Theme-a-licious May update, Theme and Anti-Theme

Theme-a-licious is hosted by Heather of It's Geek to Me

Each month Heather thinks up a theme for us to stitch to, or in my case, a theme to somehow shoe-horn my existing stitching into, no matter how tenuous the link!

Monochrome May

Pick a colour, any colour, then stitch only on projects that contain that colour for the month!

Usually I can get my stitching to fit in with the relevant theme albeit with some stretching some months.  A round robin counts as a bird, right?  So this month I had the perfect project, Green Goddess by Joan Elliott, lots of lovely green, green and more green in her.

I really wanted to get her face finished this session, there was a lot of filling-in with 677.  In a large area like this it's important to keep your stitches neat and your tension constant or it looks untidy and uneven.  I stitched on her for roughly the same amount of time each evening at the same time.  Here she here, about to have a little rest while I stitch on a Mermaid:

Once I restart her I hope to complete her, I'm in two minds about the square border so I may leave it off and keep her as a circle.

I've stitched the May JBW alphabet kitty in pink and green but I'm not 100% convinced, I used a nice sugar pink fabric because I wanted to use different colours for each month but I think it would look more blossom like if I used pink thread on green fabric.  If I have time at the end of the month I might do the other colour way and see which I prefer!  No picture as yet.

And here is the Anti-Theme piece, what's the opposite of monochrome?  How about multi-coloured?  I've had this gorgeous imitation silk in my stash since the 1990s just waiting to be used and when I saw the Thread Pickerz SAL on FB I decided it was high time I used it.   Eileen is sending us two hearts each week for 8 weeks.  I know I needed another SAL like I needed any more charts but the hearts were so sweet!  Here are the first four designs:

I changed the first heart as it was a plain solid heart designed to show off your chosen variegated thread but I charted our four initials to fill the heart shape.  It's so much fun getting a new chart each Sunday morning and having all day to stitch.  The Small Boy's current craze is video clips on Youtube so I can sit next to him, stitching away and be ready to click on his chosen one.  The Barefoot Books songs are my favourites.

I have reached another milestone - 400 Followers!  That calls for a little giveaway.  I spent today sorting out the parcels for my last two giveaways which should be mailed this weekend.  Then I can see what's left I mean choose something special!  And devise a cunning competition.

Talking of something special, I received my prize for the best wood themed puns on Shebafudge's blogaversary giveaway.  Sharon was celebrating five whole years of blogging which is Wood in anniversaries so I left an extremely hilarious comment on her blog using every bad joke I could think of.  Evidently Sharon appreciates bad jokes (I wonder if her husband tells Dad Jokes!) and said she would send me something wood-themed.  The parcel duly arrived and when I opened it I found a lovely piece of fabric.  Oh well, I thought, she couldn't find anything wooden.  Then I saw the name - Sun Dappled Glade!  How perfect is that?

I even have a chart that will look rather nice on it.  Fifth one down on the right hand side, a Passione Ricamo freebie fairy designed to celebrate Fairy Day 2007.

Finally the Shepherd's Bush Buttercups chart I was looking for has arrived, along with four little friends courtesy of Laura aka Ilkinbillburg of For the Love of my Needle blog.  She said she had all five in her stash for many years and will never stitch them herself.  I have generously offered to lend them to her if she changes her mind!  A Big Thank You to Laura and all the other people who also offered to send the charts to me.  Stitching Bloggers really are the best people!  I have spent my £10 voucher from Willow Fabrics on the required linen and will make a start immediately after my Round Robin mermaid.