Poppy Dance latest and a new start

Helllllllooooo peeps!

How are you all this fine (and it actually is which makes a change for Manchester) day?

I joined Full Coverage Fanatics on Facebook recently and was just in time to be able to join in with the Tour de France challenge where you have to stitch the same number of stitches each day as the number of kilometres the riders are racing that day.  For once I kept up with it all the way through with there being quite a few days I was actually ahead of the pack.  I made brilliant progress on Poppy Dance and decided to keep going on it once the race was over.  Today, I finished off 2 pages of it (I was waiting for a colour for the end of one of them), which means there are now 10 pages completed.  In terms of stitches, I am 47.43% completed.  There are 72709 stitches completed, with 80591 left to go.

Poppy Dance charted by HaED
Marianne Broome

Although despite amazing progress on Poppy Dance, I also started Halloween by JBW Designs.  It is all Rachel's fault.  She is having some new starts this month and asked us to guess what they were.  I recognised this one immediately as I have had it in my stash for a while.  As you will know, I can always can never resist a new start and so found some Sparklies Thalia lurking in my stash and a nice Hallowe'en pumpkiny colour (Anchor 966 I think). Hallowe'en cats have GOT to be black in my opinion and so I changed them.

The fabric is looking really washed out in the photo, it is much richer in real life.  I think it is looking gorgeous.

French Country Scaredy Cats - JBW Designs
Sparklies Thalia 16ct aida

I have also been doing LOADS of finishing too. I have actually FFOed 7 things - that's right - 7!  I'm saving those to show you on the 10th for Rachel's FFOing challenge.

A total mish mash of the week's events!!

On Thursday, I became the mother of 2 teenagers!  How that happened I have no idea.  It doesn't seem 5 minutes since they were both born.  The birthday boy had us all up bright and early so he could open his presents, the main one being a keyboard. I have to say that the One Republic tune he has been learning at school sounds pretty good. Excuse the mess on the window sill.  We have been sorting out lego for the last few weeks.

Luke didn't want to have a birthday party but did ask if he could be allowed a Choccywoccydoodah cake. Here it is in all its glory!  I have to say it's nice but not as nice as the ones the kids have made this year.  The thick layer of chocolate is quite tasty too!

On to stitching news!

Yesterday, I finished StitchersAnon's 'Every stitch is from the heart'.  It is stitched on Sparklies 'Spring Greens' 28ct something or other.  I can see this as a cube finish with some green shamrock backing fabric and emerald green ribbons. I loved stitching this as I thought of Gaynor and her girls on their stitching retreat.  I have already signed up for next year's stitching retreat and have my passport forms ready to fill in!!!

I also finished my first Crazy January Challenge piece too.  It turned out really cute and I turned one of the little reindeer into a Rudolph.  I stitched it on white so had to change the colour of the reindeer but think it looks ok.  Oh and there should have been a heart on top of the tree but I changed it for a star. 

I made a little progress on 'Oh Christmas Tree' but there is only so long that I can stitch one colour for before getting bored and moving on to something else.

Very quickly, look who was in our garden this morning!  Soaking up the sun on our potatoes.

Now if you have got this far (well done!), I have a dilemma for you.  I have joined a facebook SAL and need a fabric.  Originally I saw the 2nd piece of fabric (Polstitches, Cosmos) and thought it was the perfect piece - except it is too small and would have to be done over 1.  As Jo pointed it out, it would lose bling and beads if I did that. However, I could always order a bigger piece of that!  I then chose a piece of Permin aida in Almond which would be plenty big enough  - but is that boring?  So I had another look and found a piece of Zweigart lugana 'Lavender' but again that would be over one or finally there is a SMF 'Summer Twilight' that might work but is again only big enough for over one.  Arrrrgggghhhhh!  What do I do?

March Madness - Theme-a-licious update.

Well, it did start off quite well...at least I think it did.  I'm pretty sure I stitched a little on each of these in March but there is absolutely no way on this earth that I managed to do 31 different projects.  That was due to it being assignment time and lots of reading for the module.  I can't wait to have all this free time to stitch!

Joan Elliott - Unicorn

All through the Night - Oh Christmas Tree

CCN - Santa's Village

JBW Designs - A Very Merry Christmas

CCN - A Place we call Home

Nora Corbett - Faerie Spring Fling

HaED - Santa and the mouse

Mirabilia - Touching the Autumn Sky

 

Praying Hands - Footprints

I think I stitched on all of these in March.  Hopefully April will be a bit of an improvement!

Birthday stash and giveaway stash too

First up is all the lovely stash that I received for my birthday. There is a chartby The Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery and another by Papillon Creations, 2 Just Nans, a Lizzie Kate Santa, one of the Snow Belles, a JBW Christmas Tree one and some fabric - Icicle by Crafty Kitten which is big enough to stitch the other 8 Nora Corbett reindeer on.

I also received my threads that I ordered with my gift certificate from Linda.  Thank you Linda.  They are shown with the chart and fabric which I already had and I can now get cracking on this...soon :)

Crazy January Challenge - Days 2, 3 and 4

Oh dear...I used up my phone's whole month's data allowance uploading the video Rachael took of David Tennant to Dropbox in case I lost my phone whilst in London which meant I couldn't post to my blog.

So without further ado here are the missing days stitching starts.  I don't suppose it will surprise to learn that I didn't have time for much stitching?

So first is a start on Home of a Needleworker.

Then JBW's Christmas Tree.

 

And finally HAED's Santa ornament which I am doing over 2 rather than over 1 so that it is will be a bigger design rather than an ornament.  I am hoping that it is going to look ok but if not then I will restitch it over 1 instead.  I would like to turn it into a Christmas cushion eventually!

stash, exchange and other news

Well, Manchester has been basking in glorious sunshine this weekend.  What have I been doing? Sat at the kitchen table all day Saturday and all day Sunday writing and assignment on safeguarding and resilience.  The only sun I have seen is when I have brought a line of washing in so I could put another out!  I'm sure it will all seem worth it once I have my degree...

Please see my previous post about Rachael and Luke raising money for Sport Relief.  They are both swimming a mile each and would love any sponsorship or messages of support you are willing to give them - even £1 or $1 would be welcome.  As the advert says "Every little helps".  Rachael has written a little bit about the challenge she faces and why she wants to do the swimathon.

Anyway - there has been some stash deliveries this week.  Firstly, 2 designs to stitch for Luke.  He wanted a cushion stitching for him.  I couldn't decide which to get him but found these 2 so got them both!  I have already started stitching the larger one for him and there is a photo of progress so far.  This is after about 2 hours stitching on it.

new charts for Luke's cushion

after about 2 hours of stitching

I had to buy a piece of fabric to stitch the cushion.  As it's for Luke it needs to be pretty hard wearing so I have opted for aida instead of evenweave.  I was using my sewandso voucher so treated myself to 5 fat men. (Yes I know it is 6 but I already had one given to me for my birthday!)  I also got one of the JBW designs charts that was on my wish list too.

birthday stash!!

I have also done a little tiny bit more on Rachael's bookmark.  I am finding it really hard going with trying to see the very pale grey on the white fabric especially when it is one strand and half cross stitch.  It will be worth it though - she will be so pleased with it!

Rachael's bookmark

Finally, I received my exchange piece from the exchange on Tiny Treasures Too.  My exchange partner was Liz who stitched me a lovely scissor fob for my Union Jack scissors and a measuring tape.  She also sent a lovely card where she had stitched onto the card.  They are all beautiful - but I will let the pictures do the talking!

TTE2 - one side...

...the other side

with the card

The picture above is my offering for my exchange partner.  I really hope they like it!
Tomorrow (Monday) is my blogoversary.  I will be announcing a giveaway to celebrate.

Poll is up

As mentioned in my post last night, the poll is now up for what to do with Plum Pudding.  Hopefully no one will choose the last option but you never know!  Please leave a comment here if you have another idea or a link to how you finished yours if you have stitched this design.  I would love some ideas.  You can choose several different finishes in the poll if you want to.

Thanks for voting!

Good News, great stash and other news!

I'm going to start with our day out yesterday.  We went to a National Trust place called Sudbury Hall and Museum of Childhood which was fab.  We parked up and had our picnic on a grass bank near the car park to save having to carry it round the Hall.  The kids wanted to do the museum first but unfortunately you couldn't use flash photography so there are no photos of it.  The exhibits were brilliant.  There was a room where you could pretend to be a chimney sweep with 2 fireplaces that you crawled up one, along and down the other one.  Rachael has reached that awful preteen age where something like that is 'so not cool' and wouldn't do it.  Luke didn't want to go on his own so didn't try it either.

Then we went to the Victorian Schoolroom for a 'proper' Victorian lesson.  Rachael waited outside as that wasn't cool either!  We had to sit down and clean our slates.  The teacher (Miss Savage) then came and inspected our hands/nails - I got told off for wearing jewellery.  We had to write the date in neat script, then had to do a 'reading' exercise followed 'spelling'.  Colin was picked out as a good speller of today's words and had to go to the front to say them for the rest of the class.  Miss Savage then asked him to do yesterday's spellings which of course he didn't know.  He was then given the dunce's cap and told to stand in the corner.  It was so hilarious....I so wish I had the camera to hand.  Priceless!!!

In another gallery there were 3 bedrooms on the ceiling all done up to look like authentic periods.  I think it was Victorian, 1970's and around 2000.  The room guide asked Rachael if she could come back on Tuesday to help change the sheets.  Bizarrely Rachael later asked me if she was joking.

The back of Sudbury Hall

A VERY, VERY rare photo of me

There was this amazingly huge chair in the grounds.
Just so you can get some idea of the size, I'm 5' 7" (tall not round!)

I ordered some fabric earlier in the week from Pelenna Patchworks ready for finishing a couple of items.  Unsurprisingly, the Christmas pudding one is for the Plum Pudding design that I finished stitching last week. I can't decide how to finish it though.  If you read this far, I have put a poll up for ideas on how to finish it so please help me decide.  The one on the right is for my Tree of Stitches (which you can see an update on further down the page.)

Pelenna Patchwork fabric

A really lovely surprise this week was from Colin.  I told him the log in for my wishlist at Sew and So just to allow him plenty of time to organise himself for Christmas.  He had taken a look and ordered me some things for a treat.  Bless his cotton socks!!

Colin's treat to me!  The fabic is a large piece of white jobelan which
is my favourite fabric and a colour I had run short of.

Each week, WOCS has a Friday freebie on their facebook page - or did until facebook decided that it was no longer allowed. All you had to do was to 'like' the freebie post - so I did - and out of 1430 people, I won!! I got a laplight.  I am so chuffed! (chuffed means pleased if you're not local!)

My prize win.  A laplight!

With everything that has been going on all week with getting ready for me and the children going back to school, stitching has had to take something of a back seat.  There has been a few stitches put in my Tree of Stitches which I really want to get finished now I have the backing fabric for it.  I love this design but I'm having such trouble with the cushion stitch, I don't know why but it is just really hard going.  One of the silks I am using is really springy which is part of the problem I think, but it really shouldn't be the most difficult stitch.....grrrrrrrr.

Tree of Stitches - Abi Gurden
This was a SAL on The Stitch Specialists Yahoo Group

Close up of the stitches.  I have unpicked the cushion stitches at the top as I wasn't
happy with the coverage with one strand.  They are being restitched with 2.

It might be possible to see a little progress on my Cut Thru Garden Shed.  I really love this one and will be sad when I finish it.  Oh well I have several more Cut Thru's in my stash!  Congratulations if you made it all the way to the bottom of the post.

Bothy Threads - Cut Thru Garden Shed

Stitching and pickling

Thankfully my back is much, much better.  It's not quite right yet but I can move reasonably freely.  Standing or walking for very long is still difficult but I'm getting there!

This week I did something I've never done before - pickling!  We harvested some of the beetroot from the allotment.  Colin boiled and peeled them, so I pickled them.  The first ones we had were delicious!

Our first 2 jars of pickled beetroot!

Stitching wise this week - I have completed Libra for the RR but forgot to take a photo before I posted it.  I also did a little bit of stash shopping too - you know the way your finger 'accidentally' presses checkout whilst looking!!  I ordered 2 JBW designs: Plum Pudding and Christmas Bells and some new gold needles.  Once they arrived I couldn't help but have a look to see if I had some fabric for Plum Pudding...and then of course I had to check the threads too.  Well...whilst I'm getting everything together I might as well put a few stitches in as well.  So here is my 'few stitches'.  Oops - well at least it's not going to be another WIP/UFO lol.

JBW Designs - Plum Pudding
Fabric - unknown was just lurking in my stash
Threads - GAST / WDW as charted

I did a little bit on She sells seashells...but not much!

And that's it for stitching this week.  I'm going to pick up Garden Shed in a minute to work on.  My eyes are feeling a little sore so aida will not strain them so much!