Jasmine Becket-Griffith is so cool!

Jasmine

When I completed Porthole of Fantasy 1, I sent a photo of her to Jasmine as I thought she might like to see how she turned out. Well, I got a reply today and here it is (I'm pretty sure she won't mind me putting this here):

"Hey Jo!!

I was going through my ancient Spam folder and for some reason this was in here! =)

I wanted to thank you so much for sending this pic over - she looks awesome!!!

Hope your summer is going well!!

Jasmine"

I really wasn't expecting her to reply so this was a great surprise and really made my day :-)

Half year total ...

For a bit of fun, we record our hours stitched each week - and then each month - on Bubble. It's really interesting to see just how much, or how little, stitching you manage to get done each week. My hours are noted each day in my stitching diary (where I also make notes about what I'm stitching that week and how it is going) and then posted on a Monday on Bubble.

As we are now halfway through the year (already! now where has the time gone?) I thought that I would post on here how I am doing so far. So, drum roll please, to the end of June I have stitched for 415 hours and 50 minutes!

I can't believe I've got that much done. Last year, from March to December (I didn't note January and February's hours) I managed 578 hours and 45 minutes so I am catching up on that one already!

Anyway back to stitching, this week is the year long SAL - so Curl Up again. Here is how I left him after the last SAL:

I am still in the nightmare that is the decanter :-( It took me 90 minutes to do just the first 10x10 block! So sloooow going but I will beat it LOL I am aiming to just get this one column done this week, so as not to put too much pressure on myself - I'll only get annoyed if I think I will do more and then not get it done!

Another Fairy Day has been and gone ...

so here is my post-Fairy Day SAL update ....

For Fairy Day itself I was working on SK Sunny (from last years SAL!). I'm still on the dreaded confetti that is her hair and boy is it frustrating! Over the four days I had allowed for her I only managed to complete the column I had left her at in November 2010, so still a long way to go :-( Here she is:

After that, I made a start on Ice Wind for this year's SK SAL.

Opinion was divided on this one and the wonderful Michele at HAED has, as a result, done a rechart of her face and neck as some stitchers thought she didn't look enough of a 'English Rose' with the colours she had used. I have both versions and originally intended to stitch the alternative version, but after I had put the first few stitches of her neck in I have now gone with the original. It seemed to me that the neck colour was just too similar to her hair. So, we will see how she goes.

I had hoped to get half the page done but I ran out of steam halfway through the week, so managed just three columns. Hopefully next month I will be able to complete the page and will be back on target. Here she is stitched one over one, full crosses on 28ct ice blue jobelan:

So SAL week this week is the QS, so back to my little draggie on Curl Up. Fudgey has sent page 4 through this month but I am sooooo far off that it is untrue lol. I am hoping to get page one done this week - but we shall see ...

By jiminie ..

... I think it worked! My stitchy bug has returned :-) After a terribly long (for me) absence, he has finally made his way home thanks to my joining in with the HAED swip SAL!

I worked on Early Visit this week and I managed to complete the whole page, so I actually stitched 5 columns. I've now got to her hair, so the next page should be a little more interesting. Here she is:

The next two weeks are the Fairy Day and SK SALs. So for those, Sunny as I really need to get going on her and, of course, Ice Wind (a lovely new start).

Here is Sunny how I last left her in November 2010!

I'm going to give her my full attention for 4 days and then will settle her into the regular swip SAL each month in the hope that I can get her done. Page 2 is confetti mad but page 3 should be a quicker stitch. She is being stitched on 25ct, which I have now decided is NOT my thing. I don't really like my coverage on it but it does make a nice change from the 28ct and is giving my eyes a bit of a rest :-)

Finally, Ice Wind. No before picture but I will make a start on her on Friday. Hopefully by then I will have the rest of my threads so that I can start her fully kitted up.

A little progress

but not much :-( the ole stitchy bug is still mostly absent, but it is probably not helped by me having jetlag after visiting NY last weekend (which was fab!).

Anyway, in an effort to kick the little bugger up the butt, I've decided to follow the SALs on the HAED board for a bit. So this week it was the freebie SAL week and some progress was made - YAY! That's three columns now done and so only one more of that painfully slow decanter to go.

Curl Up after the June 2011 SAL

So, this week is the swip SAL and, let's face it, most of my HAEDs could qualify for that one! I've decided on Early Visit as she has been sadly neglected for a long time and to be honest, I need a break from the confetti. I'm hoping that the blocks of colour will stitch up quickly and give me some visable progress on something!

Early Visit at April 2011

The week after is the confetti SAL and that will have to be Sunny as I need to complete her for one of my yearly goals.

Speaking of yearly goals, it's review time already! Looking back I think that I may have been overly optimistic lol! So far I have only achieved one of my goals - to finish Porthole. I think that if I follow the SALs I may be able to meet the others, but hey who knows!

Where oh where ...

has my stitchy bug gone, where oh where can it blardy well be!

Stupid stitchy bug has got up and done a runner :-( I think it must have been the decanter on Curl Up which sent it running for the hills!

If anyone has seen it, kick it's butt back here please!

Not feeling quite so guilty now ..

... that I have at last made a start on the SAL Curl Up piece :-) I've managed to get in just over a thousand stitches and despite the numerous colour changes, I am enjoying stitching him and wish that I had started him sooner!

After plugging away for a couple of hours with brown, brown and brown I was starting to get a little - shall we say - annoyed. But then I pushed my frame away and lo! there were all the little details that you really just don't see up close and yes, all of a sudden all that work was soooo worth it. Here is progress after the May 2011 SAL week:

SAL Curl Up with a Good Book

(c) Spangler and HAED

He's a bit messy with my parked threads everywhere but you can see the detail coming out in the book. You wouldn't believe the colours in the decanter - pink purple green and more!

Anyway, I've decided to carry on with him for a bit and try and catch up. I've got the first three pages to work on and I don't think page 4 will come until July so I've got a bit of time ... I'll see how it goes.

It's that time of the year again .. already

And the sign up for the HAED SK SAL has started. It only seems like 5 minutes ago we were signing up for the QS SAL but we are already 5 months in! As entry for the new SAL doesn't close until the end of the month, I'm not going to say here what I'm doing and you will have to wait until sign up is closed before I post a picture lol! As usual I have signed up despite already having sooooo many wips! 

The one good thing to come out of it though is that I have at long last made a start on the QS SAL Curl Up with a Good Book. I felt so guilty even contemplating another new start when I hadn't even started my draggie, that I quickly gridded up and got started. Some of the threads have been pinched for other projects but they were easily found. 

So far it is a little slow going as there is quite a bit of confetti and colour changes, but not too bad. I've managed to get about 700 stitches done in the space of the last three nights so I'm quite pleased with progress. I'll post a picture when it's worth showing. So far, when you are looking up close, it looks like nothing but already from a small distance you can see the swirl on the book. Very clever charting as usual from HAED.

And now for something completely different ...

What with the girls' Easter holidays from school and the extra long Bank Holiday weekend for the Royal Wedding and DH going off to Italy for training before he starts his new job in Saudi, it's been a couple of weeks since I was here last. I have been stitching ... honest gov! But I have also been doing something else - my completely different - running.

I have long battled with self-confidence and depression and one thing the doctor always said was "do something for yourself, it will help". Well yeah whatever I thought and promptly ignored her. Then, I set up my little stitching corner and lost myself in lots and lots of tiny crosses. I carried on doing this for a long time, but the problems never quite went away. Then I realised, I really needed to get up and do something else for me ... something that was outside the house, where there was no "mum! I need a drink!" or "muuuuum, I'm hungry"! So 10 weeks ago, I started running around the footpath on the estate.

To start with, I could just about manage to run the distance of 3 lampposts. I managed to get round 2.5K doing this but would be just flattened afterwards. So my running buddy and I decided we needed to be told what we needed to do, both being running novices and also having, in a complete moment of madness, signed up the 5K Race for Life. Couch 2 5K was the answer and, although it has been a struggle, in the space of 7 weeks I have gone from being able to run for a minute, to running (in the loosest sense of the word) for 25 minutes at a time.

We run 3 times a week - even when we don't feel like it lol! With just 2 weeks of the training programme left that time will gradually be built up to 30 minutes and the elusive 5K! So, has it helped with the 'me' problems? I don't know yet ... somedays my doubts kick in and I struggle (like today when I actually gave up because I just couldn't run any longer) but there is a great sense of "yay, I've done it!" when you finish. I haven't lost any weight yet, which of course would be fab, but I am definitely more toned and fitter than when I started! And yes, I am ever so slightly hooked :-) So, I'll carry on.

Anyway, back to my first love, my stitching :-D After kitting up and gridding Ophelia I started her last Tuesday. Two and a bit columns in and I am going insane already. It's just black, black and more black! I don't mind block stitching but I know that I stitch slower with black, trying to ensure that my coverage is good. On 28ct it looks patchy when under a daylight bulb and close up but once you get a normal distance away, it looks good. Here is progress so far, as you see, not much.

Portrait of Ophelia (c) JBG and HAED

So as that black is driving me crazy, I'm going to swap projects this week .. to my Wall. Talk about one extreme to the other lol! I've not stitched on Dragon Charmer in what seems like forever but seeing her finished by another stitcher on the BB recently has put her in mind. No doubt my next post will be about how much the confetti is driving me mad - but lets face it, us stitchers are never happy are we?! Here she is as I left her last (threads all over the place) I think in October of last year. Stitched on 28ct light blue jobelan, one over one, full crosses.

Dragon Charmer (c) Josephine Wall and HAED

Finally, FF150. I stitched on her for a bit for the themed SAL last week but starting Ophelia got in the way. I have managed to make good progress on her though so here she is. Not sure about the green on her face, it looks a lot brighter in real life but I'll trust the charting and go with it!

FF150 (c) JBG and HAED

Lastly in an effort to clear away some cobwebs, I've changed my online profile pic. The old one was taken last April and has been there far too long. The new one was taken on our 10th wedding anniversary last year at 15 (Jamie Oliver's restaurant). I've put a photo filter over it to jazz it up a bit because it was a bit grainy. How long will this one be around for I wonder?

At last!

.. the gorgeous Ophelia by JBG has been released! I requested her a while ago (it seems like forever) and yesterday she arrived. And during sale time too! :-D Needless to say, she jumped straight into my basket, I think within 10 minutes of her hitting the HAED site lol.

Now I am just debating fabric choices for her. I did think I might try 32ct but my common sense eventually kicked in and I think I will stick with the 28ct. My coverage is great on 28ct, except for the usual black. There are occasional spots of fabby showing through. Not too bad in small patches, but Ophelia has 47,088 stitches in black, and a fair few of those are on the first page which is almost entirely black! I usually stitch on bone jobelan, but this time I am thinking something slightly darker like tan or english rose or prairie grain. Hopefully with a slightly darker fabby behind any show through will be less noticable.

Back to my current wip, FF150. This is the supercute JBG HAED released for their Japan fundraiser. Here she is 5 columns done, so just over half a page. I wouldn't normally post until I had a complete page, but it's been a while!

FF150 as at 15 April 2011

Don't you just love that eye? JBG always does good eye!