Suggestion box is open!

Hello my beautiful stunning followers and guest stars!

A big welcome to Rachel, Elisa and Titti my newest followers. Thank you for the honour of your company.

To stitchy biz - I need some help please please please!

It's my anniversary. The anniversary of being ME! So to celebrate the awesome achievement of being married, we gave each other a gift. I gave Me the beautiful Rachel Anderson's chart "Ruby" (technically not a Ruby anniversary) and uncanningly Me figured that I would also love a HAED chart for a pressie and bought I "Faery 2" as a gift.

But the dilemma is I has White 22ct opalescent (ooh bling) fabric big enough to take on this chart but I was thinking would it look cooler on a blue bling fabric.

So the question is...Should I dye the white blingy fabric some kinda blue or green or another colour. Also thinking of maybe a more vibrant orangy colour to set off her fiery hair!!

Or should I just leave as is and stitch on the white bling 22ct fabric??

Help me beautiful and talented stitchers. You're my only hope as Obi Wan had no idea!!@!!

Here is the chart I am referring to...isn't it beautiful???

 Thanx stunners

Will post wips and progress in a day or so, just needed help on this question so blogged early!

xoxo Alicia

Photo montage time!

Hello stunning followers and guests!

It's been a month since my last post but I was out there doing things so I would have something to blog about!

WELCOME!

Welcome to my newest followers Erla, Erin, Lucy, Lori, Keeble and Karen. How cool they came in matching pairs of E's, L's and K's. Thank you for the interest. You guys are my inspiration and my muse - I sew for you! (for the Aussie's out there that last is sung to the tune of Johnny Farnham's "I burn for you"). LOL!

A friend in need!

I have an amazing friend Janine who has been a cross stitcher for a long time. However thanx to Mrs. Dibble and I we have helped to ignite her stitching fire. Janine bought a BAP from Golden Kite of an a Pierre-Auguste Renoir painting "Jeunes filles au piano". Which I believe means "Young girls at the piano." Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. Anyhoo this picture used to be on Janine's piano teachers piano from when she was une jeune fille herself. She has always loved the pic and it obviously has sentimental value.

But I digress as usual...If anyone has ever worked on a Golden Kite chart it has blended threads as well as solid colours. Which means that you use one strand of 2 different colours at a time for at least half the chart. The symbol count can go up to 180 or more. Pheewww.

Janine was becoming a little discouraged with the lack of progress so I encouraged (also read threatened) her to start a blog to visually document the progress. It helps to step back and compare (as you all know) the difference in the before and after. So she has done just that, however she only has 2 followers and is feeling a little unloved, and as I thought you guys are awesome in your support of me I was wondering if you had a spare moment to pop over to her blog and just give her a little encouragement. Her blog which she updated this morning is http://aunty-nene.blogspot.com/. I greatly and fully appreciate it if you get a chance to pop over and visit her. She's a great girl and an avid animal lover as you'll see with her 2 babies on her blog.

OK back to me!!!!

I have put together a photo montage to show you rather than just waffle on in narrative about my cross stitch endeavours. (Since I appear to have waffled quite a bit so far!) I've decided to post before and after shots so that you, and I for that matter can actually see if I've been productive...or not!

Enjoy!

Guardian Angel - L A Williams - Heaven and Earth Designs

                       

QS Fragile Heart - Hannah Lynn - HAED SAL

Spring to Life - Hannah Lynn - HAED

New Starts!

Faces of Faery 164 - Jasmine Becket- Griffith - HAED

She is my free chart that Michele Sayetta kindly sent to me for participating in the reward program for HAED and completing FOF88.

I couldn't resist starting her and I've named the turtle BOB in honour of Thea's (Gizzimomo's) husband who calls them all BOB, which I think is so cute.

My faery is being worked on 25ct Opalescent white lugana 2 over 1.

I'm giving 2 over 1 on 25ct another go as I will not accept defeat. Somehow it's really nice to work on this time. I think my tension must have loosened or something. I thank my Guardian Angel for this. Ever since he has let himself be known to me I've become alot more relaxed in life. And this new me can't be attributed to extra doses of Chardonnay either. So it MUST be his influence LOL!

Froth and Bubble - Long Dog Sampler

Mrs. Dibble strikes again! She has been infatuated with samplers lately and of course it peaked my interest when I saw one of her finished works. So of COURSE I had to go and get one too...I'm so immature! or just easily influenced...maybe both.

The poem will read -

Question not, but live and labour,

Till yon goal be won,

Helping every feeble neighbour

Seeking help from none,

Life is mostly froth and bubble,

Two things stand like stone,

Kindness in another's trouble,

Courage in your own

Aww it's so sweet. In comes in 2 seperate charts which I thought was weird as it wouldn't make sense without the 2 verses together. Well anyway I bought them both. But you already knew that...hee hee!

A few firsts for me as it's my first sampler, first time working on 32ct linen and first time using 2 strands over 2. So a bit of new ground for this Princess.

The fabric is Summer Khaki which I bought from the lovely boys at Sewitall. He was so cute trying to describe the colour over the phone and he was asking me if I knew the colour of specific leaves on specific plants....ahhh no Pete but if you were to describe the colours of labels on South Australian wine bottles then I would have known exactly what colour you were talking about!!!

New Stash and stuff!

Went a bit crazy on the Nordic Needle catalogue so bought a bit of stuff. Please note though that the new charts are teeny tiny compared to the charts I normally buy, so it really doesn't count - much!

Sampler - Alessandro Adelaide

Needle threader

Beautiful butterfly needle and scissors holder

Fiber Hider

Awesome find - it's for when you only have that one or two stitches left to go on that colour and you're thread is stretched to the limit...so you just do the stitches then leave the tail at the back. Using this lil beauty you can then grab the tail and thread under the stitches. So no need to re thread a new strand for just one or two stitches....AWWWESOOOMMMMME!!

Fractal Bookmarks

These are only bookmarks and I only intend on doing one or two...ok maybe three at the most!

And the fav purchase is the finishing card. To record all the details of your finished project. They come in packs of 40...so only got just the one pack for now...although will eventually need to purchase 5 to record all the stash I have...you know when I finish them all. YAY!

WOW that was a long post...maybe I shouldn't leave it so long between in the future. If I still have your attention...

Take care my beautiful friends, be safe, be happy and be yourself!

For those living in the Commonwealth have a great long weekend, good time to get some extra stitchy time in.

Love you xox

Alicia



Finally my first HAED finish!!!

Hey there stunners! Hope you are all doing really well in this funny thing we call life!

Welcome to my new followers Kaye, Simone, and Veronica. I hope you like it here and thanks for taking an interest.

Sorry for the long hiatus but I have been stitching, organising, buying more stuff and even -- wait for it -- getting rid of some stash!!! Yes my beautiful followers the Princess has reduced her stash to 181 charts!!!  So this is achievable in my lifetime so feeling good, feeling great, feeling awesome (sing with me) feeeling like buying more charts just so I can crack the 200!!! D'oh!

Anyhoo here is my finished Faces of Faery 88 by Jasmine Becket-Griffith. It's my first Heaven and Earth Designs finish ever!!! Yay!

Isn't she beautiful and how cute is her little purple dragonling now that he has 2 eyes and 2 horns! So I'm pretty happy and it has set my stitching mojo on fire cos I have almost finished a page on Guardian Angel and on Spring 2 Life as well. Will post on the next round.

I managed to finish the faery in time to qualify for the rewards program on HAED website. So I chose Faces of Faery 164. It was fate. I was sitting at work daydreaming and I thought of getting a pet turtle. I first asked around about what kind of poop turtles make cos I'm kinda anti faeces. I was told they were pellets, which are cool as I can deal with that, I think.

In the morning when I got home from work I was on the HAED website, sipping my fav chardonnay when a lovely faery with a turtle (or tortoise) was featured on the new charts list. So I believe that's what the cosmos was telling me to do. To get that chart rather than a real turtle. Cos let's face it I should never be in charge of anyone or any living creatures life or fate.

Plus I love her multi-coloured eyes, it's kinda freaky and weird but pretty as well.

Have a great week everyone. I want you all to find the time to do something crazy this week, that you would normally never do but have always wanted to. Or at least find the time for yourself and do something that YOU love. Take care stunners.

Alicia xoxo

My winning Chart!

Hi stunners,

Welcome Shelleen - thanx for joining the madness!

Just a quick update for you my beautiful and gorgeous followers!  I finally picked the chart that I won for participating in the Fairy Day 2 week HAED SAL!

TA DA!!

 

 

 

It's QS Black Rose Immortal by Rebecca Sinz. 

Mock up of her!

I wanted to choose another fairy in honour of it being fairy magic that won this comp for me in the first place. Not sure if the girl is a fairy or maybe an elf but she's immortal and that's what I need to become to finish my growing stash! Man I think sometimes they multiply in the night.

I was so excited when I won that I told Mrs.Dibble and Aunty Nene as soon as I saw them later that night at work. But my mum takes my breath away with the comment of the day! I showed her the chart  and she says "She's lovely darling, she reminds me of you - she's got tits just like yours!" Oh bless her my mum. As lovely as the Black Rose boobies are I would rather have her immortality!



I will be starting her next Friday for the HAED themed SAL - the theme is NEW START! Yay but I have vowed I won't enter if I don't have FOF88 completed first. I'm going to spend all day today working on her and hopefully she will be done! Which would be really cool then I would have accomplished not only my first HAED finish but also one of my official half yearly goals. Double YAY!

I also realised that I did a miscount on my tally of my stash, as I forgot a whole load of Mystic Stitches that I had kept in another folder in the back of my closet. So will go through them again tomorrow. I just really need to know how long I need to live so I can inform my Guardian Angel. He needs to know how hard he has to work to keep me alive! Poor bastard he really drew the short straw getting my sorry ass to take care of. Bless him poor petal! His project is one of my top priorities and will hopefully be my first completed medium size HAED project.

Just a quick post today stunners - I hope to post a finished Faery in a couple of days.

Love you and take care

xoxo Alicia

No Finish...sorry for letting the team down *sigh*

Hello my gorgeous stunners!

Welcome to some new followers, Lince.80, My mother in law from Hell (very catchy title), Marianela and Fani.  Fani it looks like you may be a gorjuss girl fan. I love those charts and have 3 kits in my stash, which I hope to start soon. So I hope this will give you something to keep you interested in my little blog! It's awesome to have you all along for the ride!

Well didn't get the 23rd June deadline met, I'm so sorry everyone I feel like I let you all down especially after all the awesome supportive comments you left for me.  But the lovely boys were so cool that they decided that the next craft show in April will be fine. But they want to see 2 finishes...I was so happy that I bought 5 pieces of hand dyed evenweave from them. Cool not a problem. I have entered the HAED half yearly goal challenge and 2 of them are to complete Faces of Faery 88 and Spring to Life. Easy peasy!! HEE HEE.

Here is the faery:

Sorry for the colour, she looks a bit yellowy but that's just the sunshine distorting the colours. I will get a good shot for the page finish. I only have to do his wing and then only 1 page and a tiny partial page to go. Very excited.

She will become my take to work project as I will be joining in the HAED freebie SAL this week with Fragile Heart. I have to get going on her as she is one my of my goals. 

Craft Show!

Mrs.Dibble, Coral, mum and I went to the Darling Harbour Craft and quilt show on the 23rd. I was so good. I only bought one HAED chart and 2 teeny tiny little Gold Dimensions kits. I just couldn't resist the Marchetti. This will be my next BAP when I finish the 3 I have going in my rotation now! So won't be long stunners!

Oracle of Visions! - Ciro Marchetti

I stayed in Sydney overnight with my mum and we went out and ate Japanese cuisine for a change. Both had a Bento wahoo. It was gorgeous. Back to the hotel for some wine and checking out the goodies we bought at the show. Me being me I started one of the teeny tiny kits. It was a great day..however note - mum snores like a chainsaw after half a bottle of wine. Never sleeping in the same room as that woman again!  

So I have entered the HAED half year goal challenge. If you finish all your goals that you set yourself your name gets entered in a hat and the winner drawn out receives a free chart! The deadline is July 3 so get on that if you are interested. It's posted on the BB under general discussions.

Here is the challenge I have set for myself:

Finishes:

Faces of Faery 88 (progress as above)

Spring to life



Complete one page of :

Page 2 of "Where is my Valentine?"

Page 2 of "Lost in You."

Page 1 of "Release"

Complete page 1, 2 and 3 of:

Guardian Angel

and finally

QS Fragile Heart   - 

I'm working on her this week and as you can see I'm doing all three pages at once using the parking method. Hopefully this will speed things up a bit. Even if I do one line a day I will have it finished well within the half yearly goal time. Plus we received page 4 this week from Fudgey so it's motivated me to light a fire under my bum to get moving on her.

That's it for this week stunners.
I hope you all have an amazing July and keep up the beautiful stitching.

Alicia xo

Here comes the purple dragon!!!

Hey stunning stitchers!

I have stitched my butt off this last 2 weeks trying to get FOF88 finished by the craft show on June23rd. I haven't got as far as I would have liked but at least I've managed to complete the top row. Thankfully this chart only has 2 rows, hee hee! And the bottom row are only partial pages which is her mouth and a lovely mixture of vibrant greens and deep purples of the dragon, so will be really awesome to stitch.

Only a short update this week my lovelies as I have to get off this computer and back to stitching!

But I will be taking a break and sipping some cabernet savignon whilst perusing all your blogs. Take care everyone. And to all of you that are still under British Rule like us Aussies I hope you had an enjoyable and safe Queens Birthday weekend!

Here's my progress xo

Can you see him???

Confessions, Progress, New Car and a Naked Butler!

Hi Stunners

I guess I will start with the naked butler and my new car!

But firstly a big welcome to some new followers - Caitlin, Tammy, Cat and Scully. Thanx for the followship, LOL!

NEW CAR and BUTLER IN THE BUFF

This is Pete from "Butlers in the Buff" looking very buff indeed and posing with my new car.  I was at my Bff's handbag party that she was hosting. As an added benefit she hired young Pete to serve us drinks, food and anything else we needed (within reason). So I asked him to pose with my car as I am so in love with it. In fact he was the first male to get into the backseat of my car. Now don't get any ideas I was driving him up to the local bottlo, he was such a good sport that he went dressed or undressed as you see him below with butt hanging out in all his glory!  The man has no shame. I did feel sorry for the old bloke standing behind him in line at the counter. Poor bugger didn't know where to look. All of a sudden the ceiling held so much appeal for  him. LOL! Didn't help matters when I gave Pete a little smack on his butt cheek to make the old bloke look down. Oh naughty Princess, but it was so funny!



Pete from Butlers in the Buff!

That's me hanging onto him - hee hee

 

Spring to Life



Now the reason I posted this pic is to show you how cross stitching influences almost every facet of my life.  I specifically chose the Mazda 3 as it was the only manufacturer that offered a car with a colour close to DMC 995.  It's the main background colour for Spring to Life. I loved this colour so much whilst using it to stitch and my eye always fell on it when I opened my bobbin box...so it was the obvious choice for my car. My dad thinks it's a little too bright but hey I stand out amongst all the silvers, blacks and reds that everyone seems to be driving!

 Luckily I love the Mazda 3, it's so smooth to drive and it just slides into gear. I love driving manuals and simply can't drive automatics I get bored. Mazda 3 has 6 speeds not including reverse...OMG I'm in heaven! See we were meant to be. The universe answered my prayers with an awesome colour that I love on an awesome vehicle. Happy Princess!

PROGRESS

I've worked hard on Spring to Life this week even taking her to work. Putting stitches into her every chance I got and I still haven't finished page 2. She's moving so slowly!!! Unfortunately she is going to be put on hiatus until the end of June. I really need to get working on Faces of Faery 88. As I want to take her to the Craft and Quilt show being held in Darling Harbour in Sydney on 23rd June.  I promised to show the boys from the sewitall store my finished HAED. Both Guardian and FOF88 are being worked on fabric I bought from them. So....those 2 will be my focus pieces from now till the show!

Progress on Guardian Angel is much faster. I'm almost finished page 1 and hope to get page 2 completed by the show date. Fingers crossed.

It looks better from far away, close up it's just a blob of greys and whites. It's so beautiful to stitch. I'm really loving the 28ct fabby using 1 over 1 the stitches just look so much neater than when using 2 strands. Well for me anyhow.

Here is FOF88 where I have left it and hopefully I will complete it by 23rd June. If I can manage to finish off these 3 pages in a week, then down to a page a week I will get it done. It will be my first HAED finish too if I manage it...very exciting!

CONFESSIONS!

Okay, I know I said I wouldn't purchase anymore charts about 2 blogs ago...wellllll HAED had a sale, it was only 25% so I told myself - no - you have too many, and was so good throughout the sale. Until the last day that is. It went down to 50% off and I have never seen them drop it that low. So I had to buy some of my BAP's in my WL as they were only $9 and with the US dollar dropping it was even less in Aussie dollars. Now I say to you who could blame me under these circumstances so I bought 9 more charts. 5 BAPs, 3 medium sized charts and 1 storykeep! So not so bad right??







BAP's above are :>

Dahlig's - Envy and Wrath

Spanglers - Fireside Fairytales

Christensen's - Superstitions and The Chess Match

Medium charts below are :>

Kimpel's - Purple Orchid

Jelina's - Corina

Nielsen's - SHH Now

and finally

Thomas' - SK Winter Wings

Oh God help me it just looked so bad as I scrolled down my post. Well my guardian angel certainly has his work cut out for him if he thinks I'm going to live to see all these charts finished. Bless him!

I did a tally on the insistence of Aunty Nene and Mrs.D so here is my final confession:

Stash of a lunatic Crafty Princess!
WIP's  - 18

Faces of Faery and small charts - 19

HAED Med charts - 20

HAED BAP charts - 34 (Holy Sh*t)

HAED Quickstitches - 27

Mystic Stitches (Med-BAP's) - 19

Other (inc Miribilia's, Gold dimension kits) - 27

Scarlet Quince BAP -  1

Golden Kite BAP - 3

A grand total of 168 Cross stitches - YIKES

Good news though the last sale completely emptied out my WL on HAED and I refuse to buy anymore charts - oh except for a baby sampler for Blair from work, but that's it!!!

Have a great week gorgeous people. I have checked your blogs and loving the work of everyone. Congratulations sisters and brothers of the creative thread.

 xo Alicia

HUGE HUGE CONFESSION!

OMG!!!! It's not even 24 hours since I posted this blog and already I have blown my promise to myself. It's not my fault though. I've always wanted a "GAIA" chart and never really liked any of the charts with this theme. Closest I liked was Jo Walls "presence of Gaia" or something like that but the flowers all over her head reminded me of those old fashioned swimming hats the elderly ladies wore to the pool and the beach. Then Winkler had to release this beautiful pic recently and I stuck it in my WL with no intention of buying it (well yet anyway).

So trawling through the HAED BB I found a note from Michele Sayetta stating don't forget to check the announcements so I did and she advised to type in a code at checkout for a nice surprise. Curiosity got the better of me, must have been a feline in my past life...so I needed a chart to chuck into the cart just to see what the surprise was, not to buy. So anyway used Winklers Gaia and the surprise was so so so good I found myself clicking on "confirm wahoo" button and now I'm the proud owner of another chart.

So editing my above tally I have 170 charts, adding this med HAED chart of Gaia and the birth sampler for Blair's spawn.

It's all good - I've always loved a challenge - I intend to live well into my hundreds and now I will have something to do to pass the time! YAY!

So here she is the earth mother who broke my will.

*SIGH*

See you next week my stunning followers and guests!

xo Alicia

A Fatigued Princess!

Hi Stunners!

I'm so sorry for the lack of blog updates but I have been seriously stretched thin over the last 2 or so weeks. I had a lot of overtime shifts over the Easter break, mother's day, as well as her birthday, visits to Nanna, visits from relos overseas and catching up with friends. So sadly the one thing that suffered was my stitching. Big thank you to Manbroider who popped by to check on my welfare. Very sweet of you, sorry to worry you but I'm great just a little weary.

But that is all behind me now so I can concentrate on stitching. Within all this I managed to get 3 new starts in and some work on Spring to Life! I was feeling a little depressed re the lack of progress on her so remembered how Manbroider and other talented stitchers completed just the black outline of Hannah Lynn's work so I decided to do that to get things going!

NEW STARTS

New Start 1 - Guardian Angel

I couldn't let this one wait. It's really lovely to stitch alot of chunks of colour even though it's mainly greys and grey greens at the moment. Hopefully I will get page 1 finished this week. He is being completed on 1 over 1 28ct Opalescent Antique White. The sparklies didn't really show up on the pic even though I took it out in the sun.

New Start 2 - Fractal 45

I purchased this off the Fox Collections website. I always love fractals and when I came across this one I felt it too hard to resist. I had a whole roll of black Aida sitting in my craft box for years and thought I would whip this one out on that one. Not sure it's a good move as it's going to be HUGE when completed, 25 inches x 23.75 (62.5cm x 59.4cm). Check out the pics below. I'm doing this using 3 over 1 on 14ct Black Aida.





OMG so big, oh there are my toes just noticed that! LOL!

New start 3 - Fragile Heart (restart)

I'm having another go at parking. As she has so much chunks of colour it's working really well so far. I just have to try hard to resist continuing down the page with a colour when I hit a large chunk of it. I'm doing the top 3 pages simultaneously so that is the finished width of her. She is being reworked on 22ct black Hardanger 2 over 1. I dyed this myself in my mums washing machine. I was so proud of myself, until dad's bonds singlets came out pink in subsequent washes. He wasn't too mad but has banned me from using their machine for dying fabrics...As an artist himself (oil painter and sketcher) you would think he would understand ones sacrifices for their art, well in his defence he is the father of a lunatic Princess so I have to cut him some slack! 



That's it stunners from me. I promise Aunty Nene that I will post the new charts I bought from the HAED sale on the next post. I'm now off to check out what you all have been up to whilst I've been offline.

Welcome to my new followers thank you so much for taking the time to read my blog and follow. It makes it all worth while to have some friends on the journey!

Take care and love lots
xo Alicia