Mom and I will be selling at the Oconee Farmer's Market tomorrow morning, so keep your fingers crossed for some sales for us both! I'll swing back by some time with photos from our first day there. In the meantime, have some more kumihimo photos, including two with beads! (Please excuse the somewhat dark photos!)

 Necklace and bracelet set.

 Not really sure what I'm going to do with this; barely long enough for a necklace. Might make a coiled bracelet.

 Simple earth-tones with agate pendant

This necklace is done with bamboo crochet thread

Two simple bracelets done with Czech glass seed beads

Rebirth

Alrighty. I've been very absent from most things online for quite some time now. Things have been fairly meh and I've had pretty much no interest in stitching. Our sweet furbaby kitty Eliza passed away in May and I just haven't had the heart to pick up the scroll frame with no one there to instantly OMGSIT on it as soon as I put it down to change threads. One day I hope to go back to them. Cross stitching has always been a hobby for me over the years; its just kind of ebbed and flowed in and out.

For the time being, however, I've discovered kumihimo, and I've been using that to keep my hands busy. Plus, with my mother selling her beadweaving at the local crafter's shows, I've been able to use this little distraction to make a smidge of extra spending monies. I even set up an Etsy shop! (There's a link in the side bar.)

Most of the kumihimo I've done has been with DMC cotton threads, although I've experimented with the metallics and verigated DMC as well as crochet thread. I've also been playing with beaded kumihimo, which I think is more where my current crafty trend is heading. Both Mom and I hope to be able to participate at some of the larger local festivals (such as the Oconee Fall Festival, October 20th in Watkinsville, GA and perhaps even AthFest in 2013). I have plans for other crafts besides the kumihimo, such as origami star earrings, modge podged notebooks, other braiding techniques, et cetera.

For now, this much-neglected blog will be a bit more general crafts focused, although I plan to leave the name/url as "Stitchy Lilly." I hope having the blog around again will help keep me on top of taking photos of finished pieces, as I'll need them for posterity and Etsy!

Some examples of the kumihimo I've done:

 Hopefully I can be a better blogger and stay a bit more up-to-date! Hope everyone has a great Wednesday!

Ugh. I've really been in an icky place this past while, so very little stitching has been getting done. I've still got all that backstitching left on Ornate Butterfly, but I keep getting lost in the pattern, so it hasn't been a good choice for stitching and TV watching. Woman with Bouquet has been half-heartedly poked at a few times, but no "real" progress worth taking a photo of.

Despite that, I hope I get out of the slump enough to make a little something for one of my coworkers. Her daughter-in-law went into labor SEVERAL weeks early with twin girls (they were only 29 weeks), and one of the tiny darlings just didn't make it. We're a very small company, with people having worked here 20-30 years, so its kinda like an extended family; we're all super sad for them. I was thinking of just doing a little name sampler for the sweet girl who is still trucking it along, since they changed her middle name to be her sister's first name. Just something for Grandma to have, ya know?

Just going to have to smack myself a few times and get out of this funk!

March IHSW

My IHSW wasn't very productive. =/ I am, however, almost done with Ornate Butterfly! I had done pretty much all of the progress on this before IHSW, but I needed to update the photos anyway.

I've finished all the regular and half stitches and now it's down to all the back stitches, couching, and knots. I think it looks amazing and I already have the frame bought! Going to have to be sure I pack it up carefully for delivery, since it is a gift for a dear friend. <3 I hope she likes it as much as I think she will.

I've also started on Woman with Bouquet, mostly because I just couldn't help myself! I got the fairly large EZStitch kit with all the different size bars and I was itching to make use of it. I haven't made much progress on her yet, though. Just the first bit of a flower and her sleeve.

I also grabbed everything I need for my YRP sprite stitch. Once I finish up Ornate Butterfly, I'll probably juggle Bouquet and YRP. How was everyone else's IHSW? :D

Phew. It's been a little while since I've posted and for that I apologize! There's been a lot of just icky worries floating around our home these past few weeks. (Short story: Money is horrible. D:) In any case, I've been trying to keep my mind off things by stitching and as such am probably now 3/4 done with Ornate Butterfly!

I need to blaze through it the rest of the way so I can make the little sampler of names for my BFF's birthday before I get started on my next project: Woman with Bouquet! Must add reference pic for effect!

She is just incredibly beautiful and I can hardly wait to get started! Going to grab a larger scroll frame for her tomorrow, since the tiny one I got for Butterfly just ain't gonna cut it. I also have some sprite stitching I plan to be working, starting with YRP:

Abysswolf's sprites are really incredible. I'm planning on doing several, actually, including following in Karyn of A Riot Patch of Pixels's footsteps with the Pokemon trainer. My son Link loooooves his Pokemon! Plus, if I ever do the Pikachu Pile, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be able to part with it!

Feb IHSW!

I didn't get nearly as much done this weekend as I had hoped on Ornate Butterfly. One reason being:

I'd put the scrollframe down to rethread my needle and Eliza would go "MINE" and deposit herself in her new chair in Mama's lap... (Ignore my super tacky pj pants! Hehe.)

I did make some progress despite having to play grumpy mother to my own mother. She managed to make a tendon in her knee very mad and I guilt-tripped her into actually going to the ER to get xrays about it. She'll live, but that pretty much ate up my Sunday evening stitching time.

The lighting at work is kinda meh, but I think you get a better idea of the colors here. Once I get this sucker done and gifted to its new home, I'm going to do a little name sampler as a gift. My best chic friend has 5 (yes FIVE) kids and I thought doing a little sampler of their first and middle names in different colors would make a nice birthday gift. So! I have until the end of April to get both Ornate Butterfly and a name sampler done. Wondering if I've bitten off more than I can chew again. Ah well!

Hope everyone else had a very fruitful (or at least enjoyable) IHSW! <3

Well, I didn't get nearly as crafty this weekend as I had hoped, but I still managed to make some very good progress on Ornate Butterfly. I'm quite proud of myself, actually!

Once again, the photo doesn't do the colors enough justice. The gold-brown is much richer. I may have to pick this kit up again at some point so I can make one for myself!

In the mean time, I think I've found myself an awesome sprite pattern maker converter thingy, so after Ornate Butterfly is done, I'm going to try my hand at some sprite stitching! Starting with a little YRP from FFX-2.