May Madness

Hello!!! It's been a while. Once again work has been busy, and I'd rather spend my spare time stitching than blogging (sorry guys, but I DO miss you all!).

I had a fabulous trip to Knoxville. I took along Conchiti Drummer (NP Designs), which I started on my trip to Pretoria last August. Aida and simple colours are prefect for planes!! When I got back I carried on stitching it, initially because I was jet lagged and the thought of a TW was terrifying, but after 2 days it was because I couldn't put it down, and then it was too close to finishing to put it down.... So I achieved an unexpected happy dance:

This piece was a gift from Avivah, to say thank you for posting her tea bags - isn't he cute?

I have also picked up that flipping green cardigan (aka, the bane of my life). I undid the sewing up and unpicked the left front AGAIN, and last night I finished knitting it for the third time. You will not believe how often I checked it against the right front! Anyway, the good news is that it actually matches now and I've almost finished reattaching it to the rest of the cardy. Initial trying on suggests it might have worked this time. I really dislike cardigans, I think I'll stick to knitting scarves....

Dani asked if I made it to the LNS in Knoxville - of course I did! I found a fellow stitcher at the conference and we bunked off for a morning. Luckily I phoned to double check their opening times and found they had recently moved to a new property. I'm so pleased I bothered to phone them, and that I skipped out on the conference to go - it's probably the nicest LNS I've ever been to. Everything was laid out so prettily, with lots of stitched pieces for inspirations - lots of smalls in baskets and displayed on shelves and dressers throughout the shop, as well as the usual walls of framed pieces. I took a billion photos, and I will share them in a follow up post.

The bad news is that my credit card had to be sent off to ICU after the visit, and it's still in recovery. They had a SALE on. Oh yes! There were about 8 boxes of charts for $2 each. What is a girl supposed to do??? I also picked up a BBD (Autumn) that I've wanted for a while, a few Stacy Nash Primitives, some lovely fabrics and some overdyed threads that I needed to complete some pieces in my stash. So what did I buy? Well here we go:


Autumn - Blackbird Designs
Blackbird sampler - Hand in Heart
Spring cottage - The Prairie Schooler
The fox and the grapes - The Prairie Schooler
Celtic Birds II - The Sunflower Seed
Tulip Tree Sewing Book - Stacy Nash Primitives
Peacock Sewing Roll - Stacy Nash Primitives
Birds of a Feather - Stacy Nash Primitives
Gem Show #1 6 - Courtney Collection
My Stitching Treasures Accessories - Jeanette Douglas Designs
Stitchers Accessories Rose Fantasy - Dessins DHC
Rune Sampler - Dracolair
Mackintosh Roses - Art - Stitch
An Emblem of Love - With Thy Needle
Bad Hare Day - Bent Creek
The Curse of the Raven - Carriage House Samplings
The Raven's Roost - Carriage House Samplings

Two large pieces of pale beige overdyed fabric, which I manged to loose the names of already...

And some offcuts of fabric:
36 x 11 of Angel Hair (30 ct) by Weeks
12 x 26 of a lovely un-named sage green (32 ct)
12 x 12 'echo' (28 ct)

And about 30 skeins of weeks / GAST / Crescent colours.

(Shown on the other bit of beige fabric, ready for my new start as soon as I have posted this and cooked our dinner!)


I was rather chuffed. Bank manager less so....

Right, I'm about to start Blackbird Designs Summer / Autumn / Winter, on one of the pieces of un-named beige fabric. I'll conveniently forget that I needed to order Summer and further threads online when I got home...

Happy stitching folks xx

Greetings from Knoxville!

Well I made it across the pond on Saturday, and spent yesterday acclimatising to the lovely warm weather and pootling around town - KX is a lovely city, it felt really relaxed and family friendly, lots of street cafes and parks etc.

Before I felt I managed to finish the quilt I started and I did most of the large leaves on the grapes block of Fruit Bellpull:

I also took a pic of my ORT jar for the TUSAL today:

Trying to work out if I can get to a lovely-looking cross stitch shop today, before my conference starts. It's 7 miles out of town and I don't have a car.... So tempted to take a taxi ;)

Happy stitching folks x

Happy Easter!

It's been a lovely sunny day here today, and the snow is melting. Not fast enough for my liking - it's still quite deep where it drifted, but our spring bulbs are fighting through!

Today I started a new quilt, using a lovely set of 3" squares of vintage prints that my friend Jamie gave me about 2 years ago. I've only got 3 more blocks to make, then I can start putting it together. I'll probably spend much of tomorrow working out what order they should go in!

I never posted a TUSAL pic this month. Only 21 days late, but here it is. The layer of dark reds/pinks near the top are from the cherries.

My plan for this evening involves stitching, watching TV and eating some Easter eggs :)

Happy stitching folks xx

Cherries!

I finally finished the cherries last night. What can I say - my last 3 days in work before Easter were exhausting, it really impacted my stitching time. Not that that's a problem - I'm now off work until the 6th, when I fly to Knoxville for a conference - yeah!!!

Anyway, here's a pic of the cherries block:

And of the bellpull so far... grapes next :)

My stitching plans for this holiday and typically vague. I might start a new quilt, I might try and fix that b****y green cardigan I knitted, I might work on my lace, I might do something else entirely. But for now the bellpull has my attention...

Happy stitching folks x

Snowed in (ish)!

It's been unseasonable cold this March, and once again we'd had snowy weather. It snowed steadily all day Friday, and we've had about a foot of snow - hard to tell as it's very powdery and has drifted quite a bit. It's actually not too bad around us - all the main roads are clear and our street is passable, but we decided to hunker down and not bother digging the car out! The garden looks really pretty:

I'm still working on the Cherries block of Fruit Bellpull - On Friday night I finished all of the green. I took this yesterday morning, but never turned the laptop on to share it. I've done about 1/3 of the cherries so far, and I'd like to finish the xs today, and the bs in the next couple of days. So I'm snuggled up on the sofa under my lap quilt in my stitching nest. Poor Eddy, there's never room for him to sit down as I've spread the floss and other essential supplies all over the other sofa seat!

Happy stitching folks xx

Green leaves

This is where I've got to with the cherries block... Hope to put some more in tonight

Plums!

I finished the plum block on TWs Fruit bellpull.That puts me at the half way point (well, just past it now, as I've completed the border of the cherries block since taking the photo). I've really got into this piece lately, and it's really showing in terms of progress.

I've also been spending a fair amount of time on my lace project (although not much this week). Mostly it's a mess of pins, threads and bobbins, but one of the big leaves is now visible, so here's a snap.

I also missed the TUSAL earlier this week, so here is a photo of my ORT jar. All of the greens with the layer of purple on top are from the plum block.

This week and weekend I've had a cough and cold - I've not felt too ill, just very snuffly, but it's left me quite tired, so my stitching mojo was a little off over the weekend, and I didn't feel up to the drive to Sheffield lace makers.Which I'm annoyed at, because I really wanted to go. Such is life. But I did get more xs done and movies watched than I had hoped :)