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Thursday, October 17, 2013

Along the River During the Qingming Festival. Page 1/279.

I was looking through one of my favorite online websites to purchase craft supplies, when I came across a kit for a really big one that looked really awesome. It was a Chinese scene that had a bridge, boats, and lots of people in it. This thing was 6 meters long! I instantly fell in love with it, and would periodically go back to the website to look at the kit. There is so much going on in this piece, that I could stare at it for hours. This is one of those things that just grabs you and captures your imagination.

I soon decided I was going to buy this kit for myself. I began researching it a little bit to make sure that I got the best deal around. During my research, I discovered that this cross stitch is based on a famous ancient Chinese painting Along the River During the Qingming Festival. 
From Wikipedia: It captures the daily life of people and the landscape of the capital, Bianjing, today's Kaifeng, from the Northern Song period.

Unfortunately, in my research I also discovered that this 6 meter version is actually just a smaller portion of the full kit. The entire thing is actually about 22 meters long! Since I was already pricing the kit, I decided to go ahead and price the humongous full version while I was at it. I finally found the cheapest price that could be found, but since it was so big and the price was a little high, I decided to save up my money and purchase it after a few months.
About 2 weeks later, as I was periodically checking prices and kits, I found that one of the sellers on the website I go to was having a huge sale of 50% off their cross stitch kits. They even had the full 22 meter kit that I was wanting on sale, as well. This seller wasn't the cheapest  before the sale, but after the 50% off, this huge kit was about $100 cheaper than the lowest price I had found and decided on earlier!
I had to jump on this deal. Granted, I didn't have as much time to save up my money like I had originally planned, however that's what credit cards are for!

Now, I have had the kit a couple months, but I did take a few weeks off of working on it in order to crochet something up, really quick (I'll post it later). I have finally finished page one, though!
In this picture, you can see the top left corner of the piece that I have completed, and the technicolor printed parts that haven't been done yet.



The fabric has the pattern printed on itself, as you can see. I am very grateful for this. It helps me so I don't have to look at the pattern book every few minutes, and have to count all the squares. Could you imagine if you miscounted somewhere in the middle?!
The kit came with the pattern (broken up into 2 books), the bolt of aida with the design precision printed on it (with water soluble ink), all the floss (with 2 labelled floss palettes), and about 30 needles. The package weighed about 32 pounds!






There are 49 colors in this thing, but I didn't like the floss palettes they included. They seemed to be just laminated card stock, so I wanted to get something more sturdy that will hold up over the years that I will be working on this thing. I wanted to get something with big holes, too, since the replacement floss skeins are pretty big. I researched some more online, and found the perfect item. Yarn sticks! I bought 2 to begin with, and I have recently purchased my third. They hold 20 colors each, and are perfect! These things will be an integral part of my crafting, I can tell. I love them and highly recommend them to everyone.