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Project: The
Designer: Vicki Hastings
Company: The Cross-Eyed Cricket
Date: 2010
Fabric: 35 count Guacamole by WDW
Floss used: DMC, GAST, WDW, Silk ‘N Colors, DragonflyLotus, Silk Mill and Kreinik
Approximate time: Almost a year

 

 

 

 

This project has been a joy and a curse to stitch all at the same time.  This was the second thing I ever bought at my LNS.  My LNS did not carry the Silk ‘N Colors that were called for in the chart, so I substituted those for GAST and WDW.  I ended up buying one because I couldn’t find a suitable color…and I had to go to three places to find it, too.

I started stitching it and was going really well…until that damn moon started.  That moon liked to have killed me.  Mostly because the thing was huge.  But oh…I thought that was going to be the killer. I was wrong.

Next came the roof.  The roof from hell.  That nearly did kill me.  Seriously.  The moon was like a cake walk by comparison.  I mean, I could have built my own damn roof four times over in the time it took me to stitch it up.  Now, that being said, I am so thrilled I persevered.

As I went on, I started getting a little itchy to do some changes, not to the physical pattern per se but to the colors.  I had received my usual thread of the month from DragonflyLotus and there were two colors in particular that I just had to use. Scholarly Text and Moonless Night.  Scholarly Text was a silk, so I figured it would be fine.  Moonless Night was wool, so I messaged Liz to ask her if she thought it would be ok on 35 count.  She was worried it might be too heavy…so she made me a single skein of a new alpaca wool/silk hybrid she had been curious to make.  And it worked.  Like a dream.  However, since I was getting that wooly texture for the body that meant that I really had to swap out the purple cottons for silks.  Oh shucky darn…having to use more DragonflyLotus… 😀  (I love DragonflyLotus. It’s like crack.)

Finally, I felt that Poe’s name needed to be in red, so I chose one from Silk Mill and that was a fantastic decision.

Now to find a frame…

For those curious, these are my color swaps:

WDW Hazelnut -> SNC Acorn Woods
WDW Mulberry -> SNC Obsidion
GAST Grape Arbor -> SNC Aged Plum
WDW Whitewash -> SNC Snow Drift
WDW Tin Roof -> SNC Greystone
WDW Buckeye Scarlet -> DMC 817
Kreinik 005 #4 -> DMC 310 (lid on the inkwell and Raven’s claw)
WDW Whiskey -> DMC 834 (I was too lazy to go to Michael’s)
DFL Scholarly Text -> DMC 310 (the ink)
DFL Moonless Night -> DMC 310 (Raven’s Body)
DFL Crushed Berries -> SNC Obsidion (Raven’s Wing)
DFL Flambeau -> DMC 327 (Raven’s Wing)
Silk Mill Rosemary Jelly -> SNC Desert Moss (Poe’s Name)

Here’s a closeup of the ridiculously sexy Raven: