[finish] Hello Kitty
I recently picked up a copy of Cross Stitch Card Shop magazine and it had this adorable chart in it for a very sweet Hello Kitty. The magazine reckoned a stitching time of 2-3 hours, so (as I was looking for something quick and easy) I decided to stitch it.
As it happened, this little girl took me around 5hrs 30mins – 6hrs to stitch! Now, whether it was because I was using 28ct linen rather than the 14ct aida recommended, or that the magazine had timed it incorrectly, I don’t know… But this chart sure did take longer than I anticipated (and I’m not a slow stitcher)!
Despite that, though, I do find her rather sweet. :)
Now all I need to do is decide what to do with her … ROFL!
[finish] F**k Cancer!
This is another finish of mine, which I framed and presented to a dear friend recently. Originally from Subversive Cross Stitch, I did some colour substitution on it so that it matched my friend’s favourite colours … Be warned though — as it’s a Subversive piece, it’s gonna have some language… ;)
Another of those gorgeous brushed silver framed suited this one well — maybe I should just buy a load of them in different sizes next time I’m in the store, as I always seem to gravitate back to them! — and it was a delight to stitch. All told, it took 4.5hrs — not bad at all, and as it’s my first Subversive piece I can well and truly say that it has me hooked! LOL :)
I’m glad to say, too, that my friend loved it — turns out she’s had her eye on this chart for a while, so it was a lovely surprise when I gifted her with it. She’s one of the most inspiring, strong and loving people I know so it really meant something to me to be able to craft this for her.
[finish] Cross Stitcher In Residence
Along with the knitting projects that have kept me busy of late, I’ve also finished and self-framed a couple of cross stitch pieces. For a change, these are both for me and are now on display in the small lounge.
I love the framing job on this one. I couldn’t find a frame to exactly match the dimensions of the mount, so instead I found a frame I liked (and I adore the brushed silver effect here!) and added some black card as a background to lift the piece a little. I believe it’s worked out really prettily, and the whole piece is just adorable. :)
The second piece is Cross Stitcher in Residence, which was still a WIP when I last blogged about it. Well, I finally finished it in mid-May, and despite not being totally sure about the colour substitutions I’d chosen I really like it now. I wasn’t that enthused by the pale blue and pink on the original Lizzie*Kate chart, so I reworked it with two different shades of red (DMC colours 498 and 815, to be precise) and utilised the dark blue for the large crosses at the top and bottom. I do think it came out better than I anticipated! All in all, it took around 10 hours.
Andrew helped me choose the frame, as I didn’t quite know what I was looking for at the time. He was right, though — aiming for something more rustic worked wonderfully.
[wip] Cross Stitcher In Residence #2
Further on the Lizzie*Kate design, “Cross Stitcher In Residence” — actually, this has been sitting around here for a good few days after I reached the point shown in the photo below, but I have had a lot of other stuff going on. The PC died for one thing, and who knew that it would take over a week to get sorted? *sighs* But still, here be the current progress update:
Sadly though, it looks like I will have to take a break from crafts for a little while. :( My right hand has been sore of late, and when I began sobbing with pain on Saturday, AJV whisked me to the hospital pretty darn quick. Several x-rays later and it seems that I have a foreign body in my hand, and so will need an operation to remove it. Currently, the docs think it is the by-product of an encounter my hand had with a glass window back in 2004 (!) and that this sliver of glass has been sitting in my hand ever since, waiting for an opportune moment to wake up… Gah!
Thus, I’m currently wearing a protective bandage which is a little hampering for cross stitch. I haven’t checked to see if I can knit with it yet, but given that I will probably be wearing an even more restrictive bandage post-op, I’m not holding out much hope. :( That said, though, we currently don’t know when the op will be — hopefully, we will be able to find out later on in the day.
Best do what I can while I can then, yea? ;)
[wip] Cross Stitcher In Residence #1
I have been working on a Lizzie*Kate design this weekend, a relatively quick chart which is delightful in its simplicity. As I did not have the colours which the original chart required — and preferring to modify some of them anyway (e.g. red instead of blue) — I swapped some of the colours for ones which resonated more strongly with me. After all, this one will be for me! :)
This is also a new experience for me — I am stitching on linen for the first time ever. In this case, it’s a subtly mottled cream linen, 28-count (specifically, it’s Zweigart’s Cashel Vintage Linen, in “Country Cream”). I am pleasantly surprised by how easy it is to stitch “over two” — which I’d always intellectually understood in the past, but the concept of physically doing so freaked me out so much I had a mental block for quite some time!
And so, after four hours I had completed the hillside, house, roof, and trees — which I thought wasn’t bad! Here I am at the five-and-three-quarter-hours mark.
When I finish the entire piece I’ll probably write more about the colour substitutions I’ve made, but for now I’m just looking forward to seeing how it all develops…