Gifted Gorgeousness August Link-Up Post

Welcome to the Gifted Gorgeousness link-up post!  The link-up date will continue to be the 15th of each month but I will keep the linky open until the end of each month so you have plenty of time to join in.

The format remains EXACTLY the same as last year so I'm sure you are all aware of what can be included - gifts to and from you; charts, fabric or threads; shoe-horns welcome!

Since my last GG post I have worked on a few gifted pieces:

Elizabeth Shephard by The Scarlet Letter - a gift from Nicola:

I finished this one on the 16th July and added a little personalisation to show it was a gift from NP (Nicola) to JP (me):

Counting Bats by Just Nan - a gift from Epic Mel:

Ghostly Mandala by Ink Circles - fabric is a gift from Rachel:

stitched on 32 count Autumnal Woodland from Crafty Kitten

Gathering Honey by Jannlynn - a gift from and to my friend Sam:

Little Snap Dragon by Kustom Krafts - a gift from Lesley:

stitched on 32 count Murano Evening Sky by Crafty Kitten

I also received a lovely surprise gift myself.  Remember Kim's 60 RAKs for her 60th Birthday?  Seems like her record-keeping isn't quite as good as her stitching and painting because I got a second gift!

A Mill Hill kit, some DMC, gorgeous fabric and a pencil tray

Close-up:

Kim says this porcelain tray is painted in the 18th Century style using 24K gold!

It is just so exquisite, as all Kim's painted pieces are.

We'll do a little GGG this month.  I ordered some Tibetan Silver charms for a couple of projects.  These come in bags of 10 charms all the same.  It is rare I need ten charms so I will pop one of each into a bag and send it to one lucky participant.  All you have to do is link up below and tell me how charming you are!  Or just indicate you'd like to be in the draw.

Just some of the charms I got!

Here is the place for you to link up so we can see what Gifted Gorgeousness you have been stitching so far this year.  Please use your name or your blog name in the field NOT the words "August 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.

Thank you.  I can amend links if you make a boo-boo though.

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Finally, The Days of Jo's Life Big Birthday Blog Hop was been launched and is taking sign-ups.  The Hop will be on the 17th September.  To take part all you have to do is leave a comment or email me.  Nearer the date I will allocate you a Year of My Life and on the 17th September you do a blog post about that year or that life event in your life or what you were doing at that age (assuming you are that old!).  Also, post something you have stitched which you think I will like.  Lots of people have already signed up but there are still some spaces left if you'd like to be involved.

It's Been a Challenging Week

But in a good way!  First I've been continuing with my Daily Art Challenge and then on the 5th the Olympic Challenges for the WIPocalypse and Stitch Maynia started.

I'll show all the Olympic stitching in my WIPocalypse Update later this month but for now, here's the daily art themes:

Day 7 - Pattern

Southwest Garden by Karen E. Dudzinski

Day 8 - Trees/Flowers

Bluebell Wood from Cross Stitch Collection

Day 9 - Reflection

Love by The Stitcherhood

Day 10 - In My Wardrobe

Celtic Christmas by Lavender & Lace

Day 11 - Red

Bande de Dragons by Dessins DHC

Day 12 - Water

Hear the Sea Call by The Stitcher's Hideaway

My main focus for the Marathon part of the WIPocalypse Olympics has been Gathering Honey by Jannlynn.  I have finally finished all the fiddly green leaves in the top left corner and now only have more fiddly leaves in the bottom right corner to face!

There are some purple flowers and some red flowers to be added to this corner and theee rows of plain border, which I've made a start on.  I will also backstitch all of this corner before I move on to the bottom corner.

Here's the whole thing, you can see I did a little bit more of the backstitch in the bottom left garden, there are still a hundred French Knots to be added in that area.

stitched on 28 count evenweave

I've also been working away on Ghostly Mandala by Ink Circles and I'm well over halfway now:

stitched on 32 count Autumnal Woodland by Crafty Kitten

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And now - a chat about blogging!  Most of us use Blogger because it's easy and it's free.  We have the little Followers button on our blogs so we can connect with the people who read our blog.  Since Blogger disabled their Reader people now use a variety of Readers to follow blogs (I personally use Feedly) which means they don't always click the Followers button.  I get notifications from Bloglovin that I have new followers there but they don't show on my blog counter.  So please, if you follow via Feedly, Bloglovin' or any other Reader - click to be a Follower too.  I have a little giveaway every time it ticks over a century so it's in your best interests LOL

Next - commenting.  We love comments, it's such a great way to connect with people and discover what people enjoy on your blog.  I personally try to reply to every comment via email.  But we have a couple of little problems here.  Number one is the "no-reply" commenter.  This may be a person who hasn't added an email to their profile or it may be a person who has gone over to Google Plus and their email hasn't linked.  If you are a "no-reply" person, email me so I can answer you.

Number two is political!  Blogger, Blogspot and Gmail are owned by Google.  Google want to take over the world and ensure we all use their products.  So certain email accounts (Yahoo and AOL) aren't accepted and while the comment appears on the blog the commenter may get a "failure" email and the blog author won't get an email notification.  One solution is for the commenter to email the blog author with the text of their comment, another is for the blog author to enable "moderate comments" so ones without email notifications are left unpublished until you go and look.  Then you can copy and paste the text and reply that way.  This is what I do.  Of course, the commenter can also use their Gmail account for blogging, which again is what I do.  I have AOL for boring real life stuff and Gmail for stitching stuff.

Number three - replying to comments.  I visit up to 50 blogs some evenings, leaving comments on many of them.  I do not have time to go back and visit again on the off chance the author has responded to my comment.  Neither do I want click the "send notifications" button and be drowned with several hundred emails telling me that Tom, Dick and Harry have also commented on that post.  If you are going to respond to my comment - email me! Or if it was a question other people might be interested in hearing the answer - respond in your next post.  Please.

Any questions on any of the above issues - please leave a comment or email me.

Glad to be of service!

Finally, thanks to everyone who has taken part in the Summer Linky Party so far.  You still have the weekend to join in if you wish.

The Marvellous and Mesmerising Alphabet Mob

It's the first Saturday of the month so it's time for detention!

"They only met online, but it changed their lives forever"

I think most of you know the lovely enigmatic Chiara who blogs at The Grey Tail?  We were chatting via email a while back and between us came up with the idea of an A-Z language challenge.  We batted some ideas around and are calling it the The Alphabet Club.  Chiara has the full details on that link but basically she will post a link-up post on the first Saturday of each month (Saturday being detention day in the film) reminding us of the month's letter and we will all link up with themed things, from stitching to designers and local customs.

M is for Mummy from A Dark Alphabet designed by Julie and Becky's Note of Friendship blog.  That Mummy was so much fun to stitch!

Here's another Mummified creature:

Adapted from a Carand88 design

M is for Measure (and Mouse and Metallic) as shown in the Brooke's Book's Stitcher's Alphabet piece I am stitching for the Alphabet Club SAL:

M is for More Mouses (the creature, not the blogger, not yet!).  And who designs the cutest mice?

Margaret Sherry!

There are a few M designers but Mirabilia must be the most well-known.  I have stitched a number of the Mirabilia free cherubs and also partial designs for Round Robins.  The first full size Mira I stitched was The Friendship Tree back in 2003 for a friend's new baby.  Unfortunately I didn't take a photo!  The second was Sleeping Beauty:

Then July's Amethyst Fairy (again no photo) and finally Bluebeard's Mermaid:

(Can you tell I've been playing with the new collage maker?)

I've stitched a few Mill Hill kits too, they are probably the most well-known brand of beads in the stitching world.  The industry standard in the same way that DMC is.  It should come as no surprise to find that their kits are heavily beaded!

I have an M on my WIPs list - my Mandala by Ink Circles:

And now my Mates, my stitching friends!

Margaret's Blog

Miniz' Diary

Measi's Musings

(home of the WIPocalypse)

Mii Stitch

Mrs Milkybar Kid's Musings

Mabon Stitcher

Mary Joan Stitching

Michele's Made Ups

The Musing Badger

There's also a lot of people whose blog name begins with "My...." so I won't list all of them.  You can see them in the blog roll down the right hand side! 

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There have been a few more entries in the daily Art Challenge I mentioned last post.

Day 3 - Shadows

Passione Ricamo - Silhouette Fairy (it's kind of like a shadow!)

Day 4 - The Sky

Joan Elliot - Mother and Baby Dragon

Day 5 - Zooming In

Joan Elliott Christmas Angel

(I showed just one frame of this zoomed in)

Day 6 - Smiles

San Man Originals Spooky SAL

Finally, don't forget to link up on Monday for the Tenuous Shoehorn's first linky party - the theme is Summer.  Make a post somehow connected with Summer and show some Summery stitching and link up here.  Like a blog hop but less work for me LOL.  The Linky will be open all week because Summer is the time to be lazy! 

August 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 left we have Ghostly Mandala by Ink Circles:

stitched on 32 count Autumnal Woodland by Crafty Kitten

Can you see the tiny little ORTS?  That is literally how much thread I waste from each length.  I stitch "secured needle" with a 28 petite so I can stitch down to the last needle length, tuck it under some stitches and snip a cm off for the jar.

And on the right is Gathering Honey by Jannlynn:

stitched on 28 count linen

And here's a close-up of the lovely leaves:

There are three different sets of leaves with three or four colours in each set.  The bigger green ones were quite simple but the more lime green ones are very fiddly.

I've been posting on FB about my son's Art Challenge that I am joining in with using my stitching.  There is a theme for each day in August and here they are so far:

Day 1 - Breakfast

Witchy Brew by Witchy Stitches

Day 2 - Faceless Self-Portrait

J by Nora Corbett

I have a new collage maker.  Someone recommended it and it's awesome!  As well as the standard collages I usually use there are all sorts of special effect ones like the two above.  You can find it here - Fotojet and it's really easy to learn to use.  Best of all, it's free!  You have to create a login to use some of the features but it's still free!

I got a lovely surprise in the post this afternoon, a piece of fabric from Chromatic Alchemy from Tiffany:

32 count Amortentia Belfast linen

It's slightly more maroon than the photo and the pale parts are not so obvious in real life.  When you look at it there's all sorts of weird shapes and faces in there.  There is clearly a ghost just to the right of the centre line.  I won this in a "Guess What I'm Stitching Next" competition on Tiff's blog.

I'm wondering what it would look like with this chart from Life's Trivial Pursuits?

Finally, as there is no Summer Postcard Blog Hop this Summer I have decided to host a simple Linky Party next Monday instead.  The Tenuous Shoe-Horn!   The theme is Summer Holidays and basically all you do is make a post on or near 8th August and then link-up on my blog.  The post must show some stitching, past or present with a link, however tenuous, to the theme Summer Holiday.

Here's a picture of a shoe-horn to advertise the Party!

There will be a small prize for one lucky participant.  Invite your friends and followers to join in too.

Fifth Friday Pie and Owls

Last Friday was the Fifth Friday in the month of July so as I'm working a four week rotation each Friday I get a bonus project!  I have chosen the Teresa Wentzler Byzantine Ornaments as my Fifth Friday projects and started work on the second one this weekend.

Here's my progress:

stitched on 28 count burgundy linen

This one is so much quicker than the first one, found here Byzantine Ornament I.  You can see I have totally changed the colour scheme again.  I'm using the charted gold colours but the accent colour is DMC 321.  I've added some extra splashes of red too.  And yes, I am aware that one satin stitch diamond is incomplete, I used the end of the length and I'm going to finish it when I use that colour in the outer diamonds next.

I'm making great progress on my evening project which is Ink Circles' Ghostly Mandala:

stitched on Autumnal Woodland by Crafty Kitten

It's symmetrical!  I reckon I am at least 40% of the way through.  Nothing more on Gathering Honey because it's the weekend but I will pick that one back up tomorrow.

Spending was much more sensible this month:

JCS Hallowe'en Special	£8.45
Dragon Boo Xs & Ohs	£3.33
Monthly Spend	£11.78

Obviously the JCS magazine is an essential and to justify postage I add to add a little chart!  This is actually a collaboration between Dragon Dreams and Xs & Ohs:

Cute, isn't it?

And now for Pie:

You can see what my two focus pieces for Justine's Just One July were - You Were Hatched (Finish!) and Gathering Honey.

The only thing you haven't seen before is a piece I started for a FB SAL called "Now I Know My ABCs".  Much like the Alphabet Club, you chose a design and stitch the relevant letter each month.  I spent a lot of time trying to decide what to stitch.  I wanted a project which would only take a couple of hours each month but didn't fancy spending two years stitching on a small alphabet either!  So I started this one:

Close-up: 

Stitched on 32 count Tiger Lily Murano from Sparklies

Would anyone like to guess what design this is?  The spider is my own addition, it does not feature on the original chart.  You can find the answer here.  My witch thread holder came from The Primitive Hare.

Finally, how often do you go into work and see an owl?  Only on Harry Potter's Birthday!

Yes, that is a real live owl in a real live bookshop!  We has all sorts of fun and games to celebrate the launch of the new play which is the eighth book in the Harry Potter series.  And an owl!  Which apparently made the other stores in our cluster quite envious because they didn't have owls and we did.  Haha.

He doesn't look happy!