Their Song is Finished!

Still all abuzz about my stash booty, I whizzed home after work and picked up Their Song straight away. I knew if I had a few hours on it, it would be all done - and so it proved! I'm quite pleased with how it's turned out, and only missed my goal of completing it before the next Loose Feathers came out by one day - that's not too bad!

Now I need somethign to fill up my Thursdays... I'm going to wait for a few days and see if my hunch about my parcel from Wyndham Needlework comes true, as it should contain a whole lot of linen, and will provide me with a wider choice of new starts. Watch this space!

I carried on with putting together my biscornu once I'd finished with Their Song - I've sewed up 6 sides now and am preparing to stuff. I'll probably go back to this at the weekend to finish it off, so possibly photos then. I have yet to work out whether my camera will download to H's laptop, so given that the weather forecast for Saturday looks like this:

...I may well get an opportunity to test it out at the weekend! Happy stitching and have a lovely weekend everyone!

Busy Week!

It's been a hectic few days, but here I am to update you on my progress over the weekend.

Friday is Love is Patient, and I have managed to stitch the first few words on this design, as well as put a significant(ish) dent into the heart shape around all the words. This is tricky stitching, my first attempt at 36ct linen, and this design entails very careful counting. I stitch a short row, whip out my highlighter, mark off the stitches on my blown-up image of the design (the original was printed so small that it gave me a headache before I even started), and then pick up the needle again. I find myself squinting a lot. Attractive, I'm sure. But it's worth it because the threads in this design are so gorgeous (Crescent Colours in beautiful rich tones), and of course the verse is part of a reading that we had at our wedding.

Then on Saturday, the grey and dreary weather persisted so we didn't get up to much bar our weekly trek to Sainsbury's. (During which trip we discovered pear cider! It isn't quite like BC pear cider, and in fact it tastes a little more like syrup than pears. But nothing ventured nothing gained I suppose.) On our return, I renewed my efforts on Paradigm Lost, and nearly - o so nearly - finished the first row of the alphabet, all the way to starting the 'T', leaving me only that and the 'U' and a flower motif before going to the next 'row'. This is a really enjoyable project, but it's slow going. (This is a theme that I'm noticing about all my stitching projects. I am resigned to being slow. Unfortunately the list of projects that I'd like to stitch is careering somewhat out of control...)

So Sunday, we had grand plans to go out and challenge the golf course again, but somehow the drizzle wasn't encouraging, and it was so muggy...so yes, we pottered around the house again. Weekends are for relaxing right? I think we'll have to push ourselves out the door a bit more though, much as I love curling up on the couch with the remote and my stitching. In the morning I finished off the last few stitches on the biscornu I'm doing (again, slowly!), which means that come Wednesday I'll be doing the 'finish finishing', which I'm quite looking forward to, my first ever biscornu.

Sunday night, I decided to press on with Their Song, as I am so nearing a finish. I've decided to do only a 6-day rotation so that I either can catch up with missed stitching at the weekend, or really go for it on something that I'm nearly done. I'd run out of WDW Moss for this design, and my order hadn't arrived yet, so I concentrated on all the others colours, and now I'm left with only (lots of) Moss stitches and a few Havana (brown) stitches. I'm feeling quite proud of this project - I'm definitely looking forward to the next Loose Feathers design.

And that was it really for the weekend. Little sun, little exercise, lots of stitching, lots of films watched. A nice dinner with some friends on Saturday night. Can't complain I suppose.

Last night (Monday) I carried on with Northern Lights, finishing the backstitching on the eagle and completing the next row, which was all satin stitches in 'Inuit colours' rather than being anything tangibly representatitve of the North. The next band is the Alaskan Pipeline - looks like a quick one as it's simply long and skinny :) I've lent my camera to a friend so she can take photos of her car to put on eBay (long story), so hopefully will have photos of this for tomorrow.

Happy stitching!

An Upside-down Tulip. Or a Red Snowdrop?

Actually I'm not really sure what type of flower this is on the lower left-hand side of Their Song, any suggestions? Maybe it's a bleeding heart, anyway, it's lovely as is the rest of this design, which I am getting very nearly done! I am running out of WDW Moss though, so I've ordered another skein and hopefully it will arrive before I continue on this next week.




I went a bit stash-crazy today - I ordered threads and fabric for a couple of projects in the latest Gift of Stitching (and wasn't that an amazing issue???) - for Double Dutch and for the pincushions. I also ordered a bit of ribbon and some charms for a couple of charts I unearthed from my stash and am thinking of starting. Now just to wait until it all arrives in!


A very short post for those of you strapped for time :) Happy stitching!

A Busy Weekend

Phew. What a busy weekend we've just had!

First, on Friday, I came home after a busy day of work to find 2 wonderful packages on the doorstep - having just got a nice little bonus from work, I had decided to treat myself to a bit of stash shopping - so there are a few more packages soon on the way :) Friday's post included these lovely fabrics from Sew & So:

L-R 40ct cream, 36ct Antique White, 32ct Antique White, 32ct Confederate Grey, 32ct Misty Blue, 28ct Raw, 28ct Light Sand, 28ct Light Mocha, 28ct Confederate Grey, 28ct Sage (not from memory, I may add)

After the fun of opening this parcel, I carried on with Paradigm Lost, and managed an H, an I, a J and half a K - I think I might try and stitch this on a Saturday or a Sunday, as doing an hour here or an hour there just seems to get me nowhere. This is more likely due to my slow stitching than any design flaw!

Saturday morning I spent with the second of Friday's packages - some beautiful scissors from the wonderful Leena and her shop Violarium. I've used these to finish the Heart Throb scissor fob - my first ever attempt at such a thing - and I'm immensely pleased with the results:

Front is stitched on 32ct cream with recommended DMC fibres, back is stitched on 32ct Permin/Wichelt English Rose with Silk 'n' Colours Pink Elephant

The rest of Saturday was spent in finally building the BBQ - which took a surprising amount of time, but is done done done! I picked up Love Is Patient that evening, and carried on with that. Previously it had just been one straight line, and now it's several. Plus a large red area which, believe it or not, will be the top left part of a big red heart, but currently looks more like a looming eyebrow. So I've added a photo below, but it isn't really much to look at yet:

And then on Sunday, after a wonderful round of golf (ok, actually half a round of wonderful golf followed by half a round with quite a bit of swearing and tantrum-throwing by my good self, having lost several balls and found a really irritating creek which insisted on meandering through the fairway exactly where my ball kept landing - yes on 3 holes in a row), H manfully fired up the new BBQ and cooked us a delicious dinner. And I sat down to my final stitching session of the weekend, and carried on with Their Song. I just love this design and am really looking forward to the next Loose Feathers instalment!

I hope you all had wonderful weekends and enjoyed the weather as much as we did - happy stitching!

A Wonderful Busy Stitching Weekend

As I suspected, the proper piece of kit didn't arrive for H's laptop, so no blogging at the weekend. And with the weather being extremely liquid at the weekend, it meant absolutely no distractions from stitching - I got so much done! No bbq building, no golf, no gardening, but plenty of stitching :)

First, I finished off the scissor fob I started (I think I will send it to my mum when completed). I stitched this freebie from Drawn Thread called 'The Heart Throb'. The front side (on right below) is on 32-count cream linen and uses the DMC threads listed on the chart. The reverse (below left) is the same design stitched on 32-count English Rose (Permin/Wichelt) using Silk 'n' Colours Pink Elephant. Having stitched one side of the border as directed on the chart (a stitch called double faggoting which was extremely tedious and boring, although looked nice), I frogged it and just went with a simple backstitch border. I also managed to pop into the craft store and pick up wadding and some delicate dusty rose-coloured ribbon for the fob, so I am all set to 'finish finish' this (once I pick up some nice scissors, which the craft store most definitely did NOT have). H also bought my birthday present when we were in town - a daylight lamp and it makes stitching o so much easier - I am already so thankful for it!

Next, I pulled out Silver Needle and finished off 3 bands (the sort of wave-y white and pink one, the teal one, and 'Followed where my fingers led') and started a fourth, which doesn't look like it but will be another floral band.

And then, since it was still teeming down with rain, on Sunday I decided to spend a few hours on Northern Lights. I'm really pleased with how this one is turning out - it's chock full of speciality stitches and speciality fibers, so there is always lots to keep my interest! I finished several bands on this one before starting the 'animal' band. Everything was fine with the eagle and the snowy owl, but then I started the rabbit ears with Wisper thread (which I've never stitched with before) and suddenly lost all confidence because it didn't quite look like I was expecting it to, so...

...no problem, I simply packed it away and pulled out 'Their Song'! It's wonderful having a whole weekend of free time and so many projects on the go that I am spoiled for choice! Their Song is progressing famously well, with only the bottom quarter or so of the design to finish. I'm hoping to get this one done before the next Loose Feathers chart arrives on my doorstep, but I think that may be a race I lose as Kate from Thread Bear let me know the other day that the chart is on the way from the States.

And, then, finally, nearing the end of Monday I decided it would be a good time to start a new project as I have a couple of spaces in my rotation - so I picked through my stash and came up with Love Is Patient by La-D-Da. I'd bought the Lakeside Linen recommended fabric when I was over in Canada earlier this month (can anyone tell me where is a good place to get this, and/or R&R fabrics in the UK or Europe? I'm having a hard time getting them in any kind of a timely way from US distributors - it seems to take at least a month to get fabrics across!). The design uses only five colours, but they are gorgeous, sumptuous colours from Crescent Colours so very much looking forward to using them! I only managed to get a small part of the outer border in the design done, so didn't bother to take a photo - a single straight line of stitches just doesn't spark the imagination somehow!

And phew that's about it for my weekend. I'm hoping that my order from Wyndham comes soon, as I'm reserving the final space in my rotation for Spanish Wine, but I'm awaiting the LL fabric which is on the way. Fingers crossed that all the thread I've ordered from Attic comes through soon as well - I can't wait to get going again with Paradigm Lost, which has been sitting disconsolately in a corner for about 10 weeks waiting for the thread to arrive...

Happy stitching everyone!

3 Birds

Sorry I haven't posted in a few days - we've been busy playing golf, eating well, and staying out of the rainshowers. Yesterday we took a 'tour' (courtesy of Dad) of the Cowichan Valley, and drove all around Arbutus Point, Maple Bay, Cowichan Bay, Cowichan Station and into deepest darkest Glenora - further out than even I had been before. Cowichan is such a gorgeous part of the world. Now all we need is for our EuroMillions ticket to come good so we can buy a nice bit of acreage and build a house :) Dream on...

Progress on Their Song has been steady - H has been distracted by the pool table downstairs, leaving me plenty of time to stitch. I had a small heart attack when I realised that some of the stitching is one thread out, and I thought I was going to have to rip out substantial areas, but after a medicinal peach cider (possibly the cause of the problem in the first place), I realised that the two 'star' motifs to the left of the tree were the culprits, and I had counted 'and very frankly' off them as well. Everything else though was stitched in the correct place, so I've made an executive decision to leave the stitching in place as is - you'd have to know (and probably count threads) to see the error, and it won't affect the final look, so I don't see any reason to take it all out.

Rather helpfully, Mum read the finishing directions for Heart Throb (scissor fob) and also couldn't really work them out (despite 50 years of sewing experience), so I can go ahead with my plan for finishing it without any qualms!

Happy stitching everyone!

Welcome to BC

We've arrived! After months of anticipation, we're finally in BC. It's wonderful.

I had decided to bring my stitching on the plane to keep me distracted and amused, so I found a couple of freebies to start stitching - a scissor fob design from Drawn Thread called 'Heart Throb' and a small square design which I'm hopefully going to turn into a biscornu - my very first attempt at one, so we'll see how that goes. And, just in time, the threads at left arrived in the post (Silk 'n' Colours Pink Elephant and Needle Necessities Island Butterfly). On Thursday night then, having confirmed on our trip to Dublin the week previous what stitching implements could be brought on board (sewing needles yes, scissors no), I cut all the threads I'd need for these two small projects into useable lengths, got the linen ready, and found a small frame. The 9-1/2 hour flight from Heathrow to Vancouver passed quickly enough, and my progress (Heart Throb top, biscornu bottom) is here:


I'm intending to use the Pink Elephant to replicate this design for the back of the fob, and the Island Butterfly is used for the biscornu. I'm now not convinced that such a dramatically hand-dyed thread was the way to go, but hey it's only my first try and we'll see how it turns out - live and learn.

I'm hoping to finish at least the scissor fob design whilst I'm here as Mum is a champion sewer, and I'm not 100% sure that I understand exactly what the finishing instructions are trying to tell me.

H's flight wasn't quite as comfortable as mine. He'd had a bit of a sniffle before we left, and Thursday was spent on a teambuilding exercise with his company. Whoever was organising it must have a small sadistic streak ... I know, what we'll do is we'll take a number of office-based staff who have minimal DIY skills, give them some rope, barrels, and twigs and ask them to McGyver up a raft! And then they can race that raft on a lake! In April, yes! ... Well, I guess you can imagine what happened next: having far more confidence than was warranted in their floating barrel(s), H and partner set out on the race, only to capsize at the furthest possible point from shore and then have to swim back towing what was salvageable of their former raft. A bit of discussion ensued ('No, just because you were first back with a broken bit of your raft in your hand doesn't mean you won' - 'But the rules didn't say you had to actually be on the raft to win the race' - etc), followed by a prize-giving, and suddenly H had been standing about drenched in lakewater in April temperatures for the best part of an hour. Throw in a bit of chilly recycled air for 9-1/2 hours, and I guess neither of us should have been surprised that he woke up with a full-blown fever and the worst cold he has had in 4 years on our first day here. But he's cheering up, helped no doubt by the gift of a set of golf clubs once we'd arrived!

We spent a couple of days with my sister and her boyfriend, and they took us to Little Mountain, aka Queen Elizabeth Park. Vancouver is beautiful at the moment - all the spring shrubs and plants are in full bloom, and the rhododendrons and tulips are particularly gorgeous. Right is H, sharing some sunny weather in the park with BC's emblem flower - the dogwood. Sister T and A are below, with a bit of the mountains behind them.

I spent a bit time on Sunday doing some stitching - apart from the small designs for the plane, I brought Their Song with me as it has a small number of colours, making it easier to travel with, and frankly I am just loving this design and can't wait to spend even more time on it! An early start on Sunday (for some reason T and A weren't up at 6am...) meant I could devote a few hours to it, and then our trip over to the Island on the ferry meant I had a couple more, so progress is on the left. In fact I'm going to finish off this post and find a quiet spot to get this out again.

Once we arrived on the Island last night, I gave Mum her joint birthday and Mother's Day present - Mum's Heart I. And she loved it! Photo - FINALLY - at right. I'm so glad she loves it, and so glad I can finally post the photos from this project! I'll also now post the Mum's Heart II progress photos, as I know that H's mum will never stumble across them by accident.

I also gave T her (extremely) belated Christmas present, which is a Mirabilia design - 'Titania, Queen of the Faeries' (at right) is I think the full title of it. T has had a life-long fascination with fairies, and also a life-long streak of middling to poor luck, so hopefully this fairy will look out for her and keep her safe. I'm taking it to a framer in Saanich in the next week, and Mum and Dad will pick it up to bring to T for her to finally put on her wall. It's the first big design I ever stitched, and it was so rewarding to see her face light up when she saw it. I have two more Mirabilia charts in my stash pile, and although I was still learning most of the way through it, it still took me 5 months, so I don't know if I'll pick up the next one in a mad hurry. I'll maybe give myself a bit of a rest!

So I think that's brought you up to date for our trip, and I'll hopefully post a bit more when I'm here. I wish everyone as relaxing a time as I am having!

Their Song - a new start!

Last night I started 'Their Song', the first Loose Feathers chart for 2007 - it's so gorgeous! This is my first Loose Feathers chart, and I love not only the beautiful design but the obvious thought and care which have gone into the creation of it. I started off last night in the middle of the design, and finished the main arcing branch, a couple of leaves and half of two berries, as well as the flower motif to the right. I'm using the recommended threads and fabric - the colours are really muted, but really beautiful, and they really have that true sampler feel to them. I've lent my digital camera briefly to a friend who is selling her flat so that she can take lovely photographs to entice buyers, so no photos of my progress thus far, but I should get the camera back by the weekend and hopefully I will be able to put up some progress photos by Sunday. If Blogger cooperates, and if I can get H's laptop to play nicely with the digital camera...

We've house guests over for the weekend, so I'll probably not post again until Sunday, as I will be either entertaining or madly cleaning the house from top to bottom until then...

I wish everyone a happy and healthy weekend!