Tag: mystery SAL

I’ve had a bit of ADHD lately with my projects.  I’ve been working on four at a time. 

Here’s the next part of the mystery sal completed:

I also started two projects.  First, Northern Expressions Needlework’s Antique Lace band sampler:

This is stitched on ruby wine linen with HDF’s examplar white chocolate silk.  Since I had to order quite a large piece of linen to get the right length, I had plenty (after I cut it in half) to use the other piece for the Coat of Arms SAL.

This one is using “Obsidian” silk from The Silk Mill.  It’s gorgeous, shiny filament silk — but as slippery as snot.  I quickly learned to use much shorter lengths than usual (for this linen count, I have to use two strands to get the coverage I like).  I feel more worn out after wrestling with the slippery silks, so I might regret my decision to use it on such a large project.  But it’s absolutely gorgeous…

I’m not sure what other colors I’ll be using in the CoA yet.  I want blacks or dark grays that look good on the deep red.  I’ve placed another order from Carrie’s Threads, and as soon as The Silk Mill is shipping again (they’re moving and won’t ship until after 10/1), I’ll order more shades of black.  I’m tentatively thinking that I’ll do each row of the sampler in a different shade of black.  That’ll allow me to explore a bit.

My other project is a small kit with lots of beads that That Man talked me into the other day.  I don’t have pictures of it yet but I’ll snag one the next time I work on it.

I’m going to be starting a new cross stitch project shortly, and because it’s something new for me, I thought I’d share my progress here every week or so.

SAL = Stitch A Long.  In this case, it’s a mystery SAL – we’ve only been given a glimpse of what the finished project will look like.  There are 8 pieces, and we don’t get the NEXT piece until we finish the current one and send a picture to the designer.  Currently, there are 125 people signed up to participate, and we’ll all be stitching at the same time.  Pretty cool, huh?

What’s even more cool: each project will look very different, depending on fabric and choice of colors. I was thinking about my project tonight, and it both amused and irritated me.  It’s so reflective of my writing journey and personal struggles.

First, I want to do something different, that no one else will do.  Even though we’re all doing the same pattern.

I went through all my stash, reviewing my linen and silks, looking for unusual elements that interested me.  I found a large piece of Mermaid Blue 35 ct. linen I bought from HDF last year.  I love the subtle mottling, but it’s soooo dark.  If you’ve never worked on dark linen before, it can be really hard to find the threads.  Accidentally get off by one thread, and it can look really terrible.

But the designer’s piece is stitched in a nice blue silk, so I kept coming back to the Mermaid Blue linen — sort of an “opposite” idea with blue as the main background.  I have a mystery spool of soft light blue silk that would look gorgeous against the darker linen. It’d definitely be a challenge, and Lord knows I loooove a good challenge.  Sigh.

The first part of the pattern doesn’t come out until Sat. so I decided to do a little test stitching on that dark linen first to make sure I wouldn’t end up pulling my hair out.  I have a little freebie from Ink Circles that I ought to be able to finish in a day or two, and I’m using the mystery spool to make sure it stands out well on the dark linen.  So far, it looks nice like I hoped, but it is difficult to skip around too much — I just can’t see the threads.  These old eyes just aren’t what they used to be. 

I’ll wait until I get the first part of the pattern on Sat. and decide.  If there are lots of skips that I’m going to have to count very carefully, I’ll probably go back to my second choice, some nice Cream 40ct. linen with Paua Abalone silk from HDF.

I’m tentatively planning on posting about my stitching progress on Wednesday, similar to Nicole’s WiP Weds.