Good News and Bad News

First up, thank you to everyone who has contacted me about this project, your comments and messages mean the world to me, thank you for taking an interest in my project.

I do have a little update picture for you :)  I decided that parking would be a good way to be economical with the threads for these last 3 pages, so here she is all gridded up and with a few hundred stitches in.

So that is the good news, the bad news is a little less pretty.....

I have this week become very disappointed with the HAED business & in particular, their treatment of past customers and supporters (including myself) now I am not going to put it all up here and I won't go into details..

But the result is, that I am no longer able to support or recommend Heaven and Earth designs, I will continue to support the Cross Stitch world, cause I love it and there are some incredible designers out there, but this is one business who will never see another penny from me.

This has deeply saddened me, I had hoped to really dedicate myself to this project and work towards finishing her this year, so that I could start another of their charts.

Now, I WILL finish this project, I owe myself that much, but at the moment I have lost all love for it. She will be packed away for now, probably until the new year, when I am not feeling so upset and angry.

I thank you all for your wonderful support and I promise to update you when I have stitched more.

I do not know if anyone from HAED reads this blog, but if they do, I am very, very disappointed...

Happy Stitching guys xx

A Page Finish (or 3) and a Promise

My last page finish on here was page 14, back in August last year (hides head in shame)

I will be honest, those middle pages were tough! I'd come too far to consider quitting, but still had such a long way to go, each page seemed to take forever and I just wasn't able to find the motivation to keep going.

It was a dark stitchy funk, I wanted to start something new, but I knew I would just feel guilty, so little by little I stitched away.......

This week, I am very pleased to announce that I finished page 17! That's right, three whole pages more!! I will shut up for a moment and share her photo

Isn't she pretty!! For those who have been keen to know my thread usage on this beast, I have so far purchased 543 skeins of DMC threads, yikes!  She is getting really heavy, I am still using a large 21 inch quilting hoop, which is pretty sturdy, but the frame tends to tip with the weight now, so I have to kind of wedge it, which is a bit awkward, but works!

I now have just three pages left to stitch, which, suddenly feels achievable, it's the homestretch!

Yesterday I put her back on the hoop and made a start on page 18

For the rest of this project, I would like to be as economical with the threads as possible, so that I can avoid buying too many, but also to make sure I don't have too many left over when she is finished.

So, from now on I will be using the parking method, it should make it a little quicker too, which can only be a good thing.

Now, as for time frames, I am nervous to put this out there, as I am generally setting myself up to fail, but my aim it to finish her before the end of the year.

This would mean I could begin charting for myself in January, giving me the freedom to play with fabric and thread without the thought of this piece hiding out at the back of the cupboard.

If you would like to join me from the sidelines and watch this project finally run towards to finish line, I would like to have you here with me!

I will be sharing updates on here as often as possible, three times a week seems a good number, or more if I really get on a roll.

As I head towards Christmas I am pretty booked up with commissions and crafting, but I will be making as much time for her as possible,

If you got this far, THANK YOU! You are awesome! If you would like to share this blog with your stitching friends, that would be great, the more people cheering me to the finish, the more likely that I won't go hide in my duvet fort with a glass of wine......

Apologies and an update

I can't believe it, has it really been over a year since I last blogged? Saying I'm sorry feels like it's not enough, but I am really, really sorry!
The last 12months have been an amazing rollercoaster ride, if anyone saw my Crowdfunding campaign, then you will know how mad it went.
I was supported by so many generous individuals, giving me the opportunity to start working full time as an Artist/Creator, I have been inundated with requests for commissions, alongside trying to find time for my own artworks and designs and I will be honest, I'm a bit knackered!

In the last few weeks I have started to slow down a little, taking more time for myself & my family and to remember why I was doing all of this in the first place.

I have been doing a lot of painting and a little designing, if you read Cross Stitch Gold, you might have spotted this little lady in the autumn last year

If you would like to see more of what I have been upto, feel free to pop over, you'll find me on facebook https://www.facebook.com/CarolineLordFelineArtworks or @sketchingkari on twitter. I've not really had the time to play with designing as much as I would like to, but I hope that will be changing very soon :)

However, when I start designing properly, I want to be able to test stitch my own designs and to be able to do that, I need a clear stitching mind space, what does that mean? Well, it means that this giant supersized project needs to be finished, soon!

I have made alot of progress since my last blog, update to follow in just a moment or two...

Page 14 is all finished :)

I did it! I finally finished another page, 6 more pages to go still, but this felt like a major milestone for some reason and I am so pleased that I finished page 14 :)

So far I have completed 89875 stitches, I have 44175 stitches to go.........

I managed to squeeze in a couple of hundred stitches on the new page last night, but I am almost totally out of threads.  Today I will do a stock take and write out an order for this page (361 threads ordered for her so far).

I would like to say that the next page will be finished by the end of the month, but knowing how things go here, I won't make any plans, instead I will just stitch on her as and when I can.

Not quite a page.....

But nearly there.....sadly, threads have stopped play, 413 & 823 are all gone!   I should get a chance to pick them up tomorrow though, so by Monday, the page should be done and maybe a bit more too

I did, however manage to finish a painting today, this Lynx has been painted in pastels on velour paper

Progress! Oh and blog hunting.....

Look! So excited to say that the page finish is now within my reach, about 1800 stitches to go, so likely by the end of tomorrow I will finally have another page under my belt :)

As this week is progressing, I am lightly tip-toeing back into my stitching addiction, I didn't realise just how much I had missed it.   It's not just the actual stitching process (although that is a good chunk of it) it's the embracing warmth of the whole stitching community.

Watching other people's WIPs grow, helping them solve problems, happy dancing with them as they complete something unique and beautiful, being inspired by their progress and adding to my already endless wishlists, it's a wonderful stitchy world out there!

Today, I am asking for a little help from you guys, is there a blog out there that you love, or a blog that you write yourself, somewhere that stitch obsessives can feel at home?

If there is, could you post the details in a reply, then I will check them out and add them to my feed, they will al get a mention in my blog tomorrow too :)

Thanks for reading and happy stitching!

Memories in every stitch

Before I start prattling on, I have a picture to share, not quite at the page finish, but getting there, I should be at the end of this page by Friday I hope!

I'm sure that I am not the only one who attaches memories to their pieces of stitching. Many of my pieces were stitched through the nights when my babies were small and I was on night duty.  One of my sons would never sleep at night and insisted on playing with his Bob the Builder toys from 2am to 4am every single night! I stitched Teresa Wenzlers The Castle when he was 2 and a half, it took me just 6 weeks of nights sitting up keeping him company, watching endless re-runs of his Bob DVDs, I still smile when ever I look at it, thinking of his cheeky grins and sing songs in the middle of the night.

Looking through my photo's earlier, it hit me, that this project, being over such an extended period of time has had stitched into it, many more memories than most, some good, some bad.  When it is finished, I will be able to look on it and be reminded of the passing of time........as much as I am frustrated with myself for taking so long on her, she will be a special collage of a big chunk of my life.

When I started her, my youngest was just a cheeky toddler, now he is a very tall, lanky almost 7 year old.   My gorgeous kitten Jasper and my beloved Devon Rex Coco who both sweetly modelled on her for me, are now playing together over the rainbow bridge.

I'm sure that fur from all of my cats is sewn in there somewhere, along with a few of the grey hairs which seem to appear on my head every day.

Time passes, we cannot do anything to stop it, as long as we spend as much time as we can doing things that we love, then all is good :)

I have taken a great deal of pleasure from working on her this week, I've missed it.    Life got so busy there for a while, that I forgot to stop and taking some pleasure in my life, stitching on Night Queen has reminded me to stop and stitch and smile every now and again.

Even a work-a-holic is entitled to a couple of hours off a day, right?