Who Doesn't Love a Giveaway?

Hey loyal fans I just discovered it's about to be my 1 year blogiversary in June 9th!  So to celebrate I'm having a giveaway!  It's going to be a surprise on what I'm giving away but I hope you'll like it!  I'm going to randomly draw the name on the actual day of my anniversary and if there are a lot of entries I may draw 2 names.  In order to enter you have to:
1.  Be a follower
2.  Have an active blog
3.  Comment on this post (if you like you can put your favorite colors or what you're planning on stitching soon or what you like to stitch so I can match up.  If you don't I'll just make it a surprise!)

That's all easy right?  Good luck everyone!

SFS May Report and Progress

Hey everyone I'm back!  I promise I didn't forget you all.  I was on a nice 2 week vacation the longest I've had in a while.  And a big welcome to my new followers!  I appreciate every one of you!

First up is SFS.  SFS is hosted by Mel from Epic Stitching and we are supposed to limit our budget to $25 a month.  Whatever we don't spend can carry over to the next month and if we blow our budget we're out until the next signups.  However if we do stitch from out stash then we can earn more money.

May Allotment: $25
Carryover: $79.75
Spent: $10.45
Total left: $94.30

I bought all of my threads and fabric for Pirate and Disney but I still had a gift card from Christmas and I didn't have many colors to buy.   In total it was about $30.  The thing I spent my money on was the Pirate Retreat pattern from HAED.  They had another sale so I went for it.  I worked on Swirling Peacock so I have a little bit earned but I'm not counting it for the challenge.  I'm also out of gift cards so any money spent from this point will be counted.  I did get $100 from my dad as a late birthday present but I'm counting it as going toward my new phone.

I did a bit of work while I was gone.  I finished my Composition II class and ended up with an 86%.  This was a very stressful class because of how it was run and I plan on writing a pretty nasty review and probably will be writing to the manager of the class who I had already e-mailed before.  I also did some stitching.  Not a lot as I was having too much fun but I took Swirling Peacock on the plane with me as Paradise was too big.

I left off here:

Wow I didn't realize how long it's been since I worked on this.  My last post on this piece was in October!  But anyway here's where I am now:

I finished one more column and started the next one.  It's hard to see but I started the moon as well which is all Kreinik and is up by the blue swirl on the top. 

So far this piece is beautiful I think.  It's so sparkly and is only going to get more so with the moon and the backstitching.  I'm going to put up a trip report next so stay tuned for that.  I'm not going day by day like I did last time but it will be pretty picture heavy.  Thanks for stopping by see you next time!

Gifted Gorgeousness May

Hey everyone I made it just in time.  I'm on vacation right now so not doing much stitching but I'm into the 7th page on my paradise piece by love thy thread.  For those of you who don't know, gifted gorgeousness is hosted by Jo of serendipitous stitching.  We're supposed to stitch on a piece that we were gifted or that we are stitching for someone else.  I'm stitching paradise for my cousin's wedding.  I'm working on page 6 which is the 8th page of the pattern and I'm almost halfway through the top row.

I can't wait until I finish this and can gift it.  Even though it won't be on time I know she'll love it.

Fabric Redo

Okay I redid my fabric and I love it so much more!

Sorry for the crappy lighting but I just redid the bottom which makes the whole piece so much more blue.  Since I only had one little part to do I didn't use soda ash and only dyed the part I needed.  I decided to just put the fabric in a cup with the dye instead of a bag.

When I grabbed it out it had sucked up all of the dye so a lot of the surrounding purple got more blue as well.  But this is now my favorite piece of fabric!

I also forgot to mention in my last post that I've pulled Swirling Peacock out of my UFO pile.  Unfortunately everything has become a UFO since starting Paradise but that will change when it's finished.  I pulled it out so I can have a project on the go and it's smallish.  Technically my Halloween pieces are smaller but I like working with the kreinik and love the fabric.  But I think Halloween  Banners will be rotating with it.  I have green and yellow left so if you have one you like better let me know!

Ciao for now thanks for all the comments you guys leave!

Page Number 5 (7) is Finito!

Yep another page has been finished!  We're now working on page 6 which is the 8th page finished.  I've decided I'm going to go all of the way across and then when I move down I'm going to do both pages.

As you can see I've already started the next page and will soon have another word finished.  I need to find a way to get those crease marks on each page.  I think sewing behind the creases should help but that's going to wait until the end.  

I also dyed some more fabric and bought the floss for my Disney and pirate charts.  

The teal piece is for pirate and the pink one is for Disney.  I'm still not sure if I like that much white in the bottom but it's actually light purple.  I may redye that bit. Probably dye it teal just so there's more teal in the piece.

Such pretty colors!  Now I just have to get them on bobbins and into my binder. Speaking of which I think I'm at the point where I have to get a new binder.

I'm pretty sure I've found a way to add the movies I want into the Disney piece.  I found some stained glass of the ones I like and someone made them into coloring book pages.  So I just have to have hubby overlay them and replace the old in the chart.  I've decided on adding princess and the frog, brave and frozen replacing brother bear, one of the snow whites and the other bear one.  They're all on the bottom next to each other.  

But now it's time to go to work.  See you all next time!