A Mother's Arms

I decided to pull out A Mother's Arms again and work on it for a while. I now have only 14 weeks until my due date, so I think it's probably not realistic to expect her to be done by the time our daughter is born (especially since I have ornaments to stitch, and I know I'll want to work on something else soon), but hope springs eternal! Anyway, it'll be good to get some more done on her, as I didn't have much more than her face, her gown bodice and the baby's face done.
I've put off working on her because she was first started two years ago, a week or so before our first miscarriage, and I guess a part of me felt superstitious about starting on her again. The weird thing is that when I opened up my little stitching book to record my stitching time, I realized that I was starting her exactly two years to the day since I last put her down. I'm glad that at the time, I didn't realize what a long wait we had before us.
I don't have a progress pic to post yet, but I'm having a lot of fun working on her, especially because this chart is perfectly suited to making little changes here and there. I'm not really doing a conversion per se, but I'm not stitching the background because she's being done on a gorgeous opalescent (not one of mine - a Silkweaver), and I'm changing a few little things, like the color of her hair and such. I also changed her hands somewhat, because they looked a little clawlike to me. And I added lavender blending filament to the crescent moon to make it sparkly. You can never have enough sparkle!
Here's the original design for those not familiar with it:

Fairy Flora

Okay, so I'm putting Fairy Flora away for now. I feel like I've made some good progress on her...but of course, the bottom portion of her is the most stitch-intensive, so I still have a ways to go.
I started her before I began keeping track of my stitching hours, so I have only an estimate of how much time I've put into her. I *think* this is about 70 hours' worth:



I have never been crazy about the fabric that Mirabilia calls for in this chart, but when I started her (LONG time ago) I was still pretty new to stitching on anything other than Aida and didn't feel confident enough to go with a different choice. I really regret that now, because I've seen her done on pale green fabric and I think she looks best that way. Still, she's turning out nicely, don't you think? (Especially since you probably can't see all the mistakes in the small image, heh heh).

what to do, what to do...

So I've been plugging away happily on Fairy Flora, but I don 't think I'm going to push through to a finish this time, as I still have quite a ways to go. I'm starting to get that vague, itchy 'time to stitch on something else' feeling, and I can't decide what should be next. Probably, I'll do a couple of ornaments (I really need to quit putting them off til December every year, since I always give three or four ornaments as gifts), and then switch to a bigger project...but I don't know whether to go back to Gypsy, pull out Land of Enchantment again, or start back on A Mother's Arms.
Really, what I want to do is start Mirabilia's The Stargazer as a color conversion on one of my own fabrics, but that would be bad. I have too many WIPs as it is. Bad Rose, bad. No new starts for you.
But that's what I REALLY wanna do....

Made some jewelry...

The 'fertility jewelry' section of my jewelry site was getting awfully sparse, so I made a few more pieces. The only problem is that I'm running out of names for the different pieces; since each one is unique, I want them to each have a unique name, but it's getting difficult to come up with good ones!

Anyway, here are a bracelet and necklace:




I always forget how much I enjoy making jewelry til I sit down and start making it. My next non-stitching project was going to be needle-felting, since I want to start getting some miniatures made in time for the holiday season, but I think I may make a few more pieces first. I have some gorgeous Hill Tribe silver beads that are screaming at me...

Color Conversion Blues...

After putting Marked One away, I decided to work on a Mirabilia for a while, so I pulled out Scent of Old Roses. I've always loved this chart, but I hated the brown in her dress and for that reason put off stitching it for a long time. But then I decided to do a color conversion a year or so ago, and happily started her, only to find myself not pleased with the result (you can see a pic of her over on the right side).

I thought that tucking her away for a while might change my mind, but I'm still not happy with the colors...so far I've just made a few changes, but it doesn't look right to me. I think the deep red in her bodice is the problem. Even though 814 is my second favorite DMC shade (500 is my first), I think it clashes with the blue. So, after working on her for a whopping one hour, I realized I was going to have to frog all the red I'd stitched, and since I'm feeling particularly lazy and self-indulgent, I tossed her back in the WIP box and pulled out Fairy Flora instead. I think my brain's just not up to dealing with a color conversion right now. Plus, when I looked at my stitching notebook (I keep track of all my stitching hours), I realized with horror that Fairy Flora has been a WIP for !!! SIX !!! years. Gah. Maybe I'll finish her this year...

Marked One

I did another page on Marked One, yay! Only thirty-one more to go. ; ) She's fun to stitch, but working over 1 on 32-count gets a little tiring at times. I'm tent-stitching her (2x1), so that does make it go faster...it generally takes me 18-20 hours to do a page, which is a nice block of time for my on-again off-again rotation. Anyway, here she is:

Ornaments

I'm so proud of myself - last month I went ahead and stitched the 5th TW 'Days of Christmas' ornament (I give one each year to my brother and his wife). I haven't done the finishing yet, but at least the stitching is done. This year's was easy...I was getting really tired of birds!!

The ornaments are pretty, but it's turned into something of a chore getting each one done in time for the holidays. Hopefully I've started a new habit, and next year won't go back to 'OMG it's two weeks til Christmas and I haven't stitched the $@^&! ornament yet!!!', which is my usual modus operandi.

Here's the unfinished ornament. I finish all of them as standups, because I think they're really too big to hang on a tree. My brother keeps them in his china cabinet all year round, which is great for my ego. ; )

It's up!

My website has officially launched:

Faery Fire Fabrics

Now I just have to figure out the best way to promote it... I thought about doing Blogads, but they have only two (!!) crafty blogs in their list, and they're for those yarny people. Well, okay, I crochet (never could get the hang of knitting, and to be perfectly honest I have a slight resistance to learning now because it's turned into such a trendy thing). Anyway, I don't know that a blog devoted to knitting/crocheting would really reach all that many stitchers, so I'm off to put my thinking cap on...