Pincushion Exchange

Where has August flown to? In the blink of an eye, it's already September.

First and foremost, I need to apologize to my fellow bloggers. I'm so behind in visiting your blogs that I have no idea how I'm gonna catch up. My Google Reader is exploding with 1000+ unread posts. I think I just might clear it and start over.

Let's see, what have I been up to? I was pretty much incapacitated by migraines near the end of July to the first half of August. For some reason, during that period, my migraines intensified from once or twice per month to once a week, lasting two to three days each time. It wasn't pleasant to say the least. All this while, doctors have only given me painkillers which didn't help much, if at all. Finally, I went to the hospital and was prescribed Metoprolol. The pain stopped and once again, I can function like a normal person again. Thank God!
As a result, I don't have much to show. First off, here's my TUSAL update. My ort jar is posed with the Coca-Cola Olympic glasses offered by Macdonald's. I managed to collect them all and meant to post this in August. That didn't happen. Sigh! Best laid plans and all :P

I did, however, participated in NNC's Pincushion Exchange. My partner was Bee Ee (no blog) and she sent me not one but three pincushions along with a cut of fabric. Lovely, aren't they?

For my part, I went on a Cathedral Window Pincushion making craze and ended up with a stack of four.

I think they're so pretty. Do you agree with me?

This is the one I picked to sent to Sally.

I sure hope she likes it. I gave one to my mum too ^.^

And guess what? For returning to visit my long neglected blog and sticking till the end of this post, I have two more to give away.

Just leave a comment letting me know you'd like to be included. That's all. Winners will be drawn on 15 September 2012.

Also, watch out for My Memories Suite giveaway next post. I've been given two free copies. One for me and the other for you :D Now if only I could find the time to play with it. It sure looks fun.

Happy Stitching!

Stella

Finally, my July WiPocalypse update. Might as well make it my IHSW update too. I know it's still the weekend but I can no longer wait to share...

Design: The Stargazer

Designer: Mirabilia

Fabric: 32 count Silkweaver Starquest Reflections Belfast linen

Fibers: DMC

Embelishment: Mill Hill Beads

Stella's done. My first Mirabilia. Woohoo! Took me a little over five months. I started her on Valentine's Day. Not too bad considering she wasn't the only project I was working on during that time frame.

Stunning, isn't she? Her skin is stitched one over one. Love the effect.

As usual, this will be a picture heavy post with close up photos so brace yourselves ^.^

Swirls of beads... My absolute favourite part. I made some changes to the huge star, switching the DMC to Kreinik. What can I say? I can't get enough glitter.

My conversion for the star if you're interested:

DMC 3747 - Kreinik #4 9294

DMC 3756 - Kreinik #4 1432

My least favourite part. This particular area gave me a lot of trouble along with a throbbing headache. Not fun but the result sure is though.

More beads. Seriously, this design is so heavily beaded I'll be hard pressed to take a photo without beads.

Which isn't surprising. I estimated over 2000 beads on this baby.

What is surprising is the fact that the swirls on her dress beaded up much quicker than I had anticipated.

Since it's a WiPocalypse and IHSW update post, you don't need to ask what's next. My July TUSAL update too :D I think that should be my trademark from now on.

This month, my ort jar is modeled by the world's cutest bear.

Anyone who knows me knows how much I love the Forever Friends bear. This particular one was a birthday gift from my best friend, Adeline, years ago. Note the cupcake he's holding :)

Friday the 13th, a supposedly unlucky day. That was the day I bought my first floor stand. Turned out to be one of the best decision I've ever made. It arrived five (yes, five! Miracle indeed) days later. May I point out that this was shipped from the UK?

This is the Stitchmaster Floorstand made by Daylight Company. Easy to assembled and perfectly well balanced. The Q-Snap you see on it measures 20" x 17".

Along with the floor stand, I also ordered the Stitchmaster Seat Stand. On this one, I've placed a 6" x 6" Q-Snaps but it can easily hold a 11" x 11" Q-Snaps or any scroll frames along that size.

Can you tell I'm in love? I ordered it from Sew and So. Altogether, it cost me £40.16 (US$62.74) excluding shipping. Shipping was £33.00 from UK to Malaysia. Very reasonable. Excellent customer service too, I must say. So if you, like me, have been looking for a stand that does not require any adjustment of knobs to flip your work or more importantly does not break the bank, I highly recommend these.
Happy Stitching!

The All-in-1 Post

Not a few posts ago, I said I gotta stop doing this. Now I'm doing it again. Since I'm late for everything, this is the mother of all all-in-1 posts.

First up, I spent IHSW two weekends ago and most of last week working on the borders for my first Mirabilia Round Robin. I'm no strangers to round robins but it has been years since I've joined one and certainly not a Mirabilia one before. Took me a while to settle on the Seasonal Queens.

Seeing as how borders are the bane of my existance, it shouldn't come as a surprise that my stitchy update ended up being so long overdued. Now for the fun part. I'll be stitching Spring Queen for my square.

At least I made progress on Monday's 6 Fat Man SAL...

...and ended with a mini happy dance.

Design: Snow House

Designer: Lizzie Kate

Fabric: 32 count Picture This Plus Tarnish Belfast linen

Fibers: Hand Dyed Fibers silk

For WiPocalypse, I also finished two more motifs in my Magic Garden Sampler.

Lynn, however, has nearly completed hers. Sigh! Anyone else wanna SAL this design with me? LOL!

Since I've been on a Mirabilia craze lately, here's my TUSAL orts jar with Seaside Kingdom behind it.

Yes, I managed to get my hands on this hard-to-find, out-of-print chart! All because of Carin.

I found a shop in Netherlands who still has it in stock but the owner refused to send it overseas. Carin agreed to order and ship it to me. I reimbursed her the cost of course but really, if not for her, I'd still be searching high and low for it.

So thank you, once again, Carin, from the deepest bottom of my heart.

I'm convinced that my fellow stitchers are the kindest and most giving souls out there. Here are two more examples why... I've been pretty lucky lately and won a couple of giveaways. Here are some lovely vintage patterns I received from Melissa.

And a lovely piece of Silkweaver fabric from Melanie.

Isn't the colour yummy? It's in my favourite count too!

Thank you, Melissa and Melanie.

I see I've just hit 300 Followers! I'm a little overwhelmed. 300! Never in my wildest dreams. I'm really not that interesting, you know.
In light of all the kindness I've received lately, it's my turn to have a giveaway so stay tuned. I'll set it up as soon as possible. Gotta take care of an exchange and finish my Spring Queen block first.

May you find joy in your stitches!

SALs Galore

I need to stop doing this, lumping all SALs into a single post. So how successful was your IHSW? Mine went pretty well.

As mentioned, Stella had all my attention. Here she is now with nearly all the stitching done.

Only one blue is left then it's beading time :)

As for my 6 Fat Man SAL, I didn't get too much done.

I actually stitched on Tuesday instead of Monday and was kinda too busy watching House MD's final episode for much progress. So sad that there will be no more House MD after this week :( I think it's one of the best television series ever! I love his wit, sarcasm and  humour.

I was reminded from my blog hopping that it's TUSAL time again. My ort jar this month is placed on my first and fairly new (bought in January 2012) laptop with the login screen of Diablo III in the background ^.^

What? I can't help it! Yes, I know, I'm such a geek :P

Happy Stitching!

Bunch of SALs

Last weekend was IHSW again. Like Joyce, I had the dilemma of being torn between stitching and Diablo III. Thanks to Blizzard, it's Diablo III Open Beta Weekend. Yes, of all the weekends they picked, it had to coincide with IHSW. What's a girl to do?
Fret not, I did manage to get some stitches in. Say hi to Stella again :)

I'm still having so much fun with her it's unbelivable.
Yesterday was once again our weekly 6 Fat Man SAL. I had more fun stitching letters this time. Don't you just love the "o" in snowmen?

Finished off two more boring borders. That's four down, two to go. Hopefully, after next Monday, it will be on to the fun part.
On a sadder note, I found out today that my favourite painter, Thomas Kinkade, has passed away on 6 April 2012. He was 54. Known as the "Painter of Light", I fell in love with his paintings the first time I laid eyes on them. My favourite is his Sweetheart Cottage II. All those hidden hearts throughout the painting. How could one not love that?
So as a tribute to him, I took this month's TUSAL pic with two of Kinkade's jigsaw puzzles that I own as backdrop.

On top of this, I also found out the previous day that Roger, the gentleman who created and manufactured the Stitchmate floor stand had passed away last Wednesday via Valerie's blog. More details here. I've always thought that someday, one day, I would own a StitchMate. His passing is a great loss to the stitching community.
Talk about a bummer way to start the week. May these two gentlemen who has brought great joy to many in their lifetime rest in peace.

IHSW & TUSAL

I fell sick couple of weekends ago with flu, cough and headache so even though I took Monday and Tuesday off last week, little stitching was done. In fact, I'm still coping with a right nasty cough :(

Last weekend was IHSW for March. I managed to put a few more stitches in Stargazer. Truth be told, I could hardly bear to put her down. She's so much fun to stitch. Here's how she looks now.

Finished all the ribbons on her dress. More progress would have been made had there been less need to keep changing floss colours. Looking forward to work on her dress now.

Once again, it's time for TUSAL. For once, I'm right on time.

In the background are my much neglected books in my TBR (to-be-read) pile. As you can see, I'm a huge J.D. Robb/Nora Roberts fan. I think Roarke of the in Death series is the most scrumptious male character ever created.

Anyway, I digress. Back to stitching related matters, I've aquired a new SAL partner for my Magic Garden Sampler. Woohoo! Gillie has offered to join me as she has this design in her WiP list too. Now I'm no longer stitching alone. Yays! Now to find time to get to it. I doubt Stella would be happy if I leave her now :P

Happy Stitching!

Meet Stella

"Who is Stella?" you ask. Well, dear readers, this is Stella... My new project.

I started The Stargazer by Mirabilia on Valentine's Day and have been stitching on her since, all through IHSW. She's stitched on Silkweaver's Starquest Reflections Belfast and is to date the design with the most bling that I've ever attempted. I must admit all those beads are making me a little nervous but I'll only worry about that when the time comes.

By the way, what is your usual stitching process for Mirabilias, Lavender & Lace, Passione Ricamo, etc. designs? Do you start at the top, bottom, left or right? Do you finish the head, the dress or perhaps even the background first? Do you stitch the skin as soon as you could or leave it for last? Do you stitch the skin as charted or do you prefer it over one? These questions popped into my head while working on Stargazer and I'd love to hear your answers.

As you can see, I started at the middle and headed straight for Stella's head/face immediately. I've stitched her skin over one. I just love the delicate effect of over one skin. With the exception of Garden Verses, I usually complete the face first as I like to see who I'm stitching and watch her grow. Besides, I dread stitching the fiddly skin and since the hair usually contains confetti stitches, I'd rather get those out of the way as soon as possible. The only reason I've not stitched the skin on Garden Verses is because it consists of a big area and I've yet to decide how I'm gonna go about it. That amount of one over one scares me. LOL!

Technically, The Stargazer is not on my WiPocalypse list but in my opinion, that's the beauty of WiPocalypse. I'm allowed to start anything I want because after all, the world might end soon and I ain't about to miss my chance to do so :P

Anyway, I've been seeing stitchers posting photos of their ort jars on their blogs which reminds me that it's once again time for TUSAL. Here's my ort jar:

It now contains plenty of clippings from Home of A Needleworker (Too)! and of course The Stargazer.

One last thing, I've removed Blogger's new, impossible-to-read word verification from my comment section.  I've been getting spam since removing it but I'd rather my visitors not have to go through that just to leave me a comment. Believe me, I know how frustrating and annoying it can be. Don't you just hate it when people try to fix something that isn't broken? Sigh!

Happy Stitching!

Unofficial IHSW Update

Chinese New Year falls on 23 January this year. I had returned to my hometown the previous Friday with my family to celebrate Chinese New Year with my relatives. Hence, I had thought I wouldn't be able to join in this month's IHSW so I didn't sign up for it.
Surprisingly however, I found myself stitching quite a bit this past weekend so here's my unofficial IHSW result:

This is such an enjoyable design to stitch. Makes me wonder why I hadn't started it ages ago. All that's left now is the construction of the house.
I had mixed up the TUSAL dates last post. WiPocalypse is on the FULL moon and TUSAL is on the NEW moon. Whoops! Thanks to Mouse and Dani for pointing that out to me.
Here's my TUSAL update again with more orts from Home of A Needleworker (Too)!

To all my friends who are celebrating Chinese New Year, Gong Xi Fa Chai and to everyone else, Happy Stitching!

New Year, New Starts

Happy New Year, dear readers. Yes, I'm late with my WiPocalypse update. Still, better late than never, right? I've had two new starts. I figured January should be a guilt-free month.

First, as planned, is Magic Garden Sampler by Shakespeare's Peddlar.

I'm stitching this with HDF on Lakeside Linens Navy Bean. I absolutely love how the silk glides through the fabric.

Next, I started Home of A Needleworker (Too)! by Little House Needleworks as well.

It's stitched on the same fabric as Magic Garden Sampler. I've also converted the colors to HDF. It's not an exact color conversion as I'm only eyeballing the floss and choosing what I deemed fit but I'm loving the results so far.

Last but not least, I've joined the TUSAL and this is my first update:

Have a great weekend, everyone and happy stitching!