Parisian Street - April Update

I have been a very slow stitcher due to several office deadlines...
I always look forward to have one of my stitching weekends..
Here is my progress so far :

Week 11 - I have finished building my cafe...
















Week 12 - My backstitches were done.. I'm impatient to build my tower..

Parisian Street - 3 Weeks Update

Here's a little update on my WIP.


Week 4 - I finally completed my flosses for the chart. So, I concentrated on filling the 'holes', e.g. the windows and the tables.








Week 5 - I usually complete the cross-stitches, then do the back-stitches. But that time, I was impatient to see the finished-look of my cafe and did the back-stitches on the completed part instead of moving on to build the next storey.







Week 6 - I started to build the third storey of my cafe, at the same time I finished my first cat for the Margaret Sherry's Culinary Cat SAL (I will soon post a picture of it).

Parisian Street - Week 3

I haven’t had a chance to post an update on my WIP last weekend, so here it is.
I was building my 2nd storey of the café.



I still don't have several of my flosses, because they aren’t available at the local store. I’m missing the blanc, 762, and 632. So, I’m still having a few ‘holes’ on my piece. Hoping to complete my flosses as soon as possible.

And this month I start the Margaret Sherry SAL. It's the first time I join a specific SAL, choosing 3 out of 6 Culinary Cat patterns. I will start my first cat this weekend.

Parisian Street - Week 2

The last two weeks have been very windy and the weather kept changing through the day. No outdoor activities last week. So, I spent most of my spare time stitching, doing house works, and watching television.

One thing that caught my attention is the natural disasters in some parts of the world and here in my homeland. My deep condolences to those who lost their love ones and homes.

By the way, here is an update from the second week of my Parisian Street Scene.



I was trying hard to finish the below-left part of the piece. Well, I need more luck :)

First Piece 2011

Finally, at the beginning of year 2011, I managed to stitch the Parisian Street Scene, designed by Maria Diaz, from The World of Cross Stitching magazine.



As far as I remember, I only have 1 WIP, the tablecloth…. So I will do both of them alternaly…



I started stitch the new piece last Saturday. And here is the progress from the first week.

Memory of Paris

Since I was an elementary school student, I loved to read very much. I visited several bookstores regularly. My favorite bookstore was Toko Buku Jawa (Jawa bookstore) at Braga Street where I could browse and buy some books. Maybe it's because the bookstore location is near my school at Merdeka Street and also around the corner of my parents offices. Back then, I'd love to read Herge's The Adventures of Tintin, The Adventures of Asterix (by Rene Goscinny & Albert Uderzo), Tanguy & Laverdure (by Jean-Michel Charlier & Albert Uderzo) , and Michel Vaillant (by Jean Graton). It seemed that colored comic books are more interesting to me.


Maybe it was a coincidence that the original version of those books was in French language. And the story settings was France, except Tintin's location setting was Belgium. So at that time, I became acquainted with city names, landmarks, and maps of France and surroundings.

After reading, I used to daydream about those places... what would it be like to go there and experience the adventure of traveling abroad... :-P

When I went to college, I started to have a passion about being able to speak French. But I haven't had a chance to register myself to a French language course because a lot of circumstances (lack of time & money to be precise). But then I managed to get busy learning French after I graduated from college and started to earn my own money by doing several research projects with my professors. The language was quite complicated in writing and pronouncing.. but that didn't stop me from learning.

But still I have never imagined that someday I would be able to travel abroad until I worked on a national transportation survey project at Ministry of Communication and Transportation at 1995. It was a big project and at the end of the project we (me and the whole working team) were given a bonus, not an amount of money but a traveling package... yaay...!!

So, the next year (February 1996) I went to Gold Coast, Australia. Waaaw the first time going abroad made us quite nervous.. but we were having a good time.

The next year, we got the 2nd phase of the project, also at Ministry of Communication and Transportation. So we were beginning to wonder if we could get another bonus at the end of the project. And we were lucky to be able to bargain for it, and we decided that we want to explore Europe this time.....

So, this was August 1997, and I finally stepped on the romantic land, PARIS....


The Eiffel Tower is a must to visit and photograph, off course. Unfortunately at that time we were still using a conventional camera with negative films. Oh yeah, we were worried about the result of the photographs we took, is it in a proper lighting, did we pose our best smile.. etc. Not the same as the instant result of digital camera nowadays.

The adventures that we've been through that time could take hundreds of pages... The time was too short to explore the countries; France, Swiss, Germany, and Netherlands. But all I can say now that the memories still remain...

So, back to my other passion, the cross stitch, those memories caused a side effect to my preference on the cross stitch design. I always love to see all those designs about the Eiffel Tower. Feels like I want to express the memories which stored in my mind. And I can't help to love these designs.

This Maria Diaz design was from The World of Cross Stitching






This one was designed by Karen Brittan and published on Cross Stitch Crazy








And this is another Maria Diaz design, Sunset Over Paris, on Cross Stitch Gold