This week I have mainly been stitching...

So what have I been stitching this week?  Karen's Sweetheart Tree Round Robin and LHN's Home of a Needleworker.  There was some confusion over the mailing dates for the RR and luckily for me Karen gave us all another week if we needed it.  I could have barged on and mailed on the date but I decided to take my time and do it nicely.  And stitch both floral rows that I liked rather than choose just one!

Photo to follow when bands complete

I'm stitching the Home on Home of a Needleworker which is no where near as much fun as the lettering!  Rows and rows of "typewriter" stitching, just back and forth.   Anyway it's looking good and I have the lovely alphabet saved for the end.  Here it is so far:

The prize I awarded to Anne my 2000th commenter arrived in Canada this week!  Yay!  The design was chosen by Christine as the August Challenge piece on the Needlecraft Haven and I thought it would be perfect for Anne.  I stitched it on 18count rose evenweave over 1 using a Stef Francis mercerised cotton in variegated purple.  Lovely isn't it?  I finished it into a pillow using some of the fabric samples as backing.  Anne asked if I'd stitched all the french knots on it myself - is she craaaazzzzzzyyyyyy!  No, at £75 a metre I expect someone else to programme a machine to do them LOL.  No, I didn't pay £75 a metre either, I was given a bunch of old sample books last year.  Each piece is 12 x 12 and makes great ornie backing.

The design came from the Samplers and Santas blog, I just removed the crown and fitted Anne's name in the space.  Good thing she's not called Anastasia or I'd have had troubles!  The link includes nice instructions on how to make a needle keep if you'd like one.

Has anyone else used Stef Francis' threads?  I think I bought them from my old LNS or maybe the Olympia craft show.  They come in a variety of weights, this one is NE 20/3 (I have no idea what that means!!) and some gorgeous colours.  The website is well worth looking at as they do a wide range of items for embroidery as well as cross stitch and other crafts.

I have been treating myself a little bit just lately (it is my Birthday month!) and today I bought two magazines.  The first was Cross Stitch Crazy for the Joan Elliott Christmas booklet.  The second was Cross Stitch Gold for the lovely Blackwork Angel by Lesley Teare and the I Saw Three Ships designs.

As usual I have added the contents pages of these magazines to the special page on my blog.  You'll find it at the top of the blog under one of the tabs labelled "Magazine Contents Page".  The idea is that I post a picture of the contents of any UK magazines I buy.  This will enable you to decide if you want to try find the magazine in your own country.  It's very hard if the mags are sold sealed up to decide if you want to spend the money.  Hopefully this will help you.  Please note the Big Red Disclaimer at the top of the page - I will not scan and email charts.

Finally, I'm trying to comment as much as possible on your blogs but Blogger still won't accept what I type into the word verifier no matter how many attempts I make.  If you have a word verifier because you're afraid of getting Spam then try removing it and the option to post "Anonymous" or have an email address available so I can comment that way.  At the very least warn me there's a word verifier before I type out a long comment and then it pops up after I hit "publish"!