Monthly Mandala: August 2014

As summer zips by and we flip another calendar page, I roll out the next installment of the Merry Go Round series. Stitchers are still welcome to join us, although the "mystery" part of things is 71% out of the bag (i.e., 5 of 7 revealed.) It costs $35 to join, or $25 if you do/did the 2013 series, for 7 of these color customizable charts.

August's offering is "Tropic of Cancer," being named after the latitudinal line as all of the other circles in this series. You may think I missed the boat because the zodiacal calendar has Cancer ending not in August but on July 22nd, but perhaps I was deferring to the Sidereal calendar which puts August 1st smack in the middle of the sign. Whatever your opinion on my astronomical and geographical ramblings, I hope find that the chart speaks well enough for itself.

Tropic of Cancer: number 5 in the 2014 Roll Your Own series
New colorway: Cancer -  817/350/352, 935/469/471, 3834/3835/3836, 632/407/950

This one seemed to look great in every palette I tried on it. Here are 15 of our established combinations to get you started (or to hopelessly bog you down in equally wonderful choices.)

Too many options? I think not!
Row 1: Candy Ducks, Long Jacket, Floral Hues
Row 2: Owl Optimizer, Solas, Poiple
Row 3: Garand, Honey Bee, Anchor Moss Rose
Row 4: Revenge, Emerging Hues, Halloween
Row 5: Buried Jewels, Darkside Duck, Orchids

Your stitching horoscope: I see all of your x's crossing in the same direction and little pieces of colored thread everywhere. You are having trouble locating a particular skein of floss that you bought. You will clean half of the house looking for it, then decide to go the the LNS and buy a duplicate. While there, you will decide to reward yourself with a few other goodies as a reward for doing that housework.

Gingerbread

I had actually forgotten that I did a piece for this until the finished book showed up in the mail! It's a sweet book with a lot of well-designed projects, IMHO.  I see a number of designer friends' names in there, too, which makes if feel like a group collaboration.

Hardback book on the shelves now.

You'll like the way they divided the projects up by planned color palettes - we got to choose which section fit our piece. I picked purples and gold.  I used DMC, but you could easily sub in overdyes or different colors.

GIngerbread Flourishes by Ink Circles

So if you're looking for a collection of Christmas patterns that extends beyond an ornament collection, have a look at this book. It would also make a nice gift for a stitcher.

P.S. You still have plenty of time to finish something BEFORE Christmas. ;-)

And in the Magazines

I've got three new holiday pieces popping up in the magazines this season.  Look for a new Halloween Mandala in the the Just CrossStitch special Halloween 2014 book. This is the fourth year I've done a piece in this series.

Ghostly Mandala by Ink Circles

For some reason I think of Scooby Doo when I look at it.  This series was all done with dark but not black threads on varying backgrounds. Any one of them, but this one in particular, would look really neat stitched on the new Glow in the Dark fabric produced by Fabric Flair.

Changing seasons and dropping down to ornament size, I have a piece in both the JCS Ornament 2014 Issue and the Preview Issue. You can see my mistletoe peeking out at the bottom on the Ornie issue. It's not on stands yet, but you can preorder from just about any shop.

Stained Glass Mistletoe

The Preview issue (JCS August 2014, which is out now) had the companion Holly piece.

Stained Glass Holly

Happy holiday stitching,
Tracy