Stash and a Challenge

It's reveal day for the Monthly Ornament Challenge on Needlecraft Haven. This month the design was either one of these two lovely snowmen from Jura Point de Croix.
Here is my finish, stitched on pale blue evenweave using orphan threads from magazine cover kits.
The other finishes are in the album here

I had a fabulous stash parcel this week. Look at these wonderful goodies from The Victorian Motto Sampler Shoppe. Nancy even threw in a few extra free things to help offset the postage charges.

I also had another parcel in the week. I mentioned last time that I'd run out of polyester fibrefill, so I went on EvilBay and ordered another bag, and because there wasn't much difference in price I ordered a 10 kilo bag. Well it came. Big mistake. Do you guys have any idea how big a 10 kilo bag of fibrefill is? No? Let me tell you. It is about the size of a large dustbin. I could take up taxidermy and stuff a baby hippo.
Guess I won't buying any more fibrefill anytime ever...

Presents and Prizes

I've been single handedly keeping  the Post Office in business this week.
First it was dear Barb's birthday, and I sent her this little brooch I made (if you don't already know, Barb loves sheep). I embroidered the little sheep on a piece of linen, then used it to cover one of theose self-cover button forms and added a vintage fabric ruffle to the back before I attached the pin. I forgot to take his picture before I sent him off, so this is Barb's photo, and the beautiful Hardanger is hers not mine.

I have been lucky enough to win a couple of blog giveaways recently. The first was from Heidi and was for a gorgeous heart penny rug mat. Here it is looking quite at home on my new (old) sewing table, which used to belong to a very dear aunt, and has now come home to live with me.

The second was this wonderful  Homespun Elegance Needles and Pins chart which I got from Michelle, I don't have a stash keep to put it on, but I've got a tin which should be just about perfect for it.

Last, but not least, I received a gift from Barb during the week. This adorable little tweed coin purse with it's big, bright corsage is just so me!
Thank you all ladies, I'm feeling very blessed this week.

A review, some stash and a knit-along

I received an email recently inviting me to review one of the cross stitch kits from Yiota's X-Stitch - www.yiotas-xstitch.com  
I spent a long time on Yiota's website browsing all the different designs she has to offer. Something for everyone is a bit of a cliche, but in Yiota's case it is quite justified, the site offers a huge range of designs in a wide variety of styles, covering almost every subject matter you could care to think of.  There were several designs which caught my fancy, but I found myself coming back time and again to the William Morris designs. I've always had a thing for the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Goes with my love of the gothic I suppose. I eventually chose a Morris design called Lily, and sat back and looked forward to it's arrival.
The kit arrived quickly and well packed in a sturdy board backed envelope, and is well presented and thought out. 
The chart is spread across two A3 sheets with a clearly marked overlap, and uses large, clear computer generated symbols, and full instructions are provided. 
The evenweave fabric (all the kits come with a choice of aida or evenweave) is generously sized, with a needle tucked into the corner so that the kit is ready to start right away, and the threads (Madeira) are pre-wound onto cardboard bobbins and clearly labelled by shade number, a real bonus when so many similar shades are involved in a design. 
If I had to change one tiny thing about the kit, I would have liked to find the fabric serged at the edges, but that is quite trivial, and doesn't detract from the overall quality of the kit.
The design itself seems to be a sympathetic conversion of the original artwork, with nice clean lines and subtle gradations of colour, and I'm really looking forward to stitching it. I've got a long train journey coming up next weekend and I think I will probably start it then, so watch this space for updates.

I also got some new hand dyed linens and threads this week from Sparklies, a company I hadn't used before, and I have to say I am very pleased with my purchases. The fabric colours are (clockwise) Black Dahlia, Rainforest, Vireo and Parchment. I particularly love the Parchment colour, I think it will be useful for a lot of things.

Have you seen the Knit-along Deramores are running in conjunction with Rowan Yarns? As soon as I saw this I knew I wanted to knit it, and ordered the wool (Rowan Alpaca Cotton). It came the next day and I started right away. The wool is cloud soft, and knits up beautifully, and I am totally besotted with this wonderful muted damson colour. This is my progress so far. Hope the cold weather doesn't end before I've finished, I need an excuse to wear this.

Christmas Stash Goodness

Did Santa bring you all everything you wanted then? Apparently I must have been "A Good Girl", as I received some wonderful knitting and stitching gifts from family and friends. The girls gave me these two wickedly subversive knitting books (Dominknitrix and Punk Knits),  ~ complete with a dayglo pink post it note detailing which items they'd like me to knit for them first!!!


Clare sent me a Thornton's chocolate reindeer (yum) and a pair of  matched hand dyed perle and stranded cotton threads in a beautiful blue and aqua colour combo, perfect for some colourful Hardanger. Sorry about the dodgy photo but I was trying to include the twig reindeer Eloise made, and he kept falling over everytime I went to take the picture. Clare also sent me a  lovely crochet booklet for my Birthday.

Karan sent me this fabulous assortment of purple silks, and an adorable gingerbread penguin. I shall have to put my thinking cap on to figure out what to do with them (well, not the penguin, I pretty much know what to do with him already)
I got a fat quarter of cream evenweave as my final gift in the Needlecraft Haven advent exchange, 

and Pat (no blog as far as I am aware) sent me this super gift in the VSCyberstitchers Christmas Exchange, a Sweetheart Tree kit for the sweetest little holly biscornu, a set of DMC variegated threads and a simply gorgeous angel statuette/ornament, who may just stay on my mantelpiece all year round.
Thank you everyone, I feel thoroughly spoiled.
Back soon with an update on the Travelling Pattern and all the crafty things I've been getting up to lately...

Fun Fabrics!

Following on from the last post about the wonderful new Mollie Makes magazine, I've been fabric shopping.

How amazing are these?
The fabulous retro kitchen mixer print and pattern are to make an apron for Naomi (she loves 50's kitsch), and the Paris street map print and B-feature horror movie print are to make skirts for Eloise (Its got a vampire on it, 'nuf said!)
Fabrics are from here and here, and I can thoroughly recommend both shops.

Lovely things in the post

I've had two wonderful pieces of post this week, plenty of the usual bills, bank statements and forms from HMRC too but the two nice ones more than made up for it.

First dear Barb sent me a package containing a Sampler Girl pattern "In the Kitchen with Jane Austen" that I have coveted for some time (yes, I know covetousness is a sin, but I'm weak) together with the most incredibly exquisite beaded amulet purse. How beautiful is that? I couldn't even begin to imagine making something like that. Thank you Barb, you are too kind, I feel thoroughly spoiled.

Second was this beauty that popped through the letter box yesterday. The inaugural copy of the new craft and lifestyle magazine Mollie Makes.

Well, that was Saturday gone! I love, love, love this magazine. So many fabulous crafty things, so much inspiration!

There aren't a lot of actual projects as such, but there is enough eye candy to induce a diabetic coma and more ideas and "jumping off points" than you could possibly imagine.

Here's a picture of the contents pages to give you an idea of what it's like. The girls have already put in their orders for a retro style pinny (Naomi, of course), and a bobble trim skirt and one of the too-adorable-for-words crocheted apple cosies (Eloise).  I'm not much with the crochet yet, but it looks pretty straightforward (famous last words).

Spring, Stash and a winner

Spring appears to have sprung!
My miniature azalea has made itself all pretty,

and the beach is getting busy again (but we found a quiet corner yesterday).

The postman brought me my order from Karen at Wasatch Needlework. Raise the Roof's "Official Crazy Cat Lady"
Have they met me?
I love this design, it has come straight in at number one on the must-stitch list! The only thing I'm not totally sure about is it lists some threads on the back as CCT. I'm thinking that must be Crescent Colours?

And finally the Dandy Dreams chart. There was quite a lot of interest so I drew a name and the winner is Sally! If you could just let me have your address Sally, I'll pop it in the post to you.

Mothers Day, More Stash and a Sneak Preview

Happy Mother's Day! Hope all the Mums out there are being spoiled rotten. The girls got me these lovely flowers. The slighly odd looking one is a bath ballistic from Lush, it smells all delicious and citrussy and the paper label tied to it is impregnated with wildflower seeds so I can plant it in the garden, and use the stick to mark where I put them. How perfect is that? Got to love Lush (and the girls).

The halo slipped a bit last week and I shamelessly bought this new stash (I have precisely NO will power, its official), left to right: Blackbird Designs - Snow Garden, With thy Needle and Thread - Miss Lapin and Just Nan - Needle Tweets. Well, I can call the rabbit and bird ones my Easter Egg...

And finally a little preview of a new design I just finished stitching. This is one corner of the sampler, now I need to come up with some "smalls" to go with it

Snow in Spring

It is definitely spring here. Look I can prove it, here are my snowdrops and crocuses (crocii?). There are primroses out and the first daffs are already showing their colour, yesterday I even dug the infamous sack of you know what into the veg bed.
Despite all these harbingers of spring however, there was a little snowfall in my house a couple of days agao when this little chap landed on the doormat. Gaynor accidently found herself with two of these charts and was kind enough to offer one on her blog, and I was the lucky winner. She also included the cut of grey fabric and gorgeous threads shown. Thank you Gaynor, so far I have been good and resisted starting him as I have a couple of other things I must finish first, but who knows how long my will power will hold out...

Stash and Sh*te

We've had the Dung-Runners here today. I'd never heard of this before we moved here, but the Young Farmers bag up all the sh*te one morning, and then sell it door to door for charity, so The Cancer Research Fund now have some of my cash and I have a large sack of something looooovely to dig into my vegetable patch. I won't share a pic with you ;D

My other shopping this week is much more photogenic. I got a parcel from one of my favourite eBay sellers with beautiful hand-dyed linen, threads and other textile goodness. I feel one of my sea embroideries coming on...

If the snow has gone it must be spring....

...at least the sun is shining, I can see the starts of daffodils poking through, and the frogs have started spawning. The pond only thawed out on Friday and there is a big mound of spawn in the middle of it already. Randy little buggers!

A couple of weeks back Polly posted a picture on her blog of some scarves she'd knitted using Rico's Pompon yarn, and it inspired me to grab the ball I'd bought out of curiosity and try knitting a scarf from it.

It was such fun to knit, and the resulting scarf was so soft and cosy, that I promptly went out and bought another ball in a different colour, and I am LOVING this new one. I can see me knitting a few of these as the girls have their eyes on them too.

Speaking of the girls we bought the fabric for Eloise's prom dress yesterday. How old does that make me feel? Eloise has her prom this year! Anyway its a kind of peacock blue colour ~ think Anchor 170, and we are planning to overlay the skirt with black chiffon and trim it with jet Swarowskis. Watch this space as they say.

Is there a teenager in the house?

In point of fact there are now TWO
(be afraid, be very afraid),
because Naomi is 13 today.....
Yes, my baby is all grown up
It only seems yesterday when she looked like this!
A good post day too. I won a door prize from Arachne's Silken Web at the Online Needlwork Show, and it came today. Isn't it lovely? Sadly I fear there is absolutely no chance whatsoever of this one being done by Christmas...

I've been RAKd

Barb (no blog) let me know a few days ago that she had sent me "a little something". Imagine my surprise when the postman called and "a little something" turned out to be this enormous something!

Not only did she send me this beautiful Karen Buell Autumn Sampler kit, but she also included a fabulous hand beaded fob. You need to take my word for it that this is just so much more sparkly and stunning in real life. Barb said it was meant for my scissors, but I'm planning on converting it into a necklace so everyone can see it.

Quite a few ladies from Stitch and Stash have had RAKs from Barb recently, and I am honoured to be one of them. Thankyou so much Barb!

Crabby New Year

Or at least it will be soon. I'm taking part in a SAL of Raise the Roof's "Crabby All Year", as organised by Daffycat.

I haven't actually put needle to fabric yet as I'm waiting for supplies to arrive, but I've recharted the heading to read "Grumpy" instead of "Crabby", crabby not being a word we use round here unless we are descibing crustaceans, so this is a progress report of sorts ;)

I got some great stash for Christmas, but foolishly forgot to photograph it before squirelling it all away! Anyway my haul included a Hardanger chart, fabric and DMC linen threads in antique mauve, pink and blue shades from Clare, the Ink Circles Croakworth Sampler, a Whimsy and Wit Quaker chart, DMC scented threads and beads from Polly, and a scissor keeper, needle minder and Soie Cristalle silk threads from Karen, so as you can see I was pretty spoiled.

Now as this post is shamefully devoid of any other photos, I'll leave you with a picture of one of the New Years Honours List's new CBEs

OK, so when did Robert become "establishment"?

Supplemental question (for absolutely no bonus points). When did I get old??

Off now to add an appropriate playlist to my side bar...

Look what the Postman brought!

A couple of weeks ago I was thrilled to win a draw on Sharon(Daffycat)'s blog for a penguin floss tag (I love penguins). Well the parcel just arrived, and wow! A plethora of penguins! More penguins, in fact, than you can shake a stick at. Not only the lovely little floss tag (the pattern for that is on Sharon's blog by the way), but also a whole pack of coloured gaolor's rings, some penguin gift tags, a piece of penguin print cotton, an adorable penguin tin, and a penguin Christmas tree ornament.

I love penguins!

Just look!

I'm going to make myself a Christmas Stocking out of the fabric (it doesn't show too well in the picture but the print has lovely glittery snow effect patches). All the rest of the family have stockings that I've made for them, now its my turn! Did I happen to mention that I love penguins?
Thankyou Sharon, I'm overwhelmed.

Monthly challenge and stash shopping

Yesterday was reveal day for the Monthly Challenge at Jaynes Attic. This months design was from Windy Willows. I stitched mine on Zweigarts opalescent lugana, using Anchor 1033, 1034 & 1035. As usual there are some wonderful finishes in the album . I finished mine a Christmas card hanger, here's how I did it:-

I cut two ovals of cardboard and gathered and laced the stitched piece over one of them, and a piece of print cotton over the other, lined them up together back to back and stitched around the edges catching the evenweave to the cotton. So far so much like a pinkeep except that at the centre top I caught in a small loop of ribbon for hanging, and at the bottom edge I sandwiched the top edge of a 1m length of sequin waste between the two cardboard pieces. It is quite easy to pierce the sequin waste with a sharp needle so I just stitched right through it as I stitched the front and back together. Finally I trimmed the edge with a length of braid, fastening it onto the front section rather than around the outside edge as you would for a pinkeep. The cards are hung onto the sequin waste with tiny clothes pegs (the sorth they sell for card making).

Oh, and I mentioned stash shopping. My friend and I went to Exeter yesterday for the Stitching and Creative Crafts show. Not a huge amount of Cross Stitch there, but lots of beading. I got some beads, a highly discounted DMC kit (I didn't really want the kit, but it was so cheap it was worth buying it for the nice piece of eau de nil linen that came with it), a pretty pair of Premax scissors with flower patterned handles, and a kit to make a Machine embroidered piece from organza, where you use a soldering iron to melt away parts of the design, which sounds like a lot of fun.

I got some drop dead gorgeous beaded shoes too. Because they were there...

Back to school!

The girls went back to school today, and it seemed really quiet without them (they are making up for it now of course).

It was Naomi's first day of secondary school. Where did my baby go????

Note the difference in colour between the nice new school sweatshirt and the one thats been washed a few times. You'd think with what they charged for them they'd wash a bit better than that.

I got stash post today. As soon as Naomi got her eye on this she wanted me to stitch it for her. Well, the chart is horrible! Not only is it in colour, which I hate, but it is a HUGE single sheet (A2) folded in four. I think I'm going to isolate the Kitty motif, stitch it up as an ornie, and forget the rest.

Back from Holiday

I love Brittany and as usual, I took dozens of photos. Here is a selection of a few of my favourites

And here are a few highlights
Crepes with Cider!

A French Needlework Shop...

and the stash I got there ;)

Exchanges revealed

All the Christmas exchanges I've taken part in have now been recieved/revealed, so I can share some photos. Many thanks to Julie for the wonderful sampler style pincushion (all stitched over 1!), and to Karen, Rebecca and Gail for the wonderful stitchy gifts. Many thanks also to Claire, Ish and Karen for organising the exchanges at Jayne's Attic.

Now if only someone would gift wrap two extra hours a day for me, I'd find time to do justice to all this lovely stash!

New Stash and a BIG DAY tommorrow

I have had my eye on this piece (Dans la Foret, by Tournicoton) for some time now, and, having had a stressful week, I decided I deserved a treat, and it arrived today. I love it even more in person. Of course I have absolutely no idea when I'll get around to stitching it ;)
Tommorrow is the crowning of the Carnival Royalty, (if you remember, my younger daughter is going to be Fairy Queen) and I put the last crystal on the last dress at lunchtime. I do love cutting things fine!.
Apparently it is going to throw it down, which is a shame, but we shall have to make the best of it.