The Floss Box

I finished this one yesterday:

I’m pretty happy with how it came out.  I’m trying to use more than just the usual outlining stitches.  I think my new favorite stitch is wrapped chain stitch!  That’s what I used to fill in the tree with, and the outline of the leaf.  I also tried the romanian couching to fill in the sun.  My long and short stitch is so uneven, I think this is a nice alternative.

So, I got an idea for a freebie last night, and here it is:

love

This isn’ t the color combo I originally had in my mind, but I like these in any case. I may do my other idea next time.

Enjoy!

Almost halfway through May and I haven’t even begun my projects! I like to get going on them right away usually. If one falls behind can one even ever catch up again? I’m trying not to find out.

Anyways, I’m glad I delayed some to think about what the heck I want to do for them. So for the challenge that I am running, the topic is food. I chose cakes. Isn’t this cake great? I love using image searches, makes it nice and easy to find relevant pictures.

I finally decided what to do about the TIF challenge. I thought it would be awesome to combine the challenges into one project, but it just isn’t going to work. I don’t want my cake project to be restricted to certain colors. But, I am combining it with another type of project I want to do. I thought it would be great practice for me to try my hand at this “fine” stumpwork, the style that Jane Nicholas likes, flowers and such. I just can’t bring myself to do one of her designs as they are though.  I know, something must be wrong with me. So I was pondering what to do. I finally decided to make my own design, but in her style. My subject will be forget-me-nots. They are one of my favorite flowers, and the colors will go nicely with this month’s color palette.

They are so delicate and pretty. I have a few that managed to grow in our weedy yard. I wish more would come though!

I had better quit messing around and get stitching!!!!

I found this at Pipstitch and grabbed it.

Why did you start your blog?

I started out at blogger before I got my own domain and set up here. I just wanted to share my projects. I want to do more now though, share ideas, inspiration, tips, great sites.

How did you come up with your blog name?
My original blog name was Cross Stitch for Life. That was when I was doing cross stitch exclusively. I just decided to get a new name for the new blog, no good reason. At that point it was still cross stitch. I needed a name for my main stitching site too, which has been in development and unreasonably long time now, and just decided on the floss box. Of course, as you see, I’m doing all kinds of stitching these days, so I’m glad I chose a more generic name for my new blog.

Do your friends and family know about your blog and if so, what do they think of it?

My mother knows about it. She visits from time to time. She shows her friends sometimes too. This weekend she just told me she was at my SIL’s house and showed her my blog on the same day I posted some pics of her quilts. She was pleased when I told her that some of you left some nice comments about them. No one l know in Sweden knows about my site, stitching isn’t popular and I don’t want to bother them with an English blog anyways.

How do you write posts?
Not exactly sure what this question means, lol, I sit at the computer and type? hehe. I like it best when I have projects or freebies, or some interesting how-to’s to share, then it’s obvious what to write. If I find people doing interesting things or with good ideas, I like to post links.

Have you ever had a troll or had someone leave unkind comments?

Nope. People like that are mostly just out to hurt someone because they are hurting themselves, and unfortunately they are extremely good at finding people’s weak spot.

Do you check your stats?

Yep, from time to time.

Do you care how many people read your blog?

Tricky question! I don’t want to just fill cyberspace with more junk, so it’s good to know someone out there is in fact interested. There are always spikes for the cross stitch freebies, but I figure those people are just after freebies and not blog reading, thus the reason for my other (third!) stitching site also in development which will house freebies, among other things.

What kind of blogs/posts interest you?

Stitching! yes, I like stitching of all sorts, and I would add crafting too. I like to see people’s new ideas. I also have started looking at more blogs by illustrators. I also like posts with great pictures. I’m always interested in reading where people get their inspiration from, but most seem to leave that part out.

What do you like and dislike about blogging?

This is another open-ended question I suppose. Blogging is great, but it’s all about what’s on the front page. Most blog software isn’t designed to make it easy to find previous content. I also hate the editors that are in the blogs. Wordpress is always mangling my nicely (and simply!) coded tables. Drives me up the wall. So that’s just the mechanics of it!

As for the actually blogging itself… well, I’ve said it several times to my partner, I don’t really want to blog in the usual manner, I’m not an awesome blogger in my mind. I want this blog more or less to be a place for status reports for my projects, as well as the status of my other sites, thus keeping things in line with the idea that a blog is just front page info only. I want to put stuff like the freebies, ideas, tutorials and such on a separate site, which as I said is in development! There it will be easier to find older information.

I’m not sure if I want to get into the things I like/dislike about other people’s blogs, lol. That’s a big old can worms best left unopened.

Thanks for all the comments about the tourist project! It was a fun one to do.

It’s always cool when people do stuff with the patterns I create. Look here to see what Lil Birdie did with the little geek patterns I put up last week. Those are way cute!

Someone else posted a completed Planet design and posted it in the Flickr embroidery pool. Click here to see it.

I haven’t seen that many men doing traditionally womanly crafts, so it always catches my attention when I find one. So go check out Quilt Dad’s blog.

I found a cross stitch freebie site that I’m pretty sure I haven’t seen before. They are mostly very small, but some are quite cute.

I’ve been looking into other methods for transferring patterns for embroidery. There are some instructions here. I thought maybe using the heat transfer paper might be handy, but the only thing is, the lines are permanent, the same with using pencil and tracing paper, and then retracing that onto the fabric. These methods are good except if you aren’t going to cover the lines completely. It’s nice to be able to wash the lines out, since I can’t always manage nice, even straight stitches, lol.

Well, those were all very random thoughts, lol.

Yay I finished this morning. I’m pretty happy with it, overall.

Side view, so you can see some of the relief stitching:

This took a couple weeks, so it wasn’t a super long project. It was very involved though. It takes some concentration to do things nicely. I learned a lot doing this, which is good, because I have a lot to learn!

Check out this chestnut tree. I saw this in a yard near here, and had to take a picture, but the picture doesn’t do it justice. It’s huge!

Hi all,

I’m sharing this alphabet I put together some time ago, in case I needed some letters handy. I haven’t gotten around to doing anything with it yet though, but I’m sure I will!

It’s only in pdf due to the size. Too lazy to post together screen shots this time.

alphabet

Perhaps it might be useful to someone out there.

I should be done with the tourist project this weekend. No more wip pics till then, I want the finish to be a surprise, lol.

I’m working on my challenge projects ideas. My subject will be cake! Like I mentioned before, I’m combining to challenges into one project, so it’ll be a real challenge to make some sense of it, lol.

Probably most of you can’t help thinking in terror about a chubby pair of little hands when you hear these two words together. But there is more to it. I found these instructions on giggleface studios on how to use crayons to add some color to your stitching. I had to give it a go. Here is my result:

It turned out pretty well. I just used some cheap-o crayons, so I felt like the color didn’t spread that nicely when the wax melted. A bunch of the wax got picked up by the paper I was using to iron with, and all the color pigments just stayed put. Anyways, it’s a great way to add some life into a project without doing a lot of work on filling in stitches. I know some have used the water color pencils to add a bit of color to fabric. I think I need to acquire some and give that a go too.

Almost forgot. I took a picture after I was done coloring it. Here is how it looked:

I used quite a bit of crayon on this, so there was still a fair bit of wax left on the paper after ironing it.  My hands felt kind of waxy after working on it, lol.

I just finished this yesterday.

I really couldn’t get a nice picture of this one at all for some reason, I may try one more time, lol. I think my color choices ended up being a bit odd on this one. I always liked genetics though, so I had to do something with it.

I haven’t posted many outdoor pictures lately. The nice weather just keeps coming, and the days are getting long fast. Day to day you can see the leaves grow, it’s like an explosion of green.

Lil birdie suggested making some “geeks” with some other wording, so here they are:

gamergeeks

computergeeks

There may be more kinds of “geeks” in my future, lol.  But they more variety than these.