Stitching, Knitting and Pastels :)

I am plodding away on Night Queen, but progress isn't very fast i'm afraid. Another 30 skeins have been ordered and I will carry on with this page and hopefully share it finished very soon :)

In the mean time, I have been keeping myself very busy as always, last night I finished this original pastel painting, called 'I Love You Mummy' it shows a lioness and her cub looking very cute and squishy together

I've also been knitting again and finished this lovely little stitching bear, based on an Alan Dart design and tweaked a little

Page 9 Finally Finished :)

It took almost a month longer than I hoped, but here she is, another page finished.

Did a little math today, the total stitch count is 151,200 stitches, so far I have stitched 63,845, I make that around 42% complete!  Not quite half way, but getting there.

I have been getting a little concerned at how raggedy the fabric is starting to look, seems my kitten cat has taken a keen liking to it :) I don't like the idea of it being worked on for another three years! So, I am going to make a huge effort to get a big chunk of it stitched, in a perfect world, I would have it finished by the end of the year, that is probably not possible, but who knows :)

I am off to do a thread count and replace the foam in my Pako needle organiser as the large needles have worn it all away.  Then I will order the threads for the next page and start stitching, it is only a part page, so it shouldn't  take me too long (I hope)

Thank you for reading my blog, I hope to share another page finish with you very soon.

Nearly the year end, almost a page end?

I had two things I wanted to achieve before the end of 2012, the first was to finish the latest section on my Pet Portrait Course, which I finally did last night, this is the latest piece, which together with eye studies make up the second section of my course, I will send them all in on January 2nd and will keep my fingers crossed that I do well.

The other thing I really wanted to do was finish my current page on Night Queen, I've just done a quick stitch count and I have 2587 stitches left to do......................do able? I think so, as long as I don't get too distracted by housework lol

So needles at the ready, and a quick prayer to the thread fairy in the hopes I do not run out of any colours, here I go!

Progress!

I'm so chuffed, I had thought I would suffer the usual new page blues and pop her away for a few weeks, but thankfully not, I have carried on stitching the next page and am about a third of the way through already, hopefully bang on track to finishing this page by the end of the year.

I'm also trying to find the time to finish my current submissions for my art course, I finished these wolf eyes in pastel yesterday:

This is the last piece I need to finish this part of the course, Tiger again in pastels, I think it will take a lot of hours to get the layers of fur and all the details right, this is the underpainting stage, with a little detail added in the top right corner

Another Quick Thread Count

This is just for me to try to keep tabs on how many skeins I have brought so far for this project, including the 10 I ordered last week, and the 40 more I ordered today, we are now upto 296 skeins of DMC threads...............

PAGE 8 IS FINISHED!!!

Finally! I do not know what it was about this page, I just seemed to get a massive block with it, I dread to think how long I spent on it, it must have been over 6 months.

But I am so pleased I stuck it out and I am hopefully over the block now and ready to keep going with this project, first few stitches are already into page number 9.  If I really stick with it, I am wondering if I can complete another page before the end of the year?

The page has 7220 stitches, that would mean an average of 277 stitches per day, every day until 31st December...............I reckon I can do it! Watch this space lol

So here she is:

 And with my kitty cat for scale :)

Now I am off to do a quick thread inventory and order for the page ahead, then on with the stitching!

Christmas Crafting Giveaway x

Still waiting on threads, postie is not my friend this week, bringing me nothing but bills so far!

But while I wait I am doing some updates on my Gothic Yarns sock wools and have just added a big crafting stash giveaway on my facebook page,  I thought I would share it with you guys, in case anyone fancies joining in the fun x

Here is a piccie of all the goodies :)

And here is the linky link:

https://www.facebook.com/GothicYarns