Visit to JoAnn

The last few days were spent in searching the internet up and down for stores where I would be able to buy the thread of the shade I had ended up short on (mentioned in my previous blog entry).

The thread shade in question was Anchor Shade No. 888, and to my consternation, I found that there were no retailers for Anchor in the US! I consulted a few of my friends who are into art work here, and they suggested that I look for such items either in Michaels or JoAnn. I found out that embroidery thread was being sold in JoAnn. However, they stocked thread from DMC only. I now had to look up the particular shade that I was interested in and find out the DMC series number. Fortunately, Googling helped me discover a site hosting the Anchor to DMC conversion chart! I found out that I needed to pick up DMC Shade No. 3045.

Fortunately, there was a JoAnn outlet in a shopping centre reachable by public transport (since I am still debating on when to go ahead with a car purchase!), and I managed to pick up the required item on the way back home from work. I also picked up a small cross-stitch kit which will come up on this blog once I am done with the present long-stitch kit.

Photographs of the progress on the Cartload kit will continue in the next post!

Progress on Cartload - III

At the outset, I have to admit that I have put in more than the usual hours that I wanted to allocate to this kit in the past week. And it has ended up on a bit of a frustrating note, with the number of skeins given for one of the colours (the update you see as the topmost picture in this post) not proving sufficient. Now, I guess I have to hunt down some shops here and search for that exact shade. I believe it might prove a bit of a wild-goose chase. I might even decide to substitute some other colour in the areas where that shade was supposed to be used. But, I am afraid that the final look of the kit might not be as good as I would have liked it to be, when beginning work on it.

In any case, here are the latest updates, and as usual, the present status of the kit is right on top.



Time spent on the kit for marking out and stitching up the above areas: 4.5 hours [including updates for the above colour shown in subsequent posts] (approx.)
Cumulative time spent on the kit: 40.5 hours (approx.)



Time spent on the kit for marking out and stitching up the above areas: 1.5 hours (approx.)
Cumulative time spent on the kit: 36 hours (approx.)



Time spent on the kit for marking out and stitching up the above areas: 13 hours (approx.)
Cumulative time spent on the kit: 34.5 hours (approx.)

Progress on Cartload - II

Some more updates from my end over the last two days are presented here. I got done with two more colours. As usual, the latest version is on top.



Time spent on the kit for marking out and stitching up the above areas: 4 hours (approx.)
Cumulative time spent on the kit: 21.5 hours (approx.)



Time spent on the kit for marking out and stitching up the above areas: 1.5 hours (approx.)
Cumulative time spent on the kit: 17.5 hours (approx.)

Progress on Cartload - I

I might not have updated my blog in the past week, but that doesn't mean that I have not been working on my tapestry kit!

It is always suggested in most tapestry kits to start work with the darkest colours since light colours are prone to smudging, as we work on the kit.

Here are some photographs of the kit after three of the darkest colours were completed (in reverse order, with the latest update on top).




Time spent on the kit for marking out and stitching up the above areas: 5 hours (approx.)
Cumulative time spent on the kit: 16 hours (approx.)




Time spent on the kit for marking out and stitching up the above areas: 6 hours (approx.)
Cumulative time spent on the kit: 11 hours (approx.)




Time spent on the kit for marking out and stitching up the above areas: 3 hours (approx.)
Cumulative time spent on the kit: 5 hours (approx.)

Starting Out on Cartload!

I started out yesterday on my new embroidery kit, coninciding with my plans to track my hobbies on this blog.

Kit Details:

Name: Cartload
Anchor Long Stitch Kit Model Number: ART AIM03 SH 005
Impressions Series [36 cm X 28 cm]

Here is a photograph of the canvas in the kit after ironing out the folds. The working area has been hemmed in order to prevent the canvas from fraying during the course of it being worked on.



Time spent on the kit for ironing out and hemming: 2 hours (approx.)

Blogging Plans!

I have so many things I want to write on a blog, but, unfortunately, most of it will not be of interest to anyone other than me! So, instead of going down the tried and tested track of penning down experiences and stories in a blog, I am going to try to track the progress of some of my hobbies here.