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.

Cauldrons (aka Spell Check) is another cute little Hallowe'en finish that I can't for the life of me remember where it came from.  I am going to hazard a guess that it was from an old issue of Just Cross Stitch magazine. I'll have to go and have a root through and see if I can find it.  I do know that the fabric was Pumpkin Patch from Sparklies.

Cauldrons -
Fabric - Sparklies Pumpkin Patch

Crazy January Challenge - Day 16 (because I can't count)

I admit it, I can't count!  I found that I had 16 projects to start instead of the 15.  I have been stitching on this a little bit today too as I am loving the fabric and the orange thread.

This is Behind the Gate by Blue Ribbon Designs and is a Halloween Countdown Calendar if you are not familiar with the design.  The fabric I am stitching it on is Sparklies 'Pumpkin Patch' on 28ct Jazlyn.  It is a gorgeous fabric to handle.

There hasn't been any photos of the two dopey felines lately so here is what they were doing the other night. Synchronised sofa curling up!  What a little pair of cuties!

Crazy January Challenge - Days 13, 14 and 15

These should be the last 3 starts, but I can't count to 15 it seems! I haven't taken a photo yet of my Day 16 start though so that is going to follow.

Day 13 saw Everyone brings Joy by Waxing Moon.

Stitched on SparkliesVireo 

Day 14 was Rosa by India Grace Designs.  Not much progress as the middle is all cut work so I had to count, recount and then double check that I was starting in the right place!

And what should be finally..but isn't...is Day 15's Halloween House by Ursula Michaels.  I decided to start with the border...don't know why, just did!

Crazy January Challenge - Days 11 and 12

They might be small starts but they are starts.  This is one challenge that I am keeping up with for once ;)

First off was Mirabilia's Touching the Autumn Sky which is stitched on Sparklies glacier jazlyn.  It's a lovely fabric to stitch on but is quite a loose weave.

Today I started Penguin Parade on 18ct 'mystery blue' aida. (Thank you Jo for giving me the fabric.)  It was rather odd working on a piece of fabric 5 feet long.  I ended up draping one end of it over Rachael as we were watching a film.  She wasn't impressed!

Oh, and I seem to be unable to count to 15 and look to have an extra project put aside for the CCJ.  Oh well, I might as well start it anyway!  I'm just going to double check that I have counted properly!

Christmas Stash

I was SO lucky with the wonderful Christmas presents I received this year.  As well as some stamps, perfume, CD's and chocolate I got some great stash - and not all of it was bought by me to put away!

First off some lovely fabrics I picked up at Harrogate a few weeks ago.  Pumpkin Patch is for doing the Halloween countdown calendar which will be a Crazy January Challenge piece this year.  The others all have plans too but I can't remember which design off the top of my head and the list is upstairs.

Then there are some lovely Crafty Kitten fabrics too.  All of those have plans except for the linen which I just wanted to see what it is like as I'm not good with linen!

Another piece of Sparklies which was missed out in the first photo.  IT IS GORGEOUS!

The Nutmeg Company and Mill Hill kits were picked up by me in Harrogate.  The reindeer were a total surprise and I was thrilled to receive them.  They are something that I have wanted for a long time but apparently they were only on my abcstitch.com wishlist and not my sewandso.co.uk wishlist. I was showing Colin a photo of them on facebook the other day so he picked 2 of them up for me.

2 lovely pieces of backing fabric from Sparklies too - even if it is upside down!

Another kit for my Crazy January Challenge starts.  I saw this in person at Harrogate and it is SO pretty. The chart looks horrendously complicated but Vickie has already taught me how to do the knots to make the flowers and said if I need help to email/message her.  She may regret that...

I also received another Cut Thru to add to my collection.  This one is North Pole House and is so cute.  This may well be the one I start when I finish my stable!

I know it looks like there is a huge amount of things here but with our families living so far away, they send money and we pick up what we would like labelling it from them.  

Finally, when Annette sent me all the bits for making my Gingerbread Cupcake, she also sent me a package to put under the tree.  I was really good and only opened it on Christmas Day.  Inside were a load of gorgeous goodies.  Look at this lot!  2 really pretty backing fabrics, a piece of stripy evenweave and some pretty threads.  I had to add the gift tag which was made by Annette too and is lovely!  Thank you Annette for such a lovely and generous package of goodies.

We had a lovely Christmas Day.  Both children and Colin were thrilled with their gifts but the highlight of the day was Colin's Christmas dinner.  He was adamant it wouldn't be huge...hahahaha.  

So this our Christmas table all set ready, with Luke looking like an alcoholic with his wine glass.  Rachael declined having orange squash in a wine glass.

Colin's dinner - no he didn't finish it all.

Luke's dinner - somehow he did finish it all, and was the first to finish too.  He loves his veg so had plenty of it!

Rachael's dinner - she managed all of hers too.  Heavens knows where she put it all!

My dinner - no chance!  You could probably have fed someone else with what I left!

Not sure as to why I was looking so miserable here.  Obviously just an unlucky moment with the camera!  Dinner this year was particularly delicious, even with there being way to much.  I'm so lucky that Colin is such a good cook!!

I hope you had an amazing Christmas too.

This week's progress

This week has been a bit on and off for stitching.  I hurt my back earlier in the week - by getting washing out of the machine.  How ridiculous is that?  Honestly, who injures themselves sorting out laundry!  I have tried resting it and gentle exercise and so far neither have made much difference.

Colin took the photos for me this week and you can have a guess as to which one he described as "that's probably the most boring photo I have ever taken in my life".

I have worked on my RR piece this week which is now going to be the remainder of the Zodiac cats RR.  As it is just a blob of white on white, I spared Colin having to take the second most boring photo of his life too!"

I have worked on  started CCN "She sells seashells" but haven't made an awful lot of progress on it so far.  I am stitching it on Kiwi Illusions 'bourbon' which is gorgeous and has a lovely feel to it (I think it is Jazlyn).  It does look slanted on the photo but it's not really.

Possibly the most boring photo Colin ever took!
CCN - She Sells Seashells
Fabric - Kiwi Illusions Bourbon
Threads - CC called for

There has been some progress made on the Wedding Sampler this week but not a lot!  This design is really growing on me the more I stitch it.  It's still not something I would want for myself but I am enjoying it a lot more than I was.  Interestingly it made me realise the other day that I never stitched anything for our wedding day or for either of the children being born!

Helen and Kev's wedding sampler
Janlynn - Married this Day

Whilst blog hopping recently, I have seen loads of lovely "Tree of Stitches".  I am in love.  Thankfully Abi Gurden who runs/moderates/designs The Stitch Specialists yahoo group let me in!  I have made a start on my Tree of Stitches and so far I'm loving it.  I chose to go for a dramatic, contrasting look and am using a piece of  Sparklies fabric in 'fire' with The Thread Gatherer silk.  I am using another silk but the name escapes me at the moment.

Tree of Stitches - Abi Gurden - The Stitch Specialists on Yahoo
Fabric - Sparklies Fire 28ct lugana
Trunk - GAST Blackcurrant
Leaves - The Thread Gatherer Blue Violet and HDF unknown

Sparklies fabric arrived

I ordered a couple of pieces of Sparklies fabrics the other day after seeing them on the blog. They arrived yesterday and are gorgeous. They feel like they will be really nice to stitch with. I only ordered the small cuts of 9 x 13 as I wanted to try them before committing to a bigger piece. The 4 I ordered are Thalia, Shades of Autumn, Pumpkin Patch and Fire. The service was great, with lots of communication at every stage of my order. I was impressed to receive it so promptly and would highly recommend using them.

Also today, I finished part 9 of "How does Your Garden Grow?" Only 3 more parts to complete now. I have decided to focus on this now until it is completed.