tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-78696519889015055552024-03-13T16:16:20.140-05:00Brownie's ChairAlyssa Fhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17493806120430252745noreply@blogger.comBlogger200125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7869651988901505555.post-19797165961242997322019-07-05T11:47:00.002-05:002019-07-05T11:47:54.056-05:00The Return of Free Pattern Fridays!My poor little neglected blog. Long story short, although my stitching has continued (mostly) for the past couple years, I've not been as good posting progress. Although I recently started an Instagram account, which I'm hoping my get me to share that stuff more often.<br />
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Anyway, I was thinking it was high time to bring back Free Pattern Fridays. I probably won't be posting every Friday, but I think it's a worthy goal to try and tackle at least some Fridays. :)<br />
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So for today's pattern I have this adorable American Flag sampler from Jean Farish Needleworks. I know the 4th of July was yesterday, but I love patriotic patterns all year round. And you can always get a head start on next year after all.<br />
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You can download this cute free cross stitch pattern in PDF format <a href="http://www.jeanfarishneedleworks.com/wordpress/freebie-americana-sampler-flag/" target="_blank">from Jean Farish's blog</a>. <br />
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Happy stitching!<br />
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<i>Patterns are free and available at the time of posting. Unfortunately sometimes post are removed or moved, which may make the links in this post no longer viable. In picking and posting my free cross stitch pattern posts, I make every effort to ensure the designs I share are legitimately free charts. Please let me know if you see a problem with something I've posted so I can update it. Thank you!</i>Alyssa Fhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17493806120430252745noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7869651988901505555.post-73557431206539482412018-09-06T15:28:00.002-05:002018-09-06T15:28:58.188-05:00My Stitching ProdigiesHello from the other side of a move. <br />
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Well, sort of. We're in temporary digs while we look for something more permanent. Which means most of my stuff is staying packed for now. Including most of my stitchy stuff. It's a bit of a Catch 22, because having to repack everything when it comes time to move again would be really stressful, but without my stitchy stuff I'm having trouble finding a stress-releasing activity...<br />
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Anyway!<br />
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My brother and sister-in-law stopped through town to help us move for a few weeks and once we had a bit of free time he was able to update me on his stitching progress:<br />
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Not bad for a beginner! Excuse the terrible quality of the photo, I took this with my phone and it's not a good picture even once it's touched up a bit. <br />
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And although my sister-in-law already knew the cross stitch basics, I did get her started on a Soda Stitch pattern, which gave me the opportunity to walk her through how to do backstitch:<br />
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I just love my little stitching prodigies. :)<br />
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<img align="right" alt="post signature" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fRp8DTH1C60/VKR1_quUNwI/AAAAAAAAIcE/my_KEskt1oc/s1600/temp.png" />Alyssa Fhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17493806120430252745noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7869651988901505555.post-18680632559636530222018-07-11T14:45:00.000-05:002018-07-11T14:45:25.100-05:00Did you know cross stitch runs in families?I suppose an update is long past due.<br />
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I actually don't have any of my own work to share today (I'm working on a gift, so it's a secret!), but I do have something to share:<br />
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Ta-da!</div>
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But this isn't my stitching, it's my brother's. <br />
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My brother broke his ankle in early May, which followed with emergency surgery and several weeks of complete bed rest. One day when I was chatting with him on Facebook Messenger to see how he was doing (he was pretty bored) we had a conversation that went something like this:<br />
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Me: You need a project to help with the boredom. You should take up cross stitch. It's good therapy.
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Him: Meh.<br />
Me: No really. I even have a pattern you'd like. Want me to show you?<br />
Him: Sure. (you can tell he's thinking "yeah, right")<br />
*I show him a picture of the pattern*<br />
Him: Actually that's pretty cool.<br />
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Fast forward one day:<br />
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Him: So are you going to send me the stuff to do this thing or what? Cuz I want to get started.
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Luckily I had already kitted up this particular pattern with the inention of starting it myself one day, so I pulled it out and was all ready to send it on the way to him when he informed me in no uncertain terms that he also wanted to be fully kitted out with a needle minder, qsnap, and grime guard.<br />
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Well, how can a sister say no to that?<br />
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Fast forward to a month later, and now I'm getting phone calls asking what happens when you miss a stitch, how to count not from the center, wanting to just have a day off work so he can work on his WIP, etc. etc. Welcome another stitcher to the family. :) I think I may have gotten him hooked. <br />
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<img align="right" alt="post signature" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fRp8DTH1C60/VKR1_quUNwI/AAAAAAAAIcE/my_KEskt1oc/s1600/temp.png" />Alyssa Fhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17493806120430252745noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7869651988901505555.post-15121602667437685102017-03-27T11:06:00.005-05:002017-03-27T11:06:51.398-05:00A Basket of BunniesHey everyone,<br />
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I've been gone for quite awhile, and I know that I said in my last post I would try to update more often. December got really crazy with us having my soon to be sister-in-law come visit for Christmas, and I got sick with a cold at Christmas and then with flu and another cold in January, and things just got away from me. <br />
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The truth is, I've kind of been intimated by my own blogging goals, which made it even easier to just keep putting the updates off. Despite not blogging, I have been stitching and keeping photo progress too, I just have been too intimated to come back and post here. <br />
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For the Crazy January challenge this year, I did 31 starts of those little free kits that come with the cross stitch magazines. I have a lot hanging around and I figured it was time for me to do something about them. But when I thought about coming on here to post my progress, it just seemed like more of a chore than anything else. And then more and more progress has happened since then, and it only complicated things further. <br />
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So I've decided, it's time for a fresh start. I'm not going to worry so much about showing each and every one of my past progress photos, but instead focus on sharing more current stitching (that frankly I'm more excited about. The CJC projects I picked felt more tedious than anything else by the end of January). <br />
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The World of Charity Stitch group I'm a part of on Facebook recently did a Bunny themed challenge. And looking through my patterns apparently the only thing I have more of than bunny charts is cat charts. So I started 4 different squares (and planned to do many more! But ran out of time...). So my recent stitching is full of bunnies. <br />
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Here's the beginning of Woodland Bunny by Lucie Heaton:<br />
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I literally started this stitching and got this far while having a 100+ degree fever as a result of the flu! Next is a cute little springtime themed bunny from Durene Jones:<br />
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The bonus thing is that this bunny also has several daffodils in it, which are one of my favorite flowers. Next up is a Winter Bunny chart by Ursula Michael:<br />
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The other two bunnies were very stylized/cartoony, so I felt like this realistic bunny was a nice change. <br />
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And last up because I was sick of brown and white, I found a blue bunny from an old Carolyn Shores Wright leaflet called Snugglebunnies:<br />
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So that's mostly what I've been working on recently. I'll try to do better about posting pictures of my progress. I did also make some progress on two other things, but since they are presents I better wait to show pictures until after they have been gifted. <br />
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Happy stitching everyone!<br />
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<img align="right" alt="post signature" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fRp8DTH1C60/VKR1_quUNwI/AAAAAAAAIcE/my_KEskt1oc/s1600/temp.png" />Alyssa Fhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17493806120430252745noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7869651988901505555.post-26548001736999507612016-11-15T09:00:00.000-06:002016-11-15T09:00:07.718-06:00Long Overdue Update (Picture Heavy)Well, my last post here was apparently 3 months ago to the day. Yikes. I knew it had been a long time but hadn't realized it had been that long. I've still been stitching over the last few months, but I kind of fell off the bandwagon with my Olympic stitching in my last update, so I just hadn't been coming back on the computer to actually post an update. So here's a rundown of what I've been working on in the meantime...<br />
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First off, I did finish the Believe part of Lizzie Kate's Living with Charm series from the LK Round Robin I was in. Here's how that one looked when it was finished:<br />
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Next up was the last round for the Lizzie Kate RR before getting my own project back. I stitched the bottom of this pattern from the 3 Little Words series:<br />
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I don't know what kind of evenweave this project had, but it was a joy to stitch on. So thick and creamy, if you can describe fabric that way. My qsnap loved it too. <br />
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So after I sent this one on I got my project back. Unfortunately my original project got lost somewhere in Canadian customs, by my fellow RR stitchers pitched together to get replacement fabric and threads. It was a tiny bit disappointing getting it back, just because although the project hadn't been replaced, I couldn't help thinking it wasn't actually <i>my</i> project. It still has several sections to complete before it's done, but I had to put it away for a bit because it just makes me a little sad to look at right now. <br />
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I also got some stitching done on my Etsy Round Robin projects. The first one after the darling Disney project I showed last time was a block from the Spooky Halloween Sampler by Frosted Pumpkin:<br />
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I had actually stitched one block of this already in the Frosted Pumpkin RR I did last year, so it was nice to do a different part of it this time. I did L is for Lollipop this time. <br />
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The next round in the Etsy RR I've actually lost photos of that project somewhere, so I don't have anything to show you. It was a part of a subversive cross stitch called Welcome to My Hood, I think by Granny Panties? It honestly wasn't my favorite thing to work on, so I'm actually not too torn up about losing the pictures, haha. <br />
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The next round project was another Halloween piece, this one is by Satsuma Street. <br />
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I did the two E blocks and the candy corn. I have to say I've loved the couple of Satsuma Street patterns I've worked on, although this one gave me a bunch of trouble. I had to frog and restitch the border twice, and the big E on the bottom once. My scissors definitely got a workout on this one. <br />
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That brings me up to my current project for the Etsy RR. This is my progress so far on Sewing Room by Soda Stitch:<br />
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I have to say I've admired Soda Stitch's patterns for a long time and I even have a couple in my stash (2 I think?) but I have never actually done one yet. I am loving this one so far though. I can tell this is a project where the back stitch will really make a difference though. <br />
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In addition to my round robin stitching, I have also stitched quite a bit more on Welcome Home than you last saw it:<br />
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Pretty much almost done except the roof and backstitch. I've put it away for now though because I'm hitting Christmas present panic mode and need to focus on those projects over the next couple weeks.<br />
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I also started on a project that I am calling Summer Bouquet, from a Lucie Heaton booklet that came with one of the UK cross stitch magazines. I got pretty far on it just a couple colors left to fill in:<br />
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Unfortunately I had a major accident and spilled applesauce all over this project. Again, had to put it away for awhile because I can't look at it after that. I'm pretty sure it will be okay because I just used DMC threads, but I haven't tried to deep clean it yet. <br />
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So that's what's been going on around here stitching-wise. Hopefully it won't be so long before my next update!<br />
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<img align="right" alt="post signature" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fRp8DTH1C60/VKR1_quUNwI/AAAAAAAAIcE/my_KEskt1oc/s1600/temp.png" />Alyssa Fhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17493806120430252745noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7869651988901505555.post-65952853572402190102016-08-15T16:55:00.003-05:002016-08-15T16:55:28.784-05:00Olympic Stitching Part 2Part 2 of my Olympic Stitching hasn't gone quite as well as part 1, but here is what I managed to do. <a href="http://brownieschair.blogspot.com/2016/08/olympic-stitching-part-1.html" target="_blank">You can see my progress of Part 1 here</a>. <br />
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<u>Day Six</u><br />
Stitchlympics: New Start Marathon<br />
Summer Olympic Challenge: A piece with specialty stitches<br />
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I had planned and planned and planned for the new start marathon event of Stitchlympics, but I didn't realize that it was on a weekday instead of a weekend. Shucks. Going to work really puts a dent in my stitching time, LOL. In order to count as a new start, you had to put in at least 50 stitches. I only managed two projects in the time I had after work. The start of a Margaret Sherry Christmas card:<br />
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And the beginning of my next Lizzie Kate Round Robin piece (Believe from Living with Charm series):<br />
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I also put a few stitches into a 3rd project, but didn't quite manage 50 stitches before I crashed and had to go to bed. This was also what I was going to count as my specialty stitches (the piece had Smyrna crosses), but since I didn't get that far, I got a nil on the Maynia challenge. Forgot to take a picture of what I did manage to do, so I'll have to share that one later. <br />
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<u>Day Seven</u><br />
Stitchlympics: Specialty stitches<br />
Summer Olympic Challenge: A piece with green in it<br />
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Didn't do any stitching this day. :(<br />
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<u>Day Eight</u><br />
Stitchlympics: Wind bobbins for 10 minutes<br />
Summer Olympic Challenge: Triathlon, stitch on 3 pieces<br />
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I don't usually use bobbins to store my floss at the moment, so I was out for this challenge. And this day was also a non-stitching day (had a date instead). <br />
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<u>Day Nine</u><br />
Stitchlympics: Go For Gold: Stitch with something sparkly <br />
Summer Olympic Challenge: A piece with red in it<br />
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This was Saturday, so I finally got some progress to report! For the sparkle challenge, I pulled out the materials to start Brooke's Books Annie the Autumn Witch, and started on her hat brim because it's all Kreinik #8 braid. It was my first time working with a Kreinik braid and it went much easier than I thought it would! I managed to get the whole hat brim done:<br />
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I wish you could see it in person, the color is actually a combo of orange, purple, and black that's so nice and Halloween-y and it doesn't come out in the picture at all. <br />
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I also started a ladybug design that is a Durene Jones freebie called Love Bug for my red piece. Don't know what I'll do with this when it's finished yet. <br />
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The red was the only color I could find in my stash on short notice (the rest are likely all kitted up with something else, so I just did a good chunk of the red outline around the ladybug's spots).<br />
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<u>Day Ten</u><br />
Stitchlympics: Stitch with beads<br />
Summer Olympic Challenge: A piece with animals in it (especially horses if possible)<br />
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I had planned on pulling out a Mill Hill project for beading day, but by the time it actually rolled around I didn't have any that were ready for beads yet. So I decided to focus on my Lizzie Kate project instead while watching a movie:<br />
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After the movie was over, I didn't really feel like switching projects, so I compromised on the animal piece by stitching while watching The Incredible Dr. Pol, which at least is a show full of animals. Got almost done with the word "believe" before I stopped for the night. <br />
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So that brings me up to tonight. We have company coming off so I'm fairly certain I won't be meeting tonight's challenges. But we'll have to see. <br />
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How is everyone else's stitching go?<br />
<img align="right" alt="post signature" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fRp8DTH1C60/VKR1_quUNwI/AAAAAAAAIcE/my_KEskt1oc/s1600/temp.png" />Alyssa Fhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17493806120430252745noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7869651988901505555.post-83033795539322181662016-08-10T08:40:00.001-05:002016-08-10T08:40:22.380-05:00Olympic Stitching Part 1Hello readers! <br />
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We're several days into the Olympics, so I've been working hard on my<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.85px; line-height: 20.79px;"> </span><a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/992861674082345/" style="background-color: white; color: #179911; font-family: Cambria; font-size: 14.85px; line-height: 20.79px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Stitchlympics</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.85px; line-height: 20.79px;"> and </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 14.85px; line-height: 20.79px;"> </span><a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/1677381845863273/" style="background-color: white; color: #179911; font-family: Cambria; font-size: 14.85px; line-height: 20.79px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Summer Olympic Challenge</a> pieces. <br />
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Apologies in advance for some of the photos. For some reason my phone has been taking really bad pictures lately. <br />
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Day 1 was the Opening Ceremonies. The Stitchlympics challenge was to count your stitches while watching the opening ceremonies (or equivalent time). I happened to DVR the ceremonies (yay for fast forwarding through commercials and the Parade of Nations!) so we actually watched a couple finals from American Ninja Warrior while I stitched on my Disney piece for the Round Robin (BTW, Linda I know you asked for the name of the pattern/designer, I'm trying to find out for you!). I was able to stitch 213 stitches and finish off Aladdin's hair:<br />
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The Stitch Maynia Summer Olympic Challenge was to stitch on something blue (for the blue in the Olympic Rings). Not a lot of blue available in my Disney project, so after finishing Aladdin's hair I also started a new project I'm calling Welcome Home. That's where the rest of my 200+stitches came from. This will be a square for World of Charity Stitching:<br />
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Not much to look at yet, just some blue highlights. With only two colors and very minimal backstitch, it should stitch up pretty quick though. <br />
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Day 2 of Stitchlympics was a 15 minute stitching "sprint" to see how much you could stitch in 15 minutes. To maximize my chances I decided I should stitch on a single color block, so I chose to start the orange of Lady's face from the Disney project:<br />
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51 stitches after 15 minutes. Not bad. :) The Stitch Maynia challenge for Day 2 was to stitch on something with an international theme. I only had about 15 minutes to stitch on Saturday because we had company over so I decided to fudge and also count the Disney project for that one as well. Hey, the characters are from international locations, right? <br />
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Day 3 of Stitchlympics was a 3 hour stitching marathon. I pulled out the Disney project again and finished up Lady and started on Ariel's hair:<br />
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There's a lot of hair! The other challenge for this day was to stitch on something with yellow (again for olympic rings). Sadly I failed at this one. I just didn't feel like pulling out any other projects because I wanted to focus on the Disney piece. Oh well, I did stitch orange on Lady; that's in the yellow family, right? <br />
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Day 4 of Stitchlympics was another "sprint" stitch, this time a 30 minute sprint "relay". I managed 101 stitches on Ariel and almost finished her in my 30 minutes:<br />
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The Maynia challenge for Day 4 was to stitch something with water in it, so I stretched a bit again and figured my Ariel mermaid counted for a water challenge. So after the 30 minutes was up for Stitchlympics I finished up the last little bits of Ariel and completed her:<br />
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Since I was so close to finishing my part of this piece completely, I decided to spend a few extra minutes for the single stitches I'd been kind of leaving until the last minute (eyebrows, cheeks, etc). Would you believe it took about 30 minutes to put in about 20 stitches? Gah, I hate changing colors. But it made a difference. Here's what my part looked like when all finished:<br />
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Day 5 was yesterday which was left handed stitching for Stitchlympics and a piece with black in it for Stitch Maynia. Sadly I had a flare up of pain in my left elbow which made stitching difficult, so I don't have any progress to report for that. So my brother and I and a friend went to see Suicide Squad instead. :) But it's feeling a bit better today, so I'm hopefully I'll have something to share for Day 6. <br />
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Here's wishing you all lots of stitchy progress! I plan on making much more as I keep watching over the next couple weeks.<br />
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<img align="right" alt="post signature" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fRp8DTH1C60/VKR1_quUNwI/AAAAAAAAIcE/my_KEskt1oc/s1600/temp.png" />Alyssa Fhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17493806120430252745noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7869651988901505555.post-83184784334134620962016-08-04T11:04:00.003-05:002016-08-04T11:05:07.014-05:00Stitchy Progress and New Stitching ChallengeWell, we made it through Mom's knee surgery and she came through okay, so hopefully things will be settling down soon. In the meantime, I made progress on the next Lizzie Kate Round Robin piece. This was the letters S and T from the ABCs of Aging Artfully:<br />
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I had to break it up into two pictures since the S was at the end of one line and the T on the beginning of another. Actually, I was scheduled to stitch a little more than just these two letters, but since last month's Etsy RR piece (the sugar skull) took so much time, I ran out of time to finish my section of these completely. Oh well!<br />
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My next up piece was the second round of the Etsy rotation, and I have to say this is a project I love. It's Disney, so what can I say? I've done Chicken Little, most of Aladdin (he's missing his hair), and started on Lady from Lady and the Tramp so far:<br />
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This is the piece that kept me from going crazy while waiting out the surgery in the hospital. Just need to finish up those three then stitch Ariel and it will be onto a new home. I'm not sure I like the red color of Lady's ears. I always thought of them as more of a reddish brown, but in real life they really are like a dark red. Other than that, this has been super fun to work on. Funny story, I almost picked this same pattern as my Etsy piece for this round robin, so there's a good chance I will cave and purchase it later and you will see it again sometime. <br />
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So as you can see, most of my stitching so far this year has been round robin stuff. I haven't really done much personal stitching since January. Frankly, I've lost my stitchy bug a bit, and the only thing that's keeping me going some months is that the RR pieces are mandatory stitching (for lack of a better word). Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy doing (most of) them, but the motivation comes more from a sense of obligation than anything else. I find I love planning and picking projects, but I don't have a lot of finishes lately. I have a bad case of start-itis for sure. <br />
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So I decided a stitching challenge might be what I need to get me out of the slump. And being the crazy person that I am, I found two. As you probably know, tomorrow is the start of the Summer 2016 Olympic Games in Rio. The Olympics are one of the few sports I actually enjoy watching, so I look forward to them every couple years. So when I found two Olympic challenges on Facebook, I knew it would be perfect. <br />
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The first is <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/992861674082345/" target="_blank">Stitchlympics</a> hosted by the Cross Stitch It's Fun! Facebook group, and the second is the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/1677381845863273/" target="_blank">Summer Olympic Challenge</a> hosted by the Stitch Maynia Facebook group. Both groups have an individual stitching challenge for each day of the competition. I'm going to try and combine daily challenges wherever possible. Stitchlympics is a team competition, so hopefully I will do well and help bring my team to victory!<br />
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So along with wanting to stitch along with the challenges I'm going to try and keep up my blogging progress every few days as this goes along. Wish me luck! Tomorrow (the opening ceremonies) the challenge is to stitch for at least two hours, and for Stitch Maynia, to stitch on something blue. I think I can come up with something that meets both of those. <br />
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<img align="right" alt="post signature" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fRp8DTH1C60/VKR1_quUNwI/AAAAAAAAIcE/my_KEskt1oc/s1600/temp.png" />Alyssa Fhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17493806120430252745noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7869651988901505555.post-58207785881594285262016-07-14T12:06:00.000-05:002016-07-14T12:06:23.407-05:00Here's what I've been doing latelyWell, I suppose I am long overdue for an update. Work has continued to be crazy and I've been dealing with some health problems in the family, so although I still have been stitching, it has slowed down a bit. But here's what I've been working on. <br />
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First of all, lots of Round Robin stitching. I finished up the last project in my sampler round robin, which was a couple bands from Just Nan's Queen of the Needle design:<br />
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I feel really blessed that I didn't get a part with lots of specialty stitches, because they really intimidate me. As it was, this was my first time doing eyelets (the yellow center of the purple flowers) and I think they turned out okay. <br />
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I also finished up another part in the Lizzie Kate Round robin. This was the Give Santa Cookies part of the Christmas Rules series:<br />
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I just love these patterns, I can't wait to stitch them myself (when I have a chance to pull them out of my stash cupboard). I thought pink was an odd choice of color for the cookies though. (shrug)<br />
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I also spent quite a bit of the last month working on my first project for the Etsy Round robin I joined. This one was half of a purple sugar skull:<br />
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I have to say, this pattern was one of the reasons I am distrustful of people selling patterns on Etsy. Pretty much it looked like the graphic was just fed into a cross stitch conversion program. It really could have used quite a bit of cleaning up (in my opinion) to remove some of the confetti and make the design much more symmetrical. I was happy when this one was over. It pretty much drove me crazy. <br />
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In addition to the round robin pieces, I have made a bit of progress on a few other things. Best Friends Share has progressed from a random orange blob to two kitties and the start of a basket:<br />
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And more purple has been filled in for Singing Owl. This pattern has so much fill in!<br />
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But at least the stomach is done now. I had to put this one down for awhile and take a break though.<br />
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Next up, I'm working on the next Lizzie Kate RR piece and the next Etsy RR piece. Also, I really, really need to get started on my planned Christmas gifts for this year if I have any hope of finishing them by the end of the year!<br />
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<img align="right" alt="post signature" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fRp8DTH1C60/VKR1_quUNwI/AAAAAAAAIcE/my_KEskt1oc/s1600/temp.png" />Alyssa Fhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17493806120430252745noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7869651988901505555.post-22730713558843215832016-05-12T08:35:00.001-05:002016-05-12T08:35:24.040-05:00Calling for Round Robin ParticipantsI really shouldn't...but I did. <br />
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Since the Sampler Round Robin I have been participating in since last September through Facebook is about to wrap up (only one more project!) I decided to join another round robin, this one themed for patterns purchased from Etsy. We start in June (or maybe July) and guess what? <br />
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We need 2 more people. <br />
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So yes, I am resorting to begging to see if anyone would be interested in joining us. I know I've gotten comments on here before from people who were wanting to know how to join a round robin, so here's your chance.<br />
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If you've never done a Round Robin before the basic idea is that you pick a project, divide it up into parts (for however many participants you have), kit up your project with fabric, pattern, floss and mail it off to the next person in the round. The person behind you in the round then mails you their pattern, and you work on a part of their project with the included pattern and supplies. Then, in the next month you mail off that project to the next person and receive a new project in the mail to work on for the month. When the round has been completed, you receive back your project completed (or almost complete depending on the size).<br />
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It's a great way to try out just a bit of lots of different patterns and projects! If you're new to the blog and you'd like to see some examples of things I've worked on for the 3 round robins I've done so far, you can search the <a href="http://brownieschair.blogspot.com/search/label/FP%20Round%20Robin" target="_blank">Frosted Pumpkin</a>, <a href="http://brownieschair.blogspot.com/search/label/sampler%20round%20robin" target="_blank">Sampler</a>, and <a href="http://brownieschair.blogspot.com/search/label/LK%20Round%20Robin" target="_blank">Lizzie Kate</a> round robin tags I have on my blog posts.<br />
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As I mentioned above, this particular round I'm recruiting for is for Etsy patterns, which simply means it's a pattern that you purchased from a designer who sells their items through the Etsy website. So it's a huge open theme with lots of possibilites! Some of my favorite Etsy designers are <a href="https://www.etsy.com/shop/BrookesBooksStore" target="_blank">Brooke's Books</a>, <a href="https://www.etsy.com/shop/SatsumaStreet" target="_blank">Satsuma Street</a>, <a href="https://www.etsy.com/shop/tinymodernist" target="_blank">Tiny Modernist</a>, <a href="https://www.etsy.com/shop/fiddlesticksau" target="_blank">Fiddlesticks AU</a>, <a href="https://www.etsy.com/shop/cloudsfactory" target="_blank">Cloudsfactory</a>, <a href="https://www.etsy.com/shop/DoNaStitch" target="_blank">DoNaStitch</a>, <a href="https://www.etsy.com/shop/FangirlStitches" target="_blank">Fangirl Stitches</a>, <a href="https://www.etsy.com/shop/PinoyStitch" target="_blank">Pinoy Stitch</a> (home of the cutest owl patterns ever!) and of course one of my favorite UK magazine designers <a href="https://www.etsy.com/shop/DureneJones" target="_blank">Durene Jones</a> even has her own Etsy store with exclusive and out of print patterns. So far for this round I've selected a typography pattern from <a href="https://www.etsy.com/shop/plasticlittlecovers" target="_blank">Plastic Little Covers</a>. And there's tons more designers out there that I haven't even found yet!<br />
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Anyway, if you think you might want to join us, here's a few of the requirements:<br />
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1. You must live in the US or Canada. This is because it's hard to mail projects across the sea in a timely manner. If you live in Europe, they're going to a specific round for you guys too!<br />
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2. You have to check in monthly on Facebook. Since this is a Facebook based group, you will have to check in using your Facebook account. That doesn't mean you have to be actively on Facebook all the time, but you will need to record your mailing/receiving in the group. <br />
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3. You must have the time to complete a part of the project every month. As you can see from my progress updates, this does cut a lot into personal stitching time. But for me it's totally fun and worth it anyway to try all different sorts of things. <br />
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So if you're intrigued and you think you might want to join up, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/661089290671099/" target="_blank">here's the main Facebook group page</a>. Make sure you read all the requirements in the pinned post at the top, then go to the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/1063682240370531/" target="_blank">Etsy event page to sign up for this round specifically</a>. <br />
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Hope to see a couple new faces! And you can of course expect to start seeing new projects here in my updates too. :)<br />
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<img align="right" alt="post signature" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fRp8DTH1C60/VKR1_quUNwI/AAAAAAAAIcE/my_KEskt1oc/s1600/temp.png" />Alyssa Fhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17493806120430252745noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7869651988901505555.post-41190166312761447002016-05-04T15:07:00.000-05:002016-05-04T15:07:11.701-05:00An Explosion of Stitchy ProgressWell, somehow despite my best intentions I disappeared for a little over a month again. Oops. Life has been super crazy and I've been working the equivalent of a second job during the weekends, so lately it seems like things like blogging get pushed out of the way. Luckily though I haven't lost my stitchy bug, so I have A LOT of progress pics to show you. Here's what I've been working since my last overdue post.<br />
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It's been awhile since you've seen Mr. Let It Snowman. Here's what he looked like the last time I took a photo of him:<br />
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I've actually gotten a bit farther with this, but I haven't worked on it in quite awhile. I got sick of all the white I guess.<br />
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Also, a lot of stitching has been done for my round robin projects lately. On the sampler front, I finished my section of two rounds. The first was a couple blocks in Frosted Pumpkins Spring Sampler:<br />
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I really do like Frosted Pumpkin's patterns, but for some reason I really struggled with this one and I'm not sure why. But I got it done in the end, so there you go.<br />
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The next sampler round was the bottom-most part of this Strawberry Shortcake Sampler:<br />
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My section was the green cake plate and the little plaid stripe underneath it. This one was a fun pattern, it went pretty fast for me and I ended up ahead in the round robin for the first time ever.<br />
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I also have a lot of progress to show for my Lizzie Kate Round Robin projects. First is the finish of the February stamp that I showed progress in last time:<br />
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I wasn't sure how I was going to like the colors on this one together as I was stitching it up, but I decided once it was finished it wasn't too bad. Those little blank spots in the flowers will eventually be covered up by little purple buttons when the owner gets the project back.<br />
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The next project I got in the mail were for Lizzie's Boxer seasonal patterns. We could choose which part we wanted to stitch and I chose the top half of the winter pattern:<br />
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This one stitched up really quick, even with all that blue fill in. Although I totally miscounted the snowflakes the first time and had to frog them all. That's what I get for starting it on a road trip I guess.<br />
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My most recent Lizzie Kate finish is one of the Boo Club series of patterns. The frog turned out a little weird because his black eye buttons won't be applied to the end:<br />
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The interesting thing about this pattern was that the owner asked us to do it in only 1 ply thread, which was new for me, but it kind of grew on me the way it turned out. I personally don't like that kind of coverage, but I bet it makes your overdyed threads go much farther!<br />
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I've been digging through lots of my old magazine issues lately and even though I have tons of WIPs to work on, I couldn't help picking a couple patterns that stood out to me for World of Charity Stitching's friendship quilt theme. These will probably get there a little late to be included in that, but I'm sure they'll be put to good use (or I might find another use for them in the meantime).<br />
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This one is a pattern from Lucie Heaton, and the individual pattern doesn't have a name, so I called it Dancing Divas in my head.<br />
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Not much to look at now but I stitched all I could with the colors I have on hand at the moment, so that's all there is for now. This is definitely a pattern that will greatly benefit from the backstitching, which seems to be a common theme in Lucie's patterns. But they're super fun to stitch and work up really quick!<br />
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The second pattern I pulled is a card design called Best Friends Share from a really old copy of Cross Stitch Card Shop.<br />
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I just started this one last night, so right now it's pretty much just an orange blur, but eventually this will be two cute little kitties curled up in a basket together.<br />
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I think that catches me up with everything for now, and of course I promise to try and update more frequently, although the way life has been lately, who knows?<br />
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<img align="right" alt="post signature" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fRp8DTH1C60/VKR1_quUNwI/AAAAAAAAIcE/my_KEskt1oc/s1600/temp.png" />Alyssa Fhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17493806120430252745noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7869651988901505555.post-35083639689976137522016-03-11T13:20:00.000-06:002016-03-11T13:21:34.587-06:00Free Pattern Friday: Super March Edition!Well, if I'm getting back into the blogging swing of things, that means Free Pattern Friday is also due for a return. Since I've missed the past few weeks, I have a super sized edition with 3 different free cross stitch pattern links to share! Actually, this could even be considered an "international edition" of FPF. <br />
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First of all, March is my birthday month, so I'm going to spend FPF's sharing charts with one of my favorite sweets: cupcakes! This is a cute and sweet (no pun intended) chart from one of my favorite UK designers, Lesley Teare. It's the perfect size for stitching up and making a quick little birthday card, keychain, or magnet. You can find the pattern and key to save in JPEG format on <a href="http://www.lesleyteare.com/story/cupcakes-free-chart" target="_blank">Lesley's blog archive</a>. <br />
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And since my birthday is coming up this weekend specifically in March, I also have a cute little birthday chart to share. This cute little bear and his snail friend are surrounded by lots of colorful confetti and comes from the Russian design blog Aliolka Designs. Normally finding cross stitch patterns on Russian websites indicates a red flag for pirated patterns, but I'm happy to report this blog is totally legit! She even has some alternative color schemes for this same pattern on the post if you're interested in changing the colors up a bit. The pattern for this design<a href="http://aliolka.blogspot.com/2015/11/blog-post_30.html" target="_blank"> can be found here</a> in JPEG format.<br />
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And last but not least, March is also the time of Saint Patrick's Day (which is also the birthday of one of my oldest friends). St. Patty's is not until next week, but since FPF will come the day after, now is time to share a themed chart. It's actually the perfect design for when Easter is in March like it is this year because it combines Irish themeing into a Faberge style Easter egg. This comes from the Facebook page of another one of my favorite UK designers, Durene Jones. You can find the chart for this free cross stitch pattern <a href="https://www.facebook.com/1542440619342280/photos/pb.1542440619342280.-2207520000.1457705495./1686577058261968/?type=3&theater" target="_blank">here</a>, although I think you might have to log in to Facebook to access it. <br />
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Happy stitching!<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>If you ever come across one of my posts that contains a chart that breaks copyright law, please email me and let me know right away. In picking and posting my free cross stitch pattern posts, I make every effort to ensure the designs I share are legitimately free charts. </i></span> Alyssa Fhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17493806120430252745noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7869651988901505555.post-56386241621759189202016-03-09T12:11:00.000-06:002016-03-09T13:20:10.368-06:00A Long Overdue UpdateHello readers! I hope you haven't all given up on me, LOL. It's past time for a new stitching update from me, but I just have been so busy with work and personal issues over the past few weeks I haven't really found the time to blog much.<br />
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As I reported in my last post, I had some major carpal tunnel like flare ups in my wrists at the end of January the derailed my Crazy January plans. I had hoped to pick it back up in February, but that didn't happen. By the time I was feeling better enough to stitch, I had to get some projects for my round robins done, and well, there you go. Best laid plans. Hopefully next year's challenge will go better!<br />
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I did consider doing a new project a day type challenge in either April or May but I think at this point I don't think I will do that. I really, really want to finish the stockings for myself and my family for Christmas this year, and if I want to get through all that, I'm really going to have to crack down to have them finished in time.<br />
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So since early February although I haven't been blogging, I have been stitching. Thus I have A LOT of updates to share with you.<br />
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First of all, last check in I was working on Sweets to the Sweet for WOCS. Well, that one was finished:<br />
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It was done on 14 count white aida with charted DMC threads. Didn't make any changes on this one except I didn't attach the charm that came with the pattern. I really like this one, and might do it again, but will probably do it in different colors because by the end I was really sick of that shade of red.<br />
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After that, it was time to finish up the motif I was working on in Ink Circle's Garden of Stars for the Sampler Round Robin I'm in:<br />
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The only thing I didn't like about working on this one was that I only got to work in one color. Seriously though, the size of this project is MASSIVE. I had no idea from looking at the model photo. Even if you stitched it 1 over 1 I'm sure it would still be huge. The linen on this project was a little fiddly too, which was a little frustrating (had to frog a few things). Over the past year or so I've been doing round robins, I've really become comfortable with stitching over 2 now, but I have to say I think I prefer evenweave over linen because I just don't like the variances in thread thickness or the transparent quality that linen has in many cases. <br />
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But, moving on. I also finished up the next square for the WOCS "sweets" theme. This is Chocolate Box by Little House Needleworks:<br />
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For various reasons, including time and convenience, I did this one much different than charted. The original has a 2 part border surrounding the chocolates, complete with beads. Since the deadline on this one was coming up, I decided to only do the chocolates themselves and I left off most of the lazy daisy, french knot, and backstitching embellishments. This is also on 14 count white aida, and I used the DMC floss conversions in the chart.<br />
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The first project in my Lizzie Kate round robin came to me, so I finished up my section of that one. I forget the name of it at the moment.<br />
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Overall it was a pretty quick stitch and nicely cheerful. It was weird to completely start a new project for someone though, LOL. Usually the project owner does a bit before they send it out into the world for the RR's I've participated in before. <br />
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My section for February for the sampler round robin was also a really quick stitch:<br />
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This is part of Country Cottage Needleworks Snow Sampler, and surprisingly I actually got this done in all one night which is unusual for me. I'm kicking myself for not taking a picture of the whole thing before sending it on though.<br />
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So that's it for the finishes, which brings me to my current stitching. First up is the next project in my Lizzie Kate Round Robin:<br />
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I'm doing the February Block of the Monthly Stamps Flip-It series. The floss colors were a bit modified by the project owner, but I think it will still be very pretty when finished. I'm actually a little farther along on it than this, but I haven't taken a new picture lately.<br />
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My work project is another WOCS square, this one for the Snowman theme. Here's what Let it Snowman looks like lately:<br />
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He's much father progressed than the white blog I shared after his start during January. I'm pleased with the way he's turning out, but I'm thinking I will skip a lot of the fussy backstitching on this one. I just don't think he needs it really. I'm hoping to have him finished and on his way soon!<br />
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<img align="right" alt="post signature" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fRp8DTH1C60/VKR1_quUNwI/AAAAAAAAIcE/my_KEskt1oc/s1600/temp.png" />Alyssa Fhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17493806120430252745noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7869651988901505555.post-53972327272137977562016-02-05T15:08:00.000-06:002016-02-05T15:08:16.238-06:00Free Pattern Friday: Be MineHello readers! It's Friday, which means it's time once again for me to share a free cross stitch pattern with you. <br />
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But first, you may be wondering where I've disappeared off to for the past couple weeks? Although I managed to keep up with my Crazy January stitching through January 24th, it was getting harder and harder due to a flare up in some carpal tunnel like symptoms in my hands. So finally on January 25th I decided I needed to take a break and slow the stitching way down rather than risk damaging something so I would need more invasive medical attention. <br />
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I'm still planning on doing starts for Days 25-31, they're just going to have to wait a little longer. Maybe I might be able to pull some out for this weekend. I know I need to catch up in my reporting of what I did get done before I had to take a break, but sadly, typing imitates the movements that make it hard to stitch, so I've had to cut back on the blogging as well. <br />
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Anyway, in the meantime, I can take a quick bit to share a new free cross stitch pattern with you. We all know Valentine's Day is fast approaching, and although I'm not a big fan of that holiday, I do love kittys, so I found this adorable kitty couple pattern that I can manage to stomach for Valentine's Day.<br />
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This pattern comes to you courtesy of Alita Designs, who did one of the snowman patterns I showed a few weeks back. It's the perfect size for a card or small token that you can easily whip up between now and the big day. You can download this free cross stitch pattern directly from<a href="http://alitadesigns.com/pattern.php?id=140" target="_blank"> the designer's website</a>. <br />
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Happy stitching!<br />
<img align="right" alt="post signature" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fRp8DTH1C60/VKR1_quUNwI/AAAAAAAAIcE/my_KEskt1oc/s1600/temp.png" />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>If you ever come across one of my posts that contains a chart that breaks copyright law, please email me and let me know right away. In picking and posting my free cross stitch pattern posts, I make every effort to ensure the designs I share are legitimately free charts. </i></span> Alyssa Fhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17493806120430252745noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7869651988901505555.post-32151660355663437742016-01-29T09:57:00.000-06:002016-01-29T09:57:07.027-06:00Free Pattern Friday: Snow Couple<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Welcome to another edition of Free Pattern Friday! Today's free cross stitch pattern continues January's theme of snowmen, but as it's the last Friday in January, it also gives a nod to the upcoming February holidays as well. <br />
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This cute little snowman couple and filigree heart is from the German blog Kissy-Cross. It's a nice size pattern without a lot of color changes, which means it's something you could whip up really quickly for a gift or ornament. I bet the filigree heart border would look really cool in an over dyed or variegated thread as well. <br />
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You can get this free cross stitch pattern in graphic format <a href="http://kissycross.twoday.net/stories/4294413/" target="_blank">from the designers blog</a>. <br />
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Happy stitching!<br />
<img align="right" alt="post signature" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fRp8DTH1C60/VKR1_quUNwI/AAAAAAAAIcE/my_KEskt1oc/s1600/temp.png" />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>If you ever come across one of my posts that contains a chart that breaks copyright law, please email me and let me know right away. In picking and posting my free cross stitch pattern posts, I make every effort to ensure the designs I share are legitimately free charts. </i></span> Alyssa Fhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17493806120430252745noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7869651988901505555.post-66376901339969611832016-01-22T15:20:00.000-06:002016-01-22T15:20:01.995-06:00Free Pattern Friday: Bashful Bunnies and SnowmanWelcome to another edition of Free Pattern Friday, where I share a free cross stitch pattern link with you (mostly) every Friday!<br />
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Have you ever heard of Designs by Gloria and Pat? They were more popular a few years ago, but these are the publishers of the Precious Moments, Cherished Teddies, and Playful Kittens patterns, as well as artists like Dianna Marcum's work in cross stitch. Most of their chart books are out of print or harder to find now, but the good news is that they've gone digital. In addition to offering a lot of their chart books as PDF downloads now, they also have a lot of freebie patterns for you to download and try.<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Shos2Y3YJcY/Vo_bYTTLkQI/AAAAAAAAP1c/3Ekz82rfa-0/s1600/snowmanbunny.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Shos2Y3YJcY/Vo_bYTTLkQI/AAAAAAAAP1c/3Ekz82rfa-0/s320/snowmanbunny.jpg" width="273" /></a>Continuing with our snowman theme, this week's pattern I'm sharing is one from the Bashful Bunnies line of patterns they offer. It features a cute little bunny building a snowman buddy. For those who've never done one of the Gloria & Pat patterns before, this is a good one to practice with. They do usually have several fractional stitches with lots of backstitch, something I would call more "old style" than a lot of the minimalist patterns that are available and popular now. But I think the designs are cute anyway, so I will definitely be trying this bunny.<br />
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You can download this cute free cross stitch pattern in PDF format <a href="http://www.gloria-pat.com/webpages/BBun_snow_free.html" target="_blank">from the Gloria and Pat website</a>. <br />
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Happy stitching!<br />
<img align="right" alt="post signature" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fRp8DTH1C60/VKR1_quUNwI/AAAAAAAAIcE/my_KEskt1oc/s1600/temp.png" />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>If you ever come across one of my posts that contains a chart that breaks copyright law, please email me and let me know right away. In picking and posting my free cross stitch pattern posts, I make every effort to ensure the designs I share are legitimately free charts. </i></span> Alyssa Fhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17493806120430252745noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7869651988901505555.post-55674290687035543402016-01-19T17:27:00.000-06:002016-01-19T17:27:02.003-06:00Progress Update: Crazy January Challenge Days 15-18Well, I hope everyone had a good weekend, and those off in the US had a good 3 day holiday. It was nice to rest and relax for most of the weekend. Luckily my cold hasn't blown into full on sick mode yet, but I definitely am still feeling off my game. Monday I had a visit to my thyroid specialist for my monthly checkup and apparently the radioactive treatment I had in October has finally taken full effect. So my sick symptoms could be caused by the fact that I am now officially hypothyroid. I'm going on a new medicine for that starting tomorrow, so hopefully that will help bring me back up to feeling better in the next few weeks.<br />
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In other news, my brother made it to Florida okay and has now completed his first few days of working at Walt Disney World. Yay! So proud of him. If anyone would like to read his adventures about working as a Walt Disney World cast member, <a href="http://disneyonthebrain.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">he has his own blog here</a>.<br />
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But now onto stitching.<br />
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Things were slow on the January Challenge side of things, mostly because I got far enough into Swirly Lollipop that I wanted to hurry up and finish it. So ta-da! It's now done:<br />
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This is a chart from Dailycrossstitch.com and was done on 14 count white aida with the charted DMC threads. I did modify a few of the stripes slightly and I made the lollipop stick only 1 row instead of two because I thought it looked better. This is a project stitched for WOCS (<a href="http://worldofcharitystitching.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">World of Charity Stitching</a>) and was started on January 3rd and finished on January 17 of this year.<br />
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Friday I decided I wanted to start something new since I have a bit more extra time on the weekends instead of working on a WIP. So I pulled out this piece of fabric for a project I'm calling Butterfly Sampler:<br />
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As you can see I only got a stripe of 1 color of 45 stitches in. By the time I tracked down and pulled all the colors, I was pretty tired from the long week and ready to go to bed. This is a series of 4 freebie butterfly charts by Durene Jones that I'm stitching together as one piece. I think it will look really neat when it's done.<br />
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Saturday was another new start. This is Homegrown Melons from an old copy of the (US) magazine The Cross Stitcher. Sadly, I'm not sure who the designer is.<br />
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My plan is to frame it and gift it to my mother, since watermelons were a large theme in our kitchen and house when I was growing up. Right now I just have a few stripes of a pink blob, but I actually didn't want to work on this one too much because I ended up working on it when we got together to watch a movie Saturday night.<br />
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My project for Sunday was also a new start (noticing a theme?). This is Britty Kitty stocking by Brittercup Designs. I've gotten the crazy idea in my head to attempt to stitch stockings for my family over the next year, and these is the one I've chosen for myself. I spent most of my stitching time on Sunday finishing up Swirly Lollipop so this actually didn't get much attention, but I got two rows of a tree branch done.<br />
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Monday's project was also a stocking; this one is called Tate's Stocking and is done by Raise the Roof Designs. It's originally charted on a 20 count linen from Weeks Dye Works, but I don't particularly like working on linen because of the uneven weaving and slubs, so I swapped it out for a sparkle evenweave instead. I then spent like 30 minutes (no kidding) on trying to decide to do it over 1 or 2 threads. If over 1 thread, it will be slightly smaller than the other stockings I'm doing, but if over 2 it will be much, much bigger than the other stockings. So in the end I decided to stitch it over 1 and just have this one turn out a little smaller. I'm probably going to get flak for it later on from the person I'm giving it to, but oh well. After all that time debating, I only had the energy to make the barest of starts on it:<br />
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After that I needed some mindless stitching, so since Swirly Lollipop is now done I moved onto Sweets for the Sweet for a bit more progress on the lettering. That turned out to be a good thing because most of the night was spent stitching while having a massive discussion/argument with my aunt about getting scholarships for college and so the mindless stitching was nice to not have to think too much about:<br />
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Not sure what today's project will be yet. Honestly, I was still pretty tired from being sick/not sick/whatever all weekend, so I didn't plan the rest of the challenge out all the way like I was thinking I might. So we'll see what I pull out of the WIP or new pile when I get home tonight and see. <br />
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<img align="right" alt="post signature" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fRp8DTH1C60/VKR1_quUNwI/AAAAAAAAIcE/my_KEskt1oc/s1600/temp.png" />Alyssa Fhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17493806120430252745noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7869651988901505555.post-60371342420604260842016-01-15T18:28:00.000-06:002016-01-15T18:28:03.650-06:00Progress Update: Crazy January Challenge Days 11-14Despite my best intentions, this is the first opportunity I've had to come on and do a Crazy January Challenge update since Monday. Somehow I find myself getting sick (again!) and combined with a very busy week at work again, it's really slowed me down. Bleh. <br />
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But enough complaining. Let's talk about funner things. Here's a recap of what my challenge progress is.<br />
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January 11th, Monday, I did decide to pull out another WIP project rather than start something new. I decided it was time to work a little bit of Sunshine by Satsuma Street, since it hadn't seen any love for awhile and is actually pretty close to being finished. So I pulled it out and took it from here:<br />
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To here:<br />
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Not too much left to go on this one, so I should be able to wrap this one up pretty quickly soon, although maybe after January and the challenge is over. <br />
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Tuesday night I started a new project. This is Lizzie Kate's Autumn Alphabet, which I sent out this week as the start of a new Lizzie Kate round robin that my Facebook group is doing. That's right, I'm pretty much crazy because I signed up for another round robin at the same time. This one was hard for me to miss though, because I absolutely love Lizzie Kate designs. <br />
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I stitched the middle "M" block on my project so my fellow stitchers have a base point to start their stitching from. Here's what it looked like when I sent it off:<br />
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I'm super excited about this project because it's the first Lizzie Kate chart that I've splurged for the charted Weeks Dye Works and Crescent Colors overdyed threads. Although you can't really tell with this block because the orange is the one color of DMC in the pattern and the very slight variation in the dark brown hasn't shown up in the small amount of stitching for this letter. I can't wait to see how it turns out as a whole though. I plan on doing all 4 in this alphabet series eventually. <br />
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Wednesday I decided that after all the Mill Hill kits I did in December, I was really kind of missing doing the little Mill Hill kits. So I pulled out Kitty's Stocking and managed to put in one more stripe of color, taking it from this progress last year:<br />
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To this:<br />
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Not much progress, but hey, progress is progress, right? I was still in a Mill Hill mood the next night, so Triple Scoop got a little love to take it from where I left it last year:<br />
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To this:<br />
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Again, not much progress, and in posting this now I see a mistake I need to go back and fix. But most of my challenge stitching this week was done on lunch breaks, since I've been working on other things during the evening. Swirly Lollipop has got almost all of its stripes now:<br />
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Just the green stripes, white, and the stick to fill in. I also made a dent in my chosen mandala motif of the Ink Circles piece I'm doing for the sampler round robin for January. <br />
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So that's coming along too. So what's my plans for the weekend? Well, I haven't picked my project for today yet, so we'll see what calls to me tonight when I settle in for my nightly stitching session. Other than that, I want to organize the rest of my potential crazy project pieces and choose which ones I will most likely stitch on during the rest of the month. Oh, and rest. Lots of resting. This getting sick thing is no fun, I tell ya. : ( Good thing we have a 3 day weekend which gives me more time to recuperate. <br />
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<img align="right" alt="post signature" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fRp8DTH1C60/VKR1_quUNwI/AAAAAAAAIcE/my_KEskt1oc/s1600/temp.png" />Alyssa Fhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17493806120430252745noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7869651988901505555.post-5609973458492210872016-01-15T15:05:00.000-06:002016-01-15T15:05:02.355-06:00Free Pattern Friday: Snowman Bookmark<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Welcome to today's free cross stitch pattern link! As I said last week, January is going to be full of all sorts of snowmen. This week's pattern happens to combine two of my favorite things: snowman and bookmark patterns. In fact, I can say stitch and designing bookmarks is what really got me back into my stitching bug a few years ago after I lost it somewhere around 16 years of age.<br />
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This friendly snowman features a vest of stained glass style blues and greens with a jaunty purple scarf, and is offered by English designer Amanda Gregory. I became familiar with Amanda's designs through a cross stitch forum I stop by from time to time, but her designs have started to get more and more popular lately. She's popping up again and again in my Cross Stitch Gold magazine with her bright (usually) botanical designs.<br />
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You can<a href="http://amanda-gregory-designs.webs.com/chartsfreetodownload.htm" target="_blank"> head over to Amanda's blog</a> to save this bookmark pattern in picture format. You'll have to scroll down a bit to see it (as of the writing of this post). There's also a matching biscornu pattern featuring this same snowman if that's more your thing. Either choice is a great free cross stitch pattern!<br />
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Happy stitching!<br />
<img align="right" alt="post signature" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fRp8DTH1C60/VKR1_quUNwI/AAAAAAAAIcE/my_KEskt1oc/s1600/temp.png" />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>If you ever come across one of my posts that contains a chart that breaks copyright law, please email me and let me know right away. In picking and posting my free cross stitch pattern posts, I make every effort to ensure the designs I share are legitimately free charts. </i></span> Alyssa Fhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17493806120430252745noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7869651988901505555.post-58639095984686412512016-01-11T11:42:00.000-06:002016-01-11T11:42:09.752-06:00Progress Update: Crazy January Challenge Days 9-10Hope everyone had a good weekend. Mine was actually pretty busy since we spent most of it trying to my brother up and ready for his move to Orlando for his "summer" break for the next three-ish months. But I still kept up with at least a little stitching for my January challenge, so here's what I worked on. <br />
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Friday night I was feeling pretty dead because we'd had a pretty rough week at work, so I decided rather than go allllllll the way across the room to my work bag and pull out Fa La La, I would just pick up Swirly Lollipop and do a few stitches. Managed to put a stripe and a half in so now it looks like this:<br />
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I had a bit of a mini heart attack moment where I thought I had centered it wrong on the fabric, but after 30 minutes of counting and measuring and recounting I think it's actually okay. I'm liking the way it's turning out so far. <br />
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Saturday night I decided to pull open the latest sampler round project I had just gotten in the mail. It's Garden Stars by Ink Circles which if you haven't seen it before, is an absolute HUGE project featuring all sorts of mandala type motifs. I don't think I correctly internalized just how big this project was when I looked at pictures of it online at the beginning of the of round robin. I got a nice chunk of the mandala motif I'll be finishing for this round one, I think maybe about 1/6 of the way done?<br />
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The colors got bleached out a bit in the picture, but there's all sorts of green used. The motif I'm working on isn't my favorite green color, but it's interesting to see how it fits in with those around it. <br />
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Sunday (yesterday) I figured perhaps it was time to mix it up a bit since so far I've worked almost exclusively on new starts. I decided to pull out a WIP project instead, and pulled out one of my oldest, Silent Night by Mill Hill. This is going to be a gift for a family friend who collects nativities, and originally it was supposed to be given as a Christmas present two years ago, but I just haven't been able to bring myself to work on it lately. Not sure why since I really enjoyed it through the first 1/2 or so, but I've been bogged down on the top and haven't gotten much progress on it in almost 2 years. <br />
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So I pulled out Silent Night while catching up on Downton Abbey last night and went from this:<br />
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To this:<br />
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Not much progress, but at least the top is starting to look like something a little more now. The light bleached out the colors a bit on this picture, they're closer to life in the top picture. I did get to stitch with my Christmas Ott light, so that was exciting!<br />
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Tonight will probably be another WIP project, since I just am not sure I'm in the mood for something new again. Guess we'll see what tonight brings after work. <br />
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<img align="right" alt="post signature" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fRp8DTH1C60/VKR1_quUNwI/AAAAAAAAIcE/my_KEskt1oc/s1600/temp.png" />Alyssa Fhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17493806120430252745noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7869651988901505555.post-4311275458008892532016-01-08T19:40:00.000-06:002016-01-08T19:40:06.063-06:00Progress Update: Crazy January Challenge Days 6-8Time to share another update of my projects from the Crazy January Challenge. You know how I said I was on a snowman pattern kick earlier? Well, here's why...<br />
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After the 5th, I moved on from the "sweetie squares" to the "snowmen squares". The first is Frosty Snowflake, a Needle Bling Designs pattern from the 2013 Just Cross Stitch ornaments special. <br />
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I managed to get a bit of the brim on the snowman's top hat done. He's not much to look at right now, that's for sure. This is another WOCS piece, and they specifically asked for designs that were done on other colors of aida to offset the white of the snowman patterns. I ended up sourcing two pieces of moss green aida, so that's what I'm stitching this and my other snowman square on. The color really kind of bled out in this picture, but this next photo shows it more at it's actual color. <br />
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Day 6 is also done on green aida and is a pattern from the (now gone) US magazine The Cross Stitcher (not to be confused with the UK publication CrossStitcher magazine which is still in print as of this post). Anyway, my working copy unfortunately doesn't list the designer or the title of the pattern and since I don't know exactly where in the black hole that is my stitching magazine stash right now the original magazine is, I'm calling it Let it Snowman. <br />
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Doesn't look like much yet either. Just mostly a white blob. <br />
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Which brings me to the last project start before my internet-less (and thus update-less weekend). Today's start was also a snowman. This is a freebie chart from Plum Pudding Needleworks called Fa La La:<br />
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Although I got a decent start on his head at lunch today, without some of the facial details you can't see it much against the natural aida yet. I'm hoping he will stand out better as his face and hat are added. This is my selection for the 2016 Christmas Ornie SAL, since January's theme is music. <br />
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In other stitching news, I finished up my part of the latest sampler round robin project:<br />
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So that's off in the mail. I got the next round yesterday but I haven't had a chance to open it yet so I don't know what it is yet. But I expect that will show up in my crazy challenge later on in the month (maybe even this weekend). <br />
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<img align="right" alt="post signature" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fRp8DTH1C60/VKR1_quUNwI/AAAAAAAAIcE/my_KEskt1oc/s1600/temp.png" />Alyssa Fhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17493806120430252745noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7869651988901505555.post-36206865226880178022016-01-08T10:07:00.003-06:002016-01-08T10:07:49.342-06:00Free Pattern Friday: Baby It's Cold<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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That's right, it's actually a free cross stitch pattern post! As I stated in my post a few days ago, one of my goals for the upcoming year is to get back into posting Free Pattern Friday. If anyone has joined the readership the past few months since I've done this, the idea that on Fridays I post links to free (or nearly free) cross stitch patterns that I've come across in my internet browsing. <br />
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Since it's January, I'm going to spend this month focusing on snowmen! I don't know why, but I'm really on a snowman kick lately. I blame the World of Charity quilt that they're doing for February with a snowman theme. It really made me go through and search out lots of snowman patterns.<br />
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For this Friday, I have a pattern called Baby It's Cold Outside by Alita Designs. This pattern is a great example of using negative space, so if stitched on white fabric it should stitch up really quickly and make a great last minute ornament. I'll have to remember that as it gets closer to Christmas, since this seems to be one of my mother's favorite Christmas songs lately.<br />
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You can download this free cross stitch pattern<a href="http://alitadesigns.com/pattern.php?id=201" target="_blank"> from the designer's website</a> in PDF format. <br />
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Happy stitching!<br />
<img align="right" alt="post signature" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fRp8DTH1C60/VKR1_quUNwI/AAAAAAAAIcE/my_KEskt1oc/s1600/temp.png" />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>If you ever come across one of my posts that contains a chart that breaks copyright law, please email me and let me know right away. In picking and posting my free cross stitch pattern posts, I make every effort to ensure the designs I share are legitimately free charts. </i></span> Alyssa Fhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17493806120430252745noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7869651988901505555.post-54542576601253663942016-01-06T16:30:00.002-06:002016-01-06T16:30:54.849-06:00Progress Update: Crazy January Challenge Days 1-5Now that I've finished up wrapping up 2015, it's time to look forward to 2016. Looking back through my blog archives, apparently my first Crazy January Challenge post last year was also Days 1-5, so I suppose that's appropriate!<br />
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For any of you who haven't heard of the Crazy January Challenge before, the idea is to start 15 new projects in the first 15 days of January. Over the years it has evolved to different iterations, one of which is to start a new project for each day of January (so 31 projects). Now, I have way to many WIPs to do 31 new projects (okay, I could do it if I really wanted to) so I do a combination of new starts and new projects throughout January instead.<br />
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And with that explanation over, here's a peek at what I've been working on. My projects haven't gotten a huge amount of progress, mostly because I think I may have overdone things a little over the Christmas holiday, and I'm feeling a little flareup in my carpal tunnel and what might be tendinitis/tennis elbow. So I'm trying to take things easy on the stitching front in general.<br />
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For New Years Day (Jan 1) I got started on the latest round of the Sampler Round Robin project I'm doing with my Facebook group. This is the start of my part of Blue Ribbon Designs Little Quakeresque:<br />
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It is 1 over 2 threads done in an overdyed 3 color thread. I like how it's turning out so far, but the project owner requested we not work in rows so the motifs ended up "striped" so it takes a bit more concentration. <br />
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January 2nd I decided it was time for something more "new years"-y so I started New Years Magic. It's a freebie pattern by Brooke's Books. I got one of the fairy's arms done and the start of the highlights on her face and neck. <br />
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I've never done a New Year's design before, mostly because I don't really decorate for that holiday, but Brooke's designs really appeal to me lately and the pink and purple of this really called to me for some reason. I think I will leave off the year as it is in the original design and just leave it generic to take out for every year. <br />
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January 3rd was a Sunday, which tend to be either really good or really slow stitching days for me. My brother ended up being sick so I didn't get much done on this start either. This is the start of Swirly Lollipop, a design from Daily Cross Stitch.com. This will be going to World of Charity Stitching for a "sweet" themed quilt they are putting together. <br />
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I got two of the bottom stripes done, so hopefully this will work up pretty quickly. It's going to be very colorful when it's done, that's for sure!<br />
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January 4th was Monday and so that meant back to work, which meant a lot of my stitching was confined to my lunch break at work. This start is another WOCS project for the sweet quilt (as long as I get it down in time). This is Chocolate Box by Little House Needleworks. I thought for sure I could at least get one of the 9 chocolates completely done, but as you can see, that didn't quite happen. <br />
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With a name like Chocolate Box, you KNOW there's going to be a ton of brown in this. So it was nice to start with one of the more decorated chocolates in the pattern as the center block. <br />
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Day 5 was the last of what I'm calling the "sweetie square" starts. This is Sweets for the Sweet by Sue Hillis. Kind of weird for me to start with "backstitch" first, but since that was the center of this pattern and I'm not doing any sort of gridding for this one, starting with words it is. Anyone know what the pattern name refers to? The English major in me is pretty tickled by it. <br />
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This is going to be pretty monochromatic until I reach the chocolate box on the lower right corner. Which probably a good thing since I'm actually out of a few of the colors I need for that part. Speaking of which, do you ever feel like you must have the entire DMC library by now but when you go to pull colors for a design there's always at least 1 you're out of? Or is that just me? <br />
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So that catches me up to today. Guess we'll have to wait and see what the future holds when I get home and see what speaks to me for Day 6. <br />
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In addition to the new starts, I've also been making slow progress on the sampler round robin project from Day 1, since that needs to be mailed soon. Here's how it looks now:<br />
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Back with more updates soon!<br />
<img align="right" alt="post signature" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fRp8DTH1C60/VKR1_quUNwI/AAAAAAAAIcE/my_KEskt1oc/s1600/temp.png" />Alyssa Fhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17493806120430252745noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7869651988901505555.post-75896334466960339342016-01-05T16:07:00.000-06:002016-01-05T16:07:01.310-06:002015 Stitching Wrap Up and 2016 PlansSince my post from yesterday about Christmas got a little long, I'm going to put off showing off my Crazy January progress so far for just one more day to do a quick recap/future goals post. Well, I say quick, but things never seem to go that way when I start to type.<br />
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<u><b>2015 Stitching Statistics</b></u></h4>
Projects started: 44<br />
New projects started for Crazy January Challenge: 30<br />
Projects finished: 30<br />
Crazy January Challenge projects finished: 7 (which is why many of these are included as WIPs in this year's challenge...) <br />
Charity squares donated: 9<br />
Exchange presents mailed: 3<br />
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Not a bad year overall. So what's my plans going forward for 2016? <br />
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You may have noticed if you've been a reader since last year that I didn't really sign up for an SALs or check ins this year. Stitch from Stash as it was before has now been dissolved, although there are similar groups popping up all over Facebook I could join if I wanted to. But I'm also not participating in WIPocalypse or the Smalls SAL, or anything like that, at least so far. In the end, I really burned out in the check ins on those posts, and so this year I decided not to. <br />
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I have joined Kaye's <a href="http://christmasorniesal2015.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Christmas Ornie SAL 2015</a> blog with good intentions to keep up, but I'm not going to stress about it if I don't. I've also signed up to participate in a few Facebook challenges, but again, I'm trying to go more stress free in my blogging and stitching this year. If I meet the challenge, great, if not, that's okay too. <br />
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I will be doing Debbie's Crazy January Challenge again this year (I've already started) because that was one thing from last year I really enjoyed. I know I will continue charity stitching in the new year because that's also something I have really liked doing (as long as I don't leave things too much to the last minute!). I have some plans for some gifts I would like to make. I'm in a current Round Robin sampler round, and I'm starting a new Lizzie Kate RR in January. But in the end, I really want 2016 to be more about stitching and blogging for me, and I feel like right now, what I have committed to is working for me. Of course, that could always change in the future, since I seem to have SAL ADD. <br />
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I would like to get back to doing Free Pattern Friday posts, so I'm going to be try and be better about being regular in posting those, starting with this coming Friday. <br />
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Oh, and since I totally am behind on reporting for the TUSAL (Totally Useless SAL) where we show our ort jars each month, here's what my ort jar looked like at the end of 2015:<br />
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Now time to empty it out and start over with a clean jar. Whatever 2016 brings, I hope to make it a great year!<br />
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<img align="right" alt="post signature" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fRp8DTH1C60/VKR1_quUNwI/AAAAAAAAIcE/my_KEskt1oc/s1600/temp.png" />Alyssa Fhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17493806120430252745noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7869651988901505555.post-50574454581927848872016-01-04T16:11:00.000-06:002016-01-04T16:11:09.617-06:00Christmas DebriefHello fellow stitchers! <br />
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I hope everyone had a safe and happy holiday break. I pretty much collapsed after my pre-Christmas crafting frenzy and have been pretty quiet for the most part, although now we are into January I am officially smack dab in the middle of the Crazy January Challenge. But before I start sharing my January projects, I figured it would be a good idea to officially wrap up 2015 since I never got around to actually posting anything the past two weeks. (I did think about it, just never actually DID it....)<br />
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Warning in advance, this post will probably get long and picture heavy.<br />
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The Christmas ornaments were a big hit with my mom and brother at least. Dad and Grandma still need to get theirs, so I don't know that reaction yet. Here's what Love Potions ended up looking like (gifted to Mom):<br />
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I told her they were "lotion and potion" bottles since my mother makes her own lotions. It's a bit of an inside joke in our family. My cousin thought they were old-fashioned light bulbs up until right before I finished the project (since he was privy to the crafting process). <br />
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My Americana-obsessed brother was very happy with Stars and Stripes, despite my worry that it was a little too small. <br />
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Cookies for Santa for my dad turned out great, and I think this is my favorite Mill Hill of the year (although love potions is a close second because it used many of my favorite colors). There's just something about this that is so festive. <br />
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And my last Christmas finish was Floral Watering Can for my grandma. I was really excited to see this one come out as part of Mill Hill's spring release last year, but yikes was it a more complicated pattern than I realized! Never again will I leave a project like this to the last minute (if I can help it). <br />
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I mentioned in a previous post that I made made (non-stitchy) ornaments for my coworkers, here's how my flurry of snowmen turned out:<br />
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Does anyone know if there's an official term for a group of snowmen? If not, I think a flurry of snowmen should be made official. These are two pieces of felt blanket stitched together by my wonderful long suffering mother on her sewing machine, with hand tied ribbon scarves and acrylic painted faces by me. Each snowman also has two buttons, taken from my great-grandmother's vintage button collection. My mom agreed to part with a few of the buttons from her grandmother's collection, and I think it gives these an extra special touch. My coworkers loved the ornaments, and some even more so after I told them about the buttons. <br />
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So that is what I gave for Christmas. Here's what I got. <br />
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My exchange partner apparently had to replace my ornament because the original was damaged by the post office (grrrrr!) but on Christmas Eve I got the most adorable snowman ornament in the mail:<br />
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Perfect actually because we didn't decorate until Christmas Eve this year. I'm not sure who the designer is, but maybe Bent Creek or The Trilogy? I don't know why, but lately I just adore snowmen so much, so this was a perfect little gift for me. I think it's my favorite of all the exchange pieces I've gotten this past year. <br />
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I also got my first scroll frame to try out, and a little traveling Ott Light from my mom, both were a huge surprise and I'm super excited to use them. Then from my cousin I got a large full size floor stand Ott light, which I never expected to get because they are very expensive. I'm super excited to use it, although it's been set up, I haven't had a chance to use it yet because I haven't found the perfect spot (near an outlet) to set it yet. Perhaps when we get around to taking down the tree. <br />
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Another cousin gave me this Disney Classic Cross Stitch kit that (I think) is a Barnes & Noble exclusive because she knows how much I like Disney. Honestly, some of the patterns in here look a little weird to me, probably because they are mostly based on whole stitch/pixel artwork, but I am really excited about the Sleeping Beauty Castle pattern from Disneyland. <br />
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That pretty much wraps up Christmas. So going wrap up for the rest of the year? Well, since this post is getting quite long, I think I'll save that for another post for tomorrow.<br />
<img align="right" alt="post signature" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fRp8DTH1C60/VKR1_quUNwI/AAAAAAAAIcE/my_KEskt1oc/s1600/temp.png" />Alyssa Fhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17493806120430252745noreply@blogger.com9