dianec42

Stitching progress, Upon A Star from the book Cross Stitch In The Forest by PigeonCoop Designs.

I bought additional skeins of all 3 shades of blue, thus guaranteeing that I'll have enough of at least 1.

Working on another PigeonCoop design from the book Cross Stitch In The Forest - Upon A Star

Pattern is from the book Cross Stitch In The Forest. I foolishly thought, “This is just 4 colors! It should be simple. And I can use threads from my stash!”

Dear reader, it was not so. One 123stitch order for DMC 988 and more 989, hours of eyestrain from working on dark fabric, and about a billion three-quarter stitches later, I can confidently state that I HAVE NOT LEARNED A THING and intend to start Upon A Star (the one with the wolf and the moon) pretty much any second now.

Last week: I finished the top section. Time to scroll the frame!



At the Celebration of Needlework: I did some, messed up and undid some, did a little more.

Making good progress on Deer Trail. I learned that social Zoom calls are a great time to stitch. Somehow the cats let me get away with it!

I got through all of the easy, light-colored stitching on the Halloween Mill Hill kit. Now it's a gothic nightmare of dark (everything) on black. I may end up putting it away until spring when there's more light.


Today I had a brainwave and realized that I could take these 3 finished Christmas Pusheen cross stitches and turn them into something suitable for hanging on the tree! For backing, I have some scrap fabric that is a lovely festive red. Unfortunately getting the sewing machine out is a hassle so (in my wisdom) I decided to try hand sewing. It's a bit of a slog. But I haven't drawn blood yet so I've got that going for me.

I am working on making some bullet journal layouts that are cheerful, functional, and dead simple to update once they're created. I got some stickers and some washi tape to aid in the effort.

I am occasionally pecking at a cross stitch project, currently the Mill Hill "Haunted Graveyard", now featuring TWO shades of purple!

I *should* be working on the memory quilt but my brain has been massively uncooperative for a couple of weeks now. Sigh. Luckily(?) Mom's life is just as disorganized as mine at the moment so there is no real time pressure to get it done before I go visit.

I survived the first week(*) of my job! I'm struggling (see above about brain). Hopefully I will get my groove on.
(*) 3 days. bad enough.

I was supposed to go to a concert. Found it was cancelled AFTER driving 3 hours. Went to Micro Center as a consolation prize; tried to set up my new PC and it is a dud and has to go back. It's a good thing I like driving. (If I keep telling myself that maybe I'll start to believe it.)

Prefacing the reading and watching with "I don't know if it's the piece or if it's me, but..."

I finished the third Lady Astronaut book. The ending was reasonably satisfying. The first 10% I was very grumpy that she switched narrators from the first 2 books, to a character who I don't even like that much. The middle 80% I was basically waiting for something, ANYTHING, good to happen to these people. A lot of the events were just a little too on-the-nose with real life to be at all enjoyable. Oh well. I persevered! I'm glad I've read it, but I'm now in the mood for something lighter.

We've started watching season 4 of Stranger Things. 3 episodes in, it's not really doing much for me. There's nothing really novel going on, and the bits where The Kids Are In High School Now And Are Trying To Fit In are fucking excruciating. If Stuart wants to keep watching it I'll play along, but I'm finding it rather grim and joyless.

On the joyful and not-grim side of the aisle...

Stitching! Having finished Peeking Cats, my main criteria for what to do next were "smaller" and "absolutely no backstitch". Also, fuck fractionals on Aida.

I've started the third piece in a set, "Art Nouveau Seasons" by Sheila Hudson from the Christmas 2003 issue of Cross Stitcher magazine (UK). I've already done Winter and Summer and am now doing Spring. It's daffodils, and although I don't really care for yellow at all, I thought I'd get it out of the way so I can reward myself with Autumn which is grapes and thus has Many Purples in it. It's very soothing to be working on something blocky and less fiddly. I am not pleased with all of her color choices, as some of them are so close together as to be nearly indistinguishable, but the results are so pretty it's hard to argue. As a bonus, this gave me something simple to record some footage of. (It's surprisingly hard to video yourself cross stitching. Who knew?)

I'm sad that I didn't save more of Sheila Hudson's patterns. She passed away some years ago and I don't think her works have ever been collected and published. I have this set and a really nifty repeating-motif Oriental dragon in magenta and gold shades that I might do someday.

Sorry I'm so bad about posting photos here. I'll see what I can do.

So. Much. Black.

The good news is, I get to work on some colorful bits now. The bad news is, most of those colors are pink. The things I do for my art.

As ever, click for the big version.

Click to embiggen!


I designed it myself, using graph paper and software (Jane Greenoff Gold from around 2002 which I HATE and really need to upgrade to something reasonable, bu I digress). I stitched the house on the right and decided I hated the contrast, so the house on the left is a shade darker. I stitched using an unholy amalgam of Anchor and DMC threads from my stash.

I'm planning on updating the chart to show (DMC versions of) the colors I actually used, then releasing the chart as a PDF. Who knows, maybe Reddit will like it and other people will do it.

A friend of mine want to know if I'm selling them. LOL! I am slow and easily distracted and we'd probably be halfway through the NEXT pandemic before I complete another one. It was fun though.