Taj Mahal finish

As promised, about a year ago, when I last wrote, here is the latest Fantasy Triptych picture, looking quite castle-y. I won't be working on it again this month, so I haven't achieved my goal of getting the castle done. It was a bit much to expect of myself. I did get quite a bit done and am confident it will be done next month.



Here is a wonky picture of Taj Mahal - finally finished. I would go and straighten it up and take a better picture, but, you know me, its a miracle for me to take a picture at all! I'm so pleased to have finished Taj at last - feels as if I've been doing it for ever. I didn't enjoy stitching it all that much, mostly because of all those Heritage stitchcraft style 'squashed' stitches on aida, not fun. If ever I stitch one of these again, which is unlikely, I will definitely not use aida.



Primrose Fairy is coming along quite well - I'm working on her today and tomorrow. She will have her green legs soon.



I have achieved quite a bit on Sleeping Beauty. You can't see it very well in this picture but there are some pink flowers coming across the dress at the bottom. Its a nice change to use some pink on this design after all the green. I will be doing a bit more work on SB before April is out. Now that Taj Mahal is finished, Sleeping Beauty is my longest running WIP. She will move up the priority list next month!



I've had a terrible time with Celtic Winter - *sigh*. Firstly, having almost completed the letters of WINTER - I found that the letter I was 2 stitches too wide - so had to unpick I through to R - that took me a whole evening - sob! The I ran out of one of the blues - I had some more but it was a very different shade to what I had been using. I think what I'd started off with must have been a bit of leftover thread out of a kit. That'll teach me not to be mean with thread. I pulled out the obvious bits and hopefully the rest won't notice. What a pain! I will be working on CW again for a few days at the end of this month but I don't think I'll get her finished as was the plan.



Finally - Waiting for Neptune. I more than achieved my goal on this, I was working on it last weekend and must admit I got a bit bored with it, but I will be ok again next time I pick it up.



I had a sort-of sort out of my stash yesterday. Not the fabric or thread, but all the charts and kits. I like to keep a list of all my future projects organised into how they will fit into my rotation, but I hadn't updated it for months. A few of the charts on the list are missing, I am beginning to doubt whether I actually owned them in the first place - one I can't even remember what it looks like! I think I may have stretched myself a bit. The 'miscellaneous' slot of my rotation, the one Taj Mahal was in, has 35 future projects in it, hmmmmmm. Taj Mahal will be replaced next month by Lanarte's Ballet dancer.

I have also started to get ready the replacement for Celtic Winter which I've decided will be Passione Ricamo's Moon Fairy Spirit. I kept changing my mind about what fabric to use for this project. Having never used hand-dyeds, I had previously promised myself I would splash out when it came to stitching something by Passione Ricamo, but this project didn't call for it quite as loudly as some of the others. I kept changing my mind - I didn't have anything suitable in my fabric stash - a piece of plain fabric would cost about £5 - buying some from Silkweavers about 3 times more. I finally decided it does deserve the nice fabric and ordered it. It hasn't arrived yet, when it does I'll tell you what colour it is, I can't remember! Following the disaster I had with Celtic Winter and the 'old kit' thread I am also making sure I've got enough nice new thread at the outset. I can now throw out that leftover kit thread with a clear conscience.