Another Circus Over

Cirque des Triangles is finished! It will now go into the "to frame" drawer next to Cirque des Cercles and wait until I stitch Cirque des Cadeaux (and Cirque des Coeurs once I actually get around to buying it).

It's stitched on 32 ct Lemon Whip lugana, 2 over 2. The floss is DMC 115 which is part of DMC's older series of varigated threads. All that is exactly the same as Circles, but Triangles took one hour more.

And in case folks want a better look at some of the motifs:

Title	Cirque des Triangles
Designer	Ink Circles
Start date	August 12, 2012
Finish date	October 6, 2013
Total time	98.5 hours
Fabric	32 ct Lemon Whip Lugana
Floss	DMC 115

Music to My Ears

I ended up taking a short break from Cirque des Triangles to finish Here Comes Treble and First Bass by Ink Circles. There is a third design called Alto Gether Now which I won't be stitching because I'm not familiar with that particular clef.
I'm not a musical person. I think I have a tin ear. I like listening to music, but it's mostly a matter of "I like how that sounds". I had to take music or art as a humanities elective in high school. I was highly encouraged to do music since the art teacher thought I had no aptitude for it. However I wasn't a particularly good music student either. I never did any of the work or practiced. I "played" the violin for two years because I needed to make my high school transcript look "well-rounded". It was mostly a matter of memorizing where my fingers were supposed to be in what order. I could never tell if my violin was in tune or not. I was the despair of my music teacher! I put my violin into storage as soon as I got my university acceptance and haven't touched it since. Despite this I still have a fondness for listening to the violin (even though classical music puts me to sleep). I thought I'd stitch the two clefs I knew as a tribute to that grumpy teenager who'd have much rather been reading a book and the poor teacher who had to suffer!

They are stitched over one on 25 count and I was going to post as soon as I finished, but in a fit of optimism I thought I'd finish-finish them over the weekend. That didn't happen, so I'll throwing in the towel and posting them anyway.

Fans of Cirque des Triangles fear not! I picked it back up and am zipping along.

Title	Here Comes Treble	First Bass
Designer	Ink Circles
Start date	September 22,2013	September 23,2013
Finish date	September 26,2013	September 27,2013
Total time	6.75 hours	7.25 hours
Fabric	25 ct antique white lugana
Floss	DMC as charted

More Red, More Triangles

I'm about 75% done with Cirque des Triangles and it's been pretty easy going. I'm debating between taking a break from it to stitch something small or pushing for a finish. It feels like I've been on a finishing streak lately, which is always good. But I feel like I haven't started anything new in forever.

Decisions, decisions.


Cirque des Triangles
32 ct Lemon Whip Lugana, DMC 115

No Queen, Just Red-Faced

So um. I finished Spring Queen. Except that the pictures I took are very blurry and out of focus and my batteries just died when I went to try again so I can't take any better ones. So have a picture of Cirque des Triangles instead? I'll pick up some more batteries and have tons of pictures tomorrow, with close ups of all the beads (there were a lot of beads!)

Also the red fluff left behind after frogging red floss is an non-removable nightmare.

Cirque des Triangles
32 ct Lemon Whip Lugana, DMC 115

Seeing Red

So I had another unscheduled break with very little stitching. *sigh*

At least Cirque des Triangles is still looking pretty. It also looks strangely orange in places but it's actually all shades of red.


Cirque des Triangles
32 ct Lemon Whip Lugana, DMC 115

The Most Progress

I had a few new starts while on break and I made the most progress on Cirque des Triangles. If the colours look familiar it's because this is the exact same fabric and floss as Cirque des Cercles. I've always planned on doing all the Cirques in the same combination.

There's now also Cirque des Coeurs which I have to pick up.


Cirque des Triangles
32 ct Lemon Whip Lugana, DMC 115
As with Cercles I'm trying to make sure that dark leads to dark and light to light but it's a lot tougher on this one. Or maybe it's been so long that it just feels harder?

Also: When I went on hiatus I was still using the old Blogger interface so it was a massive shock to come back to a complete change. It took me way too long to find everything!

Modifying WIPocalypse Plans

*Scrolls over the last month to see what happened since the last

*

As far as WIPs from last year go, apparently I managed to finish Namaste.
And that was it. So I'm making the executive decision to count anything that was started before the previous WIPocalypse as an applicable WIP (that makes a lot more sense in my head).

Taking that into account, I finished off Lily of the Valley's head. Explanation about that: when I was trying to convert Lily to a brunette I couldn't visualize how the shading flowed. So I went ahead and stitched the head and then made the conversion. Instead of frogging I added the beads and I now have her head and shoulders (and headpiece) as originally charted. No idea what I'm going to do with it. Possibly a needlebook. I'll add that to the growing list of finishes that I plan and just can't be bothered to do.
Lily of the Valley
32ct White Lugana

Salutations

An unironed Namaste. It's currently clipped to a coat hanger and hanging on my closet door until I work up the courage to turn it into a bellpull. Also, it is a pain to take pictures of this.


The yellow is my favourite, which is odd because I'm not at all a yellow person.

Title	Namaste
Designer	Ink Circles
Start date	May 12, 2011
Finish date	February 25, 2012
Total time	51.25 hours
Fabric	32ct White Lugana
Floss	DMC as charted

Hermitting? What's That?

I was good Friday night* and Saturday morning. Then I went to the fridge for lunch and never went back :(


Namaste
32ct white lugana
I started and finished the yellow motif. Two to go.

I count the weekend as beginning as soon as I get home from work on Friday and ending when I go to bed on Sunday night/early Monday morning XD

Colour Inside The Lines

Ah Fangirl February. The designer that I'm currently mad for is actually Joan Elliot, but I don't have a single WIP by her. In fact, I've only stitched one of her designs. Instead I picked Tracy Horner of Ink Circles, whose geometric designs are just fantastic.


Namaste
32ct White lugana
I've actually finished off all the black stitches, but it's a pain trying to take a picture of the whole thing since it's so skinny. Instead there's a horrendous picture of the first three motifs. There are three colours (besides black) in each, and when I started I'd only stitched one purple. Not bad progress for halfway through the month, considering I've spent time stitching other things.

Not Appearing In This Post

are any pictures of Alphabetissimo, Egyptian Sampler, Celtic Autumn, Sweeping Cobwebs or Cirque des Triangle. This is excellent since I've pulled all those out, almost threaded the needle and then put them back. I've got way too many WIPs that are nowhere near finished.

Instead I've successfully finished all the black stitching on Namaste.


Namaste
32ct white Lugana
Now to start filling in the colours...

Black and White

There's a slug outside that's moving faster than Namaste, but any progress is good progress. Except for the part where I somehow managed to combine two motifs into an unholy union and had to frog the whole thing...


Namaste
32ct white Lugana

New Things

On the day that I feel like grabbing a needle and starting something new Blogger goes down. There's some sort of lesson in that.


Namaste
32ct white Lugana
Originally I was planning on stitching this on a linen band so that finishing would be easy. Then I realized that I had to special order in the linen, or that I could just use part of a fat quarter and sew it finished.The quicker way won.

The plan is to stitch all the black first and then finish off motif by motif.

A Moon of Milk and Cream

I started with the DMC conversion but switched out most of the colours since they looked far too different from the model. My favourite part:

Title	Masquerade
Designer	Ink Circles
Start date	January 19, 2011
Finish date	February 12, 2011
Total time	38 hours
Fabric	32 ct Pewter lugana
Floss	White, 745, 844, 3053, 3740, 3825, 4230

To Frog Or Not To Frog

Just a tiny bit more on Masquerade this week.

Masquerade
32 ct Pewter Lugana
But this is my issue: The model moon looks something like that.

Mine is a very clear yellow/white. I'm trying to decide if the contrast is too much and whether I should frog and go for a paler yellow. Any opinions/ideas?

Benefits of Doing Laundry

1. Clean clothes
2. Find lost items (such as memory cards) when you turn out pockets before throwing sweats in the wash.

I'm really enjoying Masquerade. I think it's because I can see the part of it grow (as opposed to my other starts where you really need to get a massive chunk in to see any "picture").


Masquerade
32 ct Pewter Lugana

I love the fact that the moon is actually made of milk and cream which are pouring out of bottles!

Sadly this will be on hiatus in just a little while since I ran out of 844 and don't want to count too far out into space.

A Quick Decision

I participated in an SAL over at Ink Circle Stitchers last year (Cirque des Cercles owes that SAL a big thanks) and part one of my winnings arrived today. (well, probably yesterday but I didn't get to the mailbox until today)

I had the option of picking a chart and it was a no-brainer: I went for Masquerade. I'd thought that the ornament version in JCS was cute, so a full size version? Score!

Of course, about five minutes after I ripped apart the envelope I checked my stash on the off chance, and... well, I went ahead and started it! Definitely the shortest in-hand to start time ever!

The fabric is 32 count Pewter lugana, and I'm going with the DMC conversion.

I have to mention that I love Tracy's charts: they're large-print so it's very easy to see, split over multiple pages which means no wrestling with a a bulky chart and no rips along fold lines and do not have similar symbols that I could mix up in the middle of the night.

Still haven't found the memory card. The picture is courtesy of the internal memory.

Dancing in Circles

Finished 10 minutes ago.

Cirque des Cercles
Start date January 24, 2010
Finish date December 18, 2010
Fabric 32 ct Lemon Whip Lugana
Floss DMC 115
Total time 97.5 hours

A couple of motifs have been switched around and a couple of stitches are off (but mirrored correctly on the opposite side).

Jolly Good

Finals are over, it's winter break and maybe I'll get some stitching done? But first:

Flashback to, oh maybe, about a week ago? So I open my mailbox and there's a pretty light blue box. With a Royal crest. My first thought was the Queen was sending me mail!!! Then I realized that instead of being called British Mail it's actually called Royal Mail. A slight disappointment (I like the idea of royalty) but I recovered very quick when I saw what Lindsay had sent as part of our exchange.
A lovely purple and green biscornu which now holds court as the largest in my collection, fabric with the cutest stitchy print, and an ornament!

Purple is the September Celtic Knot and green is the October Celtic Knot. Both from Ink Circles. I've been planning to stitch some of Tracy's squares up as a biscornus, so this was just serendipity.

The snowflake (a green one?) was apparently sent because the mail went out late. Ummm. Am I a bad/greedy person if I say I'm glad for Lindsay's over developed sense of guilt? Now I've spent a great deal of time drooling over her beaded works so it gives me great pleasure to hang this pretty up beside the other ornie I won from her last year.

*Sigh*

While I've been good and haven't started anything, I've also felt somewhat blah and not stitched very much. I blame the weather. Tomorrow's forecast is snow.

After I got tired of the Sleepy Hollow moon I stitched a little on (everyone's favourite) CdC.

Cirque des Cercles
32 ct Lemon Whip Lugana, DMC 115