2.3 Queen of Diamonds: June update

When Es first started thinking about cross stitch, she did the usual Es thing.  Which was go looking for everything and anything about cross stitch, and looking for a pattern to begin with.  My advice to her was simple "No quarter stitches, not too big".

Did she listen?
*laughs*

Queen of Diamonds was one of the original front runners for her first ever pattern.  While the pattern says it's possible for beginners to do, as it only ever has full cross stitches, and no backstitching etc, the sheer size AND randomness and bitsy nature of it are somewhat...daunting.  Even for someone who has been doing cross stitch for a while.
Plus the pattern has 30 A4 pages.  Yeah.  THIRTY.

I will say this for the girl, she's ambitious.

While she did eventually decide on another pattern (*angels chorus*), I decided I liked the pattern enough to try it.

89 different colours.  101 skeins in total.  Fabric had to be bought cut to size.

The pattern then 'advises' me to start from the top left corner, page 1 of the pattern, and to work in 10 x 10 blocks.

I start on page 13, working from the middle out, paying no attention to blocks of 10.  Being different, that's just how I roll.  Yup.  The fact I've been doing this for years, and work better from the middle out has NOTHING to do with this at all.  Nuh uh...

I started taking pictures about 3 days into the pattern.  After much swearing about the face, and the fact I was going crosseyed from so much DMC 819.

Then I discovered the hell that was the beads to the side of the face.  And the background.  Bitsy, 8 colours for one diamond block.  Oh the joy...

So I gave up for a bit, counted out, and did some of the border.  Cos, well, why not?

And went into the page above, yey, no longer just the same boring 3 pages!

Eventually I felt bad, all that empty space I'd left behind.  Damnit, I was gonna have to do the beads and background afterall.

I attempted doing just a line of 10 x 10, since single blocks were an affront to my dignity.  Turns out the line is too, I keep seeing stitches of the colour on my needle RIGHT BELOW ME.  To make myself feel more acomplished, I also finished a section of the head-dress.  Must do the chores before the fun, right?

Background joys.  While it's beautiful to sit back and see, up close it makes my head hurt as I notice yet again I missed a single stitch of that colour...that I just wound back up and put back in my box.  *sigh*

My thoughts of 'another diamond same as the other' was rapidly put to rest, as I then remembered the joy of SHADING.  It's darker towards the border.  *whimper*

Sheer frustration resulted in jumping up to page 6, and doing the red diamond.  So while I was feeling good I had another section started, and yeyRED, I also remembered that I now had a random big blob of red in the middle of nowhere.

It was time to knuckle down and do the damn background.  I'd put it off enough.

OMGWHEE I finished a couple pages of stitching...out..of...30, damnit.  Still, now you can actually SEE how the background was taking shape, which was pretty cool.  Plus, moving on up in the pattern!

Then I went home to my parents place for a few days.  Damned if I was going to do the boring stuff, so i skipped over to page 7, and started the head-dress proper.  Blocks of one colour, oh the joy of simple pleasures....

So yeah, so far this covers 5 pages total of the pattern.  Gonna take me a few years for this one....