500 Followers Mini-Blog Hop

I acquired my 500th follower recently and decided to host a mini blog hop instead of a giveaway.  So we all give some love and receive some comments and new followers!

Several people signed up and over the weekend I emailed them all the name of a fellow blogger to research and dedicate a post to today.  The posts should be appearing over the next 24 hours depending on where you are and whether people remembered to post!  Here is the full list of participants so you can pop over and see who they have dedicated their post to:

A Stitcher's Story

Stitching with Summer

A Patchwork of Crafts

I Love to Stitch

The Alchymyst's Study

Ishkabibble

Wisdom with Needle and Thread

Stitch Bitch

This and That

Finding Flapjack

Kitten Stitching

The Southpaw Stitcher

Don't forget to leave a comment on their blogs!

I had a lovely weekend in London with the Large Boy, we decided to visit The Art of the Brick exhibition in Brick Lane of all appropriate places!  The exhibition features the work of artist Nathan Sawaya who works in Lego.  All his artworks are made entirely with standard Lego bricks.  It was a fascinating exhibition, it started with some reproductions of famous works of art recreated and reinterpreted in Lego such as the Mona Lisa:

and The Scream:

This one really made use of the 3D nature of the bricks.

The other part of the exhibition was Nathan's own concepts, often expressing how he felt trapped in his career as a corporate lawyer such as this piece which shows the Lego builder escaping from his shell:

You could reproduce this in cross stitch with the stitching bursting out of the everyday you.

This one is a classic piece already as it has been used in the publicity for the exhibition:

I've got about 80 photos of all the pieces so if you want to see more, let me know!!

We also visited the Science Museum and had a quick look round the Natural History Museum too.

The Science Museum had an exhibition on Materials which was very interesting and included this massive sculpture:

The back of the feature: 

I am envisioning something similar using all the shades of DMC now!!

Finally, I suppose there ought to be some stitching in this post.  So here is the piece I worked on during the train journeys to and from London:

Blackbird Designs - Spell of the Moon

stitched on 32 count Cognac linen

(which is less orange in real life)

Day 7 on my Hallowe'en Tree

edit to add - As well as 500 followers, I blew through the 200,000 page views mark today!!  yay!!

500 Followers Blog Hop?

As I mentioned in the last post I have reached a rather big milestone; 500 followers.  I had thought of doing a giveaway to celebrate but to be absolutely honest I still have two giveaway prizes to sort out from earlier this year and I don't want to be still working on 2014's giveaways in 2015!

So I had a little think and thought about a Surprise Blog Hop.  Very simple to take part, just leave a comment on this post making sure I can find your email address and your blog address from your profile.
Next weekend I will email you the name of another participant and you must create a blog post dedicated to that person.  Read her/his blog and find out what they like and post any stitched pictures you might have that you think they might appreciate.  Maybe find an online cartoon or a link to something they love.  Anything you want really.
I will list all the blogs here and we can hop around to see who had dedicated a post to whom.

So not a giveaway in the physical sense but you will receive some thoughtfulness, some comments and hopefully a few new followers yourself.

What have I been stitching this week?  I completed The Little Stitcher piece for the TUSAL and was torn between the latest part of the Joan Elliott Faces SAL and the Frosted Pumpkin SAL.  Then I remembered I have to rechart the skin for the JE design and that tipped the balance for the FP Hallowe'en Not-a-Mystery Town anymore SAL.

Here is my progress:

The fabric is 28 count Moondust by Crafty Kitten and I am using the DMC conversion.  I am very happy with the house colour, I blended 501 and 503 to make it a little bit more varied than plain 503.

I must order some more fabric from Crafty Kitten, you get a discount code in your Birthday Month and mine is nearly over!

Finally, I have been coerced into signing up for the DUCJC2015 (Debbie's Ultimate Crazy January Challenge) in honour of the recently departed Debbie.  I have made a list of 27 designs I want to stitch on during January with the remaining four spaces put aside for new additions over the next three months or maybe unfinished projects from this year!  Who else finds it fun just going through your list of designs and piles of charts?  So many are gifts from friends so they come with little notes and letters to re-read too.