may not get much to fall from the sky compared to our friends up north, but what we do get is usually ice, not snow, and really dangerous as a result. I've got a few things to do around the house (around them, heh), but then I think I will settle down for some good stitching time. What better thing to do on a yucky day like today?

Until next time!
~Katy