Getting a Head

Neither Summer Queen nor Midsummer Night's Fairy are headless anymore.

I'm back focusing on getting Summer Queen finished. I'm also looming on the end of the semester at school, so I'm not sure how long it will be until she's finished. I have some stitching to finish (STILL filling in all that white!, plus finishing her hair), and then the beads and backstitching, so probably two weeks or more.

Midi has a face and hair now, and I've started on some of the metallics. All of the wings (a large part of the overall design) is Kreinik metallics, either alone or blended with floss. I finally got around to trying Thread Heaven to keep the metallics from being a total nightmare - what a difference!! Thread Heaven is basically a wax-consistency product that you run the thread through and it keeps them from fraying and otherwise driving the stitcher nuts. I'm actually annoyed at myself that I didn't try it sooner, but for sure, I won't be stitching metallics without it again. Midi has been placed on hiatus for a little while so I can finish up Summer Queen and probably spend some time working on other projects I have going.

An earlier picture of Midsummer Night's Fairy

New Mirabilia Released

"Circle of Friends" was released today ~ they remind me of her earlier "Maidens of the Seasons".

So I broke down....



...and started Midsummer Night's Fairy. I needed a little break from working on Summer Queen, and I truly intended to get back to one of my other (many!) WIPs for a couple of days. But you know how it goes - that bag of pristine linen and threads just called to me! So here's a couple of day's work. She's actually going very quickly right now, but there will be a LOT of metallic thread and bead work coming up. I finally got some Thread Heaven so I'll see if that helps with the metallics. Midsummer Night's Fairy is being done on 32 count Misty Blue belfast linen. It's darker than what the photo is showing.

Midsummer Night Fairy after the first evening.

No commment other than this was NOT intentional.

This Week's Summer Queen

I had a good week on her, but I'm actually getting kind of burned out and a little bored. I'm going to put her away for a week or two, and work on something else for a bit :-)

Store Review: Salty Yarns

I visited Salty Yarns for the first time. It's located on the Boardwalk in Ocean City, Maryland, between 8th and 9th Streets.

It's much bigger than I expected, and is it ever packed with stuff! And you all know the way to my heart - yes, they had tons of Mirabilias. It's been such a long time since I got to physically leaf through a big stack of Mirabilia patterns, which was great. I can always buy them online, but it's not quite the same, eh? They had a ton of patterns overall. They also had: a ton of fabrics, specialty threads, Sudberry boxes, scissors - just about everything to do with stitching you could think of.

If you look at their website (http://www.saltyyarns.com/), they also host stitching events and classes a couple of times a year. The upcoming stitcher's retreat is VERY tempting!

Predictably, I got a couple of Mirabilia patterns: Royal Holiday, Lilly of the Woods, and Mermaid of Atlantis. If I were someone who liked keeping a lot of stash, I could have gone nuts in there :-)

Overall I really liked Salty Yarns, and would recommend a visit if you're ever in the area or feel like a day trip to the beach.

Stich A Mirabilia Blog

I've joined the posters over at the Stitch a Mirabilia blog :-) It's a nifty blog that's been up since the beginning of the year, showing the different Mirabilias we're all working on. You can find it here: http://stitchamiriabilia.blogspot.com/. It's a very talented group, and I'm glad to be a part of it.