I made it! Mystic

For years, I was a cross-stitching fiend. Any time I was watching TV or chilling on the couch, I had to have a needle in my hand.

Then I burned out. I started trying to learn to knit, played a whole lot of City of Heroes -- weeks went by and this project sat in the corner of the living room on its stand, patiently waiting for me to pay attention to it again.


"Mystic" is an Enchanting Lair design, based on the work of artist Amy Brown. It was released in 2003, but only 1,000 charts were made -- some sort of licensing screw-up that led to "Mystic" being a limited edition.

When I first saw the design, I had to have it because it reminded me of a character I used to play in Earthdawn. Lyssa was a tough little windling fighter, more feisty than faerie. And even though the campaign wasn't perfect, I still have fond memories of my little Lyssa.

The work is stitched on hand-dyed evenweave fabric from Sugar Maple Fabrics, in the Moon Princess colorway, with DMC, Kreinik metallics and Waterlillies silk floss. There's about 500 beads on her wings (blue with a silvered interior) -- I bought one package of Mill Hill, and it was practically empty when I was done.

I'm pretty pleased with it overall, although the pattern had more mistakes than I like to see, and the backstiching lines were a vague suggestion at best. Maybe I should have taken the photo in sunlight, though -- it looks darker on my monitor than it should. When I get it framed, I think it will look nice in our guest room.