Celtic Wolf - WIP post 9 & TUSAL

Wednesday's lack of progress can be seen above, although I did get a lot of XL backstitching done, so there was *some* progress. Yesterday I didn't do much better, however I did have a lot of "life" happening. All good though! I met my bf at the station nearest the airport he arrived at and after a cup of coffee to rehydrate after travelling we went to my house where he is staying the weekend.

Between making bacon and eggs for him and the kids for lunch, catching up on wash and making roast lamb for dinner as a nod to the Chinese New Year (this year is the year of the sheep), I didn't get much stitching done. I managed 100 stitches, which is more than I thought I'd manage to be honest.

 You can see 2 threads trailing up, these are parked so I can continue the lines later.

Stitches done: 100
Total stitches: 4186
Total backstitches: 33.62 inches

Tusal is all about showing off your orts - if you click the button above you will find out all about it. Since last time I have done quite a bit - above you can see what I've been working on for the last 9 days - yes 9!

Before that I worked on my February Ornament Of the Month - I always make 2, one to use as an ornament and one to make a garland with.  If you head over here you can see the garland ornament and find out where to get the pattern for free.

Going back in time and through the layers you can see that before all the purple is some lighter coloured threads, some of these are from the owl ornament, owl scissor holder and the "A" letter book lasso I also wrote about in the post I linked above

So quite a bit has been achieved since the last ort report, Hopefully I can finish the Celtic Wolf before the next one, or be very close to doing so!

See you all tomorrow (hopefully) for my next Celtic Wolf WIP report.

Celtic Wolf - WIP post 8

Above is as always the reminder of where I was before I started stitching. Yesterday was not a good stitching day. I ached quite a bit as I'd pushed myself too much on Tuesday with the pancakes and I'd had to take my oldest son to an appointment and do grocery shopping - my body hated me for it. I did however take my embroidery to the appointment and did some of the blue backstitching while I was there. When I got home I finished it. So far so good

Then I started cross stitching and things seemed to go well, seemed because at 89 stitches in I discovered that my stitches were off - and the place it went wrong was 5 stitches in from the beginning of what I'd done. This was one of those times when fudging was not an option so I had to rip it out. Have you ever noticed that the ripping seems to take twice as long as putting the stitches in?

If you look carefully you can see where I had to rip between the curved cheek area and the woven strands.

Total stitched: 89 - 89 = 0
Total backstitched: 22.87 inches.
Total stitched so far: 4086 +  33.62 inches of back stitching.

See you tomorrow!

Celtic Wolf - WIP post 7

When I started yesterday I was at 3598 stitches. I didn't expect to get much done as it was pancake day and I was expecting 5 additional kids to invade my house and play till it was time to stuff themselves with pancakes. I was right too. First I lost my chair to the kids wanting to play board games (YAY!) at the dining room table, sadly the kids didn't seem to have either volume control buttons OR indoor voices so I managed to gain a lovely case of half a dozen gnomes drilling into my head. I retreated to the sofa to do a bit that I didn't need to be at my Nerd Central Command (NCC for short) for but soon lost that place as well to my eldest's friends, so I gave up and made a double batch of pancake batter from scratch. Apparently this is unusual as none of the younger kids have seen their parents do it like this. I did eventually get my NCC seat back but even though I put headphones on to listen to music I was not really able to concentrate as the noise almost overpowered the safe levels of sound from my headphones.

4 pints of milk (2 litres) , 2 pounds of flour (900 grams), 2 tablespoons of cocoa and 8 eggs later I was exhausted having made over 30 pancakes, some of which I'd made into chocolate pancakes with the cocoa (best eaten with a sprinkling of sugar and fresh orange juice). By the time the last of the kids had gone home I'd barely done 30 stitches + a bit of the XL backstitching in the blue area, which isn't counted in the stitch count.

Somehow in the evening I perked up enough to do a whole lot more, all in black as I worked on doing the outlines on the cheeks and lower jaw. With the Kreinik threads on the way I want to see how much I can complete before it gets here so I can hopefully get going with them straight away. I want to postpone re-hooping for a long as possible.

My total stitch count for the day was 488 stitches which brings the total to 4086 - not bad for a week's work.

My average stitch count this week was 568, which is 140 more than the minimum average I need to finish on time.

See you tomorrow with my next instalment.

Celtic Wolf - WIP post 6

Yesterday when I posted this I was at 3225 stitches. I had to do a bit of cleaning yesterday as I'd been letting that slide a bit while having far too much fun stitching. I also needed to make the kids do something about their rooms - not the easiest of tasks as many of you will know but I'm not one to do it for them as they made the mess. As a result I didn't get nearly as much done as previously, and didn't even make my stitch count.

 Here is a close up of the background area so you can see what I have done there. As you can see my stitches with the silver aren't always perfect hehe.

And here I am at the end of yesterday - only 373 stitches unfortunately but the middle blue filling in has been completed for this section, there is more to come but I'll need to first do some more black outlines.

I'm at 3598 stitches now = 20%!

I have ordered the Kreinik Solar Silver #4 braid I wanted - I had to order in the UK as none of the Dutch online shops had it in anything but blending filament. I am eagerly awaiting it but I probably won't get it till next week.

Till tomorrow when I return with another super exciting instalment of "what I did yesterday" lol.

Celtic Wolf - WIP post 5

Above is the Celtic Wolf at 2697 stitches. Yesterday I took things slowly as befits a lazy Sunday and did a chunk of the background, first by doing the dark blue lines of background in the loops, then by doing all the red corner stones. After that I started filling in the rest with the lighter blue.

At the end of the day when I finished my last thread I was at 527 stitches, which annoyed me as that was 99 stitches above the required amount so I started a new thread and did one more stitch to round it off to 100 - crazy I know but 100 more feels better than "just" 99.

So yesterday my total stitches was 528 bringing the total to 3225, which is where I thought I'd be after 7 1/2 days so I'm 2 1/2 days ahead of my schedule!

See you tomorrow with another update.

Celtic Wolf - WIP post 4

So after the marathon stitching effort on Friday I was here - 2055 stitches in and surprised to be that far already. I did pay the price the next day, my right lower arm was rather sore. I decided to keep stitching as muscle ache needs gentle movement to help it get better faster, so I stitched slowly and took many breaks and gently stretched the offending muscle and by the early evening it decided to stop being silly and work normally. At this point I was at about 250 stitches. I had decided to listen to music yesterday as I'd run out of documentaries I can watch while the kids are around and only had shows left that are 16+ as things like Criminal Minds are often a bit too gory for kids.

I didn't expect to find that at the end of the evening I had managed to stitch 642 stitches! Somehow listening to OMD, Nik Kershaw and a whole lot of other 80's music got me into the stitching groove and lots got done after all.

I started yesterday by closing off the left side of the middle so that I'd be able to do the blue grid there later. The light gold (E3821) filled area to the left is the throat area of the wolf and is the first outer line of the wolf. Once this bit was done I started with the darker blue (820) of the background grid.

This brings the total to 2697 stitches, which is just under 15%

Today I shall be continuing with the background grid and I'll be back tomorrow with the next update.

Celtic Wolf - WIP post 3

Above is the daily reminder photo of where I was the day before. I was at 1203 stitches when I started stitching yesterday and it was a really good stitching day too! I did a bit of the background to see what it would look like, including over 2 cross stitches "back stitching" which looked better than the normal over 1 for this particular design. I also got a chunk more of the black outlines done so I have some area's where I can go full on berserker stitcher and rack up the stitches. To top it all of I also managed to complete the section of silver I had started the day before

In total I did 852 stitches yesterday! Not sure how though lol. This brings the total to 2055 stitches which is just over 11% not bad for 4 days stitching.

I'll be back tomorrow with another update, though probably with less stitches completed this time hehe.

Celtic Wolf - WIP post 2

Yesterday I was at 764 stitches in total at the beginning of the day. I didn't get as much done as the day before but I did do 439 stitches which is a smidge more than the 428 that I need to do to make it. I'm now at 1203 stitches which is close to 7% complete. Between shopping and an unexpected nap, as I dozed off when I was taking a short reading break, I lost quite a bit of time but I hope to manage more today.

As I need time to do my March ornaments I'm trying to build a bit of a buffer stitch count wise to make sure I can do them on time without effecting my chances at finishing this, so every day I do a bit more than the required amount is good.

That's all for today's update - see you tomorrow!

Celtic Wolf - WIP post 1

The Deviant Art group Stitching Pirates is having a competition with tribal and totemic as the theme. I spent some time looking around trying to find something I liked to stitch and finally found an amazing Celtic wolf line art image, the artist was amazingly kind and let me use her artwork to make a pattern for myself. As the image was only the lines this gave me a lot of freedom as to how to fill in all the spaces as just lines for a cross stitch is boring. I decided to go down the route of illuminated manuscripts and let them inspire me with the colours and fill in patterns. So I will be using lots of metallics, some interesting patterns from manuscripts done in normal DMC floss and for that extra bling some beads too. I found some amazing Dragon scale beads (manufacturer is All Beads ) that I will be using and I'm considering some rose petal beds too.

 I started this project a couple of days ago but didn't really do much as I was tired and had a busy day. The starting point for yesterday is 101 stitches which you can see in the photo above.

The fabric I'm working on is white 18ct Aida that I hand dyed with Dylon velvet black dye which resulted in a grey slightly splotchy fabric.

Yesterday I got my skates on and did a lot - 663 stitches to be exact, 396 of them using DMC 310 black and the rest using DMC E168. The bit I'm working on is a woven section and I hope to get my hands on some 001L - Solar Silver or 001HL - Silver High Lustre Kreinik #4 braid so I can have 2 different silvers in this area.

As this project is huge and I need to finish it by the end of March I need to focus on this project and keep progress going so I am using my tried and tested method of posting my progress every day in an attempt to make sure I do enough every day. My goal is to do at least 428 stitches a day to make sure I finish in time. I will be back tomorrow with today's progress.

Ornament of the Month & Tons of Tiny February editions + finishes

 

I'm going to start with my ornaments from my Ornament of the Month project. The patterns were already posted on the NCC International Headquarters site (click the button above) so you can rush over and grab them if you like what you see.
This months Birthstone is amethyst so I went for the purples that you see so often in these stones. As the month is February I decided that a wink to Valentines day was ok. Hearts are also popular during Christmas as it stands for loving your family, friends and neighbours. I included a little candy backstitch on each of the corners as candy is a favourite during both Valentines and Christmas.

For the beading I used some amazing TOHO permanent finish silver lined amethyst size 11/0 seed beads which I sewed down with the darkest purple thread. I managed to get my hands on some lovely amethyst pieces that had a hole drilled through and I chose 2 to use for the ornaments. A larger drop shaped one for the tassel of the bigger ornament and a really light one as the pendant bead on the garland finish ornament.

Since I can imagine people wondering how those long ears on the garland ornament work I decided to make a photo of the January and February ornaments linked.

While I was taking photo's of the February ornament I decided to also take new photo's of the January one as the original photo's were made indoors after dark. And I also took the following photo so you can see the two together.

Stats: 
Size: 3 inches along each side for the bigger ornament and 2 1/4" for the smaller one.
Fabric: 16ct antique white Aida
Colours used: DMC 550, 552, 553 and medium purple craft thread for the loops.
Beads: TOHO size 11 Permanent Finish silver lined milky amethyst and a real amethyst
Pattern can be found here: Ornament of the Month - February

Next month's pattern will be posted on the NCCIH site on Friday 6th March.

This month I am a bit early with posting the Tons of Tiny but I decided to do a 2 in one post as my ornaments also count for Tons of Tiny. What is Tons of Tiny? In short it's a SAL where you stitch small projects and talk about them and hopefully also send your used and useful patterns on to someone else who might enjoy them. Last month I had 3 to talk about, this month I have quite a few more to add to that total.

First of all is the scissor keeper and fob that I made using a kit from CrossStitcher, you can read all about it in my blog post I have been informed that this counts as 2 items for ToT.

Just around the time I finished this my much delayed January issue arrived with another little kit in it. Again I had a bit of bad luck with it as the metal necklace pendant the cross stitch was supposed to go into was broken - the hanger bit that had been spot welded on had not been welded properly and had dropped off in transit. However the metal bit has been very useful to put seed beads in while beading so it's quite handy to have it! I turned the fabric and some of the thread into a lasso bookmark for my youngest son.

These were really the only colours he liked from the kit so unfortunately the letter isn't as clear as it might have been I added a lot of backstitching in an attempt to make it stand out more.

This little initial is 22 stitches square on 14ct white Aida and uses 3 colours.

Next up is this lovely little owl ornament . I found the cross stitch pattern for this a while ago and kept it in a tab so I'd not forget to make it (things that go to bookmarks tend to get lost, even though I am careful about sorting them lol). I decided that it was madness to keep the tab open till autumn so decided I may as well make it and then I would have a Halloween ornament ready well before time for a change as more often than not I never get round to it.

I decided to do the pattern on black Aida and use variegated thread to make the design itself, so I reversed the pattern. I had some trouble with the pattern at first as the designer did not use the standard 10 square grid but a grid of 14, 15, 15, 5 so I re-charted it and worked from that instead.

The pattern is free and can be found here

Stats:
Size: 41 stitches square
Finished size: 3 3/4"
Fabric: Black 14 ct Aida
Floss: Cosmo variegated thread 8034

That brings the total of small projects to 6 for this month and 9 in total. Funnily enough I haven't managed to do much on my bigger projects this month.

Now on to the patterns I shall be offering this month to whoever puts their name down for them. Last month Leonore was sent the Daffodils and Carla will be sent the dog rose soon. The other pattern was not asked for so that will go back into the box for a later date.

This month's theme is Paddington. I have 3 little patterns for him all of which are stitched with DMC colours.

The one on the left was a freebie with a magazine, meant to entice you to buy a bigger pattern that this was taken from, on it's own it's fun too though. 8 colours, whole and back stitching. no grid so I'm not sure of the size.

The middle one is Paddington sitting on his suitcase with a lollypop, made by Permin of Copenhagen. It's 33 stitches wide x 42 stitches high, whole and backstitches, 8 colours. It also contains an alphabet and 0-9 numbers. Downside of this pattern: I used a red ballpoint pen to mark where I stitched however you can still clearly see the symbols.

On the right is the smallest of the lot - 19 stitches x 30 stitches, 5 colours - they are not listed as DMC numbers but it uses the same colours as the other Permin Paddington pattern so I'll write down which number floss is what.


I will be sending one of these to 3 people, just comment with which one you'd like and I'll get in touch with the new homes for snail mail addy's some time next week. Please note that you are only supposed to request one of these if you are planning on making it yourself as part of the Tons of Tiny project, these patterns are not for resale! If you were given a pattern in the month before you can still join in!

If more than one person asks for the same pattern I'll write the names on a bit of paper, drop them in a jar and let one of the kids pull a name.

Ornament of the Month - February

Welcome back to the second Ornament of the Month! This month's birthstone is amethyst so I chose some lovely purples to use, it also being the month of Valentines day I decided to use that as a theme too because everybody loves *someone* even if they don't have that special someone at this time.

When kits run short of threads...

...one needs to either complain (and hopefully get more threads) or smile as a chance to become creative makes itself known. I chose the latter as this was a freebie kit that came with the February issue of CrossStitcher. Thousands of these are made and sometimes someone miscounts threads - in the end I only needed to add a little white to complete it and that was for an extra bit that wasn't part of the pattern.

I really liked the Owl freebie kit and started it the same day I got it, though my son's illness got in the way of craft time so I didn't get round to finishing it till last night. I measured everything carefully and found that I'd be able to make a 2 sided scissor fob as there was enough fabric for 2 of the 5 x 5 squares of Aida.  I wasn't sure what I'd do on the back but I left that for later.

The owl went smoothly, especially because I'd taken the time to measure the centre and mark both that and the starting place for the different parts. At one point the scarf on the bottom half reminded people of a ray gun and later it resembled a nerf gun more - this is the fun of stitching - seeing what shapes pop out during the stitching, I decided to not backstitch the scarf fringe but to use Ghiordes Knot: instead so I now have a 3-D fringe. I used wheat Hoffman's batik for the back of the keep as I didn't like how stretchy the felt was and I was certain I'd make a mess of sewing it as a result.

When I got to doing the scissor fob I discovered that I was a good 50 stitches short of finishing the blue and there was no more blue thread left. As a stingy stitcher who uses up thread to the last possible mm this was really surprising. Normally I have "stacks" left over as kits usually include enough for a less experienced stitcher to be able to complete it even if they have to rip a bit. I too had to rip as I'd started the column of 5 blue stitches doing the 5 next to each other before before doing the next row. This would have mirrored what you can see on the right in the photo above. Half way up was the place where I ran out so I carefully removed all of that and re-did the rows but then doing them in columns of 20 instead - I had enough for 2 whole columns so stopped after that.

As I finished colours I decided I could stitch them onto the back in a "circle" and decided to start with the bit of orange I was certain to have leftover after backstitching as I'd made a note of how much I'd needed on the owl itself.  I then did the yellow and green and then the white. It was at this point that I discovered the blue issue so I looked at what I had left and decided to use the last of the brown to make one row and some of the remaining grey to make the other two rows.  I only had enough grey left (one length of 2 strands of thread) that would do about 25 stitches but needed another 100 to complete the back so went with some white from my own stash to complete the back and used the grey to do the backstitching around the edge of the front to make the biscornu shape.

In the end I'm very happy with the result - this is really a one of a kind fob which uses the basic pattern and then does it's own thing.

Size: Scissor keep: 3 1/8" x 4 1/2" / 8 cm x 11.5 cm - fob: 1 2/2" / 4 cm across the middle
Fabric: 14ct Aida
Thread: 7 colours.

SFS - January

For more information as to what Stitch From Stash (SFS) is, please click the button above.

After a lot of consideration I have decided to set my currency for SFS to Euro as I buy from more than one country it's easier to use my own currency as the base. I have decided to use 25 Euro as my budget amount as things are more expensive here so it feels fair to do it like this. I will convert the USD amounts for the money earned to Euro.

Month: January
Spent: 24.30
Earned: 7.10
Carry over:  (25.00 - 24.30) + 7.10 = 7.80

My spending: 

This being my first ever SFS post it's all a bit new for me but.. I was good and kept to the budget as I didn't want to go over on my first post - it wasn't easy as what I wanted was just a bit over the allowed amount but I was strict with myself and made myself remove something from the shopping basket to stay under.

I got 3 remnants of fabric to replace what I've used up: 14ct black Aida (3.50), 18ct white Aida (2.85) and a section of 8" high 28ct linen band (4.00). I don't really need huge amounts so a remnant is more cost effective and takes up less space than a full yard would.

A spool of red Kreinik #4 very fine braid as I'm slowly adding to the number of colours I have of this and it was on sale for just 2.95 so a bit hard to resist.

4 skeins of Tentaculum - Gauguin, Klimt, Van Gogh and Rousseau to add to my collection of these threads - 5 down, 6 to go! These are 2.75 each.

I have also spent on monthly threads club + the limited edition fabric and thread from Jodyri however as it's specially dyed it takes some time to make and send so I've not received it yet. I have noticed that level of eagerness to receive something does not make it arrive faster *grumble* otherwise it would have magically arrived on my desk within minutes of ordering lol. As these 3 are monthly clubs they do not count as spending.

My earnings:

This month I finished 2 ornaments using the pattern I've made for my Ornament of the Month SAL The fabric is 16ct antique white Aida that I got last summer when I was in the UK and the threads are from my stash, most of which were collected before 1995 though of course I have since added any new colours and topped up colours I finished. The beads I got so long ago I can't remember when I got them but they are at least 2 years old. The thread I used for the hanging loops is craft thread my bf gave me last September.

The bigger ornament is 47 stitches square and the smaller one 35 stitches square so each ornament earns me $ 4.00 each for a total of $ 8.00 which according to the currency converter today is 7.10 Euro so that is the amount I'm counting.

I will not be counting work done to my larger projects till they are finished as they do not have pages and it's far too easy to forget what you did and didn't count.

I also finished some tiny things but as they are only 4 of a set of 12 I'm not going to count them till the full set of 12 is complete.

Ornament of the month - Finishing ideas

There are many ways you can finish the ornaments and I'll be putting some idea's of how to do so here so you can plan ahead a bit if that's something you like to do. I have added pictures as soon as I could of some of the finishing idea's - I had not done this before as it occurred to me after I started posting that people might like some pointers as to how they can finish these.

TUSAL - January ORT report

And so here I am at last with a real TUSAL report (Don't know what this is? Click the button above!) - it's been months since I last did one despite me keeping a jar for each month for it but with me having some health issues and working on a lot of secret stuff it just didn't happen. Instead I've made a photo of every single ORT jar I have - from September 2012 to December 2014 - there have been a few months where I didn't stitch at all and for those months I do not have a jar but looking back it's amazing how much I DID stitch.

The top row are the jars for 2012, just 4 of course as I only found out about this in September. The next row down and the two on the left of the 3rd row are the 11 jars for 2013. I had some really productive months there as some jars are almost full. If you consider that these are standard 450 gr / 1 lb jam (jelly) jars that's quite a bit of ORTs! the other 4 of the 3rd row and the jars on the bottom row are all from 2014, also 11 jars ,  which shows that I did quite a lot even if I didn't post about them.

A new year and a new shape of jar, sadly the company that made the jam changed the jars they put the jam in some time ago and Decembers jar was the last one I had of that shape. The new jars are taller and skinnier, which might just be a plus as you can see the layers of the threads better.

So what did I work on to make all those pretty layers?
Well there was the Death of rats and Mike's Mushrooms which you can read all about in my blog post D.E.S.I.G.N. & Death of Rats. There was Teresa Wentzler's Castle Ridge that I started on January 1st. I got quite a bit done on this but I set it aside to work on the ornaments of the month and give mike's mushrooms some love and will pick it up again at a later time, I'm in no hurry to finish this so am switching between projects.

 

Then I made the two Ornaments of the Month which you can read about in this blog post: WIPocalypse - January, new finishes and more and last of all is the little freebie that came with this month's CrossStitcher magazine on Monday - an owl scissor case with matching scissor fob.

I just need to finish a little bit of the eye and then the top piece of the case is ready. The body will be done on a separate piece of Aida and after hemming the top of that I will layer the two together with some felt to make the back and sew them together, although admittedly I'm not so sure about the felt that came with the kit as it's rather flimsy and very stretchy so I may just dig in my stash for a nice bit of cotton to use instead. The pattern gives instructions to do a scissor fob that is one side cross stitch and one side felt but I'm thinking that if I have enough thread left I might just do the other side with embroidery too as they have enough fabric to do that.

IHSW report for January

This IHSW I did a lot of crochet instead of stitching because my oldest son had a friend staying over and I was pretty tired and decided I'd rather avoid frogging. Considering the amount of crochet I had to rip out I'm pleased I made this decision as ripping out crochet is a LOT easier. Before I started on Friday I took the following photo, if you enlarge it you can see the wool to the top right about where the fold is.

The shawl is going to be a bit of a monster - it's 126 stitches wide and 27 inches high, so far I've used about 4 balls of wool - Stylecraft double knit special - I have 14 balls in total to use so there is another 10 balls to go. Each strip is 2" / 5 cm wide and I'm 2 rows into the diamond pattern I'm adding - white with rust diamonds which explains the rust dots at the top of the photo below. Over the weekend I added 8 inches of crochet. Fortunately Carla had her hangout open and I was able to chat quite a bit with her and Nancy who also dropped by for the first time in ages, so I was able to de-stress from having other people in the house which isn't my favourite thing but it's good for the kids to socialise in this way.

Yesterday my February issue of the CrossStitcher arrived and it has a cute little owl scissor holder with matching fob as this month's freebie so I decided to start that in the evening and extend IHSW by a day so I'd be able to report on something stitchy after all. My January issue hasn't arrived yet but it's still within the 14 working days since they told me they were re-sending the issue so I'm not worried yet.

I didn't get much done but it's good to have at least done a few stitches and have another pair of items for the Tons of Tiny project. It's not going so fast stitching wise right now as both kids are now ill (youngest was poorly on Sunday and oldest came home from school today)

D.E.S.I.G.N. & Death of Rats

First of all lets start with what D.E.S.I.G.N. is: Designer Everybody Should Instantly Get to Notice. This month I have decided to start by introducing someone who makes the most wonderful patterns from a photo or an image for you that is not only completely accurate but at the same time, no matter how many colours used is always easy to read. This last bit is, as most of know, not the easiest of things to find in a pattern but my designer of choice for this month manages that with apparent ease.

"Who is this amazing designer?" I hear you ask. The designer is known as pinkythepink over on Deviant Art and Etsy, where you can buy a personally made chart just for you.

I will be honest and say that both patterns she made for me were prizes from stitching pirates competitions however she doesn't know I'm writing this post about her and didn't ask me to.

Longer term readers of my blog will have already seem Mike's Mushrooms - the WIP I am currently working on (YES, at last!!) This is where it was last May and you can already see how lifelike the pattern is. I had given pinky the image and requested only whole stitches, so no backstitching and no partial stitches - no size restriction. It is 180 stitches x 261 stitches and has 113 colours, normally that would be a nightmare to keep track of on the pattern. Pinky has a super clever trick: she uses more than one colour for the symbols and doesn't repeat them, which makes them nice and easy to spot on a pattern. I have not seen anyone else do that on a pattern.

Mushrooms by Muskeg on DeviantArt

This is the original artwork the pattern was made from - with the permission of the awesome Muskeg (aka Mike) - just so you can see how close the pattern is to the original.

A pattern of Pinky's that I have finished is Death of Rats, a Terry Pratchett Discworld novel character. I didn't put any restrictions on this pattern other than "please see if you can manage to make this work" so I got a load of partial stitches and backstitching, which just make the pattern perfect.

 

Death of Rats by Pika-la-Cynique on DeviantArt

As you can see for yourself the end result is pretty close to the original artwork, which is quite a feat for something of this size. The fabric used is Haunted from Picture This Plus which I also won from one of the stitching pirates competitions and was one of 2 fabrics I'd picked to use for him, though in the end my favourite for him just didn't work asn dark blue sparkly fabric jut doesn't show dark blue well.

Even though it was not in the original pattern I couldn't resist including some glow in the dark thread and just for fun I included some Kreinick grapefruit glow in the dark blending filament too - for that extra bit of glow. I also used a silver metallic blending filament for the scythe blade so that it would shimmer.

Colours used: 10 colours of DMC + Kreinik grapefruit glow in the dark blending filament & silver blending filament + Cosmo metallic for the backstitching along the scythe blade
Stitches used: Cross stitch (whole and fractional) and back stitch
Stitches: not sure, pattern doesn't say but I do know it's 54 stitches wide and 101 high.
Fabric: 28 ct Zweigart Cashel, hand dyed by Picture This Plus "Haunted"
Size: 3 1/2" x 6 1/2"/8.89cm x 16.51cm