Magical Creatures Calendar

Thursday was not so great of a health day for me so I only worked on my Whine and WIPs piece for the week, which I'll show next week. Friday was better health wise, but I was running around all over the place with my kids most of the day (fun stuff - movies, indoor playground, McD's for lunch, bookstore, my parents' house for dinner, trip to the pool...all good...all tiring!), so I didn't get a lot of stitching time, but I did work some on the Magical Creatures Calendar from Cloudsfactory.

This piece is awesome and I love it, but I'm working on the outer frame first. I've quickly come to realize that though the frame is GORGEOUS, those corners are as time consuming and detailed as the frames in the Story Time Sampler are, so they take a long time. Which means only minimal progress to show this time:

I do love how it's turning out, though! I'm doing this on 32 Opal Belfast in Diva from Hand Dyed Fabrics by Stephanie and the frames are being stitched in Ramona silk from Mo's Sale. More Mo's colors will come as I work on the piece, I'm sure!

Until next time!
~Katy

Magical Creatures Calendar

I was so excited to get back to the Magical Creatures Calendar from Cloudsfactory yesterday:

I'm still working on the frames, but I made some good progress!

I must admit, I'm anxious to get back to this piece! All of the Cloudsfactory pieces have been so much fun to stitch, but this one holds a special place in my heart because of the theme. I could easily work on this piece for days, but I'm disciplined, gosh darn it! Onto the next piece in the rotation!

Until next time!
~Katy

Magical Creatures and Sherlock Holmes

Yesterday was the perfect day for stitching. I didn't have anywhere I had to go, nothing I absolutely had to do, so I enjoyed a lazy day of stitching! I worked on two pieces yesterday.

First, I had a new start, which should be my last new start of the year (for now anyway) - Magical Creatures Calendar from Cloudsfactory!

I'm doing the same thing with this piece that I did with my Zodiac sampler and switched out all the DMC for flosses from Mo's Sale, and the Weekly Dye Works threads I substituted for some of Mo's silks. Here is what I completed yesterday:

I'm stitching this on 32 count opal belfast in Diva from Hand Dyed Fabrics by Stephanie, and I'm doing the frames in Ramona silk from Mo's Sale. I was originally going to use another color silk, but it got lost in the fabric. I love the way the Ramona looks up close, and the sparkle of this is just wonderful! My plan is to work on all the frames first and then once they are done, I'll start filling in the months. I was both cursing this piece and reluctant to put it away all at once. Cursing because I had to frog the furthest left hand border not once, not twice, but THREE times because I screwed up on the counting along the bottom turning into the corner. And reluctant because I just love the colors on this and I'm so excited to see it grow. It'll come back soon enough!

Yesterday was also the day that the March portion of the Story Time Sampler came out, which was indeed Sherlock Holmes! I couldn't resist and ended up completing this frame last night. It's so adorable!

And here is the entire piece so far:

I love how this piece is turning out so far. It's great that the frames don't take all that long to complete, but it is kind of sad that I now have to wait until March 31st before I can pick it up again! Oh well, I have lots of projects to keep me busy until then!

Until next time!
~Katy

Sweet Pea Fairy and Adding to the WIP List

Yesterday I spent a lot of time working one over one skin on my Sweet Pea Fairy:

She looks a little creepy right now with how the skin looks right now, but one over one is going to be worth it! Yes, it quadruples the number of stitches for the skin, but I think the effect looks so much nicer - the skin looks smooth and like skin rather than like a cross stitch. Now, this piece has a TON of skin in it, and I may go blind by the end of it, but I think it's going to look awesome when it's done!

Remember how at the beginning of the year I made my list of WIP's and added four new starts to it but said that was it for the year? I lied. I'm adding three more starts from Cloudsfactoryto the list that I absolutely could not resist after seeing them on several blogs and on FB:

1. The Doctor Who Clock - my four year old son is a huge Doctor Who fan like I am (12 is his favorite Doctor and he loves Clara the most of all the Companions). We jokingly call him the wee ginger Doctor, and he even has a TARDIS (tent) and (play) sonic screwdriver and a (stuffed) red Dalek he likes to defeat. He saw this as I was looking at the Cloudsfactory website and started begging for it. Considering how many pieces I have going on that my daughter asked for, I couldn't resist (pus, I love the design):

2. Magical Creatures Calendar - I believe this was the annual SAL from Cloudsfactory last year. I've talked before about my love of fairies and all things fantasy, and I think this will go well with the Once Upon a Time Sampler and the Story Time Sampler from The Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery when it's all said and done:

3. Walking Through the Stars Zodiac Sampler - This is this year's annual SAL from Cloudsfactory. Like the Story Time Sampler, a new section of this comes out once a month for the whole year. I'm a couple of months behind this one and I'm going to pause my standard rotation to get caught up in time for March's release, then I will be doing what I do with the Story Time Sampler and doing this piece as well each month when the new pattern comes out, no matter where I am in the rotation.

This will put my WIP count up to 25, and I think that's a good number to stop at. Doctor Who and Magical Creatures will just go into my normal alphabetical rotation, so they aren't going to come up quite yet. I do plan on using the recommended flosses for Doctor Who for my son's sake, but I'm going to be making substitutions using Mo's Floss for both Magical Creatures and the Zodiac Sampler. Time to go raid my floss and fabric stash!

Until next time!
~Katy