An Inkcircles Day

I had an Inkcircles day today :)

While wearing the hand knitted socks that Tracy sent me a while ago, I was stitching Inkcircles Masquerade when the postie knocked on the door.

He brought me a parcel from Chele that was the Inkcircles Fireweed kit! Thank you sooo much Chele!

He also brought me a parcel from Tracy herself.  It included some beautiful earrings and note cards I bought from the Inkcircles etsy shop.  The earrings are sooo cute and adorable - they are my new favourite earrings that I will wear everywhere!  The note cards are digitally coloured pictures of Tracy's own stitching - very bold and colourful and perfect to send to stitchers ...

Included in this parcel were also some Inkcircles bookmarks that Tracy mentioned on Twitter a while ago, and ....

and ....

and ....

I have a sneak preview of a new Inkcircles chart being released sometime soon ...  Mum and I are doing floss tosses tonight for an alternate colourway .... so ....

Neener neener neener - I know something you don't know :D

What? I'm supposed to act like a grown-up?  Since when???

Mel's Sunday Update on Monday

Firefox has crashed taking a fully written blog draft with it twice.  If it crashes again, no more blog!

News from this week:

Mum has headed home today.  As per usual it feels all too soon, we both enjoy each others company and both enjoy being on holidays :)  However in amongst the burning issues of warcraft, soap making and whether to eat breakfast or brunch, we did manage to get some stitching time in.

Mystery Start 1 was correctly identified by Shawn and Kay as Bright Idea by Inkcircles. I'm amused that so many people guessed it was an Inkcircles chart straight off. Are Tracy's designs that unique or is she that known as my favourite designer? Or is it that she is also a favourite designer of those doing the guessing? I've included an updated pic of the project here.  This project will now be set aside until the remaining threads arrive from Carrie.  Unfortunately Carrie's family all have the lurgy, so she has my deepest sympathies!

Mystery Start 2 was, surprisingly, not identified. Hint: It is not a Dinky Dyes design, but it is from another of my favourite designers ...  I did put a few stitches into this one, but not enough to help with identification. Update pic here.

I also stitched the first part of Abi Gurden's SAL over on the Stitch Specialists group. Part one was cross stitching on evenweave/linen.  I have already stitched on these fabrics a fair amount, so this was a quick stitch for me.  Update pic here.  Can't wait for the next part in a fortnight's time.

Also this weekend I found floss for rosanne and a chart for Julie, so my stitcher's karma has received a boost :)

However, like all good week's there was one down patch this morning.  While hunting for the threads & chart I stumbled over a project I was working on years ago as part of my train commute.  It's a small project, so I figured I could get some more stitches into it before spending the rest of the week on Rosanne's RR piece.

I really really really hate it when I get an attack of the frogs and put the piece away without unpicking it.  {grrrrr}  Well I've found the mistake now, and un-stitched all I've done this morning,  I'll fix the mistake before putting it away this time!

Finally this week's photo is of my two cats.  They don't get along so pictures like this are rare.  I call this one "Trubs is too hot & tired to growl at Abby for the temerity of eating at her own food dish"

WIP - Bright Idea

9 January 2011

OK joining in the fun. Here's a new start. I'm using the recommended floss, but the fabric is a variation ( similar but different shade).

Everyone guessed this was an Inkcircles chart.
Shawn and Kay guessed it was Bright Idea by Inkcircles.

Stitching update

How many months has it been this time :)

Back in July-August sometime I finished a JAR designs Christmas project as a model stitch for Colours Down Under. It was a great little project - stitched up in under a week (it took me nearly three weeks to get it beaded though!)  Unfortunately I didn't realise until recently that the batteries in my camera were low when I took photos of this one - so I'll put up a better picture when the I next see the bell pull in Colours Down Under shop.

After that, I stitched the little Inkcircles Halloween design from the 2010 JCS Halloween issue. I stitched it on a piece of Colours Down Under handyed 32ct jobelan. I have enough of the same piece to do up Inkcircles Masquerade when that chart comes in.  I originally thought that the Halloween freebie was a companion piece from Masquerade, but now I realise its actually a small piece of the whole design - oh well. 

Edit: This was completely wrong!  I received a copy of the chart as a surprise in the mail today - thank you so much Tracy!!!  And now that I can see it closely - I see there are differences, the Halloween small is indeed a complementary chart!

I stitched my version with Glow-in-the-Dark thread for the moon, but my little camera isn't good enough to photograph the luminescence, so you'll have to take my word for it that the moon looks awesome in the dark - especially as the branches look like assisi work :)

Then as a break, I started some canvas work needlepoint. Big chunky 18ct plastic canvas!  I've stitched up four of the Needle Delights Colour Delights series so far.

Tangerine was the first I stitched. I adored the different threads and the different types of stitches used!  

Cocoa took two weeks to stitch - my doctor had me on a completely caffeine-free diet for two weeks. That included no chocolate, so I stitched Cocoa instead. 

Pumpkin was so much fun - I loved that it started in the corner and radiated outwards. This was the first one that i didn't need to double check I had it the right way up.

Bubblegum (gasp its pink!) I survived :)

I've now stated Indigo. Its another concentric one like Tangerine.  I'm halfway around it and discovered that I've already turned it 90 degrees but meh - no-one will know I hope.

Each of these have had small issues, one chart didn't specify which thread to use in one of the rows, another kit had a couple of threads left out. Indigo has a Watercolour and a Waterlilies the same colour and I used the wrong one, so had to frog and use the other.  But these are small inconveniences. 

All in all - I'm having a lot of fun with these and I think I will do a heap more and eventually finish them into a wall hanging. I have a lot of different black fabric (black wool, black cotton damask etc) from my sewing days, so I thought I would use that to make the wall hanging from - each of these colours (even the indigo) will stand out on the black.

Stitching Update: May - July 2010

Due to many factors mostly stemming from my migraine still being with me (started late March and here still here) I have been very quiet on my blogs and with my stitching.

The treatment for my migraine revolves around short-term medication leading to regular sleep patterns and lifestyle changes (both work and at home). As part of this, I'm getting back into my stitching and  reconnecting with the world again.  Anyway enough whinging, onto the update:

Stitching update!



In June I finished off poor Jasper in Bloom.  Jasper was a project I cross-stitched in May-July 2008 as one of my train commuter projects.  Unfortunately the back stitching was getting me down so I put him away.  I found him last month while looking for a different project, and decided to "be good" and just struggle through the back stitching.  The struggle turned out to be a mere two nights in front of the TV, and he was done.

A lesson there in building molehills into mountains and the fear is worse than the event and a few other platitudes.


I then, flushed with this success, went back to New York and finished it off completely.  The silver scroll-work was a pain to do on Aida but well it always is :)  This Vervaco kit, unlike Moscow, contained enough fibres to complete the whole project.  I've included a photo of the finish here so you can see that Vervaco uses generous fabric sizes in their kits.  If only they included evenweave or linen as an option...

In late June-early July my mum visited for a fortnight. Mum brought over all of her finishes so we took them down for a Show and Tell visit to Colours Down Under :)

While mum was here, I mentioned that I had a "Fall limited edition" range of Carrie's Threads that was released in a collaboration pack a couple of years earlier.  I hadn't given away any of the threads because they all blended well together but I hadn't found a chart that I could use them on.  Coincidentally, the next day Tracy released a new free pattern, Celtic Spiral, to those on the Inkcircles email list.  Mum and I pulled out those threads and some fabric and started stitching!

Unfortunately for the stitching, I introduced mum to World of Warcraft that night and no further stitching was done for the rest of the visit.  The day she flew home I sat and stitched the rest of this piece, all except for the last 10 stitches.  You see mum and I both chose one colour the same in our palettes and I gave the rest of the skein to mum to take home with her.  I was a) quite sure I had enough and b) given our history mum always finishes our collaborated projects months ahead of me. In this instance, I was wrong on both counts.

Mum has popped a length of the thread in the mail and when it finally arrives I will finish off this poor thing.  Or not.  I just found out that the direction of the project should have been reversed for the Southern hemisphere.  {insert expletive here}.

After that I became all enthusiastic about our private round robin group starting up again, so I pulled out the Historical Dress Sampler that went around last year. I had great plans to stitch up the rest of the grey border pieces to make life easier for placement for the others. In the next four weeks I stitched precisely 10 stitches on it.  I gave up and just sent it on as is.  I feel so ashamed that I just couldn't motivate myself enough enough to stitch on it.

After it went, I started a new project, a piece for a friend's birthday in late August.  So this is my focus piece for the next few weeks.  I'll put up a separate blog with pictures and progress on this project on the weekend.  I was going great guns until I found one row of the wording was out of alignment, so I've unpicked it.  Hopefully I can have that area restitched before Sunday.  I will once again be using the Sunday updates to help keep up my motivation.

And that's it - all my stitching over the past two months :)

Aventail by Inkcircles

While visiting Colours Down Under a couple of weeks ago, Janine asked me if I would be interested in stitching up a small model stitch for her.

She gave me a copy of the Aventail pattern, some 28ct Natural Lugana and a skein of Dinky Dyes floss Freo.

The original chart called for 40ct fabric which I wasn't up to stitching on :) but we did use Freo which was the recommended floss.

This chart is designed as a monochrome using a multicoloured floss.  This is exactly how I stitched it for the shop.  However, after finishing it, I discovered I had enough fabric and almost enough floss left over to stitch it again, using the same materials.  I thought I'd have a play.

My version is stitched using the exact same materials. However this time I deliberately started and stopped the stitches to concentrate colours in blocks to alter the look of the design.

What do you think?