Weekly Stitching

Rapunzel is coming along nicely. I was a bit disappointed during the beginning of the week because I didn't think she was moving along as quickly as I thought she should, after all, when I started this project, I finished the first row in about a week along with the beginning of the second row (although I piddled a bit with it after that). But, upon further reflection, I realized the first row wasn't a full top-to-bottom row like the second is, so there is a lot more stitching involved in this row and, my speed still isn't back up yet, so I'm doing pretty good, all things considered. I left off here back in July of last year:

And stopped here last night:

You might notice I didn't leave the "gap" in Flynn's hair like in the pattern:

It was just a bit too "Dr. Strange" for my taste. I don't typically like to change patterns, but I just couldn't handle that space and I didn't really understand it, so I decided to go against my personal grain and stitch through it, giving "Eugene" a full head of solid hair. Yes, I AM a rebel!

I figure I should easily finish this row this week and, since the bottom row also isn't a full one, it should go faster like the first one. I probably won't finish this week, but should definitely be finished by next week, as long as there aren't any interruptions. Then, it's back to rotations, although I STILL haven't decided what to do about Hook or whether or not to do one week or two week rotations. I'm not sure when I became such a procrastinator, but apparently it's now one of my personality traits. I don't like it much, so I guess I need to work on that.

Snow and Charming got a "bath" and are drying. I will try to get them mounted sometime this week too. I don't want to get Rapunzel framed until I get all the DoNa's done. I'd like to get them framed together for continuity's sake (plus, I'm not sure what living situation will be at the time anyway). Speaking of DoNa...anyone know what is up with her shop? Her Etsy store has been closed since December for "upgrades", but hasn't come back up yet! I think I have all her princess patterns, but I'm not sure. I'd hate to think I missed one and she's never gonna open back up again. I think the last one was Alice in Wonderland (or at least that was the last one I bought).

TA-DA!!

Well, after yet again another bad stitch week, I somehow managed to finish Snow and Charming! I didn't get the extra outlining done that I talked about doing, but that's OK...I've never done it before and all has been well. It was just a thought anyway. I left off here last week:

Here is the last finished row...55,728 stitches completed for a total of 282.15 hrs (geez, I gotta work on my speed!):

And after unscrolling, ironing to get out gridlines, here they are! They look so big, but it is only barely 8 x 10

I still need to wash them, re-iron, mount and take them somewhere for framing, but that will get done. Looks like I need to watch my stretching too because they are a bit crooked (but it was the fabric). If I take it to Joann, I make also take in my Supernatural Exorcism stitch to get it framed too...I doubt Hobby Lobby would touch it with a ten-foot pole and I have yet to find the perfect frame for it. I have actually mounted it on foam core, but in a way that doesn't support a mat. With the right frame, I don't think it will need one (I just don't have a picture of it mounted):

Since I finished so late last night, I didn't get to switch to anything else, but I did decide the "smartest" thing to do was to at least clear down the queue a bit and finish Rapunzel. I could technically whip her out in as little as a month or less, so she's my best option and will give me the time I need to decide what to do about Hook. I left off on her here back in July:

I started to load up Maleficent first, since I only have two rows left of her, but I ran across Rapunzel digging through the WIPs and knew she was the quicker option, but Maleficent might come next. I haven't worked on her since last February, but even with two rows left, that's two HAED rows of full-on dithering...at least two or three months of work, depending on how full the final row is:

I really like the thought of cutting down my WIPs (or maybe starting some new ones...I'm not sure which).

Weekly Stitching

Snow and Charming are coming along nicely, despite the fact that I didn't really have a good stitch week. But still, if all goes according to plan and I do OK this week, I should have them finished by the end of this week. I left off here last week:

And, despite the pain that Flickr has now become since the change-over to their new management (but I have WAY too many photos in there to switch to anything else, so I'm kind of stuck), I FINALLY managed to find where the new ones I put this week ended up and here is where I stopped Sunday night:

I'm excited to finish it and scared at the same time. Plus, I think I might, if I finish early, go around the border a couple of times with the outside color, just to have a little extra "padding" for framing. I just wish I had another Once realistic project to go to next! I guess I could technically make one, but then there is the whole copyright issue and I'm not sure I want to tackle that. I have LOVED every second of this project and I am eternally grateful to the wonderful person who gifted it to me, but finishing it means I have to make some serious decisions about rotations and how to redo Hook, or even if I want to...still on the fence about that one. Logic (and you guys) tell me that it would be best to switch to white fabric, but then I think about the edges of the project and when to know what is the edge white and what is fill-in background white and that's a lot of thinking. My whole thing with cross stitching is that I don't want to think about what I'm actually physically doing, that's the time my mind goes "elsewhere". As it is now, just filling in the white means there wouldn't be any thinking involved, but my goodness, how boring it would be just stitching all that white! I guess I could always see if I could cut down the background a bit:

But it would be cutting it close down by his right arm area:

I swear Hook didn't look white at all, which is why I picked the fabric I did so it would make it easier to stitch the white on. I had such a hard time with Night Wish's moon on that first row because I was stitching white-on-white and I had to stitch a little moon and then switch to something else because I kept getting bored. This is SOOO much more white than that!

I guess I can only focus on finishing Snow and Charming now and THEN see where I stand. I'm still in such a massive Once Upon A Time mood, I'm not sure I can go into a normal rotation without going directly to Hook or another Once project in my stash.

But speaking of stash, I did actually buy a new chart this week. It's from UnconventionalX on Etsy, who I've followed for a long time, but never actually bought anything from. It's called "The Blue Marble is So Fragile" by Borda Danut Adrian and it's very moi!

There is so much detail in this picture, it's amazing! There are actually a few more of that artist's patterns in their shop, but none fit me as well (and I've got to stop buying every single chart by an artist just because I have one and I like style but maybe not necessarily the piece).

Oh, and I failed to mention it, but quite a while ago, I bought another chart from MandarinksDesigns, Rumplestiltskin's dagger. It's not the typical type of pattern I would buy because I HATE it when the outlines go over half the stitches, but I couldn't help it considering the pattern (and the fact that Once charts are EXTREMELY rare). They really have some great patterns, but it's that whole "outline over stitches" thing that gets me. Typically, I fix those as I stitch, but it's such a struggle because then you are creating half or quarter stitches, I just don't like to bother (thinking+stitching=annoying). Besides, I think HAED's have spoiled me to just full stitches and I can't seem to do anything else anymore. But anyhoo, here is the pattern and I love how Belle's rose comes out the top of it:

There are a lot of great artists in DeviantArt (if you can muddle through all the semi-porn or bad stuff) who have done some amazing Once artwork and, if I hadn't gotten such a dismissive response from the Hook artist about Charming, I probably would send a message to a few of them and ask them to license out their work to Tilton or HAED or someone because they would make excellent stitch projects, but now I'm too chicken. There is a great series of holding hand pics of the Once couples from Sarah Mac Illustration that would make great cross stitch projects...here's the Hook and Emma one from her RedBubble store and then another great one is Svenja Gosen, who sells her stuff on Etsy too as well as RedBubble...it's just easier to find their RedBubble stores than find them on Etsy or DeviantArt for some reason (these are watermarked, so I think it's OK to post them, but if not, please let me know...friggin copyright laws!). Then again, I guess I could just learn digital art and do one myself and then turn it into a cross stitch project, but that's SOOO much work! It's much easier for someone else to let their work be commissioned out, especially when it's probably better than anything I could ever do anyway!

Weekly Stitching (I just LOVE typing those words!)

I did quite a bit of stitching this week. This was a very heavy confetti row, but I FINALLY made it through! I left off here last week:

And finally finished the row late Friday night for a total of 215.49 hrs so far which, ironically enough, about 150 or more of those hours were done in the month of January:

And here they are in their completeness up through row 3:

Saturday and Sunday were dedicated to starting and working on the final row, which isn't a full one, and doesn't have a lot of confetti (except for the far right side), so it should (hopefully) go quickly. I did, late Saturday night, start seeing Hidden Mickey's in there, which turned to Hidden Minnie's, and even spotted a Hidden Daisy next to the Hidden Minnie, but you decide for yourself if I was just getting delirious or actually seeing them...Daisy is on the left facing Minnie (or Mickey with two Mickeys between his ears) on the right:

But anyhow, despite the delirium of Saturday, I didn't take my Ritalin Sunday (which I often don't do on the weekends), and had a hard time focusing on Sunday. I spent the entire day trying to force myself to stitch, and as the day turned to night and the night wore on, it got harder and harder to keep stitching. My contacts started getting glazed over, I couldn't focus, but I just kept repeating to myself that I quit school for this, so I wasn't stopping. When I finally did quit because I was just too tired, I FINALLY figured out why...it was 11:45 pm! I have an alarm that reminds me to take my meds at 9:30 (if I take them any later, it makes it EXTREMELY difficult to get up the next morning and they still don't even kick in until midnight or so) and, at some point, I must have turned off the alarm, but I surely don't remember doing that, let alone it going off in the first place. My contacts are gas perms and hard, so that explains the haze I was trying to see through. No frickin wonder I was tired! Looks like I got my stitching mojo back in spades when I stitch through alarms and hazy vision!

I ended Sunday night here:

I tried yet another way to break my Once habit, by listening to a Once podcast that was created as the show was running. It's funny and frustrating at the same time because they are sometimes so far off base with their theories, but again, they are watching technically in "real time". But even back then, I think I could figure things out better than these guys did! I do like how they take screen shots and over-analyze every single scene so they are pointing things out that even I've never noticed, but then again, they fail to notice what is right in front of them (like the fact that there is a Hidden Mickey in every single episode as well as other characters...I'm personally still trying to find all those Hidden Mickey's myself). I stopped listening on Saturday because they pissed me off too much by calling Graham "he who must not be named" because they don't like him (who hates Jamie Dornan?) and they hate Hook too. Granted, Hook started out bad, but they haven't ever mentioned the chemistry between Emma and Hook. Granted, as Hook would say, his intentions were less than noble, but still, sparks were flying left and right between those two and these podcast guys can't even see it. I also wonder who these podcast people are, because there are a lot of pop culture references that they are completely missing in the show (that their "live" callers and forum members point out for them but they still don't understand them) and they pull out a lot of Biblical references (which is so NOT a Once type thing, despite the overall positive notes of hope throughout the show), so I think it's probably good I don't continue on. So, in the end, all it did was push me back into watching Once, OCD unbroken. Oh well, maybe I'll find something else that will distract me. I still have the reaction videos on YouTube (although those only come out every couple of weeks). At least for now, watching Once Upon A Time over and over is my zen at the end of a rough day until another show comes along.