My Needle's Song – Neulani laulu

Welcome!!

Things look all shiny and new again! Nothing like moving from one host to another to make you clean up your act! I still have a few things to do, but that is normal when you make a lot of changes.

I am an avid cross stitcher, one who gets the chance to stitch just about every single day. I always promised myself I would do that one day – when I retired. Now that I am officially retired I make sure I stitch every chance I get. I actively stitch for a group called Canada Stitches that does all sorts of projects for First Responders coping with PTSD/PTSI as well as families visiting Ronald McDonald House. Not only is it a great way to use spare time, it also gives me a reason to keep shopping for new stash!

Thank you so much for stopping by and I hope you enjoy the posts below.

Chart Conversions

Amazing what you come across when you update files. This is a draft that has been sitting here for a couple of *years* now, unpublished. With so many stitchers asking about doing their own chart conversions, this is probably even more relevant now.

A couple of years back, I was working with a group on making a special request quilt for somebody in Michigan. Usually, it is no issue. I find the image I like, I import it, clean it up, and then stitch. We were packing to move at the time, and my time was tight. That little light bulb in my head went off… I bet I can find the chart I want if I search. Sure enough I did. The image on the seller’s website looked perfect, exactly what I wanted. The size of the chart was a little small, but I could live with it. I bought the chart, downloaded the file.. and died.

This seller had merely taken the image and gone to a free digital conversion site called Pic2Pat and gone through their process. How do I know? That site logo was on the chart I had just paid for!! There was no stitch count, no center marks. What should have been a one or two color chart somehow turned into a 26 color monstrosity. Here’s a tiny section of the chart:

I am sure you all heard me scream. This should have been so straightforward because the design has such clean lines. Now, I am not blaming the seller. With sites like Pic2Pat, you can convert anything quickly and easily. I seriously doubt the site is meant for anything other than personal conversions. Here’s the same area from the black and white chart the seller included:

Pretty messy, and certainly nothing I would want to stitch from or send on for a charity quilt. So, I found the image I wanted to stitch, stripped out the background and narrowed the colors down to 2 so that I had nice clean lines. Then I went and looked up the correct colors for this. All in all, I spent a good hour doing this one. Here’s a section of my chart:

Mine does have grid lines and will be nice and easy to work from. The lines are clean. I did end up adding backstitching in the same color just to finish it off.

I did make some classic mistakes when I bought this chart. First off, most of the shopping platforms allow you to have more than one photo. When I put up my charts, I do include a segment of the chart so that people can see what they are going to be stitching from. Second, there was no picture of a completed piece. This is crucial to me. It means a stitcher has actually worked from that chart and finished it. Scary, but as I look through Etsy for new designs, I see more and more of this kind of work.

It isn’t that hard to make a quality chart from a picture. You can use free services like the Pic2Pat mentioned above. PC Stitch also has an import function, and DMC has a photo conversion package. But even nicer is the service from Simon over at Thread Bare. You can use his software for free, or engage his services for a very low fee. It does take time and skill to make it come out looking just the way you want it.

Until next time, Happy Stitching!

Input Needed!

Many of you know that I do make small gift items (like magnets) and Christmas ornaments for sale in my various shops. My husband and I decided that we will now be donating at least 50% of the sales price to no-kill animal shelters. I will be doing a couple of special sets that will have 100% of the sales price donated to these shelters. I cleared out all of the ornaments I had on hand and am starting fresh.

What kinds of items do you look for when buying small gifts? I do try to keep my prices down to between $5 and 10 before shipping so that it is always affordable. Some of my ideas have been refrigerator magnets, mug mats, bookmarks, blank greeting cards, and of course Christmas ornaments. I also have some designs for small pictures that would be a little more expensive, but not terribly.

But what to stitch? Just in Christmas ornaments alone, I have snowmen, Santas, angels, animals, primitives, folk-art, vintage… well, you get the idea. I do collect cat ornaments as well. I have fallen in love with the tonttu designs and begun collecting those as well.

I would love some feedback. Drop on over to my Facebook Page and leave me some ideas, please. (The ornaments above were done for family, but I would be happy to do them again and sell them for $6 each. The tonttu fits into a nice 5″ greeting card, but he can be finished as an ornament too. I like the idea of making him into a removable ornament so that you can take the ornament off the card and hang it on your tree year after year. Though I now have a die-cutter to make these cards, I also like attaching the ornament right to the card, so it becomes the design itself.)

Lots of ideas, and lots of directions we can go…

December??? Already???

Yeah, time really flies, I know. It has been a very very busy year here, but it is winding down nicely. Time is always my enemy. I think part of that is due to the nature of cross stitching. No matter how fast you stitch, most pieces end up taking 20 to 40 stitching hours (for the quilt squares I do so many of). Even a Christmas ornament can take 4 to 8 hours to stitch, back stitch, and finish.

Speaking of Christmas ornaments, one of the groups published pictures of the completed ornaments I sent them. Every year, they put out the call for ornaments to be stitched to benefit no-kill animal shelters. One of the members finishes them all into some of the cutest pillow-style ornaments around. These are then auctioned off and the funds donated. This year, I went with Carolyn Manning’s Lil Flakes and Precious Moments Minis. I wanted something that would sell at a good price to do as much good as possible. The pictures to the left are my stitched fronts and the backs are shown on the right side. Kinda neat, eh? There were 62 of these very unique ornaments created this year.

As I was working on these, one of the sweetest, kindest, most giving icons of the Cross Stitch world put out a cry for help. In September, Louisiana was hit by severe flooding. One elementary school had everything destroyed by the waters on just their second day of school. Children are always hit so hard by these losses. Pat Carson knows she can’t fix everything, but picked out this one group to help. She has done several auctions on her Facebook group. Then she thought about doing Christmas ornaments to help replace what these families lost. It doesn’t seem like much, but she has collected over 400 already, and sent them on to the school.

I packed up all of the ornaments I had here and sent them on. I will start fresh on new ones for the shop and the pet shelter project in January.

I did get time to do some personal stitching too. This 6×6 piece has already been presented to my mother-in-law. It’s not really a Christmas piece, but part of a series of winter scenes. I have two more to do for my husband’s aunts, and then I get to do some for us. This is actually the design for 2007, but I changed the year to reflect the year I gave it to them.

I also took the time to make an ornament just for us. Every year, I say I am going to do this one just for us and then I get too busy to ever get around to it. This time, I did it first. I love the way the little lady stands on her tiptoes. I did get others done for the family as well. But, like all stitchers, I never ever get enough done it seems. I did update the various galleries with the most recent finishes.

For me, it isn’t too early to begin thinking about next year. I got a bit lax on my charity stitching schedule and pitched in to help finish the squares for 2 quilts at the last moment. I always say it will be different next year, and it will be this time. I am going to be firm on the 3 days a week for my main charity. My husband and I will also be house hunting and hopefully moving late next summer.

So, now you know why there have been no new goodies for the shops! You should start seeing new items pretty quick as my queue is again reasonable AND I have days set aside to stitch again!!

Until the next time… from our house here in chilly Finland to yours wherever you are, may you have a warm and happy holiday season!

Finishes and New Beginnings

Silence is almost always a good thing around here. It means I have taken the time away from the computer to stitch. I’ve been working hard the last few weeks to get things done. since we chatted last I have finished the Spiderman and sent him on his way to Canada. He will be turned into a pillow for a very special young man.

I also finished a piece for another group. This is an anniversary stitch along, and each stitcher gets to put their own spin on the design by picking out the colors. These are usually fun stitches. Mine also got to take a trip to Stockholm as my husband and I took a lovely overnight cruise. I never ever go anywhere without my stitching! It’s like my pacifier. Even if I don’t stitch I still have it with me. If we are stuck waiting someplace, I can just take it out of my bag and stitch. Very comforting at times.

Also finished this week were my Christmas ornaments that go to that same group. Every year in July they post this event and collect a pretty good number of ornaments. These are turned into Christmas ornaments and then auctioned off to raise funds for no-kill animal shelters. These ornaments are always fun to do, and nice quick projects.

Even the more complex Precious Moments ones took a maximum of 2 days. I know these will help the shelters a lot. The auction usually happens on Facebook, and I will post a link to it once it starts, usually in late October.

One thing that has helped is a Facebook group that has grown like crazy the last 6 months. They are always holding events to help us get our stitching done. Somehow, when everyone is stitching like crazy, the combined energy seem to find its way to our individual needles and we all get more done.

In between all of this excitement, I managed to stitch 2 squares for Canada Stitches. The first one is the same flower heart I used for my mother-in-law’s 70th birthday, but with a yellow rose for healing. This one wasn’t bad. Stitched on Aida, it took me less than 2 weeks, and includes backstitching every leaf and petal.

This second one was done as an stand-by square. Hearts are always in need, and designs like this can be used for so many of the request quilts. This was another very fast stitch done using a free chart found out there on the ‘net. I used the Azalea blend of DMC’s Color Variations, but did the butterfly itself in a matching purple. It will be interesting to see where it ends up.

And there you have it. All caught up on the finishes. For the new beginnings, I really can’t show you much yet because it is a gift for my mother and secondly, I haven’t taken a stitch yet. New beginnings also includes an upcoming restart on the website for Canada Stitches and a couple of others. I think with some care and planning I can do my charity stitching *AND* my personal stitching. I just need balance. I can do my websites and stitch – I just have to pace myself. My stitching queue is again full, with 4 more pieces holding, several in the thinking about doing phase. I am taking a few days to catch things up for the shops and get some personal stitching done. I’m going back to dividing my time – 4 days for me and my shops and 3 days for charity. That is still almost almost half of my time devoted to them. It should also help me keep my promise to my husband of no more than 2 charity squares per month. Let’s see how long this lasts…

Until next time, Happy Stitching!

Creeping Ever Closer!

It’s been a rough couple of days here. I decided to move from my beloved webhost in the US to a smaller, less expensive webhost in the UK. I moved 7 WordPress blogs and 5 other websites. What a learning curve!! I think almost everything is back to normal now. This site has a fresh look with a few more features. I think I am liking it. Now that the dust is settling, I can finally get back to stitching more.

My charity stitching is winding down for the year. At the beginning of the year I made a resolution to stitch a maximum of 1 charity square per month. By April, I had already exceeded that, so I stopped raising my hand to stitch more until next year. I do still have a couple of projects going, so I am not completely done. I do have a gallery going of the projects I have done so far this year – 18 for various groups, 1 for family family, and several small ornaments. I still have 1 charity square in progress, 2 more in line, and an annual Christmas ornament SAL to do. This is July….

Mind you, I am not complaining here. I am commenting. I always have these family things creep up on me, or shop deadlines and I have not stitched what I had planned to do. When my stitching hours were taken over by school, I did not cut back on my charity obligations. In fact, I think I took on even more – with less time to do them!

So, I think it is time to get off of here and stitch. Spidey is calling me! I am in a Facebook group that does a lot of stitching events and I need to have 1100 stitches done on him in the next two days. I have 400 done…. we can do this….

Why is it…

Why is it that we never seem to get as much done as we planned to do? The first weekend every month, I do a Facebook Event for Christmas ornaments or just about anything crafty that folks want to do. I always have so many things planned to do and never seem to have the time to do tonttu1 them. This month was no exception. The July event started on Thursday because of Canada Day and Independence Day. I figured a lot of people had a long weekend, so let’s do a long event, right? Right. I started this little guy on Thursday and figured he would be done by Friday. WRONG! He turned out to be quite a difficult little one. 2 reds, 3 white/grey, 2 blues, 2 greens. And all in a rather tiny 30x45ish piece. I got done backstitching him on SUNDAY. Yep. Sunday.

So, I moved on to the next one, knowing it was a more simple design and should not take me all that long to do. tonttu2 I know from past experience that an ornament this size with 8 to 10 colors takes me about 4 hours start to finish. So, if I started it on Sunday, I should be finished on Monday. Easy. Wrong. Somehow or another my precious stitching hours just never materialized this weekend.

These are both kits, which I normally hate. I love the designs though and have been known to buy kits just for that reason alone. I still substitute my own fabrics mainly because I like a little more working room. The fabrics included with these are just barely larger than the openings and I want a bit more so that I can finish these off as ornaments and *then* insert them into the cards. The first one I did was on 16 count Aida, the 2nd one is on 14 count. I like the one on 16 count a lot more. I prefer to have a little bit of white space around my stitching. Don’t be surprised if you see variants of these in my shops before too long.

I also managed to finish several pieces for the Canadian Honour Quilts project. cgeese4 The geese I spoke of earlier are done. I am not sure if this will be on the quilt for the detachment or for the family. It’ an elegant, timeless design from Lynne Nicoletti. Lynne retired very recently, but her charts can still be found in a few places if you are lucky. She also has several suggestions for the colors on the silhouettes. I picked the soft greens as they remind me of spruce trees. This one was stitched on 18 count Aida, which means it takes a long time to see your progress. That is 18 tiny crosses per inch.

The other complex one is the Canada Quilt. I have seen this one used before on these memorial quilts and I fell in love with it. It’s canquiltdone a wonderful chart to stitch – using only whole stitches. BUT, it is a solid 98×106 stitches. The original chart did not call for the white blocks or stitching to be filled in. I added those because well, this is a square for a memorial quilt and not the time to cut corners. There are close to 11,000 stitches in this piece!! But, I am happy with it, and I know it will be a great addition to whatever quilt it ends up on.

monster2done
There are 2 children from this family that will be receiving quilts as well, both boys. I decided I was going to do the Monster Letters from Cross Stitch Wonders mainly because the designs are fun, happy, and bright. I have one done and will be starting the second one this evening.

The 8 point star I mentioned in an earlier post is also done. 8pointstar I didn’t want to use all black on the two black points so I used the darkest grey I had. It’s a very simple but effective design and I think the final quilt will be quite interesting. spiderangry I have a couple of others finished as well, so my queue is now down to a very reasonable 1-1/2 from the 6 I had to do in April. These are all headed to Canada, which has been warning people for several weeks of a postal strike. That event is finally happening this week, so it is watch and see time now. These guys will sit with me for just a bit longer rather than at the Post Office.

spiderman1 I have a Spiderman in progress for a pillow. This one is on 16 count because of the size of the chart. I changed and brightened the colors up on this one and it still looks gloomy to me. I wasn’t liking it much until I realized this is the older classic Spiderman and not the red and blue version you see in the modern movies. I will return to this one later this month, and hopefully get it done by the beginning of September. This is about 25% done right now.

And of course, I need to get working on the ornaments for the shops. This year, we will be donating 50% of the sales price to Blind Cat Rescue to help them with their ongoing needs. Watch for those going up soon, I hope! The goal is September 1st. So, enough posting… time to get back to work!

minions

The Writing on the Wall

Every once in a while, it is great to pause and read the writing on the wall. I try to do that every few months to see if I am still moving in the direction I want to go. When I did that in January, the writing on the wall said, “Over Committed”. Wow.. yeah. How did they know? I stitch for 4 charity groups and love it. I get to try my hand at custom designs and I get a great excuse to shop for more stash. But.. Over Committed. It rang in my ears. Then it hit home.

Find the Beauty - Butterfly Wings from Stoney Creek

My husband’s beloved aunt and godmother turned 70 in December. Between school and all of my charity promises, I failed to stitch anything for this very important birthday. I was so very crushed. She is always so very interested in everything I am stitching and here I could not make time to do anything for her.

Fortunately, my husband and I had picked out the pattern last year but I just hadn’t had a chance to stitch it. I quickly kitted it up and stitched like a fool for 2 weeks. My in-laws rushed it to the framer who did this gorgeous work (and it is perfectly stretched!). I had it done just in time because they were going to go visit her the following week. (Find the Beauty, Butterfly Wings, Stoney Creek. Stitched on white 28 count linen from DMC). The worst part for me was I was feeling guilty over not working on my charity stitching during this time. What? Yeah. I had a full drawer of pieces that I had promised to stitch. I felt rotten and evil for pausing to do this once-in-a-lifetime piece for a beloved aunt. That writing on the wall was screaming at me now.

I went through the same guilt feelings when I worked on this small piece momdone for my mother for Christmas last year. I could hear that voice in my ear the entire time, “How dare you! You ungrateful thing you!” It was my mother’s 89th Christmas. We needed to not only have it stitched, but framed and then shipped back to the US, all before Christmas and I did not get a chance to start it until NOVEMBER. (Feathered Friend, Laurel Burch by Mill Hill). Why? Because between school and the other charity stitching I was working on, I didn’t have time. How can you not have time for your own mother?

She didn’t have it for Christmas, but it wasn’t terribly late, and she knew something was coming. We also had a postal strike about the time we should have shipped it, so there was some delay.

ornaments2015

I also had to rush to do these small ornaments. The round ones were given to my teachers at language school as a small Christmas gift and a thank you. They constantly admired my stitching and enjoyed seeing the progress. I did not have these done for the last day of school, but I did get to deliver them the following week.

My husband has a new family member and it was important to do a First Christmas ornament for her, too. These really did not take me that much time to do and finish. Still, that voice nagged me. I had pieces I had to stitch and I dared to take time out to do ones I needed to do. Mind you, none of the ones in my queue had a time deadline, either. They were just all “Get them done so we can see how many more we need to make” kind of things. When did it happen that I let charity pieces become more important than my own family and friends?

eila One piece I started well in advance was this one for my mother-in-law’s 70th birthday. These are huge events here in Finland. We do celebrate each birthday as well as name-day but, the decade birthdays are extra special. My husband and my father-in-law helped me pick this design nearly a year in advance. We had it done plenty early to get it framed.

Still, I knew something had to change. When I made my New Years’ Resolutions I said I was going to do 1 piece a month for my charities. I am already well past that point for this year. Who really keeps their Resolutions anyway? In the past 18 months or so, I have done well over 50 pieces for charities, but only 3 pieces and 6 ornaments for my family. I used to do a collection of ornaments for family and friends every year but those spare hours I had for stitching were now spent learning Finnish. It means that I have had no time to do anything for the shop in over a year.

There is also the matter of the cost of materials. In January, when I finished kitting up the pieces I had promised to do I realized I was short on fabric. Fabric is very expensive here compared to the US. We could not afford to buy more until this past week. A yard of this special Aida cloth we use runs about $25 US here. I get 9 squares from each yard. I was also out of some colors of thread. Sigh…

Half-way into April and I already have 15 charity pieces completed for the year and 6 more in progress. I need to stop and read the writing on the wall… “Over Committed” and stop making promises. That doesn’t mean I will ever stop doing charity pieces. It means I will have to be a lot more selective about who and what I stitch for. I need to step away from the world for a while and just focus on what I have promised to do….

I will update my progress on the pieces in progress over the weekend. Right now, I just need to go stitch… and read the writing on the wall again.

FINALLY!!

We have progress!! I kept thinking and thinking about what I wanted for my header image. One night as I tossed and turned it came to me. I wanted to use the last needlepoint picture my grandmother ever completed. We now have this out of the frame for photos, but also so that we can take it to the framer in June to have it redone.

This is really a very typical Finnish-Swedish theme, with the small village with its church on the hill overlooking the river. I have had this hanging on my wall for over 30 years. It was with me in California, then Colorado, then Texas and now here in Finland. This was also the first piece where she trusted me to help her. I did some of the dark brown on the birch trees. I remember so well stitching carefully in her small apartment in Los Angeles. So very many years ago, and it brings back such memories. I used parts of this piece for my new headers. The great facelift has begun!!

It’s been an interesting week here. I did not get as much stitching done as I would have liked. But then, how many stitchers can say that they accomplished everything they set out to do? As long as I make progress, I try not to get too grumpy about it.

My geese only got about 8 hours of love total. Not really so much when you think about it. The tough parts are actually done now. I really don’t like counting the blank fabric like I did with the darker wing. It is just too easy to mis-count and then everything has to come out. This is also on 18 count fabric which is a bit harder to count. Why so fine? This will be part of a quilt and the squares have to have a certain size so that they all blend together. Too large and they get cut off, too small and they disappear. Each group specifies what size the fabric must be cut and the minimum/maximum dimensions. It is up to the stitcher to make the design work from there.

We also went visiting one day this week. Anyone who knows me will tell you that I am never without a project in my bag to work on. I try to keep it something simple that I can do with distractions and minimal counting as well as something that can be done in poor light. I do have a little mini-light that I can clip onto my hoop but I find it awkward to work with for long periods and frankly, it is quite tiring. The 8 point star fits the bill as I have the outline done and don’t need the reference the chart. Here’s this week’s work:

It doesn’t show very well, but most of the white on the upper right point is done. There is just something so unsatisfying about stitching with white floss on white fabric. You can stitch for hours and have it look like you did nothing!

Now that I have the new header images for the shops done, I will begin to relist the items in the Boutique (Etsy shop). They are all still listed in the other shops hint hint. I just have not updated pictures or descriptions.. or prices.

S-L-O-W-L-Y

A couple of tough days here… must be spring fever! Everything is in bloom and starting to come back to life after the sleepy winter months. Even Jessie is running around like a crazy little kitty these days. I almost think we need a traffic light here in the house so we know when it is safe to cross the room! You don’t really want to collide with a full grown cat racing through the house at top speed, do you?

I worked on something different yesterday, and I did promise a progress picture on the geese for the RCMP detachment in British Columbia. You can scroll down to the previous post for the reference picture, or simply click here.

I know, it really does not look like much of anything. This is the lighter silhouetted goose on the left, and I am using DMC 3813 for this one. When we work on squares for these quilts, we often are given a minimum-maximum size range along with any other special instructions. For these hand cross-stitched quilts, we are told between 6 and 8 inches for the design size, but we are not told what fabric size to choose. That is really up to us to figure out.

The chart on this says the design is about 130 stitches wide by 90 stitches tall. I can either break out my calculator or use a fabric size calculator on websites like Cyberstitchers (I use theirs because it is easy and they have a simply fantastic website with tons of useful stitching information).

When you click on their Fabric Size Calculator, all you have to do is put in the dimensions from the chart and you can easily see how big the stitched piece will be on different sized fabrics. I like it because I can compare the size outcomes side by side. Looking at the sizes, if I went with 14 or 16 count Aida, it would simply be too large. Ah, but look at what that gives us on 18 count Aida! A very nice 7 inches wide by 5 inches high! This should give a nice sized square PLUS I will be using only a fraction of the floss that I would stitching this with 2 strands of floss on 14 count.

I am actually finding this faster to stitch than it would be with 2 threads because I don’t have to worry about trying to keep the threads laying flat (I will do more about that later!). With good lighting, it really isn’t that much different from stitching on the other counts. It just takes a bit of patience, but that is true with all needlework, right?

Will update again in a few days – probably over the weekend.

Until next time, Happy Stitching!