Weekend's Stitching

I have followers!!  and comments!!  Thanks for both, ladies.  Dani - it took me a while to set up the blog how I wanted it to look.  It's all new to me and there was alot of trial and error involved.  The backdrop I found by accident, it's one of the standard ones but I really liked it so will keep it for a while.  I wanted to add lots of photos so there was plenty to see.  After a week I thought I'd better get round to posting something!

This has been a good weekend socially and stitching wise.  I finished my railway carriage (see below), started a cover kit and have done a good part of Bluebeard's Mermaid.  My week is up tomorrow but I want to finish more of her tail fin so will keep going until Wed or Thur.  I have decided that SAL weeks are decimal, they are actually 10 days long not 7.

This is my railway carriage - it is stitched on a piece of 14 count aida attached to a piece of upholstery fabric.  Earlier this year a man came into the hall where my Toddler Group meet with a load of sampler books from an interior designers.  They were free to a good home.  The cushion lady, the scrapbookers and I fell on them with delight!  We shared them out and I got all the smaller ones.  There are some beautiful pieces of very expensive material there (£75 a metre!).  My heart in my avatar is stitched on one.  I chose this red piece for the railway carriage as it was too dark and patterned to do much else with.  When I turned it over the name label said "Railroad effect".  Now that is what I call serendipitious :-)  These sorts of things happen all the time with my stitching, hence the name of this blog.

The design and words are all my own work, the threads are from my scraps bag, the railway line is a long piece of black threaded under the stitches in the sleepers.  It's a really nice effect and very quick to do.

I don't want to get too political (stitching is my stress relief!) but the main thrust of the campaign is to protest about the fare hikes planned.  Rail travel is the greenest way to travel long distances and we should be supporting it.  I commuted 30 miles a day for 17 years by train and loved my journeys.  I met so many interesting people, some of whom changed my life.  I read so many books and stitched so much too.  We also had two weddings thanks to our journeys.  If you're interested then check out the links for The Craftivist Collective

On a brighter note I spent this afternoon at a baby shower for a good friend.  We played games like Taste the Baby Food (they all taste of yuck) and Sniff the Nappy.  Not as gross as it sounds or looked.  The hostess had melted some chocolate bars onto nappies and we had to guess which ones they were!  Charming!

I took some booties along as I didn't want to go empty-handed but her present will be this cute cross stitch Nimue - The Baby Swing.  I ordered it from Violarium though I have since found you can go direct to Nimue on her French website.  Anyway Violarium sent me half a dozen free charts with my order which was lovely so I was pleased with that.  I just have to find the perfect fabric now, Dawn from Crafty Kitten is helping with that.  My friend doesn't know what "flavour" baby she's having (she has one of each already) so this is perfect as it's unisex.

Once again, thanks for all your comments, happy stitching!