Tendrils and a Frame-up

Wow, what a weekend! We went over to Dublin for H's surprise 30th party, and we had a fantastic time. He had no clue (men don't, do they) and thought that we were just going out for a nice quiet dinner with the family. We did do that, but then we got him to the local pub, which we'd spent the day decorating with balloons, streamers, banners and a photo montage of H's first 30 years. All sorts of family and friends turned up, and it was a great night! I was especially glad to get my hands on a few of the more embarrassing photos from his younger years :)



I didn't do any stitching at the weekend as I was revelling in my role as bossy party coordinator, but picked up my needle once again on our return home. I've been working away at Busy Bee fairly steadily recently, as one of my April goals was to finish it, and it seems a shame to not make a concerted effort to achieve my goals in the very first month I have ever set any. You can see from the photo that I've got on really well, finishing the pulled thread band all the way down through the tendrils and to the pair of eyelets, which are technically a row of their own, although they will be surrounded with yet more tendrils and a diamond with one last bee. Then I've just to attach the paillettes, which will be a new one for me, and the small bee charm at the top.

The frames I ordered for my two Mum's Heart projects also arrived yesterday, so I spent some time framing up the first (and completed) Mum's Heart for my mum - it's to be a mother's day gift for her. Although Mother's Day is in March here in the UK, I generally wait until May to give Mum gifts and cards as she's back in Canada. It took an hour or so, with lots of tugging and un-sticking my fingers from tape, but the result is beautiful and I'm really pleased with it! As usual, I won't post the photos yet until I've actually given it to Mum, but we've only 3 sleeps until our trip to Vancouver Island, so it won't be long before I'll finally upload all those, including progress on Mum's Heart II, which is for H's Mum's birthday, only a couple of days after Mothers' Day back home. I know that my mum-in-law only logs on to her email once every six months, so the chances of her stumbling across photos of her gift are pretty minimal!

Checker Stitch and Snow!

Tuesday night was spent on Silver Needle. I'm finding it really difficult to photograph properly, I think because of the colour of the fabric, which is a dusky pink colour. The stitching never seems to show up properly. I'll have to try and get some brighter light I think. I finished off the lettering, and completed the row below, which is 'checker stitch', or alternating blocks of diagonal satin stitch and blocks of over-one stitching. Somehow what I've accomplished doesn't look like much, but it took hours!

Wednesday I moved on to Northern Lights, as I feel I've slightly abandoned it recently. I finished off the pine tree band, and began the snow band, which is about 1/3 complete now. The blue fabric as ever is difficult to count on, and I'm very glad it is 28-count and not any finer as already I have to stitch slowly on it or risk a banging headache. So this project is going to take me quite a while I suspect.

I haven't let this put me off, though, and have just put in an order with Janice from Traditional Stitches for another chart in the series - Northern Shield. That one is luckily on a much lighter linen.

We're heading off to Dublin tomorrow for H's birthday weekend - his 30th, of which I am fleetingly jealous, and then I remember that I'm only 32, so I can't really be too worried about it. If I was really truly concerned, I'd probably be investigating lots of really expensive skin cream, which I am determinedly avoiding for at least several more years! I'll post another update after the weekend, and maybe even a few birthday party snaps!

Buzzing along

Another glorious weekend in ol' Blighty - spring is really here and the weather has been amazingly bright and warm. It's actually a bit uncomfortable sleeping at night, which is unknown in April in these parts.

We spent Friday night madly cleaning the house from top to bottom - we were having a small dinner party on Saturday night so of course all the little jobs that had been stacking up over the week suddenly became priority urgent. It doesn't matter how mouth watering your chicken wrapped in parma ham is if your bathroom sink has the remnants of last night's toothpaste stuck to the rim; your scrummy pots au chocolat are forgotten in light of the large tear-shaped red wine stain on the hall carpet. So it was off to work scrubbing high and dusting low, spray bottle of Flash in my hip holster. Next time, I vow to keep on top of these jobs so that there isn't a mad panic next time we have people over for dinner. (Really.)

After the success of Saturday's dinner, our happily stuffed guests headed off bright and early on Sunday morning, leaving us to tidy up the mountains of dishes/crystal/silver/trays/pots/every single useable piece of crockery, and then I spent a happy few hours on Busy Bee - progress to your left - while H sat and watched several hours of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. He finds it compelling viewing, dare I say addictive. I, however, cringe and try to block my ears every time Ty starts talking/bellowing, and poke fun at the poor people who get their homes re-built. It's not very nice of me, I know, but I find it so hokey and sickeningly Hallmark-sentimental. Anyway, luckily I can concentrate on my stitching and can ignore the programme for hours on end, which is a key skill when they run an 'Extreme Sunday' and it's on for endless hours.

Only 11 days until we head off for Vancouver Island - I absolutely cannot wait! First, there is the small matter of H's 30th this weekend, so a short trip to Dublin is booked and family ready for a small knees-up.

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!

Happy Happy Easter!

Sorry I've been away for so long - the Easter weekend was absolutely gorgeous, so we spent lots of time in the garden, in the park, in the house spring cleaning... I just couldn't bear to get the laptop out (we are not particularly good friends, the laptop and I), but today I'm feeling up to the task, so here is the weekend update!

Friday

It was 20C! Gorgeous for April, so H and I headed off to the park for a picnic lunch and a lazy afternoon. Truly a spectacular day. I love spring, I just feel like I suddenly have bags of energy! We bought some flowers for the house to cheer it up - tulips, my absolute favourite. I spent my stitching time working on a sweet pea bookmark as a birthday present for my mum - it only took me a couple of days, and I hope she'll love it! Also, I've had a bit of trouble locating enough Crescent Colours 'Bejeweled' to finish Paradigm Lost (although at this stage finishing is a LONG way off), and the very kind Sharon at Crescent Colours pointed me in the direction of Attic Needlework in Arizona, who agreed to take my very large order, and send it on to me as soon as possible. Hurrah, there's one project nearly unblocked!

Saturday

I love Saturdays, because we get post on a Saturday, and this Saturday's post held a special surprise! After waiting for nearly 6 weeks, my backordered Waterlilies thread FINALLY came through the door! So I'm no longer stalled on Silver Needle, and to prove it, this is what I accomplished over the weekend - not bad considering I had only part of the 3 large flowers at the top completed prior to the weekend. (I also worked a bit on Mum's Heart II, but for some reason the colonial knots have got me in knots - I actually threw the frame across the floor - very carefully mind you - in frustration because I can't get them to work properly. And last time I stitched this, I had absolutely no problems at all - sod's law I reckon.)

Sunday

Easter Sunday - after Easter Mass, I made H his easter treat - he's not over fond of chocolate, so I baked him a cake instead, which turned out beautifully, but was very very rich, so there is still tons of it left as we can only eat a sliver at a time. He, I'm quite happy to report, bought me a lovely huge egg made of dark chocolate which also came with three further bars of chocolate. Gorgeous! We spent the day spring cleaning and pottering in the garden - I planted the sweet peas for the summer, and potted up some bedding plants, and cleared the garden of a couple of minor pests - we bought the house about 8 months ago, and a previous owner had put in a vinca minor and it was rampaging around most of the very small plot. It's now history!

Monday

The last day of our magical weekend saw me finish up the bookmark for Mum and spend lots more time in the garden and with H - a truly lovely end to the weekend. In fact, we were so relaxed that we weren't even disheartened when we realised, halfway through building our new BBQ, that the instruction booklet is missing pages and skips from step 9 to step 14! Such is life, and I'm sure the manufacturer can send us a fresh copy. I hope you all had magnificent Easter weekends!

Tuesday

Back to work today, but a treat on my return home - my stash enhancement parcel has arrived from Traditional Stitches! I'm very excited about my first packet, which contained:

3 beading needles
2 charts (one tulip, one birds and balloons - of the hot air variety)
1 project for a stitched fortune teller - you remember folding up squares of paper into those four-cornered cone shapes, flipping up the flaps to tell your friends their fortune?? I do, and this is a neat fabric version - including charms
3 cute stitching-themed fridge magnets

I can't wait for next month's!

Well, that's enough for tonight - happy Easter to all!

No Time No Time

It's been one of those weeks - I never seem to have enough time to turn around, nevermind blog! Or, perhaps I've just been loathe to give up stitching time to type? In any case, I'm back and here is my progress over the last few days. Left is my progress (not quite up to date as I did a couple more hours on it last night) of Northern Lights - I put the fabric on a proper roller frame rather than a hoop on Friday night, and I'm now whizzing through the satin stitches, so that seems to be that problem solved (phew). I'm on to the second row now - pine trees.

This is my progress on Busy Bee - as expected, this one is stitching up very quickly. What you can see is the top half of the design, and the partially completed honeycomb in the middle forms part of a large central motif, including lots of honeybees, then the bottom part is a similar size to the top. So even though I'm only stitching on this once or twice a week, I think it'll be finished very soon.

I had a wonderful surprise waiting for me on Thursday when I got home - my package from the States!! I had treated myself to a number of charts, and I spent a very enjoyable evening reading them all through :) This is what arrived:

Apple Sampler - Birds of a Feather (has anyone else noticed the incorrect punctuation - that drives me nuts!!)

Fond Hearts - Blackbird Designs

Winter Sampler - Butternut Road

Quaker Study - Carriage House Samplings

Tall Oaks - Cricket Collection

October Sky - Elizabeth's Designs

Sea Stars - Ink Circles

Leaping Cat - La-D-Da

Moonlit Orchid - Patricia Ann Designs

Son of Chickens - Prairie Moon

So now I just need to kit them all out ... :)

More Light Please

I stitched for a few hours last night on the Northern Lights Sampler - it's by Canadian designer Jeannette Douglas, and I'm always up for anything Canadian :) I've uploaded a shot of the model. It's stitched on 28ct Blue Spruce linen, which is a lovely dark smoky blue-grey colour, but I'm beginning to realise that stitching on dark fabric isn't as straightforward as I had imagined. The first band of the sampler portrays the eponymous Northern Lights - beautiful beautiful shimmery and sparkly overdyed Needle Necessities Kreinik #8 braid stitched in a series of satin stitches. Although I'm finding that it's also kind of hard to stitch with. Fiddly and knotty. But I think worth the effort. I'm quite pleased with how it's looking, and I'm more than halfway done this band, so with a little more concentration and stitching directly in the glare of our 110W halogen light, I will be finished, and on to (hopefully) more straightforward bands. I'm really looking forward to progressing through this sampler as, being kinda new to stitching, there are lots of really gorgeous threads which are all new to me - GAST, fuzzy Wisper threads, Thread Gatherer Silk 'n' Colours, and Needle Necessities overdyed floss.

I've signed up for the Blackbird Designs Loose Feathers Club for 2007 through Thread Bear - where the lovely lovely Kate has been no end of help and kindness. I'm really looking forward to getting the new chart, and I've gone for the R&R fabric option as well. I am just finding it so difficult to locate a LNS where I can get anything more than DMC threads or twee cartoon character kits. And ONS's are great, don't get me wrong, but sometimes I just want to browse and inspire myself (okay, and admittedly go a little crazy on the credit card). I'm hoping to pop into Thread Bear next time I am around the Croydon area - although probably not until June. I'm definitely looking forward to visiting the Button and Needlework Shop in Victoria on my trip to Canada - I may well come back with a few more goodies than I should, strictly speaking...

I woke up in the middle of the night last night with a sudden inspiration for putting together the Folk Art sampler - I had been playing about with how to arrange the various elements/motifs but it still bugged me that I hadn't quite got it, and I just woke up and it was there. So I crept out of bed and stumbled downstairs to my stash of graph paper and quickly got it from brain to page. Now I'll need to work out borders and putting in an alphabet and getting every element positioned exactly in the right space so that it doesn't look all skew-whiff (although I may have to play the 'it's a bit more charming that way' card if I don't quite get it right!). Planning this all on pieces of A4 graph paper is time-consuming and painstaking, especially as the finished 'chart' will be wider than a single page, but I shall persevere...

Where is my thread?

This is my Monday project - Silver Needle by Just Nan. I love the pink fabric and delicate spring colours, and I'm really loooking forward to carrying on with this one when I can - this is the 2nd project I'm stalled on, this time waiting for 2 skeins of Caron Waterlilies. I've ordered these from an ONS I use, but didn't realise they weren't in stock and were put on backorder. So far it's been four weeks of waiting...oh well. Unless I get a delivery soon, that will free up next Monday to work on my second Mother's Heart (MH2) - at this rate I'm going to be working on that 7 days a week because I'll be waiting for supplies for all the other projects! Annoyingly, I have since ordered some Waterlilies from my closest LNS (about 20 miles away) and they had it in my hands within about 7 days. I wish I'd had the foresight to order it all in one go!

Anyway, enough moaning. I worked on more of MH2 on Tuesday - I've completed the heart border and the first part of the wording - 'A mother holds her children's hands for a while...' (the next part '...their hearts for a lifetime' is at the bottom of the sampler), and it's looking really good. I'm sure I ordered the fabric - 28ct Quaker Cloth in cream - from the same place as I'd ordered it to stitch the design the first time, but weirdly enough it's very different, and I've realised that the first piece of fabric is closer to 22ct than 28ct!

I'm really excited about a 'Stash Enhancement Programme' that I signed up to on Tuesday - it's with Traditional Stitches who are based in Calgary - feeling patriotic! I've never signed up to one of these before (although been sorely tempted), because they are usually just thread, or a certain type of fabric, and I want MORE! TS's SEP is for a bit of everything - charts, fabric, thread of all descriptions, random bits & bobs. It gets posted out around the first of the month, so I'll let you know what's in it!

Being a Busy Bee

My Friday project is the Busy Bee Sampler. I think it's going to work up quite quickly (even for me) as it's only about 8 inches long and just over 2 inches wide. I love the delicate leaves and twining tendrils of the floral band. This is as far as I've gotten in one Friday.


Saturday's project is A Mother's Heart, which I'm stitching for the second time this calendar year. The first time is intended for my mum for Mother's Day (in May in Canada, as opposed to March for the UK and Ireland), and this second one is for my mother-in-law for her birthday, also in May. I'm not going to post any photos of either of them just yet, as I'm keen for it to be a total surprise on the day for them both. The heart outer band though is nearly complete, and I'll probably move some of my regular projects to the backburner in the coming weeks so that I make sure to finish this second one in time for my mum-in-law's birthday. So I'll post some photos later on this Spring.


Sunday is Paradigm Lost. I love this one! It's so huge though it's going to take me months, especially on my current rotation system. It's a wonderful design though. I've decided to use 32-count Lambswool linen, and overdyed Crescent Colours threads - I've gone for a rich green colour called 'Bejeweled'. I ordered just a single skein to see whether I liked the colour (seeing it on the Internet is never quite the same, and I don't have a needlework shop near me, at least not one that stocks anything more than a few skeins of DMC and Anchor stranded cotton - certainly nothing out of the ordinary), so I'm in the process of trying to get more - the online shop I bought the original skein from had only a couple of skeins left, and this project is going to take in excess of 30. So I got up really early on Sunday morning to watch Canada in the world curling finals (which they won - hurrah!) and stitched away on this one. I managed to used up all the thread I have, so I guess this project will be well and truly stalled until more thread arrives.

I'm really looking forward to going back to BC for our holiday in April/May. I miss the obvious things like seeing my friends and family, and being there to celebrate and commiserate with them, but it's often the intangible things I miss - the air of excitement during the NHL play-offs (when the Canucks are still in them anyway!), swimming in the river, hiking up a mountain, or the smell of the earth after a thunder storm. I even miss driving for an hour to get to anything like a big town, and not feeling worried about walking outside past a group of rowdy 15-year-olds at night. And of course there are the tangible things - peach cider and Crispy Crunch bars for example! England is just so very different. Good, but different.