Exchanges, PL and whole bunch of other things!

Gosh, doesn’t time fly?! Here I am thinking I’ve just posted a nice long entry, along with photos, and suddenly I have a million more things to tell you! Okay, well, maybe six or seven!

Firstly, I heard from Marg down in Melbourne that she received the squares I sent her for the Fair and Square Round 5 exchange. Marg, like me, is a big fan of Drawn Thread (check out their new look website if you haven’t already!), so the confluence of DT and February made me think immediately of An Open Heart. I adapted the top heart motifs and sent it off to her with a few things in her favourite colours. As per usual, I didn’t take any photos of the whole exchange, but here are the squares (main square and signature square) that I stitched fro Marg. I used the recommended NPI silks (they are a dream to stitch with, I really like them):



Secondly, I also heard from Janneke, who was my secret exchange partner for the Crazy Exchange (more on this below) Birthday Exchange. I stitched Janneke a little pattern from Nostalgic Needle called ‘Rose Ornament’ – this was my first ever go at bullion stitches, and I’m quite pleased (and extremely relieved) at the way they turned out. I finished it as a pincushion, and stitched her initials as well as mine and ‘gelukkige verjaardag’ which I’m trusting is an accurate translation from English to Dutch of ‘Happy Birthday’! Ths was stitched on 32ct Cream linen using Au Ver a Soie Soie d'Alger threads as charted.



Thirdly, I got a lovely message from Iris another Crazy Exchanger who had very kind things to say about the mattress pinkeep I sent her – this was a C Mon Monde design and seemed perfect for February and Valentine’s. It’s stitched on an unnamed bit of Silkweaver linen using Atalie threads (silk and cotton) as recommended on the chart. If you’ve never tried Atalie threads, I’d highly recommend them – their silk in particular is beautiful to stitch with. You can buy direct from the manufacturers (although they only process orders during the first 15 days of each month) or from the lovely Leena at her shop Violarium – Leena ships everywhere and really quickly. This was my first mattress pinkeep finish (with a little help from drooling over all your finishes out there, and from that special tutorial wizard, Vonna!)



So, the Crazy Exchange. You may remember me mentioning it – it is a group of assorted crafters based in Europe and the US, and the basic premise is: make something at any time, send it to anyone who is also in the Crazy Exchange, sit back and wait and within 30 days later your chosen partner will have made you something in return and posted it back to you. It’s a great little exchange, although slightly chaotic in nature (I think that’s intended, the clue’s in the name, ha ha). The group moderators have recently let us know that due to family considerations they are not going to be able to carry with the group. One of the exchangers, Jacqueline, has kindly stepped up and will take over the group, but I think I’ll hold off sending any further exchanges until things settle down a bit. I'm glad at any rate it isn't coming to an end.

Now, a Thursday has gone by since I last posted, so of course I’ve got my weekly update of Paradigm Lost which I’m stitching along with all the lovely ladies over at the Snowbird SAL. I was stitching with flying fingers this week, and I could definitely see the end was near (of the big motif I was stitching, not of the whole thing!) so I stayed up til gone midnight to finish up this motif – HURRAH! I’m so pleased with the fact that it’s now done!!


Now I’m on to page four, which is littered with little tiny and medium-sized motifs, so I should fly through that a little quicker than I got through page three!

Now, as you may remember from last month, Leena and I have a little ornament SAL between us, and this past weekend was our ornament weekend. I managed to stitch two small ornaments this month rather than one bigger one, so here is the second of Prairie Schooler’s 12 Days of Christmas, Two Turtle Doves:


And, on the scrappiest of small scraps of linen which I found in my stash, Lizzie*Kate’s ‘Joy’ ornament from the most recent JCS ornament issue.



I promised recently to show you the wonderful stacks of stash I treated myself to before Christmas and which have just arrived (long story – digressing, if you haven’t been to the LNS Report Card do go and visit, it’s a great resource for both online and bricks and mortar shops, and it gives you the low-down from other stitchers on just how good – or not – a shop is, and whether it is worth spending your hard-earned stash cash with them!). Here is the (not briliant) photo – too much to list, but essentially I treated myself to a large number of charts, some linen and some threads. Yum, I can’t wait to stitch it all! (Yes, I can hear you laughing in the background – what stitcher could ever hope to stitch everything in their hoard of stash!!)



Now this is getting to be a very long post, so just very quickly before I go, for those of you who are interested in this sort of thing, Periphaeria Designs is starting a Mystery Spanish Sampler which starts in mid-March. This could be quite fun… :)

Thanks for making it this far, I wish you a relaxing week and much happy stitching!