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!