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