TUSAL & IHSW - February edition!

 

Two SALs in one weekend!   And I did stitch for almost the entire weekend (except for the part where we did leave the house to pick up the flooring, because it looked like Sunday would be the nicest day for quite a while.   But what a super productive stitchy (if not anything else) weekend :)

As I mentioned, I had finished the frame for the CloudsFactory mystery sampler.

At least I was smart enough to mark the first circle.

My camera phone (because I'm perpetually too lazy to bother with a real camera) is having a heck of a time getting the colors on this right.  It really doesn't want to pick up the pink, and it always makes the fabric look lighter than it really is (usually making it look like denim).   Of course, if I bothered to take a picture in daylight, that might help, but I won't stress it until I am going for a completed pic.

Next, after a few DS9 episodes, I had the January installment, Capricorn, done -

See what I mean about the fabric?  Always different in just about every picture.   The camera also seems to want to autocorrect in favor of making the whites blinding, too, which I can find with the limited editing picasa-web gives me, but whatever, not worth fussing over, I think.  Feh.

I think this is going to be the cutest sampler.  A representation of the zodiac "critter" will be in the outer ring, in all of it's CloudsFactory adorableness, the constellation representing the sign in the  middle, and the symbol will be in the foundation frame.   It looks like planets will take up the center.   Along with the actual goaty-capricorn, pansies, which are the sign's flower is also in there.  So cute.  I am definitely happy I decided to go ahead with this mystery.

I watched OH play Ni No Kuni (while listening to Graham Joyce's Some Kind of Fairy Tale), and finished Aquarius (with his orchids), too (what?  caught up on a mystery!  wonders!)

I love that "nebula" like motif to the right of Aquarius - The outer ring is stitched in "Bethlehem" which might be my new favorite overdye. We have a choice of stitching the large stars as Algerian or Smyrnas and I've chosen Smyrnas.   While I ordinarily love eyelets, I was not feeling them for this piece.

 I did a little counting and design spit-balling for my RR.  I've already got the pattern that's probably going to be my inspiration.   So I did, in fact, hit that goal/plan, too.

And then, instead of worrying about FS or ES (I'm starting to think it'll be ES next), I fell back into Celtic Ferret Knot and filling it in.   I did not use the colors called for (DMC, and not very pretty DMC at that), and one of these days I'll pull the original colors to show off what I changed them from.  I used the picture as a guide when I bought the overdyes for the pattern I decided I wanted to use.   I am very pleased with how this piece is coming out, and I have a feeling I'll just keep this one out and finish it up first.

This is the part where I decided I was super happy.   The brown/tan/cream are more subtle with the overdye, and the gold shows off the variation more, I love the effect.

I'm using GAST Oatmeal (off white), Lambswool (cream/tan) and Dark Chocolate for the browns and WDW Whiskey for the gold.

And this is where I ended last night, with a shot of the cover model for reference.

It's actually kind of fun - just loading up the needles (I do three at a time) and stitching away without having to refer to the pattern.   There are a couple of charting errors I've caught as I fill in, and I'll fix them (the wrong symbol, I think - it doesn't appear in the cover model and it "makes sense" - just spots where a symbol is in place where I think it should be black/outlining).   I'm glad I finished the bit of tail in his mouth - when it was all black and white it kept looking like a tongue hanging out, so I feel a bit better not having to glance twice at the piece.

Here's my juice jar ort container for the month - On one hand, I want to cut some of my bottles and make an awesome TUSAL container, on the other, I'm kind of enamored of the convenient scissor holder the opening to the bottle gives me.