New WIP

I started a new design as my desire to stitch smaller pieces continues. Here is my start on Quaker Welcome by The Stitcherhood. This is a small Quaker design that I really liked. To give it a little extra impact I chose to stitch it on opalescent jobelen from Enchanting Lair called Meadow. It is a very pretty shade of light blue. Rather than stitch the piece in black I chose a dark navy blue from DMC, number 820. I am really liking the dark blue against the light blue fabric. Like the larger Quaker WIP I have it seems to be crisp, and clean even though it is a dark blue floss on a light blue fabric. I wasn't sure I would still get that crisp appearance on a colored fabric like I got with the white, but it still looks that way to me. The colors in this picture are a bit faded. I took the picture late at night, using the flash because that is when I finished stitching.

Quaker Welcome © The Stitcherhood
DMC floss 820
28ct Opalescent Jobelen "Meadow" By Enchanting Lair

I did do a little more on Christmas Dreams by Joan Elliott, but it wasn't enough progress to take another picture. I filled in a little more white on his beard but not much.


I noticed that I now have 75 followers! WOW! Thank you all very much for following my little blog despite the occasional rambling post. I really enjoy reading other stitchers' blogs and am happy that you seem to enjoy reading mine.

Apology and Update to Yesterday's Post

Yesterday I posted about copyright infringement. Sadly I posted some erroneous information. Since I know not everyone goes back and re-reads an old post, I am posting the corrected information as a new post as well. The additions and new information to this (now) essay are in italics.

Thank you for taking a few moments to read this plea.

An Honest Plea For Help

Edited to add: I made an error, Dragon Dreams has not closed its doors completely! Please re-read for correct information. Mrs. Aikman-Smith, thank you for correcting me and again I am sorry that I posted inaccurate information about your company.

Earlier today I came across a web site. It is a Chinese posting forum that people have to spend money to get fake cyber money that they call "gold coins". The rate is 1 US dollar buys 100 gold coins. You then spend this cyber money to download stolen charts. I recognized many of the designers and made lists of their designs. I then emailed those companies and provided them the list with direct URL's to the files. I also created a fake log in and password so that I could access the "subscribers only" areas to get as complete a list as possible. I provided this log in information to the designers as well, so they could search for more of their charts. The site was just too large for me to find every chart. As it was I spent 4 hours getting that list. I was so sad by this. The Gift Of Stitching magazine and Heaven and Earth Designs recently made public comments about copyright and copyright infringement. I was sad to find that this site must be one of the sites they meant as many issues of the magazine and many HAED designs are illegally posted for download. Little House Needleworks, Country Cottage Needleworks, Lizzie*Kate, Tam's Creations, Barbara Ana, Bothy Threads, Brittercup Designs, Brooks Books Publishing, Casey Buonaugurio, EMS, Golden Kite, Mystic Stitch, TGOSM, UK mags like Cross Stitch Card Shop, Cross Stitch Gold,  and so so many more all had their charts stolen. This site requires that individual people scan in the charts and upload them so that others can download the files.

Don't people realize that doing this takes money from their favorite designers? That doing this will eventually cause those designers to stop designing charts? It is written on every chart and magazine that they are copyrighted and can NOT be copied or redistributed in any manner without written consent of the copyright holder, yet people still insist they did not know this. How can they not know it in this day and age? Especially after the massive news stories that arose when Napster (the music file sharing program) was sued and found to be breaking copyright laws? That was all over the news for weeks! 



Think about it, if the designers can no longer support themselves and have to stop designing, then the demand for such luxury threads as over-dyed flosses and silks and hand-dyed fabrics will also drop and as a side effect we'll lose those also; we'll lose the different magazines that are currently available. Every aspect of stitching that we currently enjoy will be affected. Stitching will go back to only those designs that the larger companies (such as Leisure Arts) provide us. People who run their own companies have many reasons for doing so and one of those reasons has to include profit. If a company loses money (such as occurs when their product is stolen) then eventually that company will no longer be able to afford to stay open.

Edited to add: Considering the number of hours it takes a designer to create a cross stitch chart, compared to the price those charts are sold for, their profit comes from the total number of charts sold, not from the price of a single chart. 

If charts were priced based on an hourly wage, they would be a lot more expensive. For example (using small easy number for this example only): 

small design/drawing/idea takes 10 hours..
charting the idea takes additional 10 hours..
model stitching takes 10 hours..
corrections to chart found during model stitching takes 5 hours
that small chart required 35 hours to create. 

At minimum wage (USA minimum wage $6.55/hr) that would be worth  $229.25 (35 hours X $6.55=$229.25). That's just the man hours required to produce a single small chart. The larger and more detailed the chart, the more hours and materials it takes and even a small chart probably takes more than 35 hours to create.

Now add in cost of printing the chart, materials with which to stitch the model, postage, and hours required to put it all together and the price goes even higher. Many charts are sold through a distributor, who takes a cut from each chart sold thus lowering the revenue that the designer receives from the sale of their charts. Yet charts remain at reasonable prices and selling a single chart of any design does NOT come close to even breaking even for the designer's time spent. Kits, of course, cost more as materials are included in the pack. For ease of understanding I am speaking solely of a chart, not a kit.

So every chart that is stolen and given to someone for free, directly affects the income of that designer's company and even a few such thefts are devastating. The more thefts which occur, the more damaging it is to the business. The less income that business generates until eventually the business can no longer stay open as there is no profit. A business can not operate if their costs are higher than their income same as a person's household budget will not work if they spend more money than they make.


Please, fellow stitchers, if you come across a person or a web site that is violating the copyright of a cross stitch designer (or other copyright holder such as an author), send an e-mail with the URL to that designer. If we don't all band together and fight copyright violations more of our favorite designers will be forced to stop designing or severely reduce the number of charts they put out per year like Dragon Dreams had to do. Some of these designers are running small businesses and thus can't afford to hire an attorney to fight this, but if stitchers band together, pass the word and refuse to tolerate the theft of a designer's hard work we can put quite a dent in such theft! If we don't, if we just sit by and think that it is no big deal, we will eventually find ourselves losing many of our favorite designers and the wonderful variations that are currently found in the stitching world.

So please, do not tolerate such theft when or if you come across it and help preserve the wonderful variations that are currently available in our favorite hobby! If you have copied patterns to pass along to your friends in the past, please stop doing so! It is stealing. It is illegal and it does take a toll, one that every stitcher including yourself will pay for when those companies have to close their doors.

If it makes a difference to hear this directly from a designer then go to Jennifer Aikman-Smith's old blog and read about how copyright infringement affected her business "Dragon Dreams" and how it forced her to stop severely curtail the number of cross stitch charts she designs in a year. She had to turn her focus to other areas (such as her beautiful illustrations) in order to keep her business open. designing cross-stitch charts. The entries are all still visible at this link: http://dragondreamsjen.multiply.com/journal

**edited to add: The above link is to Mrs. Aikman-Smith's old blog. I provide that link as it gives her specific story of her battles against copyright infringement in her own words, and clearly states the major impact this had on her business including the percentage of income lost to such theft. To see what Mrs. Aikman-Smith is currently involved in please visit her current web-site at http://www.dragondreams.ca and be aware that she is still producing the occasional cross stitch chart through Patterns Online.

This is not a joke and we can no longer sit back and assume someone else will take care of it, or that it doesn't affect us, or that it can't be that bad.

It does affect us and it is that bad!

We all need to do our best to preserve our favorite hobby!

Edited to add: Mrs. Aikman-Smith, I am very sorry for posting that Dragon Dreams had closed. I went back and re-read your older blog and realized that I had misread it. I am sorry and have corrected the post. 

I am *very* glad to hear that you are still designing, even though it is not as many charts as in the past. I love your work and have many of your charts in my stash and on my to do list. Thank you for taking the time to correct me, I greatly appreciate it.

Un-neat Back and More Copyright Infringement

To show that not all my backs come out neatly here are some pictures of the backside of The Guardian by Teresa Wentzler. This is a large design with many blended threads and lots of color changes in small areas, specially the dragon's scales and wings. I couldn't do the knotwork border as I damaged the fabric right where one of the corners was supposed to go, so I had to leave it off. I cried for hours when I realized I had damaged the fabric and since I was three-quarters done with this at the time, I refused to start over.

Here is the full picture of the front:

The Guardian © Teresa Wentzler
Front Side Full View

 Full size picture of the back:

The Guardian © Teresa Wentzler
Full Size View Of Back

Closeup of the head front:

The Guardian Teresa Wentzler
Close-up of dragon's head front side view

 Closeup of the head back:

The Guardian © Teresa Wentzler
Close up of the head back side view

Closeup of the wings front:

The Guardian © Teresa Wentzler
Close up view of wings, front side

Closeup of the wings Back

The Guardian © Teresa Wentzler
Close up view of wings, back side

Closeup of stitching to show the color blends and changes in the wings:

The Guardian © Teresa Wentzler
Close up of wings to show stitching detail

So as you can see, my backs are not always neat. The longer carried threads show where I got tired of trying to hide them by running them under already placed stitches and just focused on getting the stitches done. lol

An Honest Plea For Help

Edited to add: I made an error, Dragon Dreams has not closed its doors completely! Please re-read for correct information. Mrs. Aikman-Smith, thank you for correcting me and again I am sorry that I posted inaccurate information about your company.

Earlier today I came across a web site. It is a Chinese posting forum that people have to spend money to get fake cyber money that they call "gold coins". The rate is 1 US dollar buys 100 gold coins. You then spend this cyber money to download stolen charts. I recognized many of the designers and made lists of their designs. I then emailed those companies and provided them the list with direct URL's to the files. I also created a fake log in and password so that I could access the "subscribers only" areas to get as complete a list as possible. I provided this log in information to the designers as well, so they could search for more of their charts. The site was just too large for me to find every chart. As it was I spent 4 hours getting that list. I was so sad by this. The Gift Of Stitching magazine and Heaven and Earth Designs recently made public comments about copyright and copyright infringement. I was sad to find that this site must be one of the sites they meant as many issues of the magazine and many HAED designs are illegally posted for download. Little House Needleworks, Country Cottage Needleworks, Lizzie*Kate, Tam's Creations, Barbara Ana, Bothy Threads, Brittercup Designs, Brooks Books Publishing, Casey Buonaugurio, EMS, Golden Kite, Mystic Stitch, TGOSM, UK mags like Cross Stitch Card Shop, Cross Stitch Gold,  and so so many more all had their charts stolen. This site requires that individual people scan in the charts and upload them so that others can download the files.

Don't people realize that doing this takes money from their favorite designers? That doing this will eventually cause those designers to stop designing charts? It is written on every chart and magazine that they are copyrighted and can NOT be copied or redistributed in any manner without written consent of the copyright holder, yet people still insist they did not know this. How can they not know it in this day and age? Especially after the massive news stories that arose when Napster (the music file sharing program) was sued and found to be breaking copyright laws? That was all over the news for weeks! 

Please, my friends, if you come across a person or a web site that is violating the copyright laws of a cross stitch designer (or other copyright holder such as an author), send an e-mail with the URL to that designer. If we don't all band together and fight copyright violations more of our favorite designers will be forced to stop designing or severely reduce the number of charts they put out per year like Dragon Dreams had to do. Some of these designers are running small businesses and thus can't afford to hire an attorney to fight this, but if stitchers band together, pass the word and refuse to tolerate the theft of a designer's hard work we can put quite a dent in such theft! If we don't, if we just sit by and think that it is no big deal, we will eventually find ourselves losing many of our favorite designers and the wonderful variations that are currently found in the stitching world.

Think about it, if the designers can no longer support themselves and have to stop designing, then the demand for such luxury threads as over-dyed flosses and silks and hand-dyed fabrics will also drop and as a side effect we'll lose those also; we'll lose the different magazines that are currently available. Every aspect of stitching that we currently enjoy will be affected. Stitching will go back to only those designs that the larger companies (such as Leisure Arts) provide us. People who run their own companies have many reasons for doing so and one of those reasons has to include profit. If a company loses money (such as occurs when their product is stolen) then eventually that company will no longer be able to afford to stay open.

Edited to add: Considering the number of hours it takes a designer to create a cross stitch chart, compared to the price those charts are sold for, their profit comes from the total number of charts sold, not from the price of a single chart.

If charts were priced based on an hourly wage, they would be a lot more expensive. For example (using small easy number for this example only):

small design/drawing/idea takes 10 hours..
charting the idea takes additional 10 hours..
model stitching takes 10 hours..
corrections to chart found during model stitching takes 5 hours
that small chart required 35 hours to create.

At minimum wage (USA minimum wage $6.55/hr) that would be worth  $229.25 (35 hours X $6.55=$229.25). That's just the man hours required to produce the chart. The larger and more detailed the chart, the more hours and materials it takes and even a small chart probably takes more than 35 hours to create.

Now add in cost of printing the chart, materials with which to stitch the model, postage, and hours required to put it all together and the price goes even higher. Yet charts remain at reasonable prices and selling a single chart of any design does NOT come close to even breaking even for the designer's time spent.

So every chart that is stolen and given to someone for free, directly affects the income of that designer's company and even a few such thefts are devestating. The more thefts which occur, the more damaging it is to the business.

So please, do not tolerate such theft when or if you come across it and help preserve the wonderful variations that are currently available in our favorite hobby! If you have copied patterns to pass along to your friends in the past, please stop doing so! It is stealing. It is illegal and it does take a toll, one that every stitcher including yourself will pay for when those companies have to close their doors.

If it makes a difference to hear this directly from a designer then go to Jennifer Aikman-Smith's old blog and read about how copyright infringement affected her business "Dragon Dreams" and how it forced her to stop severely curtail the number of cross stitch charts she designs in a year. She had to turn her focus to other areas (such as her beautiful illustrations) in order to keep her business open. designing cross-stitch charts. The entries are all still visible at this link: http://dragondreamsjen.multiply.com/journal

**edited to add: The above link is to Mrs. Aikman-Smith's old blog. I provide that link as it gives her specific story of her battles against copyright infringement in her own words, and clearly states the major impact this had on her business including the percentage of income lost to such theft. To see what Mrs. Aikman-Smith is currently involved in please visit her current web-site at http://www.dragondreams.ca 

This is not a joke and we can no longer sit back and assume someone else will take care of it, or that it doesn't affect us, or that it can't be that bad. It does affect us and it is that bad!

We all need to do our best to preserve our favorite hobby!

Edited to add: Mrs. Aikman-Smith, I am very sorry for posting that Dragon Dreams had closed. I went back and re-read your older blog and realized that I had misread it. I am sorry and have corrected the post.

I am *very* glad to hear that you are still designing, even though it is not as many charts as in the past. I love your work and have many of your charts in my stash and on my to do list. Thank you for taking the time to correct me, I greatly appreciate it.

New Finish And Wonderful Find!

I have my third finish for 2010! YAY! I finished Lizzie * Kate's "Peace, Love, and a Cure".

Blogger still won't let me upload pictures so I uploaded to Webshots again. Here is the front of the piece.



I am so very proud of the back of it as it is one of the neatest backs I have done so far. Here is a picture of the back as well.





I really enjoy stitching works by Teresa Wentzler. I was very sad when she announced that she was closing her needlework design company TW Designworks. So I was very happy to find that she started a second blog, solely for her needlework and that she will post updates to her designs (and new designs as well) on this blog. For any of you who would like to read her needlework blog here is the URL: TW's Needlework Blog (http://twneedlework.wordpress.com/) Her original blog will now contain updates for her artwork, which are very beautiful to see. The URL for that blog is here: TW's Artwork Blog.

Biopsy Results

The biopsy results are a good and bad kind of thing.

Good news first: BENIGN (not cancer yet) 

I do not have cancer yet, but it was a tumor called Phyllodes Tumor. This is a rare tumor (counts for less than 1% of all breast cancer diagnosis). It is a connective tissue tumor rather than the more common ductal or lobal tumors. It is very aggressive (it grew 3cm in 9 days..2.4 at ultrasound..5.4 when removed 9 days or so later, it weighed 25grams), does not respond well to chemo or radiation. It counts as a positive breast cancer diagnosis even if the tumor is benign at the time it is found. Unlike other breast cancers it is not classed by stages (example stage 1-4), it is classified as benign, borderline, or malignant (cancer) based on the number of irregularly shaped cells in the tumor and how fast cell division is occurring.

I am glad that I insisted on a full lumpectomy for this biopsy because these tumors ALWAYS give a false negative (remember Dr Idiot said false negatives never happen?!?! IDIOT) on a needle biopsy, in fact they usually come back with a misdiagnosis of fibroadenoma (very benign type growth). Had I followed the surgeon's idea of a needle biopsy, I would have been misdiagnosed. They are also very hard to diagnose by mammogram, ultrasound and MRI due to the fact that they look very similar to fibroadenoma. Though an MRI can give the best view of the tumor and thus be helpful in planning surgical removal. Surgical removal is the usual choice for treatment of these tumors, sometimes requiring full mastectomy.

Next step will be genetic test (Dr. Idiot said if I come up with one of the genes, he will do the mastectomy I asked for) and bilateral mastectomy as this is the best way to prevent a new tumor (which will be cancerous) from growing (the less breast tissue I have, the lower my chances of growing a second tumor (this one cancerous) of this type.

You can find out more here:
http://breastcancer.about.com/od/types/p/phyllodes_sa.htm"

http://www.cancer.org/Cancer/BreastCancer/DetailedGuide/breast-cancer-what-is-breast-cancer"


Due to the type of tumor I will be seeing a couple different surgeons in the hopes that one of them will do the mastectomy without the genetic test, though I plan on getting blood drawn for the test in case all the surgeons I see demand the test.

Leave it to me to get a rare type of tumor that is difficult to treat and difficult to diagnose.

A Blogging Milestone and Giveaway

Cindy of "Cindy's Cross Stitching: Ornaments and Projects" has reached 100 followers on her blog! Congratulations Cindy!

To commemorate the occasion she is hosting a giveaway, check it out!

Here is where I am at on Lizzie*Kate's "Peace Love and a Cure". For some reason Blogger is not wanting to let me upload pictures, so I placed them in my Webshots album for WIPs and will try to link them.



and a closer view

Not stitching

I haven't done anymore stitching on the L*K design. I've been too antsy to do much of anything. I really hate the waiting periods of medical stuff, I am not very good at it.

I will try to stitch some tonight, because I doubt I will be able to stitch for a few days after the lumpectomy tomorrow. I am not sure, but I am guessing that the incision in my breast may make it difficult to raise my arm for stitching (hopefully it won't, but who knows).

Just wanted to let you know I'm still around..just not doing much but waiting.

Giveaway Alert!

Missie over at Eat, Stitch, Love is holding a Christmas In July giveaway! She is going to give a pair of Ghinger scissors to one lucky winner!

Aren't they beautiful? I love the pattern on the handles! So go on over to Missie's Blog for a chance to win!