Here is a first look at Medieval Town Mandala:

(The fabric doesn’t really have that pinkish tinge. It’s the same Lambswool Aida I used for MMM-03.)

I finished the gold border this morning and I’m working on the flowers around it.

One of my goals for 2008 was to finish stitching the top half of Dragon Fae 1 from Heaven and Earth Designs (charted from a painting by Selina Fenech). I completed that goal today! She is stitched on 25 count lugana, 1 over 1. I’m doing half-stitches for the background, to soften it a little.

Another of my goals for the year finished! I completed my version of Blackstone Fantasy Garden from Ink Circles:

The blues are HDF silks from Vikki Clayton (light is Yonder Sky and dark is Zaffre Cobalt) and the metallics are various colors of Kreinik and Petite Treasure Braid. They don’t show up well, but there are a few different shades of whites and silvers.

I haven’t had time to get this to the framer yet. I want to try a place a block from where my job is headquartered, instead of Michaels. Hopefully I can get there sometime this week.

Next I need to finish my Chatelaine Celtic Garden Mandala. I’m halfway through the border!

Once again, I’m behind in posting updates.  I completed part 11 of the Celtic Garden Mandala in November, but then forgot to put it on here.

Here is one corner:

I had a hard time figuring out which color to use for the red dividers.  Martina suggested DMC 350 as the subsitute, but it seemed just a bit too bright, so I went one shade darker to 349.  Now that I’m doing the ornaments that go in between those dividers, I think 350 would have looked better.  Oh well, I’m not frogging the darn things!

I forgot to post this a couple weeks ago:

I made one big mistake on this part, though it really isn’t obvious. As I was finishing the first corner, I realized my fabric was turned 90 degrees and therefore all the x’s were going the wrong way. I didn’t want to frog it, so I decided to just do all the corners the same way. I’ll go back to the original direction for the rest of the piece.

I finished part 10 of the Celtic Garden Mandala! Well, almost. I ran out of the darkest grey floss while stitching the inner trees, so I have a few more little branches to stitch.

Here ’tis, before I stitched the moon:

This was the first part in which I had to make a big change to the original directions because I’m stitching over-1 instead of over-2. The flowers were charted as 3×3 eyelets. However, on Aida there is no center hole to pull the threads out of, and it just doesn’t look right. So I designed my own little flower instead. You can see it here, along with the moon:

I also stitched the winter and spring moons:

I’ve finished the next two parts on the Celtic Mandala Garden (part 9) and the Victorian Secret Garden (part 3):

Both pieces required learning to do Jessica stitches. They more difficult on Aida, since I had to split the weave with my needle, but I’m very happy with how they turned out.

As you can see on the Celtic piece, I’ve stitched my first moon. I decided to change the color from dark gold to a more silvery gold, so it looks like the moon instead of the sun. After I finish part 10, I’ll stitch the moons in the rest of the forest quarters.

I finished this a couple weeks ago, but haven’t gotten around to posting it yet. Part 8 of the Chatelaine Celtic Mandala (it’s actually the right side, but this is rotated in the photo):

This section represents Spring, with leaves and blossoms on the trees.

I finished the trees in part 7 of the Celtic Garden Mandala last night. There is supposed to be a full moon in the middle, but I’m going to wait on that. I want to do the phases of the moon in a different order than they are charted. Instead, this quadrant (North/winter) will have a new moon, East will have a waxing (first half) moon, South will have the full moon that was charted here, and West will have the waning (second half) moon. I’m also going to change the color from dark gold to a very light silvery gold, which I think will look better on my fabric.

I also started working on Blackstone Fantasy Garden from Ink Circles, and I’ve gotten a lot done during my Metro commute to and from work. This is going to be a gift for my Irish dance teacher, so I’ve changed to colors to go with our school dresses. The fabric is black and the main threads are Yonder Sky and Zaffre Cobalt from HDF. I’m using metallics for the blackwork areas.

I wasn’t sure I’d finish part 6 of the Celtic Garden Mandala before the next part was sent out, but I did it! As you can see, it’s quite large now.

I ended up fussing with one of the colors a bit. The DMC conversion lists 370 as a replacement for Silk n Colors 155, so I did the first couple corners that way:

However, after looking at some other people’s WIPs, I wasn’t happy with how the color looked (it’s the dark yellowish brown). I wanted some varigation, plus the color wasn’t quite right.. So I bought some Gentle Arts Sampler Thread in Harvest Basket, which is almost an exact match to the original color. Here is the result, which I’m quite happy with: