JamesHimsworth

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.

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.

I have decided that I prefer working from the bottom left corner. When I work from the top corner as I have in this piece, I get stuck at a certain point and can’t figure out how to stitch below it. It is as if I need a “foundation” on which to build the next set of stitches.

I decided to quickly work down to the corner here so that I could feel better about the way that this piece is going. This meant working with a lot of brown colors, which are not my favorite. However, I really like the result so far. This picture doesn’t do justice to the blended threads that give the base of the cliff a lot of depth. I can’t wait to see what things look like when the rocks and water really start to take shape.

I have never seen so many black trees. I like how finishing the trees and the outlines of the lighthouse are starting to bring this piece together. I am excited to see how things will shape up the next time I get the opportunity to work on this piece.

I am amazed by how much I have actually stitched this time. There have been times when I have spent hours and have been unable to see much of a difference. This time around is different. I think that I have learned something about myself. I work better if I stay in the same area and finish big blocks of the same color rather than flitting around from one place to another. That way I don’t waste time trying to decide what to work on next. I don’t get quite as demoralized thinking about everything that still needs to be stitched. I also see one section of the picture grow and can get more encouragement from the obvious progress.

Several years ago I spent three weeks in Maine on business. On the weekends I went sightseeing. This piece serves as a reminder of that trip. I like how it’s turning out. However, this piece has taught me that half stitches have the potential of being more difficult to do than full cross stitches.