October Cottage Progress

Here are some progress pics of the October Cottage with the color changes I've made so far. I really love the purple house, it just makes me happy. The oranges in the pumpkin have been swapped out for WDW Autumn Leaves which is a bit more of a vivid orange. I have a ways to go, been busy this week so stitching has fallen off but I plan on trying to finish this by the end of the weekend. Pardon the big cat hair on the house, I lint roller before pics but I must have missed this one. Thanks Vincent..lol He's cute though.

 So is Sage our other cat. They are my company while I stitch.

October Cottage Floss Toss

 Here is the specified floss toss for the original colors. I wanted to go with more Halloween colors, which is funny because I'm not all that into Halloween. I LOVE Autumn but Halloween not so much. I thought with the oranges brightened up and some purples added along with some planned border changes it'd be more festive. The house is in Weeks Purple Rain, and Weeks Merlin for the darker side. I kept the Weeks Scuppernog but I'm not sure if I'm keeping the Weeks Carrot color for the pumpkins or going with Crescent Colors Lobster Claw or Weeks Autumn Leaves. I'm still playing around and seeing what will work and what won't. I also added Weeks Mascara for the blackbird. I've started the Cottage and now just need to work out the details. More to come!

September Cottage Finish..finally

 I finally got September finished after way too long. I have to admit that online games are fun but they take up too much time. I officially gave up Chefville cold turkey and got back to stitching. I'm so happy I did. I think this came out way cute and I'm excited about starting October Cottage tomorrow. I'm about a month behind my stitching schedule so I am hoping to whip through October as quick as I can.

September Progress and oh stitching bug...

I have to say I've been missing my stitching bug lately. I can say it's two things, one Chefville on Facebook (I know bad fullnovembermoon!) and the other I'm sad to say is I'm bummed out. Our local needleshop has decided to close it's cross stitch room and focus solely on crochet and knitting.
I love this shop but as I don't knit or crochet it feels like a big loss to me. I loved spending time in their cross stitch room searching patterns and comparing one hand dyed thread to another. As they were closing out the room they did have a large sale of all their cross stitch merchandise and I went just a wee bit crazy. Or a lot..lol.

I have made some progress on the September Cottage but I should be finished by now and have October started. I just sort of had the wind taken out of me as I love going and picking out just the right shade of thread and now the nearest shop for that is an hour away. I can order online of course but it just isn't half as fun as talking to the ladies at the shop. I wish I had the least bit of talent in knitting or crochet after multiple attempts at both I just don't have it. I'm lucky though a good friend is a crochet artist and she's making me a few things for fall so I'll post those when they are done. Till then I'll go about searching for my stitching bug, organize my new stash and keep you all updated!

September Cottage Progress

Here is my progress for the month so far, which considering it's been blazing hot is pretty good..lol. I am not keen for stitching in the heat and we've had a solid week and half of temps over 100F but it's finally starting to cool down a bit. I think the rechart on the cottage came out the way I'd hoped and the colors are working well together. The original design is adorable but I like this better as a school. Now I have to cross stitch the bell, beaks and oh gosh I guess I should get back to stitching. Hope you have a lovely (not to hot) summer day!

A Quick Little Finish and September Cottage Floss Toss

While I was waiting for September Cottage to come in the mail I took a trip to my LNS and found Lizzie Kate Cross Stitcher in Residence and couldn't pass it up. I used left over thread from the cottages and various other projects to finish it. I even used half of a small piece of Lugana so it was all from bits.

I used GA Morning Glory for the top lettering, WDW Americana for the bottom lettering, various bits for the house and trees and the border is Anchor 1315. I can't wait to get this framed and hung up in the kitchen area, I think it'll look quite cute.

On to September Cottage! I made changes to the colors, here is the original floss toss below,

I didn't care for the almost peach color of the lighter red so I switched them out. Here is my floss toss below.

I went with School House Red (how could you not..hehe) and DMC 814 for the darker side of the schoolhouse, along with swapping the 3031 for 3371 which is a much darker brown for the blackbirds and the barrel ties etc. The biggest change I think will be the cottage itself in that the school house didn't look like a school house to me. Nothing against the original design, it's really cute, it's just I actually went to a little red school house in kindergarten in Missouri and I guess in my minds eye it looks better with the real little bell tower up there. So I charted up one and hopefully it will come out. I can't wait to get started on this and I am really  excited to see October's cottage.

August Cottage Finish!!

Well got this one finally done while watching Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 and 2 today. This one was so funny in that the more I looked at the chart the more I realized I messed up on the colors. So beyond the roof mentioned in earlier posts, because of the tricky similar symbols I ended up doing the Shutter stripes in ..yep you guessed it Shutter green, which oddly enough isn't what color they're supposed to be. Oh well I dig green so I guess in the end it all worked out. I change so many things anyway I don't know why I worry about misreading the chart colors..lol. I also left off the sun and changed the shell accents. I didn't care for the ones on either side of the house as it felt too crowded, but I did love the idea of the shells between the flowers on the top border. So I did them in satin stitch (sort of modified) and used DMC Variations 4190 to make it look more like a scallop shell. All in all I think it works, and I love this cottage. I have seen that September has been released and I'm waiting for it to come in the mail. I already have some changes I want to chart for the building. Something about not having a real school bell tower..oh well you'll see..lol. Enjoy your summer and stay cool. (I caught my husbands' nasty summer cold but so far it's being a bit nicer to me.)..

August Cottage Progress

I'm chugging along nicely on the August Cottage, although in these photos you'll not see a cottage so much..hehe. To mix it up I changed the order of things, just to get the border established. I usually start with the whole cottage, then the month title and then put in the border lines at the top and bottom. Seeing as the roof was a bit more work (more on that later) I moved on and got some other things done first.

The invisible cottage..hehe.

My plaid roof..

Hard to see, the giant schlub next to the bump out on the border..evil little schlub! Throwing off my count..hehe.

The roof as I said was a more work that usual for two reasons, one either I made a mistake on the chart or the person who stitched the model? I am not sure but it really looks like the Shutter Green and the DMC 3022 symbols are quite a lot alike. The photo example I swear looks like it used Shutter Green in the roof, not the 3022. So when I finished the Shutter Green I finally looked again at the chart and realized my mistake, the chart calls for the 3022. Confusing? Yes! Either way it made for a happy accident in that I went and kept my mistake, and then made a choice to use both the 3022 and 3023 alternately to fill in the roof, vertical rows alternating to fill it in. The result is a plaid pattern that actually I think looks like some roofs I have seen. So that was a happy accident.


What wasn't was the what I call the "joy of schlubs" which happened in the upper left hand corner, I had one strand of the linen that had a giant schlub? in it, which caused the count to be off slightly. Now the flower is going to be a bit off kilter on that corner but if I had gone and done across two strands to even the count it would have looked a lot stranger. I also omitted at least for now the sun, as I continue to flip the clouds. I love these designs so dearly just not into the upside down clouds. From flipping them I ran out of room for the sun as it's called for in the pattern. I might restitch it or I might leave it out, I figure I'll decide when the block is closer to being done. 


In other news I'm up to FIFTY followers! When I started this I wasn't sure anyone would be interested in my stitch and craft projects but it's wonderful to know that other fellow stitchers and crafters out there like what I'm doing. I'll try to keep improving as I go along and thanks for the support! 

August Cottage Floss Toss

OOh I am so excited, August Cottage came in the mail yesterday and I've been gathering my flosses to get started. I've been receiving the monthly auto ship of fabric, chart and specialty threads from ABC Stitch Therapy and bless that place I just love them. Great customer service and great email communications when ever I have questions or comments. Just wanted to give them a shout out as well as my local needleshop Middleford Yarn here in Medford.

I usually end up buying extra skeins of the specialty thread from my local shop as the color dye lots can be so different. As you'll see below, sometimes that is a good thing and sometimes it's a bad thing. If you want consistency in your pattern to have it come out looking just like the example, sometimes it's a bad thing. I had an issue with a color of GAST that for what I was using it for, it had darkened from the dye lots in previous years and the pattern wouldn't have come out right in those colors. Today though I see those variations as a good thing. I like a choice so to speak, of shades that might suit the little cottage and in this case these greens are great.

Mmm Yummy Beach Colors...

Can't wait to get started..

Three shutter greens, three very different shades. I think I'll use the one on the far left.

Love the purpley blue of these, I think I'll go with the darker one on the right. 

July Cottage Finish!

Whoo hoo, July is all finished. With this one I stuck to the called for colors and just added Rainbow Gallery Blending thread in purple red #610 (used one strand of the Geranium and two of the blending thread) for the red part of the fireworks and for the blue I used royal blue #107 with one strand WDW Americana and two blending threads. I think it worked to make the fireworks blingy but not too much.

These are blooming in my sad garden right now, please ignore the weeds..hehe.

These really are this bright, I've never seen such a dayglo color as these. 

July Cottage Progress and what I've been up to.

Here is my latest July Cottage progress, which isn't much sadly but I do have a good excuse! I've just returned from visiting family in Pacific Grove, California on the Monterey Bay. PG as it's known is someplace I used to spend my summers as a teenager and I love it dearly. I got to stay with family and friends, telling stories, laughing and eating way too much good food. The weather was gorgeous and the ocean was bluer than I've ever seen it.



The Boom Wall and a friendly seagull.



Asilomar



Asilomar Beach

 My stitching bug is still here I just need to get back to my regular schedule of stitching, although I've been having fun lately with my watercolors again.

More July progress and my stitching buddy..

July Cottage Progress

Here is a little progress pic from July Cottage. I ended up going with the WDW Americana for the darker blue as the Crescent Colors Blue Beatrice just wasn't dark enough and didn't match the example. I think I'll end up using the Blue Beatrice on some of the flowers in the border to add some variety. I'm loving this as blue is my favorite color. I just saw on the Country Cottage Needleworks blog that the August Cottage has been posted. All I can say is SWOON! It's gorgeous. They keep getting better and better and I can't wait to spend the summer stitching away on these. How are your Cottages or other projects going?

July Cottage Floss Toss

July Cottage came in the mail this week minus one of the flosses which prompted a trip to my LNS to look for the Aged Pewter I needed to start. Lucky I did go as a lot of you know who work with hand dyed fibers know, sometimes they're..off. The Blue Beatrice that came from the store I buy from online was nearly the same blue as the lighter Blue Betty. Thankfully my LNS had a different dye lot which was darker and looked more like the example photo. It's still not as dark as the one in the example on the pattern, so to be safe I got a skein of WDW in Americana. No other color changes in this one but I did add two Glissen Gloss Rainbow blending filaments to add sparkle to the fireworks. I'm usually not into Fourth of July as a cross stitching theme but I LOVE this. It's just so fun. I'm off to work on it now and power watch some United States of Tara. I love  instant watching and cross stitching..lol.

To the winners of the giveaway, your packages went out a couple of days ago, so they're on their way!