Well, I got almost half the background done and ran out of floss. It's my favorite purple (154), so it seems stupid that I didn't have an extra skein around. Oh well. I'm hoping to get to the store tomorrow, but I really like the way the purple is making it pop.
Wish I'd chosen a different color for the flowers, or done them in half-stitches, but oh well. This one had a lot of mistakes and things I had to work around. Maybe someday I'll make another and it will be perfect (ha, like that will happen).
In the meantime I've been working on my first kitschy transfer piece! I have a big thing for mermaids, and strong feelings that they wouldn't have pink skin or red hair. Here she is so far.
Meanwhile my mom is is Italy, taking pictures of things she feels would make excellent cross-stitch patterns (and cats lounging on statues).
I could have sworn I'd posted update pictures of this piece already! Apparently my brain has gone hooey.
Soo, this is the piece. There have been some issues. Didn't have enough of the one hand-dyed thread for the squares, went to get more, but I'd written down the wrong number. Realized that the sun had faded the other pieces anything, so waiting to use more of that would still leave problems.
So I used one green-blue kind and one yellow-green kind, then decided to do have the piece is more greenish colors and half in more yellowish colors. It's not really noticeable enough though. I now have many things I wish I'd done with the the corner pieces, but oh well.
I'm doing the remaining white parts in dark purple (154) half stitches. I don't dislike the piece, but I can't help thinking about what I *would* have done if I'd sat and given myself time to think about the choices. I wish I could make myself go through all the options ahead of time, but I don't seem to have the knack. I'm slower with my color choices now, at least, but that's as far as I've come.
My friend got her package, so I can show you the onesies I stitched!
Unlike with all of Benjamin's onesies, I used fabri-solvy as a stabilizer and just drew the design on that with a water soluble marker. It worked brilliantly and make the task SO much easier.
The designs are a big wonky, because I free-handed them pretty quickly, but I'm pretty happy with them.
I'm having a block in finishing my robot sampler design, so it's back to work on the blackwork quilt piece.
I am finally stitching again! It is quite the relief. I finished two small free embroidery pieces, but I'll have to wait a few days to show you, as they're a gift that's currently in the mail and I'm playing it safe.
However, I found this old piece that I started and nearly finished over a year ago. It got shoved in my purse for a while, and then into a drawer. It was a quick finish, which made me feel nice and productive.
I also spent the last few days cutting and gluing fabric onto hoops so I could start an embroidery display wall! It's not the in the best place for it, but I've lived here for almost three years and my walls are pretty damn crowded.
Well, the stitches came out, but only a fifth of the incision knit together, so now there's a great big gaping hole in my arm.
Two weeks or more before that's healed, and god knows about the pain. The nerve disease I had, RSD, is sneaky. The more you rest the affected limbs the worse the pain and inflexibility gets. So there's more pain all around, due to resting the arm. Stitching, cooking, and cleaning are my at-home physical therapy, but with tangible and helpful side effects like food, a feeling of productivity, and a clean environment.
I can't express how frustrated and depressed I am. Hope I'll be back to normal sooner than I expect.
I went in for what I thought was a tiny mole removal. One to two stitches they said.
Now I have six stitches over an incision a bit over an inch long and I can barely use my right arm. Also the student doctor, right before she started the stitching, said "I'm so nervous!" UGH.
No idea when I'll be stitching again. Anything like this tends to react with my nerve pain disease like crazy, and I heal slowly. The pain when I type more than a couple sentences is ungodly, so it seems like a poor lookout for stitching.
Hoping I'll be good for mouse-work soon and can work on some pattern designs at least. The boredom is making me ridiculously crazy but the extreme stabbing pain (even three days after the incident) makes it rough to concentrate.
I will spare you the disgusting picture of my stitches which I've subjected everyone else to.
I added just a bit to this. I think it looked odd with just the little bit of black. I'm pretty happy with it, though I'll probably look for a smaller hoop. There's a whole series of these similarly sized circular designs, and maybe I'll eventually do the lot. Or not. We'll see.
Now I've started on another blackwork quilt piece, with a different block design.
