Category Archives: M01 – Fatum

Passione Ricamo’s Fairy Mystery SAL 2012-2013

WIPocalypse – October 2014

Posted on by
Reply

I decided to join the WIPocalypse, both to motivate me to make blog posts and to keep stitching on my current WIPs. I currently have five WIPs that I am working on, and I have two really old kits that I pick up every now and then to make some progress on them.

My most recent start and the project I am actively working on is Autumn Harvest Festival from the Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery. I got to a point where it seemed like all of my projects were huge and complicated and I wanted something smaller and easier to stitch from time to time. I think these patterns are cute, and as I am not that into Halloween I liked that it was autumn themed, not Halloween themed. This is my current progress:

Autumn Harvest Festival - Progress - October 18, 2014

My next WIP is the Tree of Stitches from Bee’s Needleworks. I worked on it a lot in September, but then I got a lot of fun stuff in the mail and I wanted to work on something else. This is my current progress:

Progress 2014-10-18

My other WIPs are the three Passione Ricamo Mystery SALs. The first one was Fatum from 2012-2013. I like it a lot, except the writing on the bottom. I find the letters very dominating and I might try to remove them. I started late and got distracted when the next one came out. This is my current progress:

Fatum - Progress - October 18, 2014

The second mystery was Into the Deep from 2013. This was the first time I ever stitched on a coloured fabric and I am really liking it. I think the pattern is beautilful and I look forward to working on it again. This is my current progress:

Into the Deep - Progress - October 18, 2014

The final mystery from Passione Ricamo is the 20 Years Celebration. Again I am not sure about the writing, so I have put that off for a while to see how it looks. I like a lot of the Passione Ricamo designs and I think the design idea is pretty cool. Somehow the pattern represented in this pattern are not the ones on the top of my wishlist, so this might be the only way that I would stitch some of them. This is my current progress:

20 Years Anniversary - Progress - October 18, 2014

Finally I have one kit of Paddington Bear making cookies that I haven’t looked at in a long time. I think it is nearly finished, but it had metallic and it frustrated me at the time. Maybe I should try to get it finished soon. The other old kit is a Classic Winnie the Pooh Miniature kit from Designer Stitches of Tigger. I love the classic Pooh designs, and I have another one in my stash, but the fabric supplied is an Aida and the pattern has a lot of fractional stitches. This makes me give up after a while and find something else to stitch.

I also have some charts kitted up that I would like to start in the near future. These are Whacky Witches in Stitches and the 2014 Magical Creatures Calendar from CloudsFactory, Workshop 1 and Workshop 2 from Châtelaine Designs and the Christmas Celebration Sampler from the Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery.

I am kitting up the new mystery from Passione Ricamo, Under the Moonlight, and it will be a priority when it starts. I have all the DMC and the fabric and special materials are ordered from the Crafty Kitten. I hope they arrive in time so that I can start this when the first part comes out.

Question of the month: Are you a Halloween or Christmas stitcher?

Halloween had become quite popular here in the last few years, but most people don’t decorate unless they have a party. Because of this I think stitching for Halloween is sort of pointless. If I displayed any Halloween stitching it wouldn’t be up for more than a couple of days. That said if I find pattern I like I might stitch it just for fun.

I have stitched some objects for Christmas, but I have become really picky and I rarely find anything I want to stitch. Again, if I find something I like I would probably get it. However I don’t feel like I have to stitch for holidays any specific time of the year, so I might stitch a Christmas pattern in July if I feel like it.

Floss organizers

Posted on by
Reply

A while ago I bought a bunch of StitchBow Floss Holders from DMC when I was kitting my HAED Teddy Bear Stocking. The pattern calls for so many different colours that it required proper organization of the floss. I also bought a couple of the large plastic wallets that take 15 StitchBows. I am quite happy with the StitchBows, but I find the plastic wallets unpractical. It is difficult to put the StitchBows back in their pockets and the binder becomes too space demanding and hard to manage when it is open. I really wanted some kind of box that gave me a better overview of my stash. So I spent a couple of hours searching the Internet.

I first discovered that DMC used to make a box for StitchBow storage, but it is discontinued, so my search continued. After a while I found an online cross stitch store in South Korea that had exactly what I was looking for. The shop is called Yeidam Cross Stitch. They had plastic boxes that could take 100 StichBows each. The boxes can be seen here.

I have to admit that I was sceptical of ordering from South Korea, and the payment method was not very good. But the boxes weren’t very expensive, so I decided to take risk, and potentially eat the loss, and I ordered five boxes. That should be enough for the entire DMC line with room to spare.

It turned that I had worried needlessly and the boxes arrived in good condition. They took a while to arrive, but I believe the delay can attributed to transport and customs control.

when I first got the boxes I only had the materials for the HAED Teddy Bear Stocking and the first Passione Ricamo mystery, and I kept each kit in a seperate box.

This is a photo of my kit for the Passione Ricamo Fairy Mystery SAL 2012-2013. I removed the inside tray to make room for the bead jars, but I didn’t really need the tray for this one so it was not a problem.

***

This is a photo of the thread for the HAED Teddy Bear Tree Stocking. I managed to fit all the floss in one box. It was a tight fit, but I got it all in and I find it a lot easier to use than the binder and plastic wallets.

***

I have since bought more materials and I have found that I ended up using a little bit of one skein and a little bit of another one in the same color for another project, and this annoyed me as well as made it impossible to keep track of what I have. I have now put all my DMC into the boxes in numerical order. If a pattern calls for several skeins of one color over a large area, like a background, I will buy the skeins for that and keep them with the project, but for everything else I just use from the boxes. This is what they look like now.

***

Yeidam also has smaller boxes, and I considered buying them for smaller projects, but for the moment I don’t see the need. I bought a DMC Gold Series StitchBow roll recently and I think it will serve my needs for transporting a project and if I want to keep a kit seperated I just use a ZipLock bag.

The only drawback of using the StitchBows is that I have not found a good way to keep leftover threads, so currently I just keep each thread in a small ZipLock with the number tag from the skein. This means that I can re-use the bags later for other threads, but it might get to chaotic and will need a revision later.

As I have recently bought my first silks I think I will use Floss-a-Way bags for those, but I have not made a definite decision yet.

PR Mystery SAL update, January 6th

Posted on by
Reply

A couple of days before Christmas I finally finished gridding my fabric for the Passione Ricamo Mystery SAL. I also started stitching a little bit before I remembered to take a picture of the project before I begin. This image was taken on December 23rd.

Progress, December 23rd

The fabric is gridded and ready for the first stitches.

I have now stitched quite a lot over the holidays and I am quite happy with my progress. I have finished page 1, most of page 2 and a little bit of pages 3, 5 and 6. I have not started on the border yet, but I want to wait a little bit with that. It is more fun to see the picture emerge. There is currently only sky, but I am looking forward to starting the actual fairy.

Progress, January 6th

Progress on the fairy on January 6th.

Passione Ricamo Fairy Mystery SAL

Posted on by
Reply

I was very excited when I discovered the Passione Ricamo Fairy Mystery SAL. But then I discovered that the sign up was closed, and I could not participate. I thought it was a nice way to try a Passione Ricamo pattern, which is something I have thought about for a while. Last week I discovered that PR had opened up registration for “latecomers”, so I signed up at once. I don’t know how long this will be available, I cannot find any information about that on the site, so if you are interested you should act quickly. The price is 12 € for the whole pattern, which is paid in full upon signup via PayPal. This equals 1 €/month which I think is very cheap. Today I ordered all the materials for the pattern, so that I can start stitching soon. I am really looking forward to how this will end up.

Edit January 6th: I have now discovered that the registration is closed.