Beauty and the Beast Falling in Love

Yesterday was my daughter's 9th birthday! I can't believe she's halfway to eighteen. Is there a way we can make them stop growing? Ugh!

But between birthday festivities and a somewhat hard day with my PMDD, I didn't get a lot of stitching done. What little stitching I did do was done on Beauty and the Beast Falling in Love by Thomas Kinkade from the Disney Dreams Collection.

I put some more stitches into the beautiful sky yesterday.

I keep looking at the castle each time I pick this piece up and debate on if I should finish it out on the other page it's on in the pattern. I may do that next time to get a break from the green country side and the sky. We'll see.

Until next time!
~Katy

Beauty and the Beast

Insomnia is not my friend. After not falling asleep until about 4 AM yesterday morning, I was dragging most of the day. I was able to get enough energy to start clearing out my craft room (I can see floor! Lots of junk removed!) and I also put a few stitches into Beauty and the Beast Falling In Love:

Here is where I was able to get to before exhaustion finally claimed me:

Kids are back in school today after a fun and busy Spring Break. It was a lot of fun having them home and I have some great ideas for summer activities now, but I'm glad to be getting back to our school time routine! Off to get some things done while the kids are at school - the sooner I get chores done, the sooner I can stitch!

Until next time!

~Katy

Beauty and the Beast Falling In Love

Just a quick post today. Being laid up with a bad back did give me an opportunity to spend some time on Beauty and the Beast Falling In Love:

Here is how things look when I put it away last night:

I am feeling better today but will be taking it easy one more day to be sure. Time to get stitching!

Until next time!
~Katy

Beauty and the Beast

Beauty and the Beast is my favorite of the Disney princess movies, maybe because Belle is the princess I can most relate to - smart brunette who is happy with a library as a gift and can see past the worst in people to find the goodness within. So when I found this piece, I just had to do it. I absolutely love it (except for the quarter stitches being done on aida - so much easier with evenweave!). This entire series by Thomas Kinkade is beautiful. I'm going to start the Little Mermaid piece when it comes up in the rotation, and I know there are several other Disney themed pieces of his out there. Several of them are on my wish list! This is a huge piece, though, with lots of colors and lots of details. It's going to be beautiful when it's done!

So here is where the piece stands after getting some love yesterday:

There are four very full pages worth of pattern for this piece, so I started in the middle and am working on the top left quarter of the piece now, and I'm not anywhere near halfway done with that quarter yet to give you an idea of how big this piece is!

I don't know if I'm going to get much, if any, stitching done today. Hubby and I are getting together with some friends of ours tonight for Game Night and I have things to do before we go out. I will be posting again tonight, though, one way or the other for Grow Your Blog! Yay!

Until next time!
~Katy

Theme-A-Licious: Jardin January

 No new stitching tonight. My son was a very wriggly and fighting boy this morning when I dropped him off at daycare - to the point where I was physically carrying him against his will into the room which caused me to wrench my shoulder a bit, so stitching tonight wasn't very comfortable. Ah, the joys of the terrible two's...

But today is the last day of January (can you believe it?) and so here is this month's Theme-A-Licious Report! This month is Jardin January!

Jardin January

The holidays were a little stressful...let's relax in a nice garden. Work on any piece with flowers or gardens.

I made my mid-month report here. Since then, I've added progress to two pieces that fit in this theme. First is Beauty and the Beast Falling in Love, which I hadn't reported on mid-month:

As of 1/20/13

And the other piece is one I have reported on already and is my current rotation piece, Butterfly Rose Cross. Now granted, I haven't gotten to any of the flower portion of this picture yet, but I will eventually!

As of 1/30/13

Next month is Figural February:

Figural February

Who are the people in your neighborhood...your WIP neighborhood, that is? Give your people-populated projects some face time this month.

People-populated projects...hmmm...I really don't have a lot of those coming up in my rotation anytime soon...though nearly all of my projects I will likely touch in February can all be related to people...this may be a month I stretch the theme a bit because I don't particularly wish to get out of my rotation, but we'll see what happens!

Oh, before I forget, I did get some wonderful stitchy stash in the mail today from Hand Dyed Fabrics by Stephanie:

Fabric Heaven!

Hi, my name is Katy, and I'm a hand dyed fabric addict...aren't they gorgeous?!?

Until next time!
~Katy

January WIPocalypse and End of Rotation Week

When I got back into stitching last year, I found that many of the blogs I follow participated in a SAL called the WIPocalypse that was reported on each month during the full moon, playing on the idea of the Mayan apocalypse that was predicted in 2012 and everyone trying to finish their pieces in time. Clearly, the world didn't end, and neither did the SAL, which continued into this year! If you'd like more information about the WIPocalypse SAL, please head over to visit Measi's Musings for more information!

WIPocalypse this year has themes for each month, including designer, style of piece and colors, all except for this month. This is January's theme:

January 26 – Theme: Introduce yourself, your projects, and any goals you have for the year!

I don't think I'll necessarily always stick in the theme for the month because of how I work my rotation schedule, but this one I can handle!

So I think all of you know I'm Katy :-) For my WIPocalypse entries, I decided that all six of my holdovers from 2012 will be counted. I will report on whichever ones I worked on each month and show the progress from where they started at the beginning of 2013 and where they are each month. So without further ado, here are the pieces that I'm going to be reporting on for WIPocalypse for 2013:

Italian Vista by Dimensions Gold Collection - Started 7/19/12, last worked on 12/8/12:

European Bistro by Dimensions Gold Collection - Started 8/4/12, last worked on 12/1/12

Flames of Desire by Lee Ann Seed from Heaven and Earth Designs - Started 8/27/12, last worked on 12/15/12:

Christmas Countdown by Dimensions - Restarted 9/2/12, last worked on 12/22/12:

My Witch's Brew by Victoria Motto Sampler Shoppe - Started 11/18/12, last worked on 11/24/12:

 

And last but not least, the piece I've been working on this week - Beauty and the Beast Falling in Love by Thomas Kinkade from Candamar Designs Disney Dreams Collection - Started 9/9/12:

Beauty and the Beast Falling in Love - Start of Rotation Week

Because of the Crazy January Challenge, this piece is the only WIPocalypse piece that came up in rotation this month. Here now at the end of the rotation week, this is where this piece stands:

Beauty and the Beast Falling in Love - End of Rotation Week 1/26/13

I'm very happy with the progress!

So there is my WIPocalypse report and my End of Rotation Week report! Tomorrow starts a CJC rotation week. None of my CJC posts will be included in the WIPocalypse this year since they were all new starts, but you know me, I'll still post progress!

Until next time!
~Katy

Just A Quick Post

It's been a super long work week with crazy stressful things at work, I had Girl Scouts tonight, and I'm beat, but I got some more sky and some green grass stitched tonight:

As of 1/25/13

Tomorrow is the last day of this piece for this rotation week, plus it's the first WIPocalypse post of 2013! Can't wait!

Until next time!
~Katy

And Even More Sky

Tonight found me still working on the colors of the sky in the blocks I was focusing on:

As of 1/24/13

I promise the fabric isn't as blue as it looks in this picture, it's actually completely white...but the thread colors aren't -too- far off...I'm loving how the sky is starting to come together!

Two more days on this piece in this rotation...I'll be sad to put it to the side, but I'm very proud of what I've done so far this week!

Until next time!
~Katy

More Sky

I was very tired after the last long three days of work in my office that I only stitched a little bit of sky tonight:

As of 1/23/13

Sorry for it being a bit darker. I need to invest in a better camera than my phone, or really just take pictures during daylight! I love the sky, though...it looks to me like the castle really is in front of the sky, providing a bit of perspective in the picture, but that's just me!

I also have to share my six year old daughter's portrait she painted of me at school in art class:

Me!

I personally think this looks great! Granted, she gave me green eyes (like what she has) rather than brown (which I have), but I am very proud of her! She has said for the last two years she wants to be an art teacher when she grows up, so you can be sure I'm keeping this in case she really does continue down that path as one of her early masterpieces! Proud mom moment!

Until next time!
~Katy

Pretty Sky

For this pattern, I am working in a combination of cross-country stitching and solid ten by ten blocks. It's cross country in that I take one color thread and I try to finishes the stitches throughout the piece in that color, but I determine my next color to work on by the ten by ten blocks of stitches. I am trying to keep it so that I build consecutively larger squares. The first square was by itself, then two by two, then three by three, and so on. The beauty of this process is that I can clearly see the image coming to life from the middle outward, but since I'm doing cross-country stitching as well, I'm not limiting myself to only working on a specific square at any one point. It helps bring more of the image to life that gets clarified once I focus on the stitches in a given square.

I finished the five by five square yesterday. I'm starting to work on the six by six square now, and that led to a lot of sky being worked on tonight:

As of 1/22/13

More of the lovely pinks and oranges seen in the sky at sunset are now visible, and I know I'll be working on more sky the next couple of days as well. I am already very pleased at the progress I've made so far and look forward to seeing what else I can get done the rest of this week!

Until next time!
~Katy

More Progress

I was able to put some more time into Beauty and the Beast tonight:

As of 1/21/13

Adding the color to the tower of the castle definitely makes it look like there was a lot of progress tonight. I'm realizing as I'm stitching this that this piece is deceptively huge. No, it's not as big as some of my HAED's in size, but I'm only working on the first of four pages right now and I'm not even a quarter of the way done with that page...lots and lots of detail, but I'm loving every stitch. I'm especially enjoying seeing some of the village begin to come to life with rooftops and smoke stacks and shapes of the shading of the foliage around it.

I think that's my favorite part of large scale pieces like this. I love seeing details starting to emerge in ways I just don't feel I get in the same way with some samplers and more primitive pieces, but that's just me. That's the other beauty about this hobby. You can find a project to fit absolutely any taste. It's such a wonderful hobby and I treasure the few hours after a crazy day of work and kids where I get to just relax with my needle and thread!

Until next time!
~Katy

New Rotation Week - Beauty and the Beast

Today I started my rotation week by picking up Beauty and the Beast Falling in Love by Thomas Kinkade, and my daughter is thrilled! She loves this piece and it will eventually be for her, so she's very excited I'm working on it again.

As a recap, here is where we last left this piece:

Beauty and the Beast Falling in Love - Start of Rotation Week

It's been nearly three months since I worked on this piece due to other projects getting in the way, but now that the CJC starts are done, I don't anticipate starting any other new pieces this year so I hope I can get to this more often than every three months...we'll see what happens! I did get a few stitches in today, and here is where we stand now:

As of 1/20/13

We'll see how far we get this week! I will say, though, that this piece is making me value the times I use 28 and 32 count fabrics over 14 and 16 counts - partial stitches in lower count fabrics are not so much fun!

Until next time!
~Katy

November TUSAL and Tribal Penguin

There is just something that makes me smile when I can look on my blogroll on the side of my blog and see all sorts of fun pictures of different TUSAL posts! So of course, I have to make my own contribution!

Here is my TUSAL jar from October:

TUSAL Jar - October 15, 2012

And here is November's TUSAL:

TUSAL Jar - November 13, 2012

And from the top! October:

TUSAL Jar - October 15, 2012

And November:

TUSAL Jar - November 13, 2012

This month, I have ORT's from Beauty and the Beast Falling in Love, May Lily of the Valley Teacup, and of course those black and white threads right on top are from Tribal Penguin, which I worked on again tonight! I tested some of the suggestions with other colors or other defining techniques. I didn't like them as much and decided instead to do the hard outline of the white of the belly. I like the way it makes it pop out from the fabric and provides definition, but it's also making me think about outlining the black as well. I'm going to wait until I finish the piece entirely before making that decision.

Here is how it looks tonight:

As of 11/13/12

Can you tell I'm having fun playing with Instagram? And I'm 13/13 as of this post for NaBloPoMo!  Yay!

Until next time!
~Katy

Beauty and the Beast - End of Rotation Week

For some reason, I don't feel like I've done very much on this piece this week. Likely that is because work is extremely stressful right now and I'm either working late hours in the office or taking work home with me, which really cuts into my stitching time! Boo hiss! But hey, progress is progress, and this will come back up again soon enough!

Here is what Beauty and the Beast Falling in Love looked like at the beginning of the week:

Beauty and the Beast Falling in Love - Start of Rotation Week

And here is where we are at the end of the week (sorry for the not so great picture!):

Beauty and the Beast Falling in Love - End of Rotation Week 10/27/12

Well, maybe I got more done than I thought. Looking at the images side by side, there definitely was some progress this week. That is always a kind of funny thing - you may not feel like you've done anything, but when you really look, you can see what you did complete and get a definite sense of accomplishment!

Tomorrow I will hopefully start Tribal Penguin - I need to do some more work at home tomorrow and I also have a family obligation during the day, so we'll see if it gets started. Fingers crossed!

Until next time!
~Katy

TGIF!!

Brrr!! It's cold! Yesterday it was in the 70's and 80's here in Dallas, tonight we have a freeze warning...these 30+ or more degree temperature drops are not something I'm fond of! I'm just glad that it's Friday and even though I have work to do at home this weekend, I don't have to go to my office for two days...yay!

I did work some on Beauty and the Beast tonight. My main focus tonight was around the central portion of the sunset which is full of blending filament. I took the suggestion of doing the crosses and then going over them with the filament, so even though it doesn't necessarily look like a lot of progress, I pretty much did the same section twice!

As of 10/26/12

I tried to capture the sparkle, as it looks really pretty and really helps to centralize the growing portion of the sunset in the sky. Blending filament is hard to capture on film!

Hope you all have a wonderfully stitchy weekend!

Until next time!
~Katy

Stash and Progress!

After a very long day in a very long week, I had some lovely goodies waiting for me when I got home!

First, my beautiful Crystal EEK! fabric from Picture This Plus came today! It's just perfect for my Halloween piece, and I think the threads look great with it! Unfortunately the picture hardly does it justice...

My Witch's Brew Supplies

I also got my stash for Tribal Penguin for next week! Yay! I'm stitching this on 28-count hand dyed Jobelan in Summer Sky that I ordered from 123 Stitch!...I think the color is a very subtle icy blue and the threads will show up great on it! I'll wind the threads into bobbins before starting the pattern next week.

Tribal Penguin Supplies

 

I also made some more progress on Beauty and the Beast tonight. The thread tonight took me back towards the sunset. The way I'm stitching this is from the bottom right corner and out, building squares of stitches as I go. I'm currently working on the 4X4 square portion of the pattern. As I pick a thread in each square, I just take that thread as far as it goes. Sometimes it goes up to the castle, othertimes it goes towards the sunset, like tonight!

As of 10/25/12

I will leave you tonight with something non-stitchy related. I've shared a few pictures of my six year old daughter on this blog before, but today, I'm sharing my two year old son who tried on his Halloween costume tonight in preparation for his daycare party tomorrow. Look out! Here comes the Spider-Man!

Spider Man!

Until next time!

~Katy

I Hate Migraines

So yesterday morning, I woke up with a horrible migraine...the kind that feels like a sledgehammer was used to impale your skull with a battle axe type pain. I forced myself to go to work because we have a big review going on this week, but by the time I got home after another 10+ hour day, all of which was in pain, I was far, far too tired to do any stitching. I did pick it back up again for a little while tonight.

As of 10/24/12

I didn't stitch as much as I would like but I do have an excuse. I spent part of my typical stitching time going through my various charts for my Crazy January Challenge to figure out what threads and fabrics I needed and I went "shopping" in my stash to determine what I have already. I now have a list of what I need to get in order to be ready for January, which is an accomplishment!

I'm hoping I can get some more stitching done tomorrow! Fingers crossed!

Until next time!
~Katy

Look At That Sunset...

Or the start of it anyway! Tonight most of the stitching on Beauty and the Beast focused on the outer edges of the sunset in the picture:

As of 10/22/12

There is still a lot of sunset to come, but I liked the purple shades I worked with tonight! This was a very much needed relaxation outlet today after a very stressful day at work. I'm already ready for Friday, and I have four more equally stressful days to go! Wish me luck!

Until next time!
~Katy

A New Rotation Week and Preparing for January

Today began a new rotation week and Beauty and the Beast Falling in Love is back! As I do every week, I want to look back at where I was when I last worked on this piece:

Beauty and the Beast Falling in Love - Start of Rotation Week - Last Touched 9/15/12

I was able to do a little bit of stitching today. Not as much as I would have liked to close out IHSW, but any stitching is good stitching!

As of 10/21/12

I also spent some of the day preparing for the Crazy January Challenge for 2013 - 15 starts in the first 15 days of January with the goal of finishing all of the projects you start by the end of the year. I'm not sure I'll be able to do it, but I did finalize my 15 choices today and now I can spend the next couple of months kitting them up and getting ready to go for the new year. Want to see the choices? In no particular order as I have not yet decided on the order in which I will stitch them, my patterns are:

1. Angel of Compassion - Selina Fenech - Heaven and Earth Designs (page one for finish)

2. Butterfly Rose Cross - Brigid Ashwood - Heaven and Earth Designs (page one for finish)

3. Tuscan Greeting - Dimensions

4. Fall Fairy - Dimensions Gold Collection

5. Mediterranean Flavors - Dimensions

6. Wedding Sampler - Carolyn Manning (one of a kind design she made for me as a wedding gift 10+ years ago - time to stitch it!)

7. American Flag Quilt Sampler - Rosewood Manor

8. Sweet Pea Fairy - Joan Elliott

9. Stitching ABC - Design Works

10. Rapunzel - Joan Elliott

11. St. Peter's - John Clayton International by Heritage Stitchcraft

12. Winter Flowers Ornament - Turquoise Graphics & Designs

13. Garden of Joy Ornament - Turquoise Graphics & Designs

14. Celtic Christmas Ornament #4 - The Sunflower Seed

15. Butterfly Fairy - Joan Elliott

What do you think? Four of these are kits, the rest I need to work on gathering supplies for to kit up! I tried to have a mix of big and small projects, and I also have a few techniques in some of these that I haven't done before, like beading, and different types of finishes. I'm going to create another page to track my progress on these projects and I'm already thinking of ways to modify my rotation to add all of these in, but I have some ideas already! I can't wait to get started!

Until next time!
~Katy