And it's a ....

... finish!

After furiously stitching to get her finished all night last night and then having to give up at 1am with just 50 or so stitches to go, Porthole of Fantasy is finally done! I started her on 2 December 2010 and 100's of hours and 1000's of stitches later, here she is:

She's a little crumpled, but then she is hot off the Q-Snap so it's not surprising. Now I just need to put her up on the HAED board and I think I might email JBG a picture, just so she can see what her work stitches up like.

Well I think she's turned out great. It just shows what a great job Michele at HAED dones. I think I'll miss her a bit :-( BUT onwards and upwards, I now need to prep my fabby for the SAL and also my new start, Early Visit :-D

Just plugging away ..

.. at my Dragon Charmer. I've been working pretty solidly on her and I've got nearly three columns done. I am still enjoying parking (which I didn't think I would!). I like the fact that it is so methodical and you can just plod from box to box. There is definitely something satisfying about filling in those little boxes and knowing that there are 100 stitches in each. It also makes it much easier to count the amount of stitches done. I was tempted to post a picture, but I think I will wait until the end of the week when I take a break from her to carry on with Sunny for the SAL week. At the moment it doesn't look like anything except a jumbled up load of colours. I can't see any of the details in it - and I certainly can't see the castle that is supposed to be there! Hopefully once I have done the fourth column things will become more apparent!

Thinking about SALs, it looks like next year's HAED SAL will be a year long one, with a Quick Stitch rather than a Story Keep. It will be interesting to see which charts are going to be on offer - apparently fudgey is sorting this now and we should find out soon. I am sort of hoping that there is nothing that I want to stitch as I really do have quite enough on the go already but, chances are, there will be something that grabs me and I will have to join in! I don't think I will be able to resist temptation. At least if it is a year SAL I will have time to get Sunny done first! I'm not going to make any of my 6 month goals - one of which was to finish Sunny. I think I was a bit enthusiastic and overstretched myself lol, that's not like me is it?! I will have to try to make any new goals more achievable (yeah right) :-)

I've been enjoying working with my new Lowery stand as it definitely suits my style of working much more than my old stand. The QSnaps are better for me too. I like to have my work right under my nose and this new combination certainly achieves that. I'm looking forward too, to going to the NEC this weekend for the Crafts for Christmas show. I've got the money from selling my old kit to spend - lets hope I can find something to spend it on this time!

Stitching along ..

I've been busy this week on the Sunny SAL. I avoided the flower on her hat for so long but I finally had to tackle it. There are only a few more stitches to go and I will have done it. It has taken ages :-( But it does look very effective. I have decided that I will probably stay working on her for a bit after the SAL finishes - I want to get the first page finished and hopefully make a start on her hair.

Talking about her hair, when you look at it, it is obvious that I really need to get to grips with parking, and now. Luckily one of my fellow stitchers has a great guide to parking on her blog and that has been invaluable, as has the HAED BB. I just don't think that cross-country will work with it, there are so many confetti stitches that I will just get lost and it'll take forever.

I will have to post a picture of Sunny when I move on again. Hopefully I will be able to take some of the gridding out and have a proper look at her!

I've been adding stuff to my wishlist again lol. A Gathering of Faeries by JBG and also Aquarius by Josephine Wall. I'm thinking I could stitch Aquarius for DD3 as that is actually her birthsign but I think I will have to work up to it as Wall's designs seem to be notorius for confetti! No rush though as she is only 2 and I don't think she will quite appreciate it yet :-D

The end of the first Sunny week ...

Thursday (the 8th) was the end of the first week for the Sunny stitchalong.

Basically, the HAED bulletin board put up five charts and I got to choose the one I wanted to stitch. I was sent the info for the chart I had chosen (Sunny by Myka Jelina) and then one week a month - from the first Friday to the following Thursday - I stitch on that chart. I have to put progress pictures on the board and, as long as I've put at least two pictures on between July and December this year, I will qualify to get the other four charts free! These get sent to me some time in January and I can add them to my (rapidly expanding HAED) collection!

I think this is a brilliant idea and the ladies that organize it are fab, it must take such a lot of work. It's amazing to think that there are stitchers all over the world stitching on the same chart as me! It has been really interesting to see how far everyone has got within the week. Some people have done a little, some a bit more and I think there is one poster who has done the whole page! I wish I could stitch that fast but you have to remember never to measure yourself against others! Everyone stitches differently and some have more time to stitch (time to stitch is pretty rare round here although I can usually get a couple of hours a night in).

I am pretty pleased with how far I have got. You can just make out where her eyes are going to be. I think I have got about a third of the page done although I do need to bite the bullet and stitch the flower that should be in the top right hand corner. It's got loads of confetti stitches in it and I think I'll come back to it next time - it'll help break up the monotony of stitching the white of her face. The colours are gorgeous though, so many shades of purple but it really is effective. The crosses you can see all over the fabby is my gridding - this is really useful on HAED designs as it is sooooo easy to lose your place and if you do you're in trouble! They are such a pain to frog as the count is so high the stitches come out really tight and you just can't get the needle in to unpick then without the thread fraying all over the place!

I think managed to get about 2300 stitches in and I spent about 19 and a half hours on her. It doesn't look much for that amount of time does it! It has been really hot though this week so it's made it really hard to actually just sit and stitch. And the bugs have been driving me crazy - I've got all the windows open because it is so hot but the daylight lamp seems to attract every bug in town! I've had to resort to a citronella candle by the side of me to try to keep them away - doesn't seem to be working that well unfortunately :-(

So, that's Sunny's week done. Back onto Aurora now for the next week, the greens and blues will make a change from the purples and black. I've not stitched on Aurora since 20th June so it will be nice to get back to her.