The Mystery Project Completed

This is what it looked like last time I posted about it and this is what it looks like now:

I completed it while on holiday in the UK last week. The pattern for the flowers and vase is from the magazine cutting I'd stuck into a scrapbook many many years ago so I'm not entirely sure which magazine it came from other than that it's almost certainly a Dutch ladies magazine so probably Libelle or Margriet. I changed the colour of the shadow of the jug from the green that it was to a grey as I'd stripped out the background and border that the magazine pattern had. I added the butterflies from the "yellow butterflies biscornu" pattern by Rainburst Embroidery as I knew they were going to look just right with it. Once I'd completed it I realised that I'd made the lines around the edges of the space with ballpoint pen (how silly can one get?!) so I decided to hide the lines with 3 lines of backstitching, 2 in DMC colour variations 4045 and the middle one in 4150. I still have a small section of ballpoint pen to remove but I am planning on trying out ballpoint pen remover on it.

Stats:
Size of embroidery: 7 3/4" inches square / 19.6 cm square
Fabric: 24 ct evenweave
Number of colours used: 21
Number of cross stitches: 4737
Number of backstitches: far too many!
Time needed: 2 weeks

The Mystery Project - part 7, the central part is complete.

Now it's time to spot the difference - can you see where the backstitching is? If you can't see it all don't be sad, I had a devil of a job seeing where I was working when I was adding them and I kept track with the pattern lol.

Not much else to say today, so I'll just go on and work on the next bits.

The Mystery Project part 6

As you may remember this is where I started yesterday and despite the appointments (the one with the specialist in the hospital was cancelled but I only found out when i got there - yay!) I got so much done that I actually finished the main piece of embroidery! All I have to do now is do the backstitching and then I can get onto the second element of this project.

Just one appointment today so I ought to be able to complete the back stitching in between cleaning the kitchen.

The Mystery Project part 5 & IHSW update

I'm starting with a picture of yesterdays progress as I have from the beginning or the project so that it's easier for you to compare progress :) Yesterday I got quite a bit more done, having no kids certainly helped a bit but as they were returned in the evening not completely hehe. I was also feeling the after effects of Friday's sink emptying fun a lot less. What didn't help was that I had to remove a section of leaf as I'd mixed up colours and used the wrong one which looked like the right colour in the artificial light. It was just the one thread length so it wasn't all that bad.

I have finished with 3 of the yellows now and don't have that many flowers left to do before this part is completed up to the back stitch phase (ugh). When this is done I have a few more elements to add to complete this embroidery.

I have a bunch of appointments today so won't have as much stitching time as I'd normally have.

IHSW update: I got a lot of stitching done - this project was barely started when I picked it up again on Thursday as can be seen here: The Mystery Project & IHSW and now it's 75% complete.

The Mystery Project part 4

As you may remember this is where I stopped yesterday. I didn't get so much done as my body was firmly telling me that all the bailing I had done was "A Bad Thing" and shouldn't be repeated. It also made getting up and moving very painful so I didn't move all that much as a result either.

I managed to do some more of the leaves, the snowdrop and most of a lily. You will also notice that I have more colours in the sidelines waiting to be used as all of time continued outside the area the ring was in and I didn't want to cut the thread when all I had to do were a couple more stitches with that colour. With all the greens and creams it would be very easy to confuse them so I have added a little tab to each with the colour symbol so I know which is which.

I'm not so sore today so I hope to be able to get a bit more done.

The Mystery Project part 3 and a bit more

This was where I was yesterday when I made the last update. I didn't get as much done as I would have liked but I was slightly distracted by the rather unexpected results of a downpour. I had been raining for a while and then the rainfall intensified to the extent when the sewers couldn't cope with the results and water started coming UP my sink drain and filling my sink. To avoid getting a flooded kitchen I had to act quickly and I started bailing out the sink and throwing the resulting water out into my back garden through the open back door. I spent over 20 minutes racing the water level in my sink and managed to avoid it overflowing, though a few times it got pretty close. However the last thing I needed was sewer water all over my counter tops and in my cupboards, though admittedly some got on the tile floor but that was easy enough to clean. Then once the rain had stopped there was the fun task of disinfecting all area's that had come in contact with the sewer water - good fun that lol.

After all that I was in quite a bit of pain so wasn't really much to much else, including going collecting for the heart foundation which I was supposed to do. I feel quite bad about that but it's not really something I can do much about really. I did however get some of the green done and I finished all of the greys and I completed the bottom half of the embroidery.

The "bit more" I promised in the header is a little bit of news about my blog - nothing exciting mind, just 2 new pages in the bar at the top. I made one page where I put my WIPs and one page where I put my UFOs to make it easier for anyone who is curious to find them.

The Mystery Project part 2

Yesterday I showed you the picture above with my progress of the day before. Today I'm back with another update as I got quite a bit done. I had started doing the white at the bottom following the line of the light grey I'd done the day before and then completed the rest of the while of the vase working from there. It wasn't till I started doing the darker grey after completing the while in this section that I noticed that I was one stitch too far too the right on the first 5 lines from the bottom. Fortunately I only had to remove about 50 stitches to sort it out as I could leave most of the white in place.

The weird stitches outside the ring are threads that I still need to continue along with to outside the ring but as I don't want to move the ring yet have just got out of the way for now.

The Mystery Project & IHSW

 Don't forget it's IHSW this weekend! This time it's a child free weekend for me so I hope to get a lot done in between preparing the vegetable bed for planting outside seeds.

While looking at my UFOs last year I came across this but couldn't find which pattern belonged to it, so I set it aside knowing that I'd probably eventually find out what it was for. I was right - a couple of days ago while thinking about my options for the #stitchingpirates latest contest over on deviantArt and while starting to put a printed in a magazine pattern into the PC Stitch so I could play around with it and Frankenstein the pattern, I realised that *some* of the squares had been coloured in with pencil - the way I do with patterns I'm following. A moment of pondering later and I knew what it was and I'm so happy - I've been wanting to do this pattern "forever" as I really love the flowers but don't like the background as much and judging by the rectangle I've drawn on the fabric I was planning to do something other than the square background in the pattern.

I finished putting the pattern into PC Stitch on Tuesday and have started stitching - it's going easily and quickly which is nice too - a nice break from the complications of the mushrooms.

As you can see there is quite a bit of progress happening here and that;s just what I managed between doing some gardening, the dentist for the post tooth removal check up (supposed to be 2 weeks ago but my rheumatism had hit the jaw and I decided to wait for the flare up to go away) and he gave me some really good news while he was at it - the 3 wisdom teeth that have erupted can stay where they are! This is a huge relief as I was really worried that they'd have to take them out but all I needed was a filling and they were good to go. I also went on a quick trip to town for some stuff.