Half-way There

I spent more time on Peacock Tapestry. I finally made it to the half way point. I think another two weeks and I should be almost done with the grid :) I took the fabric off the frame so that you can clearly see it. If you look closely you can see pink thread that marks the edges and center of the pattern.

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New Acquisitions

I put in an order last week for the Kreinik thread I was missing for Peacock Tapestry and while I was at it, I also ordered the missing specialty thread and beads for Earthdancer. And I couldn't help myself, I had to look at what special listings there were and ended up also buying the chart for Once Upon a Time (it was reduced to $9, how could I not buy it).

Power Outage

We had some pretty bad storms in Laval last week. So bad that we lost power on Wednesday night, got it back and lost it again Friday afternoon. We didn't get it back till Sunday afternoon! This really cut into my stitching time. I was hoping to finish the side borders on the first and third page.

Oh well, I still made good progress. I was really trying to keep it to 2 threaded needles at a time (no idea why I would do that to myself), but finally gave up on Sunday. You can see all my threaded needles on the two needle minders (I will have to look into getting more of these, so useful). It went much faster afterwards and I was able to at least finish stitching the floral border :)

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After

Top Border

My top border is all stitched up except for one color. I thought I had all the threads I needed, but I found out last week that I was missing a Kreinik cord. I tried to get some at Lainages du Petit Mouton but they didn't have any and I was told the owner will no longer be stocking cross stitch materials :( This means that there are no more embroidery stores in Montreal that I can go to T_T.

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After

I'm already looking at a shop on eBay to order the thread but for now I'll keep going without it. By the way, did anyone else notice how shipping cost from the US has sky rocketed. Last year I bought a lot of things from US sellers on eBay. For a pattern the cost would come to $3~4 at most, now that's risen to $13 for certain items. It's ridiculous! I will be sticking to Canadian sellers only for now until this gets better.

Slow Progress

It's been a month since my last post on Bramble and the Rose. This project has become what I like to call my basement in front of the TV project. If I'm in my room I'm usually stitching on whatever is on my frame, so this project doesn't get a lot of stitching time.

But it will be getting more attention in the next month, as I will be spending a bit of time in the basement everyday to watch a movie. So hopefully Bramble and the Rose will get at least 2 hours of attention everyday.

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After

Originally, I was trying to stitch each part in a rotation (going around the center motif), but I quickly gave that up. I'm hoping to finish the second page soon, then I'll move on to the third one (the right edge of the pattern).

July TUSAL

An even bigger TUSAL report :) This TUSAL shows the left overs from Castle in the Sky. The golden thread at the top is from when I had to rip out the border lines from Peacock Tapestry.

Very Small Update

I didn't have as much time to work on Peacock Tapestry as I would have liked. By Friday, I did have the inner and outer line borders all started and I decided to start filling in the the borders first. Good thing I did. By the time I reached the end of the middle border at the top, I realized that my inner border on the right side was off by 1 stitch :(

I had to unpick the two inner border lines, all the green stitches that came before it (because I decided once I reached the center that I would start from the right until I reached my stitches) as well as the stitches I put in the corners.

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After

I think I will finish stitching the entire upper border and then continue the side border scrolling down as I go. Not sure yet if I'll also stitch with another color again like I did with the green and then scroll back up and continue down with the next color. Good thing about this though is I will know if I am off on my counting. More to think on later when I get there.

Bloglovin Test

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Brand New Start

I'd been thinking about this for a good while now. I knew I would be finishing stitching on Castle in the Air soon and that I did not want to start beading it (at least not for a long while). So once I finished it, I needed to decide what would be my next big project.

It came down to Spirit of the Southwest by Susan Portra or Peacock Tapestry by Teresa Wentzler. But since Peacock Tapestry has been on my wishlist longer, I figured it's a no-brainer.

This is not going to be a simple project. I will probably be working on this for as long as I spent on Castle in the Air (if not more). I took advantage of the long weekend to start.

Here is a floss toss. I had bought all the materials from eBay from a fellow stitcher who, I guess, decided not to stitch it and wanted to do a destash. I think I might be missing one of the Kreinik threads, but that's fine. I'll get it later. I spent a good deal of time winding all the threads on bobbins, which cut into my stitching time.

This meant that I didn't get really far but it's still a very good start. Here is my fabric all set up on my frame. Now, I need to decide if I want to stitch the entire outer and inner border lines first, or fill them in as I scroll down.