Border is Finished

I'm finally done with the border :) Well it's not really done, I haven't added the gold thread and there is still beading, straight stitching and diamond eyelets. But for now, I feel like I did very good progress and the fun part can begin ;)

I did make some changes from the pattern. I noticed that the bottom border didn't mirror the top border the same way the side's do. So I flipped it:

I tallied the total number of hours I've already spent on it: 177 hours!!! I can't believe how fast time passed (2 months already).

I've already started stitching the grass section at the bottom left. After 45 minutes I only had this little part stitched. I sense that this will require a lot of organization. But I'm determined to pull through :)

Almost There

It's been two weeks since my last post on Peacock Tapestry. I was hoping to finish the border  by now, but got distracted by new stash... from Amazon =D I spent several days going through all the books I ordered. I think I have only 1 left (out of 7 books) that I didn't read. So that didn't leave much time for stitching.

But I'm still happy with the progress I made. I only have the bottom border left to do and then I can start stitching the center piece before I go back to finishing the specialty stitches on the border.

Before

After

August TUSAL

I like this month's TUSAL colors. So pretty! It's all from Peacock Tapestry's border, I've been stitching nothing else.

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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After

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 :)

Before

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.

Before

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.