FotM - July Edition and Giveaway Winners!

Hi there! Here we are for the end of July (gasp) installment of the Flower of the Month SAL as hosted by Alyssa at Brownie's Chair! I think my mojo has taken a break. It has been very hot here (heat index of 115-120F, 46-49C) and I just wilt with that sort of heat. Summer has always been my least favorite season because of this; I lose all motivation to do anything at all.  It is even warm in the basement where the computers currently are and so, I'm behind on blog reading.  I'm sorry. :(

Before it got hotter than hot I did manage to finish April's Sweet Peas.

Yay!

Despite the abundance of pink, this one was a very enjoyable stitch! It went quickly and the only hiccup I had was at the end -- I washed it and one of my subbed pinks bled. Luckily I caught it while washing so I just kept washing until it was gone. I made sure to mark the offending floss so I know to be careful with it on future projects.

~it's show time~

Technical Details
  • "April: Sweet Pea" freebie pattern by Ellen Maurer-Stroh, found here
  • 2 over 1 on 14-count ecru huck towel (called for 3 over but I thought 2 looked okay)
  • Finished size: 4.50 x 4.50" (11,50 x 11,50 cm)
  • Started: June 22, Finished: July 4. 11 hours.  

floss toss!
somewhat started

I also got started on May's Lily of the Valley. I had hoped to have it done as well but I have not been enjoying this particular flower. I suppose it's the colors; they seem so much more drab than the previous ones have been.  Or it could be the heat.  Or both.  One amazing thing though -- I wound up having almost all of the colors for this piece.  That almost felt a bit weird.

snow ice cream, delicious noms

Good thing about all this hot hot hot is fishing out the snow ice cream that I made back in February.  It sure tasted good and made me think of much happier (read: colder) times.  I do hope my mojo comes back soon though.  It will be time to throw myself fully into canning garden veggies in a few weeks and I won't have time to sit down!  I have started with bread and butter pickles (to give away, I don't like them myself).  Also I made some salsa verde from green tomatoes harvested from plants that volunteered where they weren't supposed to.  I think next will be pickled honey jalapenos.  I'm about to drown in them lol.

Lastly!  My Dolphin Trio winners! :D  I got to use the random number generator gadget again and the winners arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreee~

and

Yay! :D  Please send me an email with your address and I'll get it out to you guys ASAP!  It will just be the kit and no fancy extras so hopefully the parcels will teleport themselves to you.  :)))

Thank you for reading!  I'll be back to ramble again for Gifted Gorgeousness.

IHSW - July! And a Few Finds!

Hiya, hermiters! I hope you were all productive enough for your tastes!

click me for more info!

I had progress... and negative progress! I work on FFIII during IHSW and this time, the mistake finally showed itself! Doing the letters worked! This is more exciting than it really should be being that I spent a good portion of my stitchy time frogging haha.

before

after - FINAL(ly)

wrong!

A close up of the area before I picked it out. The letters are to have a 1-block "border" around them where the color touches. The top left corner of the N does not! But, the right side does. So at least I knew the mistake was everywhere to the left of the N which wound up not being too terrible to fix, especially since I start out the colored portions in half-stitches only (see, I learn from previous mistakes lol).  I took out the entire area above N just in case though; in the after picture, you can see the outline of the frogged area.  I put a small length in before I started stitching the I... not letting another mistake happen again (famous last words :b)!  I am very pleased that this mistake is gone, Gone, GONE!

☆*・゜゚・* \(^▽^)/ *・゜゚・*☆

Since I don't have a lot of IHSW to show off, how about some of my thrifty finds? If you don't know, I get most of my crafty supplies in thrift stores.  I am definitely my mother's daughter when it comes to spotting bargains!

most were 25¢ each

Crochet books, leaflets, and magazines! I adore the older Star/American Thread Co. magazines and squeal like an overly-excited dolphin whenever I find one.  I was particularly happy with the "Doily Bouquet"; there are some truly stunning pieces in there.  Unfortunately they are not always in the best shape!  Some are missing covers or are falling apart at the seams.

tatting supplies - $5

A tatting kit! My great-great-aunt was a prolific tatter and I love the delicate look it produces on the edge of things. I was tickled to find this in the thrift store. It came with two large balls of thread, two small balls, and two different shuttles, all with the original prices lol. Anyone know some good resources to learn this amazing art? Preferably books as our poor Internet does not much like YouTube.  Though if there is an absolutely amazing tutorial I will haul my laptop to the library and practice with headphones!

front, minor cosmetic damage - free!

This is probably my most exciting discovery. Since we live in a rural area, we do not have trash or recycling pickup. So, I take my recycling down to the center once a month and always toss a glance at their bulk trash pile. There's usually some interesting things, though almost always broken. This time, I noticed a nice little desk looking thing (only the back was visible). I like old furniture so I snooped. It's a sewing machine! I am unashamed to ask for trash (lol) so the guys helped me load it into the truck.

cast iron glory - free!!

After spending a few hours looking things up and taking a "what is it?" sewing machine quiz, it is a 1951 Singer 201-2 (potted motor).  I am unsure if it is the original cabinet but knowing the area, I would suspect it is. It was obviously well-loved at one time, and came with a great little diagram on how to thread the machine written on the back of an envelope. :)  It also came with an assortment of feet (including 4 hemming feet of different makes lol), spare bulbs, and a tiny mountain of metal bobbins.

I had low expectations of it working (it was put out for recycling after all). BUT IT WORKS. There is just something about older machines' sound that I just love. It does need a good cleaning and I'll have to get some fresh oil and grease for it. I think I will have it rewired as well. Most of the wiring was intact but from the machine to the pedal you can tell it's showing its age.  I really look forward to playing with it and sewing again.  More to learn! Maybe I'll finally be able to create some finish-finishes!  :D

beautiful!  FREE!!!

It is really amazing what people will throw out. Those of you who thrift shop or perhaps get lucky in recycling centers, what are your great crafty finds?

Have I talked you to death?  Maybe I should stop rambling.  I'll just leave you with a friendly reminder about my little giveaway!  Thanks for reading and I hope you have a lovely life this week~! :D

Gifted Gorgeousness - July Edition! TUSAL! And a giveaway?!

Aloha, world! Ignoring the fact that it is mid-July already, we shall embrace the fact that it is time for Gifted Gorgeousness, hosted by the fabulous Jo!

click to join the fun!

I've done a bit more work on Rathalos (gift for my husband ♥) though not as much as I'd've liked. I seem to have stalled because of a color issue.


The color of his lower jaw is driving me nuts. I've tried one color, too pink. I've tried another color, too orange. I've blended them together, still not quite right though it is close. I think I might have to go stash shopping (oh, shucks!) with this piece tucked in my purse. Really not looking forward to frogging it for the fourth time (once was for miscounting two frogs in, bah)!  But apart from my Very Picky color selections, he's really quite nice to stitch.  He's small enough (the hoop marks are from a 4" hoop) that even a little bit of stitching shows a lot of progress!


Next up we have TUSAL where we gather around and admire our lovely remnants of progress!  I feel like I've all kinds of progress in there, violets are done, sweet peas are done, lily-of-the-valley is started, infinite Rathalos frogs...........


Last but not least, I have surpassed that special 100 followers milestone, yay! I think I'll offer a little giveaway (use it for GG? :D) to celebrate. Remember Dolphin Trio? I was given this Dimensions kit by family not once, but THREE times! They must know I like dolphins.  :)  I will be realistic with myself and acknowledge that I will not stitch this three times so I am offering up the other two kits for two winners (one kit per winner)!

Sparkly Fun Rules
  1. Be a minion follower on the Google gadget (top right on my blog). I know many people use feedly, etc. but there's no way of showing that!
  2. Comment saying you want to be entered!  No ambiguity lol!
  3. I ship worldwide!
This giveaway will close Wednesday, July 29th and the winners will be posted on my FotM SAL post on the 31st.  Good luck and thank you for listening to my rambles! Giveaway closed; thanks, guys!  :D

FotM - June Edition!

Here we are for my June installment of the Flower of the Month SAL as hosted by Alyssa at Brownie's Chair! And I have emerged victorious! The February Violets are finally done!  More exclamation points!

YAY

I can't believe I had so much trouble with this particular design. I suppose it was as Preeti said, so many color changes! I have looked over the remaining patterns and it looks like the rest are not nearly as involved as this one.  whew


And here's the GIF of this project! Towards the end it looks like I've gotten a bit better at taking mostly similar pictures haha.  I will try to do one for each of the months excluding March as it was finished 5 years ago and I am unfortunately not in possession of a TARDIS or Delorean.

Technical Details
  • "February: Violets" freebie pattern by Ellen Maurer-Stroh, found here
  • 2 over 1 on 14-count ecru huck towel (called for 3 over but I thought 2 looked okay)
  • Finished size: 4.50 x 4.50" (11,50 x 11,50 cm)
  • Started: February 19, Finished: June 16.  unknown hours as I didn't keep track during vacation, oops!

where the collection now stands

But wait!

:o

:O

I got started on April's Sweet Pea! It's stitching up much faster than violets; there is only one large flower and two tiny ones left to do.  It helps when one doesn't have Must Do projects haha.  Again, I didn't have all of the charted colors so I went stash diving to see what I could come up with.  I hope they look okay!

I shall see you next time!  It is a wonderful 3-day weekend for the celebration of MURICA.  Even though I don't have any stitches for it, the 4th is hands down my favorite holiday.  Bring on the fireworks and BBQs~! :D

IHSW: Progress!

Hello there, hermiters! I hope you all had a fabulously productive time and properly shoo'd away any distractions that came your way. We had a horrifically rainy start to the weekend followed by ridiculously hot, humid weather. Bring back spring, please.

click me for more info!

Anyway, rain and heat definitely helps me want to stitch as I find myself wanting to do nothing else but stay inside and be cool. I contemplated what to work on this time. I could work on Rathalos to show off next Gifted Gorgeousness. I could work on the Flower of the Month SAL and catch up. They're the only two projects I have goi--- No! Wait!

do you remember this?

Yes, I finally pulled up my britches and decided to tackle Final Fantasy III. For those of you who may not remember, it was set aside back in March/April 2014 as I'd somehow made an error that's probably going to be rather troublesome to pick out, especially as I can't seem to find WHERE the error is.  So, I decided to start in an error-free zone and work my way over to the offending area and see if that pinpoints the problem.  I had made more progress since the last photo but I didn't realize I hadn't taken a picture of it before starting this weekend.  I have only made progress on the lettering... and have yet to find the mistake!


For any newcomers who don't recognize this project, I have taken it upon myself to stitch all of the logos in the main line of the Final Fantasy video game series.  That's currently sitting at 14 titles, yikes.  I have FFVII and FFVIII done so far.  All of them are done on 22-count (hardanger) fabric, 1-over-1 for colors, 2-over-1 for black and the patterns are designed by me.  The colors get started in half stitches because I find it easier to make the random color transitions this way.  The patterns are not yet available to share with the world!  Depending on the logo, they're anywhere between 5-30k stitches.  FFIII is about 10k give or take a few. :D

This piece will be come a focus piece for IHSW so I can work on the other two projects the rest of the time.  Three WIPs is about all I can handle before I start getting... twitchy.  I might throw in a micro project here and there just for the Finish Status Buff.

Anywhoodle!  I look forward to seeing everyone's lovely progress which most definitely didn't involve any frogging, right?