Crawling Out of the Woodwork - Elegance of the Orient

Good News Everyone! Elegance of the Orient has finally seen the light of day and gotten some long overdue attention. It's so strange that I am having such trouble with this project, when there is so little left to be done. I guess part of the problem is that I'm not the biggest fan of back stitching and there is a lot of it in this piece. This is how she looked last time I posted, a shameful 11 months ago! I honestly did not realise how neglected she was until I looked back.

Dimensions Gold - Elegance of the Orient Progress

Well here she is, I finally managed to finish off the bird, a dove I'm guessing, and made some progress on the outline of her shawl and kimono. The cherry blossoms on the trees are surprisingly fiddly, as they are only half stitches and it can be difficult to anchor the thread ends. Also their placement is awkward to get right as they aren't close to the majority of the design. So I have been working on backstitching in the branches to each set of blossoms in order to make sure they are correctly placed.

Error in the branches highlighted with a black box outline

Here is where I confess all to you dear readers, I made an error in the placement of one of the branches, highlighted above. When I first discovered it I figured that I would just leave it alone and work around it but when I picked it back up again I knew that I just wouldn't be able ignore it. It's a very small fix, so I will be ripping out those offensive stitches and re-doing it correctly. I'm also pretty sure that I have done the first bit of the Raspberry coloured cording incorrectly, so that will have to be re-done.

Dimensions Gold - Elegance of the Orient Cross Stitch Progress Close up

Believe it or not those are not the only mistakes in this, no wonder I'm having trouble finishing it. I discovered a long time ago that I had mixed up two of the pinks when I was sorting the threads. Luckily I discovered my error before it went too far but one of the pinks in the top rose on her kimono is wrong. I had always planned to rip them out and re-stitch them correctly before I backstitched that flower but I'm just not sure if I will. If I don't then the two flowers won't match but if I do it's going to take time as I'm not entirely sure which pink it is that's wrong. Fixing it will require lots of comparing and checking with the correctly stitched flower. I would love to hear what you guys think, rip it or leave it? 

Well that's all for now. I hope you have enjoyed seeing Elegance again after her long hiatus. Hopefully I will manage lots more progress on her and she will soon become a finish instead of a UFO.

Bye for Now!

YOTA March - Dimensions Gold Elegance of the Orient

Well it's YOTA time here again, this one seem to come around too quickly. Unfortunately this month I made no progress on this piece, not a single stitch.

Here she is as of last month's check in and still is:

Dimensions Gold - Elegance of the Orient

I really had hoped that this would be a finish for me this month, however everytime I picked it up to work on it I just couldn't seem to get into my stitching groove. The same thing happened with both my HAP SAL piece, HAED Bridge of Wings, and my lunch time mini project.

HAP SAL - Bridge of Wings Post
Lunch Time Mini Project Post

In the last week there were a number of days when I was really excited by the idea of going home and settling down for an eveing of stitching. I would get all my supplies together and fully intent on making some progress. After a few minutes I would find that I just wasn't enjoying the process and would have to put it down again. Unfortunately this means that I have nothing new to show you all today but hopefully my creativity will be back on track soon.

In the meantime head to the YOTA page on the top right of this blog and check out how the others are doing.

Stitch From Stash and The Experiment to Spend Less

Month: February
Spent: $0.00
Earned: $0.00

Most of my stitching progress this month is from late January and early February. However my budget is going well, with my second no spend month. This year I have started a budget plan and will be trying various techniques to curb my spending in all areas of my life.

Lickle Ted - Christmas Stitch Kit - The World of Cross Stitching

Somebunny to Love - The World of Cross Stitching Issue 179

Dimensions Gold - Elegance of the Orient

HAED - Bridge of Wings

Lavender & Lace - Celtic Spring

The first technique I have tested is a reward system. Each week that I manage to make no unnecessary purchases I add a small amount to a fund jar. This will go towards a large treat at the end of the year.  I had to ensure that the reward was neither too big nor too small. Too big and I would find it difficult to find it in my regular budget, too small and it wouldn't feel worth it.

The first lesson I have learned with this technique is never reward yourself in advance. If you decided to give yourself a reward of €5/$5/£5, whatever your currency is, but you reach the end of the week and find that you only have a 10, don't use that for this and next week's goal. Little compromises with myself, like this, is how these attempts at change have collapsed in the past. As soon as I compromise once, it makes it difficult not to do so again.

I am finding this a useful way to keep myself on track. I do have to be very clear about what is an unnecessary spend, for this exercise it is anything I do not need to survive. Here is an example of an unnecessary spend I made recently is, my phone has been crashing apps and become intolerably slow. I decided I would replace it as I use it regularly. Although my old phone was not able to perform the functions I needed to an acceptable standard, it still functioned. Therefore I considered the purchase of the new one as unnecessary and missed out on my reward. As a new phone is a large expense, I debated whether I would forgo my reward for a few weeks, however I decided against such a harsh measure, as it was only a matter of time before my old handset needed replacing.

Do you have any tips or tricks you use to help you stop spending? Please let me know in the comments below. I would be interested in trying them out.

YOTA Update No. 2 - Elegance of the Orient

It's the first Saturday of the month, so it's YOTA post day. I'm very happy with my progress since last month. Elegance now has all the cross stitching in the female figure done except the bit of frogging that I have to do in one of the flowers. I also started on the some of the half cross. I finished off the stitching under the figure and some in the cherry blossom tree.

Dimensions Gold - Elegance of the Orient in Jan 2015

Last year I was flitting between this project and Somebunny to Love, which I managed to finish off recently, for YOTA. I'm happy to be back to being able to work on this exclusively for this SAL.

Dimensions Gold - Elegance of the Orient in Feb 2015

I would like to thank all my wonderful readers for continuing to check out my blog and leave me such amazing comments. I hope all those involved in YOTA are having fun with the SAL this year and it is helping you to get some of those UFO projects finished.

Joined the Twitter Flock

Recently I decided I would join Twitter under my blog name. I thought it might be fun to Tweet bout the crafty things I was up to as well as be able to shout and scream when I do something wrong. In blog posts you get to see how the piece has progressed after a number of hours work and after all mistakes have been fixed. I thought twitter might be a fun way to talk about the process

I also plan to tweet about upcoming posts that people can look out for so that you might know in advance about something that is of particular interest or when it goes up on the blog.

If anyone is interested in following along with me my Twitter name is pulltheotherthread@pulltheotherth.

I have been working away on Elegance for a couple of days as well as making up a batch of Tomato Chutney, which my family is a big fan of. I will keep the Elegance post for YOTA which is the first Saturday of Feb. The Tomato Chutney post with a link to the recipe will be posted on Wednesday.

First 2015 Stitch from Stash - Craft Budgeting

Welcome to my first Stitch from Stash report of 2015.

Month: January
Spent: $0.00

Earned: $2.00 for the 1500 stitches on Bridge.

This month I worked on Elegance of the Orient and Bridge of Wings. I did not make any new starts from stash.

HAED - Bridge of Wings

Dimensions Gold - Elegance of the Orient

My budget plans for this year are to make as few unnecessary purchases as possible and see how much I can save. Rather than getting bogged down with a year goal I am just going to try for week by week. The idea is that at the beginning of each week I make the decision to not make any unnecessary purchases. This includes craft supplies, books, games, bath products etc. and is just for that current week. I will probably build a reward system in there for when I am successful maybe by putting aside a small amount of money for an end of year splash out on something I have wanted for a while but was too expensive.

The idea behind this is that over the last number of years I have accumulated a very large amount of entertainment items, either books, craft stuff etc. now I want to actually start using these items rather just purchasing more to be added to the pile. I am allowing myself to purchase any supplies that I absolutely need for a particular project but it has to be for something I already have such as a pattern.

I am delighted to have started off the year with a zero cross stitching spend and am hoping to have the same next month. I might even have added on some more earned funds to my budget.

Next up will be a Homemade Goodies Foodie post.
 

Elegance of the Orient Update

I am managing to progress slowly with this piece. The flowers in her Kimono are proving to be quite time consuming. I was hopeful that I might finish this for the next YOTA post at the start of Feb., but I doubt that will be the case.

Dimensions Gold - Elegance of the Orient

I decided to take a bit of a break from stitching the flowers and moved onto some of the green half crosses below her. Also there is a colour error in the large flower I have stitched that I will need to fix. Unfortunately I can't remember which one is the incorrect colour so I will have to wait until I have stitched the second flower. Then I will have to frog and re-stitch.

I am hoping to have more progress on this to share with you all for YOTA the first Saturday of the month. Sign ups are open all year for YOTA so if you are interested in joining in I would be delighted to see your progress. Head to the tab at the top of the page and sign up.

First 2015 YOTA

This is my first YOTA post and I'm very sorry that it is late. Hopefully I will manage to be on time in future. I'm really enjoying seeing everyones posts and there are fantastic projects being worked on so please do take a look at what the others are up to.

My YOTA project for this year is Elegance of the Orient and I am really hoping I will finish this early on in the year. I haven't worked on this yet this month so here she is:

Dimensions Gold - Elegance of the Orient

Hope everyone enjoys this years YOTA and you all get in some progress on those projects that have been left unfinished. YOTA is open to joining any time so if anyone wants to join in just click the tab at the top of  the page for the sign up form.

Late and Final YOTA of 2014

Hey all it's that time of the month again. I did some work on my YOTA piece this month, and am happy-ish with my progress. The complete absence of my stitchy bug means I don't have much.

Here is where Elegance was last month:

And this is her this month, Just filling in the floral details on her Kimono:

I haven't decided yet whether I will continue on with YOTA next year. I might see what kind of interest there is in it out there, so if you can let me know if you want to join in with YOTA next year I will decided if I will run it.

Here is a recap of my YOTA projects this year:

Majestic Peacock went from:

to a finish:

Elegance of the Orient went from:

to here as of this month:

SFS November

Hey all, sorry I haven't posted in a while, been busy here. I almost forgot to post my SFS report for this month, so here it is.

Amount Spent:$18.81

New Starts from Stash: Lickle Ted Christmas Stitch Kit

WIPs or UFOs worked on: Trick or Treat - Barb Cooley, Plum Pudding NeedleArt - Just Cross Stitch Halloween Edition 2013, Dimensions Gold - Elegance of the Orient.

I managed one day of stitching recently when my mojo made a brief reappearance. I decided to work on Elegance as that and Celtic Spring were the projects calling to me.

Dimensions Gold - Elegance of the Orient

Dimensions Gold - Elegance of the Orient

Trick or Treat - Barb Cooley, Plum Pudding NeedleArt - Just Cross Stitch Halloween Edition 2013

Lickle Ted Christmas Stitch Kit

Apologies for not having any listings on my Ebay at the moment. I will be relisting at the start of next month, as the fees are too costly for me otherwise, so do check that out if you are interested.

SFS August

It's SFS time again. This month I actually had a very easy time of avoiding spending any money on stash as I had all my cards cancelled due to the theft of my bag!

Amount Spent: $0.00

New Starts from Stash: Blossoming Spring - The Ultimate Forest Friends Collection - Sheila Hudson

WIPs or UFOs worked on: Somebunny to Love - The World of Cross Stitching Issue 179 & Dimensions Gold - Elegance of the Orient.

Piccies:

Blossoming Spring - The Ultimate Forest Friends Collection - Sheila Hudson

Dimensions Gold - Elegance of the Orient.

Somebunny to Love - The World of Cross Stitching Issue 179

My stitching has been a bit slow of late so not a huge amount of progress this month but not too bad :) Hope everyone had a great SFS.

Late YOTA August

Well Saturday just gone was our YOTA post day and this month I did manage to get some work done on Elegance, however some of that work was also done yesterday. I am really happy with how well this has come along. I just need to stitch the tree and bird in the background, the floral detail on her kimono and then do the back stitching. As I also need to try and finish Somebunny I really do not think I will have it finished by next YOTA but maybe October post will see a finish.

Anyway here she is:

Dimensions Gold - Elegance of the Orient as at 4th Aug 2014

Hope everyone had a great YOTA

July YOTA

Well this month I didn't get any work done on my YOTA piece which is Elegance of the Orient. As I mentioned before I am on a deadline for my Somebunny to Love piece so I was working on that instead. I did also do a couple of mini's and I have been in a gaming mood of late so poor Elegance got nothing this month.

So here she is still:

Dimensions Gold - Elegance of the Orient

I did some work on my Somebunny to Love project and managed to get  most of one of the bunnies done. I am going to try and concentrate on this to the finish. However two more babies (from other people obviously) have been announced so I think a lot of my other projects are going to get sidelined at the moment.

Somebunny to love - The World of Cross Stitching Issue 179

I also finished off my Halloween piece into a small ornie. I really like how this came out and I hope my friend will like it. I must make one of these for myself now as well.

Witch's Pantry - Plum Pudding Needle Art - Just Cross Stitch Oct 2012 - Ornament Front

Ornament Back.

Also I just would like to say that I have been having a lot of trouble with Mobile Blogger lately. Sometimes when I try to post a comment it will tell me the CAPTCHA (the numbers/letters you have to enter to prove you're not a robot) is wrong and when I do it a few times it will have published my comment two or three times. Sometimes I will press the publish button and nothing will happen so then I press it again and maybe a third time before it will work and again it will have published my comments multiple times. If you have received a number of the same comments from me I do apologise. In some cases it won't let me comment on some blogs at all!

So I'm really sorry if I haven't been commenting or commenting too much lately :)

June SFS

I, like many others, can not believe it is the end of June already! This month really did just seem to fly past. Hope everyone is enjoying whichever season you are currently in :)

Anyway onto the interesting stuff. It is Stitch From Stash time again, the explanation for this is really all in the name but if you want to know more just head over to Epic Stitching.

So how did I do in SFS this month:

Amount Spent: $0.00

New Starts from Stash: Somebunny to Love - The World of Cross Stitching Issue 179

WIPs or UFOs worked on: Dimensions Gold Elegance of the Orient, HAED QS Clara & HAED Autumn.

I did purchase a RAK for another stitcher and I am not sure if that counts toward my budget. If anyone knows, could they tell me and I can add it into next months budget instead, if that is ok with everyone. It was under the $25 limit.

Some piccies:

I also did a couple of finishes, which I will add piccies of here as well, although they have already appeared on my blog.

June YOTA

It's that time of the month again, YOTA, when we get to show off some of our work on those pesky UFO's. Other stitchers involved in this are doing some amazing stitching so please do check them out through their links on the YOTA page above.

Anyway I did manage some small progress on Elegance this month even with working so much on Clara.

Here is last month:

Dimension Gold - Elegance of the Orient as at 5th May 2014

 And here is this months progress:

Dimension Gold - Elegance of the Orient as at 8th June 2014

 I would really like to work on this and try and finish it but I'm not sure how likely that is. I will need to work on Autumn at some point as well. I might see how well I can manage with this one, as I really would like to get this done as soon as possible.

May SFS Report

It's that time again, my Stitch from Stash report. I worked on a few pieces this month, including managing to finish Majestic Peacock. However I have already posted pics of this piece so I won't post them again. If you would like to see Majestic Peacock in all its glory have a look under my finishes tab at the top or at my YOTA post for this month.

So how did I do in SFS this month:

Amount Spent: $11.80

New Starts from Stash: None

WIPs or UFOs worked on: Dimensions Gold Majestic Peacock, Dimensions Gold Elegance of the Orient, HAED QS Clara & HAED Autumn.

Some piccies:

Dimensions Gold - Elegance of the Orient

HAED - Autumn

HAED - QS Clara

My promise at the start of the year was that I would work on two large projects from my WIP's and one mini project. Well I did manage to work away on Autumn and actually managed a page finish, which I am so happy about but it is swiftly becoming apparent that Autumn will be a long slog. It is a huge chart and quite challenging. I missed working on another HAED chart so I pulled out Clara for a little while and finished up the feather in her hat. I want to try and get the last of this top row of pages done as there is very little left in them to do.

Now to show what I spent my money on this month. I have been looking for this for ages and just by chance came across it the other week, it was the last one in the store so I snapped it up!

Stash

Hope everyone had a good SFS this month :)

Late YOTA

Sorry my YOTA post is a little late this month. I have to admit that my post is a bit of a cheat as I have been having lots of fun working away on my new YOTA project. As many of you already know I finished Majestic Peacock and have now move on to the next UFO in line.

Here is where I was with Majestic Peacock last month:

And here it is again this month all finished up:

My new YOTA project is another Dimensions Gold kit called Elegance of the Orient. Here is where I was with it before I picked it up again this month:

And here she is as of today:

I manage a nice bit of stitching on this one in the last couple of days, I finished off the flowers in her hair and stitched her other arm. I am actually really enjoying stitching her and there isn't a huge amount left so I hope it get her finished up fairly quickly.