Top 5 Tuesdays - Stitchy Sites

I am so far behind on Top 5 Tuesdays that I'm just going to start anew instead of trying to back track. This is a really good topic this week as it can go in any direction and I'm curious to see what everyone else came up with! Don't forget to check out Kate's blog for the list (and the links to Emma, Tiff, Laura and anyone else who wants to join in).

1. Heaven and Earth Designs
I have a ton of HAED stash (more than a lifetime's worth) and they chart my favorite artist of the moment, Jasmine Becket-Griffith. Granted, I have had major issue with their designing change to all dithered patterns (especially with the JBGs...I feel it makes them look "spotty"), but I still can't quit them.

2. Etsy
Not a day goes by that I don't do a search for "Disney cross stitch patterns". I have found some great designers on Etsy (as well as some bad ones...sometimes you just don't know what you've got until it's too late). Part of me knows there are probably some copyright issues with some of the patterns, but I tend to have blinders on when it comes to all things Disney. It's also a great place to get needle minders and other cross stitch supplies.

3. 123 Stitch
I HATE HATE HATE Hobby Lobby, but when I'm in a hurry for supplies, it's all we have here. But when I'm not in a hurry and I want something specific like fabric, there is no better site than 123 Stitch! I haven't bought many patterns from there, but I think I've probably bought everything else cross stitch.

4. The Heaven and Earth Designs Forum
I'm not a big fan of forums...too many years on Disney forums will sour anyone against them, but I like the HAED forums because I like to see how and what everyone else is stitching. I'm not good at commenting, even on my own posts, but I still visit it a lot and, since I'm not on Facebook, it's the only way I have to see what is happening in the HAED world. Sorry I couldn't link it...it's a private forum that is invitation only (but it's not hard to get invited, you just have to ask).

5. All my Bloggy cross stitch friends!
You guys not only keep me motivated, but I LOVE seeing what everyone else is working on and the different styles and techniques that people use. I have learned SOOO much since blogging because of all of you and I can't imagine that will ever change. Again, I'm a horrible commenter sometimes, but I am always watching and lurking. I have also formed some really fantastic friendships through blogging, more than I could name, but hopefully you guys know who you are and, if I haven't said it, I owe you guys a world of thanks for all your support both cross stitch-wise and personal-wise. I'm definitely sure I couldn't stitch as much or as well as I do now without y'all. I haven't regretted a single moment of starting this blog and dropping out of Facebook because this is the world that I belong in with all of you! And who knows, once I get my house built, maybe the next place for me might just be FlossTube (although I'm definitely not ready for that yet!).

Oh, and just as an aside...wish hard enough and it will come true...I got my Captain Hook pattern from Tilton Crafts this morning:

If only there was a Charming to go with it, my life would be complete, but alas, Daniel Kordek hasn't done a Charming (yet). They also have Graham, August and Jefferson, but I'm not sure I want those, especially without Charming.

Top 5 Tuesday's Catch Up (again)

Well, looks like I've gotten behind again, so this is going to be short, sweet, and to the point. Sorry about the lack of pictures, between long work hours and this nagging chest thing, I just didn't feel like it last night.

Starting with last week's list - Top 5 Things That Make Me Laugh

I'm not a laugher by nature...the high level of sarcasm in my genes makes it almost impossible to hit my funny bone, but there are a few exceptions:

1) My Sister. She knows me too well and she knows which buttons to push.

2) My Pups. There is no greater joy.

3) Disney World. Kid...Candy Store...no explanation needed.

4) Being told what to do, especially by authority figures...not a laughable thing, but I will often burst out uncontrollably. Probably more of a nervous tick.

5) South Park. Rude, crude, horribly un-PC, but the most honest humor there is on television, bar-none.


And this week's - Top 5 Things To Accompany Your Stitching

1) iPad. I use it for keeping time and for viewing the PDFs (although I still use paper as well). Can't imagine stitching without it now.

2) My new light. Thanks to a generous Valentines Day gift card from Amazon, I managed to snag a really good LED light to replace my old Hobby Lobby magnifying light which has sucked since day one.

3) Reading glasses. I'm old, I'm legally blind, I have a degenerative eye disease, and I prefer to stitch on 28ct, so I need a little help.

4) A good binge watching show...right now, I'm on my eighth viewing of Heartland and I can't stop watching it.

5) Again...pups. Granted, their presence usually is more annoying than helpful, but there is something comfortable about having puppies snuggling with you as you stitch.

And I'm caught up again! I'm really going to try hard to get it right next week.

Top 5 Tuesdays - Catch Up and This Week

So I decided to do a bit of double dose last week's and this week's Top 5 Tuesdays, so warning...picture heavy! Last week was a free-for-all, so I'm going to go with my favorite Jasmine Becket-Griffith charts in my stash. At least 60% of the HAED charts in my stash are JBG charts, so this was a hard list, and I've been lucky enough to be RAK'ed more than once with JBG charts, so again, hard to choose (and I hope that no one feels left out)! My favorites change constantly too (well, other than these first two), so if I do this list again, it will probably be completely different!

My absolute favorite is Belle of Bonaventure and it will be my next JBG start once I finish Alice and the B's.

And then Voodoo in Violet will be either right after Belle (or at the same time, depending on how the mood strikes me):

Granted, HAED is not even close to charting all the Unseelies, but I would love to do all of them together. Right now, there are only two, Wrath and Sloth:


Another favorite and probably the start right after Belle and Voodoo, will be Max Color Frost Dragonling...a RAK'ed chart (from one of my favorite people on the planet):

And then, last but not least, the Season Fairies...Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter, which I will probably do all at the same time:





Now for this week's Top 5...movie-themed charts. Almost every single chart in my stash is probably movie-themed because they are all Disney, so I tried to find either non-animated Disney movie-related charts or non-Disney anything. It was a hard list to compile, that's for sure, so I had to fudge a bit. Fudge #1...A Summer Ball. This is currently in my WIPs, but I absolutely HATE working on it, so I may never finish it. But it does remind me of almost every single Austen movie ever made, so there you go:

Neni Designs took to the Kinkades like crazy, so I managed to scoop them up, including this one of Pirates of the Caribbean:

I also have an old HAED, Shakespearean Fantasy, so it is a movie compendium in itself:

I think I've mentioned once or twice that I'm a huge Cap fan although, from a cross stitch perspective, I only have a few charts, including this one:

I also finally took the plunge and got the Hocus Pocus chart from Tilton Crafts, so it will round this list out:

Top 5 Tuesdays - Time-Related Charts

Thankfully, I still haven't had to go outside my stash for these posts...at least not yet! Don't forget to go over to Kate's blog to see her post as well as to get the links for Tiff and Emma's...they all usually do WAY better at this than I do!

Granted, my view of the three fates are three ugly hags sharing an eyeball (too many Disney movies), but I absolutely adore this HAED pattern from Jasmine Becket-Griffith and I'll do it one day, although it's not high on my JBG to-do list. Nothing says time (or rather time's up) like fate!


This next one was the first HAED chart I bought that I realized was dithered and that they had changed over their charting method (I still miss the old ones, especially on the JBGs). Obviously, anything related to Doctor Who is time-related and I'm a total Doctor Who girl. I've been watching it since I was a kid, although I haven't kept up much since the new doctor took over (I'm still grieving over the loss of David Tennant):


Speaking of Doctor Who and new doctors, I bought this Clouds Factory chart before the switch and since twelve is now about to leave, I guess it's a good thing I didn't buy the replacement! I'll just wait a bit more to see how long the next doctor lasts!


Once Upon A Time...my absolute favorite TV show (and no, I'm not ready to accept that we might be losing Snow and Charming next season). I started this chart a while back but ended up scrapping it (my first trash project ever). The fabric was too soft and I had the "brilliant" idea to use metallic thread on their fairytale counterparts and it was a total disaster! One day I will do this chart again (the right way):


I just recently added a project to my stash that's not really my style, I but I loved the artwork so much, I couldn't help myself. I don't think anything is time-related as much as life and death, so here you go:

Top 5 Tuesdays - Quick Stitches

Sorry, I'm a bit late! When it comes to quick stitches, the definition is a bit sketchy for me...if you count a HAED quick stitch, those puppies take months, so I'm going to go with ones that I could probably finish in a week or so.

One of the first designs I bought from Neni wasn't a Disney kit, but rather this one:

I'm not really into owls, but I liked this one and I do plan to do the glasses in purple instead of teal. It's pretty small, so it would take no time at all and I would probably hang it at work.

I have always been a HUGE fan of Calvin and Hobbes (I always said, that if I would have had kids, I probably would have had a boy that was a cross between Calvin and Cartman). I have all the books (well, I used to until it got replaced with the deluxe box set), I have a C&H sticker on my laptop, and I've had a newspaper cutout on my bulletin board at work that is probably forever old (it say's "If I grow up to be some sort of psychopath because of this, you'll all be sorry!"), so it made sense to stitch a C&H project:


There was a very simple Sleeping Beauty Pattern that I found on Etsy, and I just had to have it (although I may never stitch it because it will need to be done on dark fabric):


When I used to stitch one project at a time (back in the pre-blog days), after each major project, I would always do a Disney ornament as sort of a post-workout cool down (although there is nothing relaxing about these things, I find them quite annoying and difficult actually). I still have several in my stash though that maybe I'll do one day:

The finished ones hang in my office at work:


And lastly, I recently bought several patterns from Etsy that was buy two, get one free, so these are what I went with:



Any of these would be great for my office (or my computer room) as well.

As a bonus, I have another kit that I bought that I can't bring myself to stitch until I actually go to England (and house plans have skewered those plans for a couple of years, but maybe someday soon).

Top 5 Tuesdays - Water-themed charts

Kate keeps coming up with some great topics, but boy have they been hard ones! Obviously, I've already shown quite a few water-themed charts in previous Top 5s, so I'm going to try to find different ones to show from my stash.

Obviously, I love Neni Designs and anything Disney, so I have several variations on the Haunted Mansion Stretching Portraits theme:



I also have a couple of her classic Mickey versus modern Mickey with a water theme:



On the HAED front, despite the couple I've already shown in previous Top 5s, there are several in my stash that are water-themed, most notably Dennis Lewan's Mystic Manor (my IDEAL home location):

And, although not truly water, but rather liquid-based, The Perfect Poison by Annie Rodrigue (which has been on my mind lately due to the annoyance of several co-workers):


I have all the DoNa Stitches Princesses (so far), but I would consider three of them water-themed (especially if I think like Kate and count Frozen):



(I prefer the version with Anna facing Kristoff simply because it at least makes me feel better about the whole Disney feminist movement crap)

And finally, I have all the Disney Dream kits (excluding Rapunzel, but it's just a matter of time), all of which have water in them somewhere, as well as their Etsy counterparts (along with ones not released in kit for yet), but I don't think I need to list all of them here since I kind of got carried away with the other four pics!

Top 5 Tuesdays - Food-themed charts

I don't typically do food-themed charts simply because I have enough trouble controlling my food intake, I don't need a constant reminder of what I "could" be eating. I guess most Disney characters are edible (ducks, cows, mice, chipmunks) but since that's pretty much a cardinal sin, let's just not go any further in that line of thought!

Initially, I had decided that the mice-themed charts were kitchen-bound and Kitchen Fun hung in my kitchen for years until my ex-husband broke it:

But I did complete the second one, which is also food-themed:


At one point, I decided that my kitchen had a "wine/grape" theme, so I did have a couple of charts/kits that were meant for kitchen use:

And, of course:


Other than the numerous charts that have pumpkins in them (due to my Halloween obsession), about the only other food-themed chart I have is one of my newest acquisitions, Pomegranate Girl by Addict2CrossStitch:

Good thing we are only Top 5'ing instead of 10's! I do have some food-themed charts on my HAED wishlist, but I'm in no hurry to get any of them right now.

Top 5 Tuesdays Catch Up - Stitching BAPs

When it comes to BAPs, I think they are a matter of opinion...what constitutes too big? At one point, before super-sized, max color HAEDs, I had tons I thought of as BAPs, but now those projects are just routine! When it comes to my stash, I've got TONS of BAPs, and it was hard just to pick five...so technically I'm not, but I am going to divide them into five groups.

The Disney Haunted Mansion Stretching Portraits (the Disney World versions)

One of these days, when I find the perfect cross stitch software, I'm going to chart these up and stitch them as big as I can and it's probably my ultimate cross stitch goal. I have technically charted them dozens of times, but I just haven't got them "perfect" yet, so I keep trying different software.

HAED Impossibilium

I've had this in my stash forever, but when the super-sized version came out, I knew I needed to replace my version. This is just one of those pictures that needs to be large for detail purposes.

ZAnna Cross Stitch - World of Disney

I had already purchased this pattern from Neni Designs, but this one was bigger and more detailed (sense a pattern here?). What I didn't realize until I downloaded it is that it's 222 pages worth of bigger!

HAED Little Dreamers Tree

Don't let the title fool you, this is a SS/MC chart and it's HUGE!

HAED Aimee Stewart Bookshelves
I don't have all the bookshelves, but I have the ones I like. Problem is, I started buying them before the SS MC versions, so I've had to start to replace them with their SS/MC counterparts so that they all match. I kind of wish I could trade in the older versions for the ones I want so that they don't go to waste, but I guess that's what stash buying is all about. Here are the ones I have in both SS/MC versions:
Museum Shelf:

A Stitching Shelf:


These I have in SS version, but I still have to replace with the SS/MC version (and not all of them have a SS/MC version yet):
Heroes and Heroines:

The Secret Garden:

Treasure Hunt Bookshelf:

and Wine Shelf:

Even if I buy a house in the future and I have tons of wall space, I still seriously doubt that there will ever be enough wall space to fit these bookshelves on! Maybe I'll have to rotate them out over the mantle or something!