Monday Monday - those May Flowers better be spectacular edition

It's been a freezing rainy mess of a week. 

Forsythia flowers I expected, frost flowers not so much.

The trees are still budding and the grass is starting to perk up so I'm staying hopeful for Spring. My unsprouted basil planter however... that I've written off as a late frost loss.

I no longer accept the concept of a basil free life so I started fresh seeds in a trash-hacked plastic bottle seed nursery this weekend and I'm taking advantage of the spare light from my wee Aerogarden. I did about 1/3 classic sweet Genovese and 2/3 a deep purple colored Genovese style basil variety called Amethyst Improved. I'm hoping to see those sprout in the next week or so.

I got my hairs did this week and I've finally gone back dark, though since I'm growing my cut out I still have enough lightened hair that I was able to go this amazing nearly indigo pen-ink blue.

As far as stitching goes I did a few #yearofstitch pieces, this week's post is up on my main Instagram @the_itsybitsy

Oh! Speaking of Instagram, if you like Instagram and you like cats I now have a feed specifically for mine! I always wanted to post more of them but felt like I didn't want to take over my feed. Now that you can do multiple feeds with one log-in I took the plunge.

Follow Renfield the Black cat, Quincey the ginger fluff and Mina the cow cat at @Catfaxabbey

I will only be following pet feeds from there but if you have a more general feed drop me a line on The_ItsyBitsy

I had a new computer desk debacle this week so instead of a working desk I have a pile of (mostly intact) pieces in the corner of the office waiting on replacement parts.

Sorry about the weird formatting on this post - the components for my desktop are scattered across the office floor at the moment and apparently blogging on an iPhone really just doesn't cut it.

To distract myself from all that annoyance I wanted a fussy embroidery piece, but I'm still fighting with the new stand a bit too much to comfortable stitch on my big HAED piece. I picked up my Blackwork Journey piece instead and finished the first block. The stitching is so fine it's hard to get a pic of the whole thing that also shows the designs well, I think I may do a slideshow of the individual blocks at the end.

After that I picked up a gift piece I've been working on for a few months now but I'm not showing that off yet so progress pics may be scarce for a bit.

A month of Monday Monday

Happy monthaversary!

Technically the first one was on the 8th so you could argue that next week would be the anniversary of the posts but as it's a retrospective wrap up sort of thing I'm going to call it good.

It would probably be a good idea to do my weekly blogging on a weekend day when I've gotten more sleep but then the series would be named Sabado Sabado Sabado! and that would be really misleading as this is not a Spanish language blog.

Wow, yeah, I really *did* sleep like crap last night.

I digress.

First things first:

Someone in a cross stitch group tipped me off that Jo-Ann Fabrics is having a MASSIVE online sale on cones of DMC floss and has a cheap shipping coupon, so you better believe I snatched up a cone of 310. The entire background of my current project is columns of unrelenting 310 (black) so I've been considering this for weeks. Not sure how long that's on so jump on it while you can.

I got a message last week from my stylist Fran Nordstrom at Waves Salon (here, have a Groupon deal!) that she had a color refresher thing for me so I picked it up and tried it this weekend. It came out of the tube a bit more purple than it shows on my hair but the end result was spot on for the powdery, denimy blue I really wanted this time around.

I don't think the first pic shows the yellowing I was starting to get as well as it could, but the refresher definitely made a difference in the overall tone without changing the color or staining anything (on my bathroom or my anatomy). It was easy, fast, and pleasant as hair dye experiences go. My only complaint about it is that it has a fairly heavy lily sort of scent which I find a bit much even after a day, but I'm specifically sensitive to that sort of thing so I suspect most wouldn't have a problem.

I have no idea of the general availability of this product but I would definitely give it another go.

This was my main project start this week and so far I am enjoying the HECK out of it. My mom had some medical stuff going on this past week so I stayed overnight last Monday at my parent's house and brought this project with to keep me busy while we waited for updates (long story short: my Mom is all good so far). I had a bit of a false start (that entire top row of stars had to be redone) but once I worked out a counting snafu and got used to working over two again I was golden. Per my post from mid last week I learned a new (to me) stitch and as a result will be starting that #yearofstitch project hopefully this week.

I've stopped on that piece for the time being to focus on getting a page finish in on Shades of Red, but will be setting up to start #yearofstitch and possibly prepping fabric for the upcoming Bowie project this week as I think I've decided on my fabric. Now that I've gotten away from the relentless black stitching of the background of Shades of Red it is of course confetti city and is sloooooooow going ,no middle ground there. 

OH!!! I FINALLY GOT MY FABRIC FOR THE MOST RIDICULOUS EPIC SEVERAL YEARS LONG PROJECT I COULD POSSIBLY IMAGINE!! Look at that thing! I think I have sheet sets that take up less real estate. That is a 55x55 inch square piece of 25 count Lugana from Heaven and Earth Designs and for size reference I am myself all of 62 high x *mumble* wide inches.

The end result will be the design above - Four Seasons by Jacek Yerka as charted by Heaven and Earth Designs. The design is considered a supersize piece in max colors which will be about 40 inches square and contain 234 colors. The pattern is OVER ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY PAGES and at current speed a single page takes me about a month.

I don't know, I might be crazy but I just sort of fell in love with it, lifelong commitment to a single cross stitch project be damned.

Stitchin' it old school

Stitcher's Delight by Steotch - click me for the original link including a FREE PATTERN

Not quite what I mean, but seriously how amazing is that?
Pardon me while I go download that pattern and follow her Instagram...

So anyway, what I DO mean:

Back in the day when you were a wee bairn learning the home arts you would do a sampler which would teach different stitches and alphabets and often provide a reference for future work (lettering for monogramming personal items, for example).

Sampler stitched by Hanna McGinter at age 11
(1779-1867)

I have kind of a vague half recollection of doing something like that when I was very very young but when it comes down to it my embroidery repertoire has been pretty limited; a bunch of cross stitch, some simple crewel stitches, a hint of goldwork... basically I learn whatever I need to do the project in front of me.

I've been following Badasscrossstitch on Instagram for a while and apparently her recently completed  #YearofStitch project has been worming its way into my brain.

I tried Colonial Knots for the first time yesterday in my Box Of Delights project and realized that COLONIAL KNOTS RULE FRENCH KNOTS DROOL. I had to look at a couple of different tutorials to understand how to do them but once I did I was hooked. They're simple, neat, easy to tension properly, firm, and fairly symmetrical. As opposed to French knots which look like out-and-out mistakes half the time (for me anyway). I love the look of sweet little floral accents on ultra snarky cross stitch pieces a la PlasticLittleCovers but HATE French knots so I never bother.

Seriously, they're actually kind of fun, here's a good tutorial.

Heck, this makes me want to try candlewicking!

My next thought was of course "what other totally awesome and not suck stitches could I have been using all this time OMG WHO WAS RUNNING THAT STITCH A WEEK THING!?!?!?!". I'm a little sad I missed out on the unfolding week by week-ness of the original project but whatever, Imma do it anyway. I really like having these nice discreet pieces to work on in between my magnum opus H.A.E.D. pieces.

Someday I hope to do a similar sort of thing with the tutorials posted on Mary Corbet's Needle and Thread (aka the site that helped me fall in love with embroidery) or Sarah's Hand Embroidery at Rocksea.org (source of the tutorial above) but I think my entirely self imposed embroidery workload is insane enough as it is right now.