Update Time: Finishes, WIPs, and Framing

Hello, world! It's so nice to be back. I didn't intend to take such a long break but it needed to be done, because life got in the way. I was busy with family matters and taking care of a plunge in my mental health, I suppose due to Covid and the fact that spring tends to make me very anxious anyway. 

We've had a very strange summer as I'm sure you all have as well... After one of the strictest lockdowns in the world, Spain opened its doors back in July and places have been overloaded with people. Masks are obligatory everywhere except for the beach, and unfortunately the whole country seems to have flocked over to the coast (which is understandable I guess), so there simply wasn't a safe spot to hang out around here, and we've stayed home a lot.

Obviously the numbers of infections have skyrocketed and our area is now a hotspot... Right in time for back to school! As you may know we are both teachers, so we're not thrilled. I'm lucky enough to teach online, but my husband's back to work armed to the eyebrows with mask, eyeglasses, face shield and gloves... Let's hope it's enough and that everyone is safe.

As for cross stitching, I've got some progress and a finish to show you all! My pace slowed quite a bit during the summer, but I still got some things done. So without further ado, here we go:

Charming Kitten by Dimensions

That's right, I got a finish! I don't know how, but this adorable little kitten kept me pushing through. It must've been his soulful eyes! Not only did I finish it, but I had it framed too. That was an odessy, but I'll talk about it at the end of the post: if you want more detailed pictures on the kitten piece, click here to go to its dedicated page.

Sea Flora by Nora Corbett

During the summer, I stitched up this beautiful mermaid and nearly finished her:

Imagine my surprise when among my fabric stash I found a piece of 14 count Aida, hand dyed by myself last year: a failed attempt from trying to get the fabric just right for Mermaid Azure! I thought I'd thrown all the rejects away, but apparently I'd kept this one, and if you'll believe it, it was the perfect size for this project. So it was a no brainer! When I finish her, I want to frame and hang her next to Mermaid Azure so that they're facing each other, as companion pieces. I hope to have her ready to go soon!

Wintry Wolf by Dimensions

This is my latest start, and I'm thoroughly enjoying it. If you remember, I talked about this rather special kit in this post , because I was very surprised to find pre-printed fabric! And it's not even Aida. And the pattern is worked in 3 threads throughout. I mean... Let's just say that I was intimidated. However, with the start of autumn my patience and concentration came back, and I was ready for a challenge. So here we are:

I'm marking the pattern as I go, which is a first for me as I see marking a book or leaflet or anything paper as sacrilege, but... Well, it had to be done. You'll be seeing my progress on this one this fall!

Framing

Finally, a word about framing. This one has been complicated this year. By the time our lockdown ended back in June, our one and only framing shop in town was closed for good. It was very sad to see, especially because the owner was such a kind and helpful lady; another example of how Covid is affecting everything. 

So I decided to frame the pieces myself. I went into our local carpentry/housewares shop and picked out two white frames, and then two small bottles of paint; then I set about laying the frames down on some paper out on our small balcony and painting them carefully.

 And this is how they came out:

A deep, Mediterranean blue for Charming Kitten. I wanted a really strong blue to bring out the color of his eyes, and I only put one coat of paint to make it look a bit rugged. Very pleased with the results!

And...

For my pixie, this beautiful, gorgeous, guilty-pleasure, deep popping Barbie pink:  

I could not be happier with this one. I was like a giddy child putting paint onto the wood, just enjoying the deep unapologetic pink to my heart's content. Just looking at this piece now makes me smile: it really pops! And have I mentioned it's pink? My inner child is pleased.

And finally, I also framed Guardian Spirit with a sturdy wooden frame which, while it's not perfect, at least it's done:

And that's all for now! I think we're all caught up on my stitchy news. How are you all? How are things in your side of the world? I hope you and your family are safe and sound, or as much as one can be right now. Wishing you all the best of weeks! Happy stitching :)

White Clover: Finished!

I have a finish for you guys!! Here she is!! White Clover!!

I mean... Isn't she beautiful?? I love the colors on her, all those cool greens mixed with lilacs and pinks. Every time I look at her I can't get over how gorgeous she is! I'd like to take her to a professional framer when this quarantine is over and find her the largest, most delicious guilty-pleasure-so-sue-me-Barbie-pink frame to make her colors pop even more!

As usual I used my own beads, I think the pink ones may be a bit larger than called for and a bit more pink than the dress itself... Buuuut I love pink so I ain't even sorry. Here are some close up pictures:

I can't get enough of this project!

How is everyone doing today? I hope you're all keeping busy and safe! I've decided to limit my news consumption because it's been making me feel so anxious and sad. I used to think that limiting the news would be like burying my head in the sand, but I've come to the conclusion that if I'm going to be holed up at home for goodness knows how many weeks, I have to take care of my mental health. So I'm now watching/reading the news once a day, and the rest of the time I'm either working, doing housework, stitching, or keeping in touch with friends and family. I have to say, my mood and anxiety levels are so much better... And that's not nothing.

I hope you guys are doing OK wherever you are, until next time... Happy stitching :)

White Clover & Coronavirus in Spain

Hi everyone! Just a quick stitchy update and a few words on the state of things here in Spain. First, here is White Clover, looking absolutely fabulous:

As you can see her skirt is really coming along, and I'm loving all the soft pinks and lilacs, as they are my favorite colors. The stuff of dreams! Absolutely beautiful, I couldn't be happier with this project or enjoy it more.

COVID-19.

Alright guys, I hope no one minds me digging into this topic, but... do you even live in 2020 if you don't talk about the Coronavirus? Here in Spain the situation exploded overnight. To be honest I've been very worried by the lack of action from our government, seeing how Italy has been doing for the past few weeks and we were following right in their footsteps. Things seem to be changing though.

As in stands right now, we have more than four thousand infected people and the healthcare systems of the main affected areas are completely collapsed. The government has declared a state of emergency beginning tomorrow, schools are closed and, well, it just feels like we're living in a dystopian movie right now. We expect the number of infected to rise to 10 thousand, especially now that people have begun evacuating Madrid (the most affected area) and moving to their secondary homes all over Spain. I'm quite worried about my two grandparents, who are both in their late 80s... I hope they don't catch the virus.

The president announces state of emergency in Spain

Grocery shops here are pretty much ransacked, as everywhere else, but we have still been able to obtain some necessities. My brother (who lives in Barcelona) says everything is empty though, and he hasn't been able to buy anything. Hopefully the panic buying will stop soon. It remains to be seen what measures will be taken tomorrow as part of the "state of emergency", but since we have already been told to stay at home, at the rate things are going I won't be surprised if we're in full-on lockdown like Italy.

How are you guys doing? Is there panic-buying where you live? Are your areas affected? Wherever you are I hope you're keeping safe! Until next time, happy stitching and remember to wash your hands ;)

White Clover: Week 2

YOU. GUYS. Look at this beauty!!

I absolutely, completely love this pixie! Look at those popping colors! Look at the swirly curves and all her little details! This is my favorite project in a long time. I have achieved Stitcher's Bliss :)

Speaking of details... If you notice, there's something different about her wings. I didn't use the Kreinik called for, opting instead for a cool green metallic thread that I had lying around, but I really like the effect. You can't see it in the photo, but her wings are very glittery! (Also, note to self: don't stitch with metallic thread under a strong lamp, unless you want to feel like you're staring into a thousand tiny suns. Use natural light instead!).

So, what's new with everyone? We've been down with a flu over here but are now feeling much better, we're settling into our new place and making use of our more central location to take sunny walks everywhere, including the beach! It's lovely. I hope you're all well and keeping busy with all things stitchy!

Happy stitching :)

White Clover

Alright guys, big stitchy news: I've changed projects. I was very bummed out about having had to leave our old place, and the flowers in the Baby Bluejays project were reminding me too much of our lovely almond tree beside my sunny stitching spot... that, combined with the intricacy of the pattern, were making me quite blue and frustrated. I obviously needed an easy, small design to take my mind off of things.

So, I picked up White Clover by Nora Corbett and I went nuts. Here it is so far:

I love, love, love that crown. It's so swirly and pink!

This pixie is part of Nora Corbett's "Poison Pixies" collection. I didn't understand why it was a poison fairy and I guessed that maybe white clover is poisonous, but as I stitched her I realized that actually, she does look poisonous! I mean, just look at those wings: they're full of sharp angles and changing, mesmerizing colors. If you saw that out in the wild you'd think twice before touching it! I have to say, Nora is very clever with her designs.

Some WIP pictures and my cats napping around:

Thank you everyone for your lovely comments on my last post- they were very encouraging and sweet, and I really appreciated them. And don't worry, I absolutely want to finish that Baby Bluejays piece! I'm just not in the right frame of mind for it right now, but I'll pick it up again :)

I hope you all have a great week, happy stitching :D

Ivy: Finished!

Well, we can thank the flu for this turn of events, because Ivy was finished in little over four weeks! Here she is in all her glittery beaded glory:

Isn't she the prettiest? Sigh. I can't stop looking at her. Which was not the case when I finished her, let me tell you. That day I was so not in the mood for beading, but I really wanted to finish her, so I beaded her with a vengeance ("con rabia", as we say in Spanish, which roughly translates as "with rage, in anger")... And I finished the beads in only one day! What can I say? I suppose even cross stitchers can be Temperamental Artists!

Before I show you some close-ups, I want to explain what materials I used for the "special effects" for anyone interested:

Metallic Threads

The beautiful, glittery wings originally called for Kreinik, but as usual I did my own thing. I compared colors online and got these Chinese threads instead, which may I say did the work beautifully:

One is a sky blue, and the other a dark coal blue, if that is even a thing. I was very happy with the result to be honest, as I think I got the colors right, but as you can imagine working with these metallics was absolute hell. I'd heard horror stories online about working with metallic threads so I was expecting trouble, and let me just tell you, those people were not exaggerating!

Beads

I played it by ear too when it came to the beads, and I went into my stash from my long-gone beading days. Again, I looked at the original Mill Hills, compared them to what I had, and picked the best candidates:

I mean, not perfect, but not too shabby either. They're pretty and glittery and they did the job well.

Photos

And now for the close-ups, for anyone still reading! 

So much fairy dust everywhere! And I love the little detail beads on the shoes... contented sigh. What can I say? I love this little pixie and I'm sure I'll be doing more!

I hope everyone is having a good week with plenty to keep with busy, until next time, happy stitching :)

Pansy the strong

This is a special post dedicated to my mom, because after a twenty year break, I got her hooked on to cross stitching and now we're long-distance stitching buddies! She's been working on Nora Corbett's Pansy for the past couple of months but she was struggling with the backstitching, so when she flew over here a couple of days ago, she brought the project with her so that I could backstitch it. So I went ahead and did the backstitching, and I washed and iron it and, Honorable People of the Internets, I'm proud to show you my mom's first project in over 20 years:

She doesn't like fairies so she didn't stitch in the wings. In her mind, she says that this girl has fashioned a beautiful umbrella out of flowers to keep the storms of life at bay, and that even though she's had some trouble, she still looks gorgeous and is an absolute princess. I thought that was a very sweet idea to come out of this project, and I'm glad she shared it with me.

I particularly love the rain dripping off her umbrella... it's absolutely lovely and gives it a magical touch:

And I also love the brilliant colors of this pixie, those pinks and purples just make me happy! As you can see, my mom's also been using plain white aida and the beads she had on hand: like mother like daughter I suppose!

Thank you for reading, and as always happy stitching :)

Ivy: lessons, brain fog and flares

Hello everybody! Here I am with another progress update, and a very satisfying one for me personally, because Ivy is finished except for the wings:

Isn't she just so pretty? She's looking delightfully human, and I have to say I rather like it (believe it or not, I'm not a big fairy fan). However, I do feel like the design would miss out a lot if I don't stitch in the wings, so I will probably do so!

This week of stitching has actually been pretty hard, and I don't just mean cross-stitch-wise. To begin with, we were extra busy with my in-laws, who are the sweetest couple alive, but the extra activities just pushed me over the edge and of course my fibro flared. Which in turn triggered the brain fog (in case someone doesn't know what brain fog feels like, it's basically this: you try to think, but your head is full of molasses. You try to walk, but are trying to walk through molasses). And the brain fog basically meant that I made a lot of counting mistakes, so Ivy's skirt is actually riddled with mistakes that I tried to fix as I went, but because I couldn't think clearly it was like drunk-stitching, which depending on your mood can be as hilarious as it sounds. I even confused one color for the other (honestly, don't ask...) and had to undo three whole sections, and let me tell you something, that stuff takes so much time. Insert big existential sigh.

And then to top it all off, thanks to Spanish Flosstube, I learned that the fabric that I buy at my local shop, the fabric that most sewing shops in Spain carry, is not actually aida. It's called "Panama fabric" and it does not have perfectly symmetrical squares: depending how you stitch, the stitches will come out rather flat or slightly elongated. Which is why poor Ivy over here looks a little bit squashed.

But anyway. Every cloud has a silver lining, am I right? And the good thing that came from all this is that now I know something new about cross-stitching, and I got to spend extra quality time with my cats!

And we got to visit a nearby cafe that we'd never been to, with beautiful views over the golf course:

So all in all, I can't complain. I hope everybody is having a good week and enjoying something stitchy! See you next time and until then, happy stitching :)

Ivy: Week 2

This is just a short and sweet post to document my progress with Ivy, as I didn't want to let a week go by without posting for this project:

That's where she's at right now. Isn't that inner skirt blue just beautiful? I'm a little bit obsessed with it!

My in-laws are here this week, so we've been pretty busy. It's been a fun week and a tiring one, and I'm just happy I got some stitching time in. I've even got a new stitching spot! Right in the living room, so I can stitch next to my husband while he plays on the X-Box. That way we both get our downtime together and we can chat away while listening to a show or podcast. It works for both of us! Also, Sancho loves it, and if he's not sitting on my lap he's stealing the chair itself:

How's everybody's week been? I hope you've been busy with crafty things. Until next time: happy stitching :)

Ivy: Week 1... And the kitten is framed!

It's been a whole week with this little lady and here is how she's looking so far:

I just love her! She's stitched up very quickly so far, but I think the skirt is going to take a lot longer.  But that's ok, because the main reason I love this design is actually the gorgeous drop and sweep of that skirt: it just looks heavy, and I love heavy skirts. Is that a weird thing to love?

I was also able to find a frame for Whiskers & Wings, and here it is all framed and ready to be hung up:

I wanted a wooden frame, because in my imagination the kitten lives in a wooden cottage. And I wanted it to look old-ish, so I got this distressed wood frame. I'm very happy with the result! I'm going to hang it up next to my craft cabinet, and at some stage I'd like to stitch up Morning Lake by Dimensions as a sort of companion piece, because I do feel like that's where the kitten lives:

Fall is well and truly here now: the temperatures have dropped (although I suppose that means nothing to all of you living further north than I am... It is still around 20ºC in the sun!), and there'll be snow up in the mountains soon. My favorite fall recipes have also appeared on the table: carrot soup, bacon-fried rice, salmon casserole... yum!

I hope everyone's having a good week, and until next time... Happy stitching! :)

Mermaid Azure: Framed! And a small treasure.

You guys! I'm so excited: it's happened! Mermaid Azure is finally framed and up!

But before we get into that, I want to show you a little modification I made to the beads. Here's a closeup of the area I modified, see if you can guess what it is:

I'm guessing that since you are not me (aka glued to this particular project), you won't necessarily see any difference. So I'll point it out: you see that pearl the mermaid is holding? That pearl (or rather, faux pearl) belonged to my grandmother. She absolutely loved pearls, and she had strands of them (again, fake ones) at her shop. She would use them to add little details to baby girls' clothing and headbands, and she would use them so often and so liberally that I've always associated my granny with pearls. When she passed away, one of the things I got were quite a few strings of these pearls, and I have since put them in small bottles to use for my own handcrafts.

So it suddenly seemed obvious to me to add one to this little mermaid! Because mermaids love pearls too, don't they? And she's holding it so reverently, like a treasure. So I guess that if we're being all philosophical about this as a piece of art, I suppose the mermaid represents me holding a memory of my beloved granny and cherishing it always.

Framing

Now, for the framing. I didn't go to a professional framer's this time, because if I do that each time I finish a project I'll go bankrupt. So I went to my local hardware/furniture shop and picked up a white frame with ripples in the wood that reminded me of the waves of the sea:

I framed it in a very play it by ear sort of way: I simply draped the fabric over the back of the frame, moved it around to get it as centered as possible, and sewed the sides together with a very long stitch. So if you turn the frame around, you'll see this very handcrafted look (that's the word I'm going with, anyway):

What can I say? I'm just happy the front looks ok!

To top it all off, I found the perfect spot for it: my Mediterranean corner in the living room. With its blues and whites and the obvious sea theme, I could not have planned it any better:

And here goes a special shoutout to my husband, who is just fine with me putting a mermaid front and center in our common living space, because (in his own words) it's "so cool!". Not only that, but he hung it up himself. I married the right man!

And with that, I say a goodbye to summer, because once September rolls in that holiday vibe is gone (or maybe that's just because I'm a teacher). But I did it: I stitched a mermaid and got her framed and hung in the summer. I am satisfied! I hope you're all having a great week so far, thank you for reading and as always, happy stitching :)