Bear + pegasus= pegibear!

This cutey was a freebie from Vermillion Stitchery , a few years ago actually. Sadly you can't download it anymore. It was a part of a calender series. I only downloaded the ones that I wanted. The site does have many freebies, so I check back every once and a while.
There is one thing that I hate about cross stitching and that is METALLIC THREAD!!! It is demon spawn! And this puppy called for gold AND silver!!! Actually I tend to stay away from projects that call for it. But in the end this little bear turned out so cute!!
He's stitched on 14ct. aida and he fits perfectly in a 4x6 frame. He currently sits on my sewing table.
The other charts from that series that I grabbed were a bear dragon, bear unicorn, and Bucchus the wine bear. And now as I'm typing this, damn I should have downloaded them all!

Video games try to rot your brain, try

Sorry for the period of nonpostiness. I will admit what I haven't posted in a while though. For the past several months I have been playing a video game with the boy. Over the past month I have been glued to it, in preperation for today. Yes, I play World Of Warcraft (the expansion comes out today). I'm not ashamed, I play with my husband so we still spend time together, and it has saved us butt loads of money. We haven't been going out to stores and spending money on crap that they really don't need. I've been ok with this. I talk to my friend every night through the game, she lives in Canada. So I'm really doing two things at once.
I've been working on some Christmas gifts for my nieces and nephews, so not all of my time is spent on the compy. When I finish I'll post picys. And there is a little bit of a back story but I will explain when I post the photos.

Now I do have stuff to talk about cross stitch wise.
I don't normal post WIPs but this is my BAP! I started it in November of last year and it's been taking me a while to work on, a. it's big and b. I want to do small projects to put off my boredom with my BAP.

So anyway, on to my big ass project!

Geisha
I got this Janlynn chart at Wal-Mart before they became one large butt and stop carrying cross stitch supplies. It's just a chart so I bought everything else separately.
The finished product is 8"x15.5". This will be the biggest project that I have ever done. But I WILL finish it damnit!


This is my work "mess". It takes two floss cards and a lot of fabric. I'm using 22 ct. light blue Aida. I'm a hoop user, they work just fine for my, I normally wash my completed project and iron them so I get the hoop marks out. I don't use the wooden ones, they don't hold tension like the tension plastic metal ones (I'm not sure what their proper name is). And yes I have a charm (Hello Kitty in a kimono) on the end of my scissors so I can find them. :)


This is what I have done so far. It doesn't look like much but it is!
One of these years (haha) I'll finish it.
But I'm also working on another Geisha kit.
And as you can guess now, I LOVE Japanese culture!
You should see my living room, lucky bamboo to samurai swords!

Vintage Books!!

I have been busy over the past few days. Getting ready for my favorite holiday!
I actually started stitching again. I needed my little break.
But I was going through some of my things and I found some books that my mother bought for my over the years. She supports my craftiness and buys me stuff like this all the time. I thought that I should share.
These are fours books in a series from Better Homes and Gardens

They are titled:

Sewing Casual Clothes
Tailoring Suits and Coats
Pattern Adjustments
Professional Sewing tips
They are from 1966! They are in very good condition too.



This one is called:
Complete Guide to Needlework
It's from Readers Digest and is from 1979
The colors that they used in it are nasty 70's colors of yellows, browns and blues. But it's a very good resource book.

Yay for books older then me!

This sucks

I'm actually burnt out on stitching at the moment. It's soooo frustrating! I have loads of time to spend working on something but I rather read that then stitch. And the terrible part is that I DON'T have anything to read!!!! So I'm taking a couple of days off of stitching and see what that does. I don't want to force myself to do something and end up hating it later.

Just so this post isn't completely boring, I'll add a fun photo!



This shows that I don't stitch all the time. Can you tell that I love coffee, I don't know, geez, maybe...

More of Teresa Wentzler freebies

I've done more Teresa Wentzler's freebie designs. I've posted about "Stretch" before, so here is the other that I have completed.

'Tempest in a Teacup" is my favorite by far. I just love the expression on his face. Talk about one unamused little dragon. :)

He's stitched on 14 ct. aida. Wow, I guess my fabric of choice is aida, very simple.

This morning I downloaded another little dragon of hers, called "Futurecast"
It's cute, I can't wait to start it. Unfortunately I have a verrrry long list of charts that I want to do before it.

"Stretch" Bookmark

I have seen so many people stitch this design. It is a beautiful design that TWDesignsworks had up for a freebie a long time ago, sadly it's no longer up. :(
She has a lot of beautiful pieces that I want. I love how she mixes two different colored strands to get rich detail.

I made mine into a bookmark, a rather large and bulky bookmark. But I love it anyway. I used powdered blue 14 count aida (hence the bulkiness of it) and used dark purple felt for backing. I remember starting this and then putting it down for 4 years and then picking it back up again. Again, I'm really bad at that. This was early on in my X stitching venture so I got annoyed with it because it was a more difficult piece that I have done.

Surveying the stash!

I was "cleaning" out my containers of craft stuff, and by cleaning I mean making a big ol' mess. But I had fun doing it! I keep all my crafting stuff seperate from my cross stitch things. I guess I'm a snob about keeping it all nice and neat in one spot, as to where the rest are kinda throw into draws and what not.
So I will start off this post with an introduction of my work space. It is in the spare room along with all of the boys music/art/computer stuff. We call it our studio.
The table was made by my father, it folds up and portable. I love it. The black storage container is the home of all of my cross stitch stuff, well what I could fit that is. The white one is the home of all of my other crafty projects that i do. In the closet I have all of my misc. craft books and finished craft projects that I have up for sale on my shop. I try very hard to keep it clean.


And now on to the stash!!


This is all of my embroidery thread. I will NEVER wind thread on itty bitty bobbins AGAIN!! It took for-freaking-ever!



A lot (I'm afraid to count it) of my cross stitch floss, I use only DMC. The plastic bags system works just fine for me. A little while ago I printed out a DMC Shopper's list, that has all of their thread (numbers), it helps out big time, I know what I have without going through all my bags.


A crap load of my books and charts


That's a lot of hoops! And loads of fabric!!
A lot of this stuff was given to me by a friend that I use to work with. She just gave to me, I was more then happy to accept it!

I also have a lot of magazines, but i found that the British ones have more cute and whimsical charts in them, so I have a lot of those, but they are a little pricy. Ya know, being from over seas and all :)