Onwards with the cross stitch

I am so addicted to cross-stitch. I can’t stop. I started a group that meets in my home 6 months ago, in January 3 more women will join in. One of them, Paula, came over to visit last week.

Making friends isn’t east at any age, the pandemic taught me that I have to work extra hard, it is worth it.

Remember this image? all framed and ready to go. Well I noticed that between the elks there was an unfinished tree. Sure I could have left it, you wouldn’t know. But I do. So the benefits of framing myself, I removed it, I unlaced and I fixed the tree.

Much better!

Here is a close up. better balance. Sure there are empty space, which give some relief to the eyes, but a bare tree, not good.

So as you can see, I re-laced, reframed and sent it off to Alaska – where it was received with gratitude.

I have two large projects starting in January. The modern Folk Embroidery 2022 Sew along. I’m still waiting for my silk to arrive from Spain, so that might not be a January 1st start.

I have decided to jump onto the Mirabilia wagon. I bought the pattern in Vermont, as well as linen. Then I proceeded to order the DMC online during Black Friday sales. I also have the metallic threads and will buy the beads later on.

This is one small corner of the chart. there is no way I can work off this. I tried taking pictures and importing into that wonderful new program Markup Rxp. Didn’t work. So then I though, maybe I can take it to Staples, have them make bigger copies on the blue print machine. They had a better idea, why not put it on a Thumb drive and then I can open it on my computer.

Brilliant idea, once it’s a PDF on the computer, it is easy to import into Markup. And that is what I did.

IT works!!! It will take time to mark the symbols, so many of the colors are extremely close. Look at this image, all of this symbol is highlighted in yellow. It is easy to follow, I can zoom in, I love this program – more than PatternKeeper.

I have a number of paper pattern that I have bought, remember buying patterns is a separate hobby from doing the cross-stitch. So, it the pattern is small enough to fit on my printer, I’ll scan at home, but most probably I will take my $6 thumb drive that I had to buy (I don’t walk around with one in my purse), go back to Staples and have them scan on a much higher quality scanner. Life is good!