Pennelate di Magia - 2 of 10 done!

I said I didn't have any pictures of Pennelate di Magia, but that was because I didn't scroll back far enough in my phone's gallery. My first progress picture was from June 2024... no wonder I couldn't find it! At that point, I'd finished one flower (left side in this picture) and started the border of the second.

Over the weekend, I finished the second flower panel and here's how it all looks.

Stitched as charted, except not really? There's a little color picture next to each chart showing a mockup of how it will look when stitched. The problem is... the colors as charted do not match the color mockup! The greens are all mixed up. I hadn't noticed this when stitching the orange flower (on the left) so that one is stitched as charted, with the greens placed kind of randomly. I changed the colors in the purple flower (on the right) to match the color mockup. Here's what they look like.

So now I'm stuck with the possibility of having to redo all the greens in the orange flower because it's going to look out of place. All the other color mockups have this logical color layout, with the stem being the darkest color, and the leaves getting progressively lighter as you go up on the plant. And honestly, I prefer that look so I KNOW I'm going to have to change this for my own satisfaction.

But why is it even like this???? It's not THAT much rework, but I'm getting pretty frustrated with every project having something annoying or just plain wrong with it, either charting or materials or being oversized or poor color choices or... etc etc.

I don't know. Maybe I'll start something new. Something small and cute and EASY.

endless Jessica band has an end???

It's finally over. The neverending band of Jessica stitches on Peacock Band Sampler has finally been defeated. I'm worn and bruised and my needle got bent but I WON.

So of course I had to keep working on it after finishing that band. Like a normal person. *eyeroll*

Well, I got pretty far on the central band and had a great time filling in the darkest purple. But when it was time to add the (looool) Jessica stitches around them, I got fed up...

Not because of the stitches, though! It's the thread that's driving me crazy now. I used HDF silk for the darkest purple (the kitted color was so dark it was pretty much black and looked awful) and now the lighter purple feels terrible in comparison. :( Every strand I used has ended up getting split around the eye of the needle, locking it in place (can't slide the needle toward the thread end) and then it breaks.

Several of the threads have a pink section in the middle, almost like they had gotten discolored by a drop of bleach. I've been avoiding those but used one by accident. The pink was pretty dark and blended in well, so I decided to keep using it. Of course, the thread ended up breaking at the pink part, and I wasn't putting any extra strain on it. It's almost like it crumbled instead of broke.

Luckily, the other colors in the kit have been okay so far, just a bit frizzy and prone to knotting. I've already reached the middle so I'll be reusing the previous colors in reverse order to finish the project. I just have to get past this unruly light purple first. But for now, this project will take a little break!

Oh, and I finally got a reasonably accurate picture of the fabric color.

I forgot that pulling back a little (or a lot) helps to cancel out my phone's automatic white balancing. The fabric is still more vibrant than this shows, but it's a lot closer than my other pictures!

Catstronaut - finish! (plus goals update)

Here's the Catstronaut in all its glory! I was able to adjust the colors pretty well this time, so this is actually accurate for once. The fabric is the perfect space background. :3

I only made one small change, and that was changing 553 to 552 in the purple yarn ball planet. 553 was too light, especially in the piece of unraveling yarn, but 552 looks perfect. I don't think changes would be needed on a lighter fabric (the model is on light blue) but my dark fabric made the lighter purple look too washed out, especially in comparison to 550 which is very dark.

~~~

And let's do goals since the month is almost over and I achieved them all. :3

January goals: all done! 

• frame my sister's birthday present and send it to her ON TIME
• one section of Jessica stitches on Peacock Band Sampler
• one section of central band fills on Peacock Band Sampler
• start a small (probably Catstronaut)
• 100% no buy of any stitching stuff 

February goals: (pretty much an exact copy of January)

• one section of Jessica stitches on Peacock Band Sampler
• one section of central band fills on Peacock Band Sampler
• start a small (TBD) one flower on Pennelate di Magia
• 100% no buy of any stitching stuff 

So here are the two spots I want to fill in:

If I end up doing more than planned (like I did this month) I'll be happy with that, but I won't push for more because the Jessica stitches can be very tedious. I don't want to get burned out like I did last year and put this project aside for months. Slow and steady!

Not sure what small I want to start yet. I have a lot of cute patterns from Etsy, but many of them are quite large. Catstronaut was one of the smallest out of the pile I purchased last year, easy enough to finish in a couple of weeks. Maybe I'll spend a little time playing with fabric to see what feels interesting. :)

ETA: Wait, I just remembered that I started Pennelate di Magia by Renato Parolin a while back, didn't like the fabric, never blogged about it, and shoved it to the bottom of the WIP pile! There's nothing actually wrong with the fabric other than it being 28ct evenweave (I prefer 32ct linen) soooo... that's going to be my small for next month. One flower panel!

Picture next time because I don't seem to have any in my records. Hmm. Well, here is the model picture instead! I'm doing the color version:

Hard to see, I know, but they are beautiful in person!

Catstronaut in progress!

Here is Catstronaut by NeedleLot Designs, a little more than halfway done! The kitty is complete and all that's left are some yarn planets and other cute background motifs. :3

The fabric is Old Witch's Cape by Fiberlicious, which is a lot more blue than the picture on the website, making it a perfect dark navy space background. Exactly what I wanted for this kitty! The color is a little darker than my picture shows but I had trouble adjusting the color balance (as usual, sigh).

Why are the kitty's paws and tail sticking out of the spacesuit with no protection? Well... maybe they are actually gloves and a tail cover that just happen to match the cat's fur color, haha.

I'll probably continue with this one until a finish because it's soooo cute and fun! 

Peacock Band Sampler update!

I've already reached my goal on Peacock Band Sampler for this month! Exceeded it, actually, by doing a full repeat of Jessica stitches instead of just filling one enclosed section.

 
Somehow the Jessica stitches were much less annoying than usual. Absence really makes the heart grow fonder, I guess. :p

I even felt like I could do MORE of them, but I held off to avoid getting burned out again.

And here's a closeup of the purple fill because it is SO NICE.

The darkest color was waaaay too dark (almost black! could barely tell it was meant to be purple) so I swapped it for a HDF silk from my stash. This had the added bonus of insanely good stitch definition. Seriously, zoom in on that picture, the lines are CRISP. The Fiberlicious silks in the kit are quite frizzy in comparison (which makes them tangle and knot constantly) but HDF is always so smooth.

I look forward to doing more of these eight pointed stars because they are sooo nice. But first it's time for a little break so I can start Catstronaut! I found a great dark navy blue to use for the background and even the dark colors pop on it, so it's ready to go. :) 

2026 goals (bonus January goals!)

Here we go again. Happy new year or whatever. 🎉

In an effort to retain what little remains of my sanity, let's set some goals for the year. As a bonus, I'll include my January goals here as well. In fact, let's start with those.

• frame my sister's birthday present and send it to her ON TIME
• one section of Jessica stitches on Peacock Band Sampler
• one section of central band fills on Peacock Band Sampler
• start a small (probably Catstronaut)
• 100% no buy of any stitching stuff 

Here's Peacock Band Sampler as it stands today. Well, almost? I already finished the light blue stitching between the satin stitch parts of the huge band, but I guess this picture is a tiny bit older than that. Anyway, I want to fill in the two areas circled in yellow.

And this is the Catstronaut. The light blue fabric is cute, but I wonder if it would look as good on darker fabric to give it more of an outer space vibe. I think the colors are light/vibrant enough to stand out on a dark blue but I might have to tweak a few things.

Alright, good stuff. Now for the year-long goals, mostly copied from last year.

• no large starts until one is finished
• start and finish as many small projects as I want
• sell all finished/destashed charts
• low buy of charts/materials

And more detailed goals for specific WIPs: 

• Amethyste Band Sampler: complete part 1 (of 3)
• Chinese Garden Mandala: complete one side
• Raven Queen: finish 
• Rosarium: complete center
• Peacock Band Sampler: finish Jessica and central bands, then as much of the rest as I like!
• Violet Patch Mandala: complete SE corner, E violet, redo some border colors

I think that's pretty good. Time to go make some Jessica stitches... 

2025 goals recap

Mmm, goals. Who doesn't love a good goals list? :p

So, my goals for 2025 were:

One large start for the new year:
Peacock Band Sampler was started in January after sitting in my stash since Christmas 2019! I'd hoped to finish this but stalled out once I hit the ridiculous Jessica stitch band. Later in the year, I had some health issues that made it difficult to stitch for a few months, so there's hasn't been much progress since then. I look forward to getting back into it!

No other large starts until one is finished:
Almost! The Nature's Journey SAL is technically a large project, but I did each part as it came out and the individual parts are a size that I would consider "medium" by my standards. But I did start Raven Queen by Mirabilia and she's definitely in the "large" category! Honestly I'm pretty happy that I went just over nine months without a large start. I don't think I've ever gone that long before!

Start and finish as many small projects as I want:
Getting off the large projects train allowed me to have TWENTY small finishes this year! Well, more like fourteen, since six were "medium" in my eyes (4x Nature's Journey parts, Luna, and Jams). I had a lot of fun working on cute Mill Hill kits, freebies, magazine patterns, and Etsy patterns this year.

Behold, finishes! :3 

Sell all finished/destashed charts:
Everything is already posted to ebay so it's just a matter of if/when it actually sells. I did manage to sell ten patterns, one magazine, and five pieces of linen this year. Not too bad!

Low buy of charts/materials:
I was doing quite well up until December! Before then I had spent around $80 total for the year on fabric for the Nature's Journey SAL, a 2 year renewal of JCS magazine, a Mill Hill frame, and a few DMC threads I ran out of. Then in December I spent about $120 on Etsy patterns. I'm still happy overall because in the past I would spend $200+ at once, multiple times per year! Yikes.

Progress on existing large WIPs:
I was going to call this a complete fail but after looking back through my old posts, I realized I did quite a bit on Violet Patch Mandala earlier this year! It went from here: 

To here (completed over one stitching around the center, outer part of bottom left corner, bottom violet, inner part of bottom right corner):

I'm feeling the itch to work on it again so expect this to make a return soon. :)

~~~

I guess I'll talk about new goals for 2026 next time.

Happy new year, stitching friends! Stay safe out there. <3