Days of Jo's Life - Big Birthday Blog Hop

It's here!!  I have timed this post to appear at the same time I was born, so please think of my poor Mum when you see it.  I do have a Happy Dance to share with you all later, I'm sure you can guess what it is.

aged 9 weeks with my Nana and Grandad

The blog hop starts with me.  It is August in the year 1966, England have won the World Cup and a young couple are expecting their first child.  The husband is in the army and away from his wife who is staying with her parents.  Each weekend he comes home expecting to see his newborn baby.  Each weekend he goes back to the barracks, childless.  Finally, we reach September the 16th and the baby is on its way!  Hurry home Dad!  Dad hitch-hikes over 200 miles home, bursts through the door "Where is the baby?"   "Oh, baby will be a while yet, we believe there is a good book in there too".  Eventually I appear at 2,15am on the morning of Saturday 17th September.  "Saturday's Child works hard for a living" - they got that right LOL.

aged 9 months - look at me with my duckies all in a row

To read more of my thrilling life story follow each link in turn.  Remember some links will appear later than others as people live in different time zones.  There are a couple of blank years where nothing much happened!  If you did anything exciting in one of those years, please feel free to blog about it and join in belatedly.  Leave a comment and a link.

1967 - Vickie

1968 - Ariadne

1969 - Lesley

1970 - Beth

1971 - Gillie

1972 - Carolyn

1973 - Cheryl

1974 - Christine

1975 - Deborah

1976 - Katie

1977 - Astrid

1978 - Cathy

1979 - Melinda

1980 - Geeky Heather

1981 - Gracie

1982 - Heather

1983 - Jocondine

1984 - Justine

1985 - Kerry

1986 - no link

1987 - Leonore

1988 - Elfie

1989 - no link

1990

1991 - Tiffany

1992 - Kaye

1993 - Mini

1994 - Mouse

1995 - Stephanie

1996 - Diya

1997 - no link

1998 - Preeti

1999 - no link

2000 - Barb

2001 - no link

2002 - Riona

2003 - Sarah

2004 - no link

2005 - Sharon

2006 - Pat

2007 - Kim

2008 - Noni

2009 - Susan

2010 - Rachel

2011 - Barbara

2012 - Jackie

2013 - no post

2014

2015

2016 - Bea

Welcome Back to the Present!  Here in the present we have the promised Happy Dance for Ghostly Mandala by Ink Circles.  Earlier this year Rachel sent me some gorgeous dark fabric she just couldn't get on with and thought I would like.  I decided it would be good for the Ink Circles series of Mandalas.  I have three of them from Just Cross Stitch and only need to buy the fourth.  Because the Ghosts were charted for coloured thread on white fabric I had to switch them and used B5200 for the outline.  There is a stitcher on FB who has done the reverse, she has stitched the actual ghosts in white rather than the charted outlines.  They do look good that way if anyone is considering it.

stitched on 32 count Autumnal Woodland by Crafty Kitten using B5200

Finally, I will keep this brief because there's a lot of reading in those links!  I hope you all enjoy the Blog Hop, BYOC (Bring your own cake) and loved the stitching shown.  I have several stitchy parcels already which have been arriving throughout the week so I'll be back later with some more Gifted Gorgeousness photos to show you all.

April TUSAL

It's TUSAL time again!  For those of you new to blogging, the TUSAL is a project run by Daffycat, click on the button on the right hand bar for more details.

Here is my ORTS jar posing with the current stitching projects:

On the right we have Just Nan's Spring Typography:

stitched on 32 count Dark Reed linen from Willow Fabrics

And on the left we have a new WIP!  This is another Nora Corbett design called Little Snowy Gray Cottage which I won in a giveaway an embarrassingly long time ago.  All the Kreinik, beads and Aqua Ray threads were included.  I started this one for Day 19 of the DUCJC2015 and stitched this much:

stitched on 32 count Blue Hydrangea Opalescent from Crafty Kitten

Here is my continuation:

Usually I would stitch all the plain thread, then the Kreinik and then the beads.  But this is nearly all Kreinik!  There is one Waterlilies silk recommended but at over £5 a skein I have substituted a Jodyri thread called Emerald Forest instead.

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The Easter Treasure Hunt Blog Hop

This took place as usual on Good Friday and was so much fun!  Fun for the Picture Posters who put a lot of effort into displaying their letters, fun for the Hoppers who got to visit some new blogs and revisit old friends, and fun for me to laugh when people couldn't work out the phrase even when they had all the letters!  It is always satisfying to stump a few people.  Mwah haha, evil laughter.

The phrase that all you found (and Googled) was The Ukrainian Pysanka Egg.  The beautifully decorated eggs from the Ukraine - "it is an Easter egg decorated using a wax resist (aka batik) method. Its name derives from the Ukrainian verb “pysaty,” meaning “to write.”  (“Pysanka” is the singular form; “pysanky” is plural.)" - source Pysanka

As in many of our Easter traditions the eggs represent a blend of the old beliefs and the new Christian beliefs - "The design motifs on pysanky date back to pre-Christian times–many date to early Slavic cultures, while some harken to the days of the Trypillians, my neolithic ancestors, others to paleolithic times.  While the symbols have remained through the ages, their interpretation has changed, in an act of religious syncretism. A triangle that once spoke of the three elements, earth, fire and air, now celebrates the Christian Holy Trinity.  The cross which depicted the rising sun is now the symbol of the risen Christ.  Sun and star symbols once referred to Dazhboh, the sun god, and now refer to the one Christian God.  And the fish, which spoke of a plentiful catch and a full stomach, now stands in for Christ, the fisher of men. Even so, under this Christian veneer, there still lurk the berehynia and the serpent, the sun and the moon, the old gods, the old ways, and the old beliefs."  - source Pysanka

source - Wikipedia

An unfinished pysanka ready for the black bath of dye. It bears the Ukrainian Easter greeting: "Christ is risen!"

source - Wikipedia

Evalina told me there are Polish versions of these eggs known as Pisanka - Wikipedia - Pisanka and that her aunt was a very talented decorator of the these eggs.  It seems that many Eastern European countries have a version of the craft.

I also found some lovely cross stitch versions in a recent issue of JCS magazine:

Just Cross Stitch - April 2015

If you are interested in learning more about this beautiful art, Wiki is a good starting place as ever and the Pysanka website has some great information too.  This page in particular has some lovely photos - Pysanky - Types.  If you do decide to stitch one or have a go at making a real one, let me know and you'll get the Star Position for the Treasure Hunt next year!

I decided to give a chart as the prize this year, Picture Posters get one entry into the draw, Blog Hoppers get one entry into the draw, anyone who does both, gets two entries.  My son picked out one name and the winner is:

Cathy - The Stitching Grandma

Congratulations to Cathy, a new entrant to my World Of Blog Hops and hopefully a future regular.

Which brings me nicely to the topic of the next Blog Hop.  Usually this would be Summer Postcard Hop which takes place throughout the Summer.  But this year will be different!  I am celebrating a Big Zero Birthday in September and have planned a BIG BLOG HOP for the event.  My plan is to attempt to get one Person per year of my life and allocate each person a year.  I will give you a Fact About Me from that year and ask you to base your post on that fact.  So you might get 1971 - "I am five years old and I start school".  Your post could be about you being five, you starting school, you in 1971 (if you were born by then) or some world event which is relevant to you from 1971.

Finally, I will ask you to post a photo of something you have stitched which will appeal to me!  I think you all know my tastes in stitching by now and I'm looking forward to some eye candy and probably some stash acquisitions too!  Got to have something to spend that Birthday money on.  So if you want to be in the Hop, please leave a comment or email me.  Because we need so MANY participants for this one, please feel free to share it on your blogs and invite your friends to join in.  The more the merrier!  We can always share eventful years or skip the dull ones depending on how many people we get.