B is For Boy

Well, I was gone a little longer than I meant to be. Unfortunately, this has been a bit of an exciting week for me, computer-wise. Not only did we lose Internet connectivity for two days, but my hard drive suffered a catastrophic failure and I lost a lot of data. Thankfully, I only lost two months worth of documents (sadly, one of the lost documents is my last assignment for work, and now I have to spend a lot of time to rebuild it). But, sadly, I lost ten months of pictures. I was so lucky to be able to recover pictures of the little man from my iPad, but so much as been lost.

On to better news! I finished up B is for Boy by Country Cottage Needleworks, from the May/June 2011 issue of Just Cross Stitch magazine.

B is for Boy by Country Cottage Needleworks

As you can see, it isn’t ironed. I really do iron my pieces… eventually. The design is mostly stitched as per the chart, with a few minor changes. First, I used antique white fabric (28 count, I believe) instead of the lambswool colour called for. To make the clouds stand out on the white, I used Crescent Colours Toasted Marshmallow. I also did them, and the sun, in half stitches to make them a little less substantial. And, perhaps most obviously, I left off the top and bottom boarder. Now, the design might fit nicely into an 8×10 frame, and the style is just a little bit more me.

Back to stitching! I’m making great progress on Royalty ABC, and I’m also knitting a lovely lace shawl too.

Oh, and don’t forget to back up your important data. Hard drives, even ones that are fairly new, can die without warning.