Happy Dancing

Last weekend I finished and washed Gaelic Banner, and I pressed it in the week. I wanted to wait to take a photo until I could use natural light, and here it is:

Edited to add: Terri of Rosy Stitches rightly asked who the designer of Gaelic Banner is - it's a Dracolair design.

If you remember I was worried that it had been stretched out of shape on my scroll frame, but washing it allowed it to spring back - so much so that I needed to take out and then tighten the long stitches outlining the tip of the sword. I am really chuffed with this piece, and thrilled to bits that it's my first happy dance of 2014.

Once I finished it I felt like a complete change, and a quick stitch - digging through my stash I decided on Rose Garden by Blackbird Designs - all stitched in the lovely muted pink 'Jakey Brown'. I decided to use my mum's initials and date on this piece, and I hope to finish finish it tomorrow (along with a few other things - my finishing pile is rather huge!). It's stitched on a piece of us identified hand dyed fabric - I did finally check the thread count, and it's 38 count. No wonder some late evenings my eyes found it difficult!

This weekend I have very little planned. I need to pop into town as two books I ordered have come into the book store - I've decided to re-read the musketeers saga, after starting to watch the (frankly OK but not fabulous) BBC adaptation of the three musketeers. I was amazed to realise that I don't own a copy of Twenty Years After or Louise de la Valliere. But I will by this evening!

Other than that all I have planned is stitching in front of the TV - probably a mixture of rugby, the Winter Olympics and some Scandi-noir. I hope you all have a fun weekend planned.

Happy stitching folks xx

New Toys...

This week has been extremely busy, but is has also involved a few new toys :)

First of all, my Christmas present from Eddy finally arrived ( he ordered from Thread Bear at the start of December, but I think he must have missed their before Christmas order from America). Anyway, my late Christmas present included A Stitcher's Journey, Christmas Garden and Buttons and Pins by Blackbird Designs, Celtic Summer by Lavender and Lace and 1814 Butterfly Collection by Carriage House Samplimgs. I was delighted with my present, even if it was a little late!!

Last Sunday Steff offered some old Country Cross Stitch magazines for sale over the TW Facebook group - I snapped up 4 magazines, with a total of 10 TW charts - she posted them in Australia on Monday and they made it to Yorkshire on Saturday! I can't believe how quickly they got here and I am very happy with these new additions to my stash.

Then I made a major new purchase. I'm writing this on my new iPad Air :) I'm busy kidding myself this was a necessary expenditure for work (and it will certainly be very useful), but I'm loving using it to surf the web and blog while sat on the sofa! I also bought a Logitech Bluetooth keyboard (for work), and a pretty case I picked up in the Sales...

I took this photo quickly last night using my iPhone, sorry it's so rubbish! The others are all taken with my iPad - it's starting to get dark now, so I'm quite chuffed with the quality.

I have been busy stitching - I finished Gaelic Banner last weekend, but it needs washing and pressing before I share it. I decided I wanted to do a quick project, so started Rose Garden by Blackbird Designs. This is where I am up to so far:

I can't remember what fabric this is (unlabelled from stash), but it is a very fine count!

Finally I forgot to post the TUSAL on Thursday, so here are my orts. Lots of green and gold from Gaelic Banner, and some pink on top from Rose Garden.

I think that's it for now. I hope the iPad will mean that I blog a bit more - it's certainly more fun than using my laptop. I've read a few blogs and have started commenting again - it's lovely to see what everyone else is up to!

Happy stitching folks xxx

2013 in stitches

Once again I've had an erratic year in terms of blogging, but I have made steady progress with my stitching. These were my 2013 happy dances (I THINK this is all of them, but my blogging / photography means I might not have recorded/remembered all of them):

Cross Stitch Projects:
Fruit bell pull - Teresa Wentzler
Eeyore's problem - Designer stitches
Summer / autumn / winter - Blackbird Designs
Conchiti Drummer - NP Designs
Wool Needlebook - Little House Needleworks
Tatty Teddy 'A New Baby' - Anchor
My Heart is True pincushion - Nicoletta Farraruto and Blackbird Designs

Quilts Projects:
9-patch quilt
Strip the willow

Lace Projects:
Bedfordshire Rose Leaves

Knitting Projects:
'Leafy' headband by Happy Living
Green cardigan

At the start of 2013 I had the following WIPS:

*Eeyore's problem
*Gaelic banner
*Fruit Bell Pull
*Night
*Peacock Majesty
*A New Baby (Tatty Teddy)

*Green cardigan
*Crochet scarf

*Milanese lace
*Bedfordshire rose leaves


So how did I do with my goals? Last year I wanted to:
1) Finish A New Baby YES
2) Finish Gaelic Banner NOT QUITE!
3) Finish Night NO
4) Work on all of my other xs WIPs YES
5) Finish the green cardigan YES, APART FROM BLOCKING IT
6) Finish the crochet scarf NOPE
7) Finish Bedfordshire rose leaves YES
8) Start Wisteria lace edging YES
9) Make a quilt YES
~ and, as always ~
10) Stitch lots, on what I want, and enjoy it!! OF COURSE :)


This year I am starting with the following WIPS:
*Gaelic Banner
*Peacock Majesty
*Night

*Grey Cardigan

*Wisteria Lace
*Milanese Lace

*Jigsaw Quilt

I THINK that's it....

In 2014 I'd like to:

1) Finish Gaelic Banner
2) Finish Night
3) Finish Peacock Majesty
4) Start a big Blackbird Designs
5) Finish the grey cardigan
6) Finish the crochet scarf
7) Work on Wisteria lace edging
9) Finish Jigsaw Quilt top
~ and, as always ~
10) Stitch lots, on what I want, and enjoy it!! OF COURSE :)

I'm in love...

...with Mr Bones by SamSarah. I've been looking (somewhat half heartedly - or at least not very seriously) for a skeleton (that I liked, I am quite fussy) to cross stitch for years now. HOW DID I MISS THIS DESIGN FROM 2008???? I've just been over to Arthemise's blog, where I saw Mr Bones all stitched up (there is a picture in THIS post). He is truly awesome. Sadly I cannot find the magazine for sale. Pondering if it's worth paying for the Just Cross Stitch Collection 2001 to 2010 CD / DVD.... It's only $50... Hmmm, that might be a bit much to pay for a single little skeleton.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Feeling sleepy...

I've woken up feeling really sleepy. Which may be apt given one of my current projects - night by Maria von Sharrenberg. This is my Nottingham piece (which means I don't stitch on her very often), and it recently travelled to my parents house and got some love there. 

I'm still working on Gaelic banner - I've just got the BS on the griffin to go - there's a happy dance due very, very soon!

Happy stitching folks x

Happy New Year!!!

Wow, I really have fallen out of the habit of blogging - I hope I still have some followers!

Back in October I promised to share a photo of Eeyore's problem - well here it is:

Since then I have been working on Gaelic Banner - I started the BS before Christmas. I took this photo on the 2nd Jan, but have done a bit more BS since - I have 2 pages of BS to go - this will be my first HD for 2014, hopefully next weekend??

I took a final photo of my ORT jar before emptying it on the 2nd (when we got back from seeing friends and family), and it now contains a small layer of green and gold from the banner!

I've not started anything new yet - I just really want to get GB finished! I'll do a yearly round up this week (well hopefully - I really don't want to get out of the habit of blogging again).

Happy New Year everyone, I hope it is stitchy-tastic!

Belated happy dancing

I finished stitching the bell pull about a week after my last post - so that's about 5 weeks ago - but it took me another fortnight to block it. My scroll bars had stretched it out of shape and made all of the blocks rectangular. It's not quite measurement perfect, but I'm much happier with it now:

Fruit Bellpull, (c) Theresa Wentzler. Stitched on antique white Quaker cloth in DMC. The first photo was taken with the flash - the focus is better but the colours are bleached out a bit...

Taken without the flash. It's a bit yellow because of the artificial light, but I think the colours are closer to this one. Basically I'm not a great photographer and I should have taken these in the day time, on a sunny day, but hey, this is what I have! I LOVE how it has turned out.

Having finished this piece I felt I wanted to do a bit of WIP-busting, so next I pulled out Eeyore's problem. And finished it about a week ago - pic to follow. This weekend I've been finishing off the green cardy I started ages ago (the one with the uneven fronts) and working on gaelic banner. It would be lovely to finish GB before the end of the year, but we'll see!

Hope everyone found some quality crafting time this weekend - I did! Happy stitching folks x