It sure has been a while!

I'm still here! Still stitching! I've been stitching this whole time, actually. Most of 2016 was taken up with personal side projects - I had two weddings AND two babies to celebrate! I won't be posting those projects, as they include personal details and pictures, but it was a joy to stitch them :)

A finish I'll happily share are these Christmas ornaments! They were a Dimensions kit I bought online. I just BARELY managed to finish them in time to give them to friends and family for Christmas - I did keep one ornament for myself, though! Finishing them was definitely the worst part. Tacky glue and felt and I do not play well together, and some of them came out pretty uneven. All part of the charm, I guess.

I found that I really like having a smaller side project I can stitch on the couch when I'm not in the mood to climb behind my giant floor stand! So naturally after finishing the ornaments, I started something else:

It doesn't look like much yet, but someday it'll be a beautiful nebula! I kitted this up almost 2 years ago and I'm really glad to finally work on it. The bright colors are FANTASTIC and a very nice change from Boreas, which is very muddy. I'm coming up on a page finish on Boreas (my first since last May, sadly!) - hopefully I'll have an update soon!

- Leigh

Boreas progress - page 4/row 1 finish!

I'm very excited to announce that I've finished page 4 and the end of the first row on Boreas!

This involved a feverish bout of stitching late last night as I realized the end was in sight. I'm incredibly excited to get going on page 5. I'm really hoping that having all these threads parked will make things go slightly quicker! But first I have to run to the store for more needles, as I seem to have broken or lost all of my good ones!

- Leigh

Boreas progress - page 3 finish!

I've finally finished page 3!

I'm still progressing at a snail's pace, but I'm getting there! I'm really hoping I can blitz through page 4 so I can have a row finish by within a year. That would mean it'll still take me another 3-4 years to finish everything - yikes! But it's coming along beautifully and I know it'll be worth it :)

I also have a number of side projects I've been working on. Most of them can't be shared just yet, but here's a little Devil's Claw project my friend sent me!

- Leigh

Boreas progress - page 2 finish!

We have an elbow!

I know it's taken me a while, but at long last, I've finished page 2 of Boreas! I've been plugging away at it (with a brief break for a side project) and it's been awesome to see more of the pattern develop, especially when I get to stitch something that isn't a dark blob! I know page 3 has a lot of dark blobby stuff on it, but I'm excited to start on it :)

While I'm blogging, I have a question! I've noticed lately that my scroll frame is going crooked in a way - instead of staying in a true rectangle, one of the bars will skew so things are out of alignment. This picture shows what I mean - see how the bars aren't parallel?

I have to tighten the bars a LOT to get decent tension, and it seems when I pull them really tight, it causes them to skew. I had my boyfriend hold things in place while I tightened them last night, but they flipped out of alignment while I was working! Has anyone else dealt with this? Any tips?

- Leigh

Long overdue update!

Hi guys! Sorry for disappearing for such a long time! I've been settling into my new apartment and I'm really happy with how I've gotten my stitching corner set up:

We found that armchair at Goodwill for $25! So much comfier than my awful old couch. I've already spent lots of happy hours stitching and I've completed another column on Boreas!

You might see that I had a brief flirtation with using a marker to grid. I found that it wasn't precise enough for me - the line was thick enough that I couldn't tell exactly which row of holes marked the edge of a column, which means it wasn't very helpful as I still had to count to double check. I ended up going back to the Guideline, which I find much easier. But next time I start a large project I'll DEFINITELY be buying Magic Guide fabric.

Finally, yesterday I visited the state fair and I got to see my cabin project on display! No ribbon this time around, but maybe if I ever finish Boreas, I'll submit that and see what happens :)

- Leigh

Boreas progress - page 1 finish!

Hello everyone! I know it's been a while, but I wanted to wait to post until I hit a major milestone. And now it's here! I present my very first HAED page finish:

I feel like I've really gotten into the swing of things. I'm stitching two columns at a time now, which I think does move things along faster, and I've FINALLY found the right pdf app for me (I'll probably do a separate post on that soon).

I'm really excited to move on to page 2, but it may have to wait a bit as I'm moving apartments next week. Stay tuned!

- Leigh

Finish - Block M

Hello everyone!

I'm happy to report that my total lack of progress on Boreas lately was for a reason - I was working on a surprise Father's Day gift for my dad!

We're both Michigan alumni so I knew he'd like the gift :) I was surprised at how long such a simple pattern took - this was nearly a month of work! I'm back to stitching Boreas now and very happy to be working on it again.

-Leigh