It's HAED voting time!

Alright folks it's that time again, time to choose what will be my free HAED chart for April!

A brush up for those that are not aware, I won Michele and Bob's "Find Bob" contest back in January and won one free HAED chart every month for 2012. And it's been fun not knowing exactly which would be the one I'd get! So here we are again. This month's choices... (I have not repeat any choices yet, I will likely later on in the year).

Thanks for voting and I look forward to seeing what wins. Oh right... voting will close May 1 at 5pm MST (I know a day late for April but I wanted to give people a chance to vote!) ;)

Will be back soon with a new little ornament to up on my store. And pictures of my new Sweetheart Tree start.

(ps, exciting news, I just booked my first craft fair table for June 2. Gotta make sure I have enough stock! It will be interesting to see if I fall flat on my face with no sales or run out of stock. It could go either way.)

Dragons Page Finished! (and stitching issue)

Yes it's true.
There is only 11 pages of Dragons to go. Are you thinking, really that's still a lot! Yes, yes it is. But after my next page of the blue dragon things get a lot faster with the sky being mostly 3 colours and not nearly as many confetti stitches. If you can imagine the patience it takes for those scales on the dragons... I'm amazed sometimes that this piece is still alive.  :)
But truly I love it, and might even be a bit sad in another 2 years when (hopefully) it will be complete to stop working on it. But there is always something new and exiting to work on that is for sure!
So without further adieu I give you page 17 (I think) of Judgement Dragons:

I've had some feedback from people that it's hard to tell how large or small dragons is. So here is the entire piece to date with the ruler to give you a true idea of it's size (and how tiny the stitches are).

So my issue...
well there are probably lots of them, but let's say we stick with stitching ones. I started this little ornament from Prairie Schooler the other day (it's two pumpkins stacked). I had some left over silk from The Raven so figured I'd use it. And this piece of leftover linen in the stash that was a great size. Thought it would be all great until this....

Can you see how not covered it all is? Painfully in my eyes. I guess on this linen (which is a 28ct but seems to have huge holes) and only 2 strands of silk it's just not going to do the trick. Or least so it seems to me. So tell me honestly what do you think? The linen, the silk, my inadequate stitching or it's fine? Be honest please, I do want real opinions on this. No egos in the room here.

I have other updates and items to show you that are going to be posted to my etsy store, including another stitching piece (or maybe two if I get the other finished tonight), a beaded bracelet and more Kumihimo. But that will be for later this week. I hope you'll come by and visit me then. And thank you to everyone that has left such lovely comments about my pieces and my new store. 

The Winner & Etsy

Should I tease you first... another page in dragons is done. However I need to get a picture tonight in order to show you... but it's done and you will see it soon! :)

I have some exciting news to share. I have set-up an Etsy store and it's live and running right now!
The items up there are ones that haven't seen the light of the day as they have been living protected in a drawer. I love them all I just don't have a "purpose" for them. So why not see if I can find them a good home right?
I also did up a new little piece that I love. Having this store will allow me to do up pieces that I want to do even when I don't have a "purpose or home" for them. Which is awesome. (and if they never sell then that's okay as at least I tried and they didn't just live in my drawer forever)
You can visit my store at: www.etsy.com/shop/epicstitching

The new piece in there is from Cricket Collection. It's on lovely 28ct Haunted linen from Picture this Plus. I used different hand-dyed threads from my stash to complete it. This is "Man in the Moon":

 

And now for the information many of you are waiting for... 

The winner of the Kumihimo bracelets is: 

Denise from Ohio

Congratulations my dear, if you could please email me your address and what size of bracelets would be best I will get them on their way to you!

In other news I started my April cottage today and will have an update of it soon (and of course my promised dragon picture). I will also see if I can snag some pics of my babies (the snakes) sometime soon as well. Thanks for all your lovely comments on the bracelets and baby sampler. I need to put some more stitches into the sampler soon too!  (oh and I have a Sweetheart tree quadrilateral to work on as well for a wedding... I'm afraid of it as it's got complicated instructions so we'll see how it goes)

Baby Sampler & Bracelet Giveaway

Did you read that right? you sure did, it's another giveaway! But this time it's in bracelets. However let's talk stitching first.
I've been working on the baby sampler that I am doing for a family member. The baby is due in June so I'm doing okay with getting it done (having the Raven out of the way really helps). This is a Just Nan, and I"m about 1/3 done. I've been doing the backstitch and such as I go. Here she be:

Bracelet Giveaway

 Alright folks (I've been watching too much Storage Wars, forgive me), let's do a different kind of giveaway this week.

You will win

- 2 Kumihimo bracelets with fibers of my choice (one will look like the above)
- 1 beaded bracelet that will be custom made to your choice of colours

All bracelets will be made to the size of the wrist of the person that wins.

The rules: 

- Comment on this post indicating you'd like to be included
- Be a follower of my blog
It's that easy!
- An extra entry will be given to those that share this giveaway on their blog (please let me know in the comments that you have done this).
 - Contest will close on Monday at 5:00pm (MST), winner will be announced the next day.

Easy peasy. Anyone from anywhere in the world can win.
Good luck to you all!
Mel.

PS: Dragons is maybe 1 or 2 sit downs away from a page completion, so I hope to have that to you next week. As well my etsy store will be launching next week (I hope).
A few people have been asking about my babies (snakes). I will update on all of them next week as well. they are all ok, we've had some health issues 2 of them lately but I'll share more details later. FWGU4M7S44D7

WIPocalypse #4 - March Cottage Finished!

4 of 12 posts for the WIPocalypse SAL already?? Gosh where does the time go. I know we're always saying it but I have to say it still continues to amaze me how much faster the world passes as I get older. But alas it is what it is.

I have a cute little finish to share with you all today for my WIPocalypse entry.
It's the March cottage from Country Cottage Needleworks series for 2012.
It has been so fun for me to stitch these pastel colours. So different from my usual stuff which is a nice change I must say. They are also not a hard count or stitch so it's a great piece to work on when I'm not feeling as ambitious as usual. Here be March:

So that means the first row is complete. It looks like this so far:

I've also been working on some Kumihimo bracelets. Here's a picture of my favourite one so far (sorry the pic is bad):

I'm considering opening an Etsy store that will have some of my pieces available. I really do make more than I can complete, or give away each year. So I thought maybe it would be nice to share it with the community (if anyone is interested) and post them for sale at a rate that is only slightly more than materials cost. Not looking to make money on this stuff, just to share it with people (but keep me from being bankrupt in supplies costs, lol).


On that note... I'm going to give away a few braid Kumihimo bracelets later this week. So stay tuned to enter!I'll also have an update on the baby sampler and I'm sooo close to a page finish on Dragons, maybe even by the end of the week (if I'm lucky) I'll have that for you all to see.

Thank you so much for all your beautiful comments on my last few posts. You're all so fantastic! I really do appreciate the support and appreciation we all share for the crafting/stitching community. 
Hope your week is starting out well and continues to progress that way. 

Exciting Feature!

I have an exciting little bit of news to tell you all about. At least it's exciting to me, so pretend to care okay? :)

The lovely Kristin over at Craft Corner choose Epic Stitching as one of her feature blogs this week!!!
You can check out this weeks list of feature blogs on her site at: craftcorners.com/best-of-the-web-no-14

Kristin has sooo many cool posts and links on her site. I'd encourage you to check out. It's all about DIY stuff that you can probably do without buying a single item. Using the items from your house. One of my personal favourites is this entry about making Luggage Tags. craftcorners.com/diy-luggage-tags


Just had to share with all of you, excuse my excitement.


It's WIPocalypse week, so I will be posting a progress pic of March Cottage (that I'm hoping to get finished) this weekend. As Ravens is done I'll put pics of the Baby Sampler in it's place for WIPocalypse as well this month. 

I hope everyone has a great long weekend and I'll be stopping by again in the next couple of days. Thank you so much to all of you for helping make this blog a success! Without any of you reading, commenting and engaging there wouldn't be an Epic Stitching blog, so this feature is really a feature of our awesome online community.

A Raven Finish!!! (and need opinions)

I'm excited to share that I finished the Raven piece on the weekend!

I very much enjoyed putting this piece together. It's not hard, but it does require diligent counting so you don't get off by one or two. To me it seems that the raven's beak is really squished into the letters (especially the d on pondered). What do you guys think?

This piece is The Raven by La-D-Da. I stitched it on 30ct Weeks Dye Works linen (Havana) with silks. (if you would like the specific numbers of my silks just let me know and I can share them, just don't have them beside me right now). The purple in the letter silk is showing up so nice with the flash of the camera, it's more muted in 'real life'.
So, I am considering this piece for competition this year in the Western Showcase at the local Calgary Stampede. I won 3rd in my division last year with my Needlemania piece... but here's my worry. Is this too 'dark' for competition? Will people be turned off by the subject of the pattern being the intro line from Edgar Allen Poe's, The Raven. See it's perfect for me and my man and will go up in our house (amazingly I think this is the first piece in years that won't be given away or donated) but I worry that others might not see it that way... so opinions?

I look forward to hearing what you guys think about the raven beak and subject matter here. 

I've turned my attention to the cottages, as it's April 2 and I haven't gotten the March cottage done yet! lol. After that it will be back to Dragons for a bit (which is getting close to a page finish I promise) and the baby sampler (with a due date of end of May).