Cross Stitch In Progress

Welcome to my site! I use this blog to post my progress on the cross stitch and knitting projects that I am working on. You can find out more about me, check out more details about my projects, or check out a random post. You can also subscribe to my RSS Feed to receive updates as I post them. You can also contact me if you have any suggestions, questions, or random thoughts. Have a look around and feel free to come back often.

I have officially stopped following my rotation. Or it would probably be more accurate to say that my rotation has changed. I skipped Noah’s Ark and plan on skipping Our Family as well. I just can’t stand to even think of working on them at this time. Maybe I’ll feel differently the next time that they come around.

O Jerusalem can be a little daunting because there are huge patches of it that are basically the same color. I have to confess that I had a hard time starting work on it because it seemed a little boring. However, as areas started to fill up I was excited by how good they looked. I felt compelled to continue stitching so that I could see other parts fill in. There is still a long ways to go before this really starts to look like something, though. At the rate I am going I sometimes wonder if I will live to see it finished.

It feels good to be cross stitching again. It is also amazing to me how quickly ten hours of work can go by. It doesn’t look like I have really accomplished all that much in that amount of time. All that I have really done is complete a couple of rocks in the lower left hand corner.

Those rocks look good in real life, but they look much better in the photograph. I think that the camera blends the colors together a little more and makes the rocks more life-like. Now I can see the logic behind where there are light and dark colors. I can see the shadows cast by the setting sun. I can see the seams and cracks and uneven texture of the rocks. I like the result so much that I want to spend even more time on this piece so that I can see other features come to life.

In all honesty, I think that my patience for stitching with black is starting to run out (I have never seen a piece that uses as much black as this one does), but I am also very tempted to skip over the next piece in my rotation. The thought of working on Noah’s Ark is dispiriting. I don’t want to do any more over-one animals that take forever to stitch such a small area. I want to continue working on big landscape pictures. Maybe I’ll skip to O Jerusalem instead.

As I look back over my archives, I am embarrassed to realize that it has been over a year since I last posted anything about this project. The last few months have been filled with more knitting and crocheting than stitching. As a result my cross stitch projects have been neglected.

Part of the reason for this is probably that I have felt blocked with this piece (no pun intended). The carolers really caused me problems for some reason and the snowman is stitched with blending filament. I have come to dread blending filament. If I stitch with floss and filament together the filament always seems to work itself behind the floss so that it doesn’t really do anything. My solution to that problem is to stitch with floss and then stitch with blending filament over the top of the last leg of the cross stitches. This leaves me with a feeling that I am covering ground that has already been covered and I feel like I am not accomplishing anything.

I am glad that I finally sat down and finished these two blocks. Now I can say that I have stitched from A(ngel) to P(resents). I think that next time I will work on the header before I start working on any of the other letters.

Once again I have come to the end of my rotation and couldn’t resist starting another piece. This is Stroke of Midnight by Teresa Wentzler.  (I must be insane—I am now working on three Teresa Wentzler designs.)

There are so many different symbols for this chart that it takes forever just to find the correct color to use in the symbol list.  Also the number of blended threads is daunting.  The way that the colors in the stairs blend together to move from light to dark is truly amazing.  It is this aspect of her work that make me like Teresa Wentzler designs so much.

This turned out to be a pretty good stopping point because I am not quite sure which way I should work.  I could finish the pillar and urn and then start working on the plant.  However, the green of the plant promises to be a challenge because there are little green leaves everywhere with most of the colors being blended threads.  This work could turn out to be quite tedious.  On the other hand, I could also work toward’s Cinderella’s dress, which would get me working on the main subject of the piece.  It is a good thing that I have some time to decide which way I will go.

Now that I have stitched two palm trees in the last two projects I am ready to move on to something else. This is especially the case after I have finished this palm tree, which turned out to be pretty tedious to stitch. I certainly wouldn’t be very surprised if I found some missed stitches when I come back through stitching the background color.

Luckily, the the background colors are more systematic and stitch up relatively quickly, so when I was frustrated with the palm tree I could work one something a little more relaxing.

I am beginning to think that it won’t be too ling before I am actually working on the house, which is, of course, the real subject of the picture.

For some reason my camera didn’t do a very good job of photographing this piece. The house to the left of the palm tree is complete, but the stitches don’t show up very well.

I have enjoyed stitching the house and the palm tree and can’t wait to come back to work on it. A small amount of time seems to yield a large amount of stitched area, which makes it seem that it won’t take long before the piece is completed. It is gratifying to see the house take shape with so little effort.

After I had filled in the trellis and leaves running to the top center of the vignette, the next best step seemed to be to work on the border all the way down the left side. With the border completed, I could get a better feel for the size of the design.

It turns out that the design is huge. I am amazed at how long it took to stitch down to the bottom. Unfortunately, as I was filling in the trellis, I found that I had counted wrong in one place. This little mistake made it necessary to take out all of the stitches that I had put in.

The next time that I work on this piece, I think that I will finish the trellis stitches. With those in place it should be a lot harder to miscount as I replace the outer blue border.

I am dreading the time when I actually have to backstitch all of the vines between the leaves. However, that is something that won’t happen for quite some time.

It has been a while since I have posted any new pictures.

Part of the reason for this is that I haven’t really had anything to show. Summer activities have made knitting and cross stitching rare activities for me.

Another reason for this is the problem that I have had working on this piece. I have to confess that I only stitched it for three hours.All that is left to stitch are some fiddly butterflies, flowers, interlocking hearts, and the gold border. However, the thought of stitching another butterfly with blending filament covering the wings was just more than I could take. (The fact that it took three hours to stitch the small rose and butterfly body up by the words is a testament to the agony I felt.) So I decided to cheat on the rotation and hope that the next time it comes around I will be in a better mood to work on it.

At the time I didn’t want to publicly admit my failure. Even now I feel pangs of guilt for abandoning this project.

It is amazing to me how slowly this piece stitches. After ten hours of work, only a small section of dirt is completed.

I like the way that it looks, and I probably should. The whole bottom left quadrant of the picture is essentially the same color. I had better get used to brown because there will be times when that will be all I’ll be stitching.

Despite all of my complaining, it is encouraging to me to see a block of stitches running right up to the picture of Jesus. It won’t be long before I have an outline of him and then things will really start to take shape.

Part of the reason why I have been showing more knitting than cross stitch lately is that I was stuck on working on this piece. I have come to dread working on all of the over-one animals. It can be very discouraging to work for such a long time and have only a brown mass of stitches to show for it. It must be time to do some work on the ark vignette.

I didn’t think that I would actually finish the musk ox. There were so many stitches and I was so demoralized that I was tempted to just quit early. However, I finished all of the stitches and decided that I could at least start backstitching. When I realized that I was over ten hours, I had such a small part left to stitch that I just finished.

Note to self: It helps to be watching a movie when working on a section that is causing so many problems.