Luna - finish!

Quick note at the top to say I'm sorry for not responding to comments! For some reason I can't leave any comments at all right now, even though I can post without issue. It seems to be some conflict with my browser's security settings and I haven't been able to figure out exactly what.

Except that's not quite true? It seems like I can leave comments if the blog is set to open a popup window when clicking the "leave a comment" link. I don't know, man, it's just weird.

All this rambling to say: Irene and Astrid, thank you for your recent comments! :)

ETA: Switching to popup comments lets me reply now! Problem solved.

~~~ 

And now the finish!

I wasn't expecting to finish so quickly, but the esports tournament I'm following had a matchup I really wanted to see today, so I took the opportunity to bead while watching/listening. :) I did some yesterday as well, and the two hours today was just enough to squeak in a finish.

I ended up not using the gunmetal beads at all. They were all very fat and absolutely would not fit in the spaces left for beading. I swapped them for matte peacock beads that were all a flatter donut shape. In fact, some of them were so narrow I had to pass over them and search for fatter ones! Usually I'm on the hunt for the narrow ones, especially when using the recommended MH beads which are all different shapes.

A couple of closer shots: 

The squares in the edges of the cloak are purple delicas that match her dress, instead of the recommended orange-y red. I also added some crystals in place of the 2x2 bead squares in her necklace to give it some extra sparkle. And then the wingtips got crystals in place of the flower beads.

Very nice overall and super fun to stitch!

Luna - ready for beads!

Luna is finally all stitched up and ready for beads!

I don't have any of the beads the chart calls for (well, I do have the plain shiny black, but only about 20 of them!) so I'm replacing everything with random stuff from my stash. Here are the beads I pulled out as possibilities.

 

I'll have to see what actually fits well in the beaded spaces because all the round beads are size 11 but the chart actually calls for size 15 for two of the three bead colors. The delica beads will definitely fit but I'm not super fond of the square bead look on a design like this. Love them as pattern fills and in precise things like a Chatelaine though! Soft and round is nice on a fairy though. :)

 

By the way, delica rhymes with paprika (pah PREE kah), not Angelica. They're Japanese beads and the Japanese pronunciation of delica (デリカ) is "dey REE kah." Or something like that. Listen, I'm not a linguist, just a dork who studied Japanese in college while normal people took Spanish. :p

 

Apparently デリカ is also some ass-ugly minivan from Mitsubishi as well. Haha. 

Luna progress

It's been a long time since I've shown progress on Luna! I've finished most of the bottom half (except for one small pumpkin and the beads) which means it's the perfect spot for a progress picture.

The missing pumpkin is on the left side bottom, where it looks oddly empty. :)

And the empty blocks in the edges of the cape/cloak are filled with beads. The original design has a very reddish orange bead, but the more I look at the model photo, the less I like it. I will probably replace with a shade of purple similar to one of the colors in her dress. Orange to echo the pumpkins might work too, but I like reserving that for the pumpkins only since the top half of the fabric is orange too.

In the worst case I could stitch the blocks in black thread and add some dark grey backstitch between the edges and the parts overlapped by the folds of the cape. We'll see.

little March finish

I finished the cute March freebie from Palkó-lap about a week ago and finally got a decent picture with good lighting. This one has a clover theme for St. Patrick's Day (I assume) but since I'm doing these in the colors of each month's birthstone, we have aquamarine instead of green!

The fabric is a little leftover scrap of Aether linen from Chromatic Alchemy (recently closed, sadly). It's a pretty combination of blue and tan. The rest of it was already used for Snowy Winter by Owlforest Embroidery last year. :)

Peacock Band Sampler - three bands done!

Of course, they're the three easiest bands, but hey, progress!

Bands 1, 3, and 5 are 100% complete except for beads. I plan to add those at the very end unless there is some reason to add them earlier. I think some of the Jessica stitches are too small/tight to add a bead in the center afterward, so the bead has to be placed first.

So here is the full width of the piece:

 And a closeup of a more solid area with all five bands so far:

 
Band 5 looks very sparse but a lot of those spaces will eventually be filled with beads.

I plan to finish the rest of the eyelets in band 2 this week, and maybe I'll start on band 6. That's the one with all the Jessica stitches, which should be... fun. Haha. Actually they're not too bad, I just have a hard time remembering when to start tucking stitches under to get a perfect circle.

Still the One - finish!

Last night I finished Still the One and it's super cute!

Initials are obscured for privacy but you get the idea. 

This fabric is so hard to photograph. This is probably the best I can do.

It should be a slightly brownish pink with some very subtle brownish mottling. I think the unusual combination of colors against the white background of my desk, plus the sparkle from the opalescent threads is messing up my phone camera.

The phone keeps trying to correct the color to something much lighter and it ends up looking like this:

Which is also cute, but a lot less accurate!

I made a few small changes as usual! First, I changed the shape of the O and U in "you're" to match the other letters better (both were very narrow, so I took the N from "one" and turned it upside down to make the U, and widened the O by one stitch). Then I swapped the color of the heart with the arrow through it to the lighter pink instead of using the darker one. There was just too much of the same darker pink concentrated in one spot for my liking! And then I gave the birds french knot eyes and backstitched beaks instead of a single cross stitch for each.

Super cute overall and I hope to make this into a small pillow... soon. Haha.

a few small finishes! (and plans!)

Here's a few smalls I finished in January but never posted. Oops. :)

Autumn Key got cut out from the background and I'm considering this finished for now. I don't know if I want to add a hanger and use it as an ornament since the locks aren't finished that way. Actually, not sure how these should all be finished other than carefully stored away in a box. Hmm.

I also finished the January and February freebies by Palkó-lap. I took a page from Rachel's book and stitched them with thread colors that match the monthly birthstones.

 
The January thread is a bit too dark and lacking in variegation, plus I'm not super thrilled with plain white fabric either. February is a lot cuter with tone-on-tone purple and some subtle variegation. But these are so small and fast, I figure I can make another January eventually if I want to!

Also, I started a cute design from Just Cross Stitch magazine (yeah, I still get a physical magazine... it's fun to get something good in the mail now and then!) called Still the One. This is the model picture. You can tell it's a model picture because I never frame anything, haha!

I'm stitching mine on an opalescent 40 count dusty pink. It's a little darker than the model fabric but I think that's even better as the light colors pop more. I wish I could remember the color name because it's really beautiful! I'll show my progress next time and hopefully I'll find the tag on the larger piece of fabric I still have left so I can share exactly what it is.

 

ETA: Color is called brandied apple, which doesn't seem to be a standard color. It could be hand dyed but the tag on it is from the shop, not a dyer, and only has the color name and count.

 

Oh, and my low-buy year is going well so far! I had a few patterns in my cart on Etsy and 123Stitch but moved them to my wishlist instead. Two of them were Valentine's themed cross stitch, one was a winter themed embroidery, and one was wool felt heart ornaments. Waiting for Valentine's to pass really helped get rid of the "gotta buy now" feeling.

 

Instead, I bought one piece of fabric for the 2025 Just Cross Stitch SAL. I had a few in my stash that would have worked fine, but I really wanted the same color as it's evenweave and my stash is 99% linen. (Colors are softer and more subtle on evenweave and I love that look for this SAL.) I don't normally do SALs but since the completed piece was shown in the magazine, I know I'll like the entire thing. And it's by Sprouting Lupine, one of the designers I said no to on Etsy! 

This is a terrible picture but hopefully you get the idea. It has a bit of a similar feel as Owlforest Embroidery patterns, but more relaxed and casual if that makes any sense. So cute! :)