A blog trying to focus on all the nice things in life, those moments when everything turns out right. Finding the perfect fabric for that chart you love, the ideal sampler quote, just the right picture in all the 1000s of magazines you own. Meeting people who share your interests and obsessions and totally understand why you NEED that chart when you already have enough to last until you're 104
It's TUSAL time, the Totally Useless SAL where we all show our ORTS and link-up on Daffycat's blog.
Here is my TUSAL jar with two projects:
I am continuing to use the Tiny Decisions app to choose my projects this week. This was Sunday's choice - Brew Ha Ha by Plum Street Samplers. A nice quiet day in saw almost all the alphabet get completed.
stitched over one on 32 count Platinum Linen
Monday and Tuesday saw Raven from Nora Corbett come out twice in a row. I got lots of black stitching done along the bottom of her dress:
stitched on 32 count Nebula by Crafty Kitten
Finally, it's nearly time for the spookiest Hop on the Blog - the annual Hallowe'en Trick or Treat Blog Hop. For this one, you send me an email or leave a comment saying you would like to take part. A few days before the end of October I will send you an email with a letter of the alphabet. On the 31st you must make a blog post featuring something spooky you have stitched (or crafted) and your letter.
I will list all the participants on my blog and we all hop around collecting the letters to form the spooky phrase - report back to my blog and leave a comment to win a prize!
Regular followers will be aware that for over 3 years now I have run a themed SAL on the first Saturday of each month. First we spent 26 months doing The Alphabet Club and then 12 months of the Zodiac. Now I have decided to listen to the People and post about your choice of theme. In September I asked for suggestions on the blog and then made a poll in the IHSW Facebook Group from those suggestions.
The top three choices were:
Hallowe'en
Birthstones
Dragons
So I will do one for the next three months. At the end of this post I will ask again for your suggestions and one of those will become the theme for January. In November, we choose February's theme and so on. I will post the results in my sidebar so you have plenty of time to decide what to show.
Hallowe'en
Obviously this post could be twenty pages long and I could still be typing but I will try to keep it to less than that!
Hallowe'en is one of my favourites themes to stitch. I always have a spooky project (or three) in my WIPs and several more in my stash and on my wish list.
This is the first ever Hallowe'en projects I stitched:
stitched on 14 count aida
Back in 1996 I stitched this alphabet from a Better Homes and Gardens book. It is now framed and lives in my son's room.
The witch motif seems to feature most often and here's a collage of my own Coven:
You might think of Hallowe'en as Dark stitching, I'm doing Dark October right now but it can be very bright and Orange:
The majority of my pieces are framed, like this sampler by Prairie Moon:
But I have also made cubes, boxes, 3D models and scrapbook pages:
You can see all my Hallowe'en Finishes on my Happy Dance Blog if you click on the Hallowe'en label at the side - Come Happy Dance With Me - Hallowe'en
I mentioned Dark October earlier; that is where I abandon my usual rotation and just stitch on spooky projects. This year I am using the Tiny Decisions App to chose the daily project. So far, Jardin Prive and Nora Corbett's Raven have come out twice and 2 other projects once each. Here's what I've been stitching:
Days 1 and 4 - Jardin Prive Happy Hallowe'en Night
(I also stitched some bats at the other of the piece)
Days 2 and 6 - Nora Corbett Raven (on Nebula fabric)
Day 3 - Just Nan Autumn House (for a Mouse)
Day 5 - JBW Smiling Jack O' Lantern
It's been fun seeing what the wheel chooses for me each day. I do hope to get a couple of finishes this month.
In future months I plan to go through my stash and show you the pieces I hope to stitch in the future but again, 20 pages of designs to share! There are 15 Just Nan designs for a start, including 3 of her mice. Apart from the mice, my top two choices of starts are The Hallowe'en Sampler by Cottage Garden Samplings:
acquired in August 2018
and the Trick or Treat Fairy by Nora Corbett
I have the magazine but you can download it direct from Herrschners now.
What's on my Wishlist? Everything! But this is my main objective:
Hallowe'en at Hawk Run Hollow by Carriage House Samplings. I even have a piece of fabric for it but not the chart. This will be a BAP to be started only after I finish my Discworld Mappe.
I've been following this Mystery SAL this month - Stitchonomy. It's part of the Drawlloween project which is a drawing challenge. I've been incorporating this challenge into my rock painting. Here are the first six days:
Now it's over to you! All you have to do is make a post on the theme of Hallowe'en, mention The People's Choice SAL (you can copy the picture I used at the top of this post and in my side bar) and my blog. Please link up using the URL of the actual blog post, not the home page of your blog. I look forward to seeing what you all post.
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Finally, I need your suggestions for the next poll. Any thing, no matter how obscure, weird or random will go into the poll. Keep the theme suggestions to a single word or two - so you could have Dragons, or Cats, or Blue, or Spring, or Holidays, or Warmth etc. Really anything which could be illustrated in cross stitch.
The Tinies project and planning for Dark October totally changed the face of my stitching in September as the Pie will show. I focused on the Tinies and then moved onto 12 Days of Christmas to clear the decks for Dark October.
So here's the Pie:
Exactly half the month on those Tinies which have now been mailed off to my friend. Maybe a sneak peek of one of them won't hurt?
Oh, there's two of them there! You'll see the rest pretty soon.
Stitch from Stash was much healthier this month too, after last month's splurge. I only bought two things, both from Just Nan. You'll see them on my Birthday Round-up post when I do that.
September
JN Mouse
£11.99
JN Cube
£12.99
Total
£24.98
Finally, it's nearly time for the spookiest Hop on the Blog - the annual Hallowe'en Trick or Treat Blog Hop. For this one, you send me an email or leave a comment saying you would like to take part. A few days before the end of October I will send you an email with a letter of the alphabet. On the 31st you must make a blog post featuring something spooky you have stitched (or crafted) and your letter.
I will list all the participants on my blog and we all hop around collecting the letters to form the spooky phrase - report back to my blog and leave a comment to win a prize!
Each month we have to share the projects we want to complete before the End Of The World. For me, this will be my "18 in '18". Many of them are part of SALs so I will be working on them each month.
This month I worked on 4 of my 18 projects:
1. Donna Kooler - Zodiac - Finish!
stitched on 32 count Millenium Blue linen
2. Jardin Prive - Happy Hallowe'en Night:
stitched on 32 count Cognac Linen
3. Just Nan - 12 Days of Christmas:
stitched on 32 count Vintage Grain linen
4. Mrs Peggotty - Alice & The Flamingo:
stitched over 1 on 25 count blue evenweave
Measi always sets us a discussion topic each month:
September – How do you keep your stitching stash organized?
Organised chaos would be more like it! The problem is that I don't have a room of my own to store everything in one place. Instead I have a cupboard in the Utility Room, some units in the corner of the bedroom, a box next to my stitching table in the kitchen and a large chest in the Living Room.
Bedroom - WIPs not currently in the rotation, finishing materials, scrapbooking supplies
large framed pieces in the wardrobe
Living Room - charts, kits, beads, speciality threads, older items in my stash, magazines stored in boxes.
Kitchen - DMC, current projects in my rotation, book collection.
This bag holds the entire range of DMC in Floss-away bags
Finally, it's nearly time for the spookiest Hop on the Blog - the annual Hallowe'en Trick or Treat Blog Hop. For this one, you send me an email saying you would like to take part. A few days before the end of October I will send you an email with a letter of the alphabet. On the 31st you must make a blog post featuring something spooky you have stitched (or crafted) and your letter.
I will list all the participants on my blog and we all hop around collecting the letters to form the spooky phrase - report back to my blog and leave a comment to win a prize!
Following over three years of themed posts on the first Saturday of each month, we have now come to the end of the Zodiac culminating in Virgo on 1st September. I was keen to continue with a themed post but couldn't think of something as good as The Alphabet or The Zodiac. So I thought "It's time to let the people decide"!
On the 1st September post I asked all my followers to suggest themes for the first month of the new SAL. Then on 14th September I asked the members of the IHSW group on Facebook to vote for their favourites from those suggestions.
Here are the results of that poll:
Hopefully you can see that Hallowe'en was a runaway winner. Most serendipitous for October! So the first theme for The People's Choice SAL on Saturday 6th October will be Hallowe'en.
You can show any finished piece you have, any WIPs, any projects in your stash or anything on your wishlist. As always, the theme is very open to interpretation. It's the taking part that counts, not rigid adherence to any imaginary rules!
My original plan was to choose a new theme once a month, so we would vote for November's theme in October. But people have asked to have a little bit more notice so they can join in and plan their posts/stitching. So here is the schedule for the rest of the year:
October - Hallowe'en (18 votes)
November - Birthstones (8 votes)
December - Dragons (7 votes)
Next Saturday I will ask for suggestions for January's theme and we will continue on a rolling three month schedule from then onwards.
Finally, we need a photo of some stitching! So here's a sneak peek of a current Hallowe'en WIP:
This year I am showing my Just Nan 12 Days of Christmas blocks for the Smalls SAL and also my 30-a-day projects. All smalls also by Just Nan. It's a Nan-a-thon year!
Here is Block 9 of the 12 Days of Christmas:
And here is the full piece. You can see that I have stitched a good chunk of Block 10 too. I want to complete 10 in September so I can dedicate October to Hallowe'en stitching.
stitched on 32 count Vintage Grain linen
I finished Happy Bluebird at the beginning of the month, just need to get a charm and scrapbook it:
stitched on 32 count White evenweave
The next Small in line is Jump For Joy, which is now nearly finished too:
stitched on 32 count Antique White linen
The Donna Kooler Tinies have all been FFO'd and once my friend gives me permission I can show them on here. Should be viewable for next month's Smalls Post.
My final Small is my new app - Tiny Decisons. This is a free app where you type in a question and then give a selection of answers. The app creates a wheel which you can spin to help you decide on a option. For Dark October this year I am also doing Arbitary October where the wheel makes a random selection from your WIPs. I have 5 Hallowe'en WIPs so I put each one in six times and then added Enchanted Alphabet once. Each time a project comes up I will stitch on it for the day and then remove the option so they each get stitched on during the month. If I complete a WIP then I remove all the remaining entries for it to give something else a chance. Here's the wheel all set up ready to go:
Finally, Blogger has a new glitsch to delight and entertain us all. Specially selected commenters can no longer comment on blogs where the comment field is embedded. They can only comment on blogs where the comment field is a pop-up.
So if you like to get comments - go into your Dashboard and change your comment field to a Pop-up. Chatter is restored! Thanks to Brigitte for alerting me to this latest vagary of Blogger.
I don't know where this last week has gone but I meant to blog mid-week with a post-Birthday update and then suddenly it's IHSW and it's over and time to blog about what I did then!
Came down with a stinking cold mostly.
But there was some FFO'ing and some stitching too so it wasn't a totally lost weekend.
I have spent a lot of time stitching the Donna Kooler Tinies for a project a friend is organising. Here's what one of the finished ones looks like:
Once she has decided what she is doing with them and reveals her plan, I will be able to show the fronts to you!
Once they were all completed I was able to return to my 12 Days of Christmas by Just Nan. I'm hoping to complete Blocks 9 and 10 this month so I don't have to do one in October and can focus fully on Dark October stitching!
stitched on 32 count Vintage Grain linen
I've also been pottering along on Alice & the Flamingo by Mrs Peggotty, a little bit each evening. Here's where she was last IHSW:
And here's where she is now:
stitched on over 1 on 25 count blue evenweave
A few people have said that they don't do Facebook and asked if I could host a link-up for them, so here it is! Just add your name and the link to your actual IHSW post, not just your blog home page.
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Finally, the next IHSW will be 19th - 22nd October so make sure you note the date in your diary or come and join us in the Facebook Group - IHSW on Facebook. If you don't do Facebook then you can check in here.
Welcome to the September Gifted Gorgeousness link-up. The link-up date will continue to be the 15th and I will keep the link-up open until the end of each month so you have plenty of time if you are late posting.
The format remains exactly the same, there is a list of rules on the main sign-up page if you want to check what is required but basically anything connected to the word "gift" is allowed, whether it was a gift TO you or is a gift FROM you.
In the past month I have only stitched one piece that fits the "Gifted" category, my Donna Kooler Tinies. These are for a project a friend of mine is organising.
Here are the latest ones to be finished/started:-
stitched on 22 count Hardanger
Now it is your turn to show us your Gifted Gorgeousness for the month. Please use your name or your blog name in the field and NOT the words "September Update" so I can easily see who has linked up this month. And link to the actual post, not just your blog. It is easier if you copy and paste the link, rather than typing freehand.
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I suppose I should show more than one stitching picture in a post, so here is the latest photo of my Temperature SAL, a project designed by Hetti on her blog. We've had a couple of weeks of paler Yellows (17-22 degrees Centrigrade)
stitched on 22 count Hardanger
Finally, the planning for the new Saturday SAL is well underway. I asked people to leave a comment with suggestions for a theme for a blog post and then I listed all the suggestions on the IHSW Facebook Group and they are voting for their favourite there. Whatever they choose, will be what I write a post about.
If you'd like to vote then the link for the IHSW Group is here - IHSW Facebook
If you left a comment after the Poll went up, then I will add your suggestions to next month's list.
