Full Circle

I first learned to cross stitch before I was 10 years old, and have been doing it on and off ever since then. There's been some periods in my life where I've done more and I've done less. For various reasons, I really wasn't stitching much between about 2002 and 2008 - I did a few projects here and there, but not very much.

I'd wanted to get back to stitching, so after finals were finished last spring semester, I visited a needlework store in PA (I am up there visiting my boyfriend often), and picked up the materials for Crystal Symphony (I had a choice of all of two Mirabilias that they had on hand LOL). So I got started back on Crystal (Nothing like a simple project to ease back into stitching, right?)

I worked on Crystal on and off during the summer, rotating with a filet crochet tablecloth (which I did finish):



It's worked from the center out, much like round lace doilies are worked. It's done with a size 10 thread, so it's a little thicker/more durable than a finer thread (the slightly thicker thread is also easier for me to work with - size 20 kills my hands and eyes). I've done so many afghans over the years (I learned how to crochet in the late 80's) that I rarely do them anymore - there's only so many I need :-). Extra lace pieces, however, are easy to store (and I end up giving away a lot of the smaller pieces).

A close up so you can see some of the detailing:

This is how far I got on Crystal Symphony before she got rotated out:

Crystal got bumped when I finally got the Mermaids of the Blue (Mirabilia patterns were a little tough to get last summer because of distribution reorganization). I really have not worked on her since - she didn't stand a chance once I started working on getting my Queens finished LOL.

With my finish of the Queens series last week, I've been kind of bumping around all week, deciding what direction to go in. I've been bouncing around projects this week trying but really haven't been able to settle into anyone. I ended up sitting down last night and spreading out all my WIPs and my kitted projects (an impressive pile, I must say) to basically work out what I should be focusing on for now.

Crystal is currently my oldest WIP, so I need to get back working on her for a while. I'm debating about simplifying the design, because I'm not thrilled with the chandelier at the moment. I may skip the frame entirely, or perhaps just leave that part out and lower the top edge of the frame. On the body, I have most of the colors filled in, and need to fill in a LOT of white, which will take a long time AND make it appear that I'm not progressing LOL. I was having trouble with her left arm (I did the flesh parts in over 1) so I frogged a chunk of that last night (ouch). I've since decided that over-1 just is not compatible with my eyes and my patience, so I won't be doing any more over-1's, but I'll have to finish up Crystal that way since it's nearly finished. As my official oldest WIP, I think I need to focus on getting her done.

There's also Edith Wolford, also started last summer, which has so little done that I haven't even bothered taking a picture LOL It's a beautiful purple and orange iris from Silver Lining, which I put aside because there's a lot of confetti stitching with very similar colors. I'm going to go back and start working it in 10x10 blocks (working off what I have already done), and I carded up all the floss last night so I can keep the cut floss on the cards as well to tell the colors apart better.

I'll no doubt work on some other projects as well, but I'm going to try to focus on getting these two finished this summer.