Procrastination

As always I've been doing my stitching when I probably should've been doing my uni work. I'm a GREAT procrastinator. Though admittedly, I haven't used that procrastination time to update my blog as I should but rather actually doing the stitching. There's nothing tremendous to report this time, though, since most of my projects are larger and don't have such a great dent made in them just yet.

Wednesday's Tigger Day was far better this week, helped by the fact that I didn't forget to bring a needle so I could stitch him while I sat doing nothing on campus for two hours like I did last week. Here's where he is now...

As you can see, I've made progress into the lime green on the left two columns. I started colouring in the chart to see what progress I'd made, which I'd apparently neglected to do when I first started Tigger last year, and it turned out that I've actually done way more than I'd thought. Identifying mistakes was made fairly easy by this, too, and most of them are in the stripes. I shan't be moving on to them for a while, though, for reasons which will become apparent. I did end up hating the piece by the end of the day, though.

Mae Govannen was totally the opposite. I started off hating it and ended up wanting to do more. Because it's such an intricate piece, however simple it may be, it's taking a while to come along, but I started one of the letters, which made the colour palette a bit more fun to work with. I also added another swirl...

I've several ideas of what to do with this when I'm finished, but I'm undecided as of yet.

I did make some progress on Tatty Teddy on Friday, but not enough to be worth showing, and I shan't be showing him/her again until he's completely finished anyway. The backstitch is driving me nuts, and I'm so close to putting it to the side and working on something else, but I'm gonna try to be good and power on.

I started Always Time for Tea, but again, no pictures - it's such a small piece that it's not worth showing until it's complete. I'm doing a second one using variegated floss on 18ct as well, which I'm gonna turn into a bookmark to give to my sister along with Nobody Loves You (I figured it would soften the blow a little).

The weekend itself has been terrible for sewing. With good reason, though - Saturday morning I got my uni work done, and went to Hobbycraft in the afternoon. Yes, all afternoon. I left at about 1:50, just after I'd finished my lunch and my post-lunch cup of tea, and got back at about 4:30. I walked 6 miles in total, there and back, and was absolutely knackered. The things I do for my craft! So all I ended up doing was updating my DMC floss inventory checklist and watching Doctor Who, then calling the family in the evening as is customary of a Saturday.

I did get a lot of new stuff, though. I spent in the region of £50 - which, for someone with a Meagre Student Budget, is one hell of a lot to spend on stitching stuff. It was worth it, though. I got all the flosses I wanted (except one that wasn't in stock, but I can wait), two new packs of needles (because mine keep disappearing, going rusty or are too big), a huge thingy of plain white 18ct (for all the things where it doesn't make sense to have a nice hand-dyed fabric), two A6 cards to mount the Janlynn flowers and Peter Rabbit on (pictures soon, I promise!), scrapbooking tape for the mounting, more DMC stitchbows for storing my floss in my floss folder, and, in a bizarre turn of events, some variegated yarn for finger-knitting a scarf. A friend of mine did one and I decided I loved it and had to too, so I'll post a link to the video tutorial when I can be bothered.

Remember the gift piece that I wasn't gonna be revealing? Well, it's my Saturday piece that I haven't touched this week: the passenger train!

Yeah, it's for DB (Darling Boyfriend, in case you didn't catch that one), and will most likely be his anniversary present for next year - apparently the second anniversary is cotton, so this will be perfect. He doesn't read this blog, so I figured it doesn't matter if I post it.

I also haven't touched my Sunday piece, the needle case, but I have a new start that's been distracting me from it. After I first gave blood a few weeks ago (and dramatically collapsed), I managed to sweet-talk my father into buying me The World of Cross Stitch, which contained the first half of an HAED chart - a cropped version of Rachel Anderson's Opal renamed Fairy Wishes, which is full of blues and purples and basically every colour I love. I purchased the next magazine on Friday and I just couldn't wait, so I got a bunch of the background colours during my foray to Hobbycraft and got myself gridded up pretty quickly - it's something like 252x192 stitches, so it's by far the biggest project I've attempted so far, and I can't wait! Again, no pictures yet, since I've only done a pitiful amount of stitching at the moment (and the DMC E5200 that I used instead of Kreinik #4 032 because there wasn't any at Hobbycraft is driving me mad - I loathe polyester flosses).

I'm setting myself stitching goals for May, but I'll be posting them right at the end of April, so keep an eye out for that. Other than that, I think that's it for me, though there'll be an awful lot of pictures coming soon!

Happy stitching!

Heather x