Cross Stitch Update

If you’ve been reading along on the blog all week, you can likely guess that I didn’t have a lot of time to stitch this week.  Between puppies, Gannon being sick, me being sick, and having my daughter Kalissa’s boys Carver and Anders here 24/7 for several of the days, there was little time to stitch.  Also, I didn’t stay up late the night the boys were here overnight as I knew I’d have to be up with Anders in the middle of the night for a night feeding.

I did really stitch a lot on Friday and Saturday evenings so I do have something to show, but not much.  Before I tell you about that, I have some other great news.

Do you remember I had been on the lookout for these two charts??  I had been hunting and hunting the secondary market to find them.  Often time prices would sour over $100 for a single chart!

This is Blackbird Designs Birds of a Feather,

This is Birds of a Feather Sally Spencer.

Well, imagine my COMPLETE JOY when a blog reader said she had the first chart, Birds of Feather by Blackbird Designs, and would GIVE it to me.  This is so wonderful.  I love being reminded that there are good people in the world!!

So the chart came and I was bummed that I couldn’t start it right away.  The chart calls for Needle Point Inc (NPI) silks.  I don’t have any of that.  I like silk floss but typically not so much that I’d pay the extra money for it.  NPI is about $5 a skein.  The chart needs 12 skeins.  I love the chart but don’t quite have it in me to pay that for silk. But, I debated.  This was my wished for chart.  Maybe I should just buy it.

Luckily there was a conversion for DMC floss.  I decided to pull the flosses, look at the chart and see if the colors were comparable.

I have an extensive amount of DMC.  Blog readers have gifted me some.  I typically buy what I see when I’m thrifting.  There are some colors I have five skeins of.  But, did I have these colors?  NOPE.  I was short about four of the colors.

So…when I delivered puppies to Rochester, I stopped at Michaels.  I got the skeins I was missing and a couple more for other projects that I needed.  I didn’t get a good sale on the DMC but still, they were only 60 cents each.

I got home and started comparing.  I thought it would all be okay and NPI silks weren’t needed.  WHEW!!  So if I were to stitch with silk it would be $60 for floss.  If I stuck with the DMC it would $7.20.  I think I’m totally… okay with going with the DMC.

So…now I am close to being set to start stitching…but I need to figure out the linen.

The chart calls for R&R linen.  I don’t have any.   Many of Blackbird Designs charts call for Picture this Plus linen.  I do have that.

Legacy for Picture this Plus is a good linen.  In fact, many times, Blackbird Designs calls for it.  I knew I have a piece I was stitching something else on.  It was a smaller piece and I thought I might have enough to stitch Birds of a Feather on the other half of the piece.

So I pulled it out and crazily started stitching on it to get the border done and make sure there was enough room on the other half to stitch Birds of a Feather.

The piece I was crazily stitching on is We Live in Hope.  I had put very few stitches into this and started it some time ago.  Then I left it.  I got the border foundation done on Friday night and was thrilled to find it met up.

I continued to work on it over the week and here is where I ended up.  I’m stitching it with the called-for colors on 40-count Picture this Plus linen.

I absolutely adore this piece and can’t wait to put more time into it.  The colors from the cover aren’t vibrant but I saw this version of it in The Attic Newsletter and really fell in love with it.

Here is a closer picture.

I ended up looking at the other half of my linen and my Birds of a Feather piece will fit on it but I didn’t love the modeling.  It’s the piece on the left.  So I pulled the piece on the right.  It’s Picture this Plus Sand.  I liked that better.

I put the threads and chart on the linen…Hmm.  That was okay but I thought as long as I had the linen out, I would check to see if there was something I liked better.

I ended up pulling Picture this Plus Doubloon.  Again I laid the chart and threads on it.  I really liked this and decided this is the winner.

I cannot begin to tell you how happy I am that a blog reader sent this chart to me.  It really made my day and lifted my spirits.  THANK YOU SO MUCH!!

That’s what I was up to for cross stitch except for one more thing…

My Black Dog Sampler goodies came!!  This is our New Year New Start Stitch along.  The Stitchery Nook just started sending out all of the preorders.  If you ordered you should be getting yours next week.  If you want to join us, it’s not too late to order.  HERE is the link.

You can select whether you want silk or DMC.  You can pick your linen count as well.  We’ll be stitching 1/4 of the sampler each quarter of the year with the goal of finishing by the end of 2023.  I’m super excited about this one.

I’ll be starting in the upper left quadrant but this is a “you-do-you” Stitch Along.  You can stitch it however you want.

Hopefully like here will slow down a bit and I’ll get a little more stitching time in.