December Smalls SAL

The Smalls SAL is hosted by Mary's Thread

This year I have been stitching Christmas Ornaments from the Just Cross Stitch Ornament Specials 2001 to 2009.  I have almost finished this month's ornament which is a design by The Sweetheart Tree called Merry Christmas.  So here is the top part only:

stitched on 32 count linen

I just need to add beads and fully finish it as a bellpull ornament like the other two, albeit slightly larger.  Here are the other Sweetheart Tree Ornaments I stitched for this SAL:

   

I did complete another Word in the Jessica Savage series for Cross Stitcher magazine.  This month it was Embrace:

stitched over 1 on 25 count blue evenweave

All five so far:

At the end of November I joined in with a new SAL - 1 small snowflake for 26 days by Stitchonomy.  I did well to start with but work and pre-Christmas busyness caught up with me and I finished it after Christmas.  I decided to use all beads instead of the charted colours.  The blue are some unbranded beads I had in my stash and the white and crystal are Mill Hill (00479 and 00161).  The fabric is a random piece of opalescent blue linen from stash:

I made a few changes, the blue beads are a bit bigger than Mill Hill and wouldn't all fit so I tended to leave them off where they got too crowded.  The "sparkles" she added on the 27th day are the little single stitches and small motifs inbetween the snowflakes.  I used a Madeira silver metallic for them.  Finally, I added a snowflake charm that Mouse sent me for Christmas.  Now I need a round frame!  For maybe just a round mount for a square frame.

This was a lovely SAL, not too demanding, any other time of the year I would easily have managed one motif per day.  You can buy it from her Etsy store now - Stitchonomy Etsy

I have now started the 12 Days of Stitchmas, originally I intended to stitch a band sampler but serendipity demanded a 12 Days design which I received as a Christmas gift.  Here is the cover:

And here is Day 1

And Day 2:

My plan is to stitch one length of green  border on each day and one colour on Day 1.  If I complete Day 1 then I'll stitch one colour on Day 2.

Then throughout 2020 I will finish one ornament per month.

Finally, I had a Smalls Tree this year!  Usually I have a section of our main tree for stitched ornaments but this year I decided as I had made quite a few myself there were enough to put them on their own tree:

How many do you recognise?

The gifted ones are mostly on this side:

December IHSW

IHSW or International Hermit and Stitch Weekend always starts on the third Friday of the month.  It's a chance to lock yourself away and focus on your stitching for the weekend.  You can take part on your blog or via the Facebook page.  Links at the bottom of this post.

As I mentioned last month, the challenge this close to Christmas is to get ANY stitching done at all!  I did manage to get a couple of hours on the Discworld Mappe by Lyndisfarne Designs on Sunday and Monday.

I stitched Turtle Flippers, a little bit of stitching to finish the one on the right of the design:

And some more on the one on the left of the design plus the start of the owl.

I am also trying to catch up with the Stitchonomy Snowflake SAL, only 2 more snowflakes to go!

She has also given us an additional chart with some "sparkles" to fill the gaps in.  Some people are using beads, but my whole piece is beads!  So I might use metallic threads instead.

I also stitched my monthly Christmas Ornament which I am saving for the Smalls SAL on Friday.

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 17th - 19th January 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. 

The People Chose Winter

This SAL is all about what you want to see on the blog.  Each month I ask for suggestions for themes and then put them up to the members of the IHSW Group on FB to vote for their choice.  This is what they have chosen:

December - Winter

January - Lizzie*Kate

February - TBA

It's definitely felt Wintery around here over the last week, the bird bath has been frozen over a couple of times too.  A lot of Winter designs spill over into Christmas so I'm trying to focus this post on the less-festive side of things!

Which means snowflakes to cross stitch designers, the perfect chance to show off your sparkle with beads, metallics and shades of bluey whites.

My current daily stitch is a SAL from Stitchonomy where she releases a simple snowflake each day.  I have chosen to bead my flakes on a lovely dark blue opalescent fabric from a random eBay buy:

You can find the Facebook group here - https://www.facebook.com/groups/StitchonomySAL

It's a public group so you'll be able to see all the loveliness without joining. The design was free if you signed up before a certain date but will be available from her Etsy shop at the end of the SAL. https://www.etsy.com/nl/shop/Stitchonomy

She also has a Patreon account where you can sign up and get early access to the SALs plus a free daily small chart - https://www.patreon.com/posts/22270940

Regular readers will know I do love a series and the next three samplers are all from series.  The first is from an old issue of Cross Stitcher magazine from the 1990s:

The next is Just Nan's Winter Romance:

Followed by her Winter Typography:

I also stitched this little Drawn Thread design entitled Spot of Winter.  I have done two of the seasons, must do the other two and then fully finish them!

Mill Hill have some lovely Wintery charts, this one is Winter Wonderland:

Nora Corbett has a series of very sparkly Little Snowy buildings of which I have stitched one - Little Snowy Gray Cottage.  There is hardly any DMC in these, all Kreinik and Whisper:

Joan Elliott has a lovely Winter Fairy, but I have only stitched her hand!

That was part of a Birthday card I made for a friend featuring the hands from all four seasons.

I do have another Winter design in my "To Stitch" list; the fourth of Just Nan's Seasons in a Square series.  Hopefully it will be my "10 a Day" for 2020 (Maybe I should make that 20-a-day for 2020?)  Added bonus - Christine won't snigger every time I say Tena Day.

Now it's over to you.  All you have to do is make a post on the theme of Winter, 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 Cats, or Blue, or Holidays, or Warmth etc. Really anything which could be illustrated in cross stitch.

Looking forward to reading them all!

November TUSAL

My TUSAL jar is filling up nicely now we are in the penultimate month of the year.

You can see it resting on two current projects.  The one of the right will be instantly recognisable to anyone who has read this blog this year - my continuing progress on the Discworld Mappe.

Here is the piece I have been working on today:

Look at that adorable tiny castle!

Überwald is a huge mountainous region of wintry climate that is the Disc's answer to (fictional) Transylvania, as in, a land populated almost entirely by horror tropes. It was once a part of the Evil Empire (along with smaller states Borogravia, Zlobenia and Mouldavia). The ruling nobility of the land is composed of feudal werewolf and vampire families. Lately, the dwarfs have also come into power. There are many trolls in the distant mountains, warring against the dwarfs, but in cities such as Bonk, trolls are considered semi-sentient slaves. Humans are still mostly in the roles of "townspeople" or "exploited citizens". Most Igors come from Überwald, where they traditionally serve those on the far side of sanity, using the excellent local lightning for their experiments. Überwaldean is said to be a good cursing language. The principal town/capital in Überwald is the twin cities of Bonk-Schmaltzberg.

As stated by Otto Chriek, Überwalds' scenery is psychotropic: If you say something portentus like "zer dark eyes of zer mind", there would be a sudden crash of thunder, and if you point at a castle on a towering crag and say "Yonder is ... zer castle", a wolf would howl mournfully...

Source: L-Space

A couple of people have commented about "being close to a finish" but I'm afraid not!  I should be at 60% complete by the end of the month which means there is still nearly half the chart to go!  But I am getting through the full coverage section and the millions of mountains so it's all good progress.

The other design on the left of the TUSAL jar is a new start.  Totally unplanned but the Stitchonomy FB page decided to host a small Winter SAL as everyone enjoyed the Hallowe'en one so much.  This will be 27 snowflakes in a circular design when we finish.  Each one is tiny, less than an hour's stitching.  So to make it harder - why not stitch it entirely in beads on dark sparkly linen?

stitched on opalescent blue 28 count linen

The fabric is a random piece of linen from an eBay grab bag.  The white and crystal beads are Mill Hill and the blue ones I bought from a local craft shop a while back.  I got a large bag of four different coloured blues so there will be plenty for this design.

You can find the Facebook group here - https://www.facebook.com/groups/StitchonomySAL

It's a public group so you'll be able to see all the loveliness without joining.  The design was free if you signed up before a certain date but will be available from her Etsy shop at the end of the SAL.  https://www.etsy.com/nl/shop/Stitchonomy

She also has a Patreon account where you can sign up and get early access to the SALs plus a free daily small chart - https://www.patreon.com/posts/22270940

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Finally, it's time to sign up for the Advent Calendar Blog Hop!  For this hop, each participant is allocated a day in December to make their post on.  They will show something they have stitched on a Christmas theme and answer the topic question I set.  I then copy their photo onto my blog post in the style of an Advent Calendar.

So if you'd like to join in, please leave a comment or send me an email.   Let me know if there is a date you would particularly like or one you'd like to avoid.  I will be in touch towards the end of the month!

Here is a link to last year's so you can see how it works:

Advent Calendar Blog Hop 2018

Theme-a-licious June Update and 11 Things

June is Jumanji June or birds and animals themed stitching.  We're really pushing the boundaries of definitions here.  I have a robin and a guinea pig.


Here's the robin:

What do you mean, it's not a Robin, it's a Lady in a Fur Hat?  It's for a Round Robin hahaha.  This design came from an old issue of World of Cross Stitching.  I added the golden curlicues to fill the corners.  It was a nice quick and easy stitch, great fun and a real "just one more colour" as I never wanted to stop stitching at bedtime!

And here is the whole of Melva's Christmas themed RR:

She's having the four Joan Elliott Christmas Petite Angels in each of the corner blocks then a selection of Christmas designs in the other.  Melva will finish the Lady with Book when it returns to her.

And here's the guinea pig:

What's that?  It looks like a snowflake to you?  That's because I was the guinea pig.  Beverly who blogs as Wee Stitchy has a new website Love Thy Thread.  A while back she offered a free chart to anyone who wanted to be a guinea-pig.  So I said "wheep wheep" which is guinea pig for "Me please" and received this lovely snowflake.  I'm stitching it on navy blue aida using 2 strands of DMC Blanc.


The only comment I will make, as the charts are computer generated the snowflake wasn't quite symmetrical.  I just stitched the top right hand quarter then flipped it for the bottom right.  I've inverted the chart and will stitch the left side that way.


Bev has several of these snowflakes on her site plus a wide range of designs at very reasonable prices.  She also runs a loyalty programme whereby you get a free chart if you send a photo of a completed design.  That's an incentive isn't it?  The charts are available as pdf instant download or by post if you don't have a printer with an ink in it!


Heather from It's Geek to Me who runs Theme-a-licious tagged me with this fun 11 things Activity.


The Rules:

• Post these rules.
• You must post 11 random things about yourself.
• Answer the questions set for you in their post.
• Create 11 new questions for the people you tag to answer.
• Go to their blog and tell them you’ve tagged them. No stuff in the tagging section about you are tagged if you are reading this. You legitimately have to tag 11 people.

11 Random Things About Me: 


Number 1. I like to cheat.
Numbers 2. to 11. See this post 10-things-you-might-like-to-know-about


My Answers to the 11 questions from Heather:


If you could choose any profession other than your current one, what would it be? 
I'm a bookseller but I'd like to work in education again, a school librarian or maybe as a Parent/Teacher liaison advocate.


What craft or hobby would you try if money and time were no obstacle?
Nicola from Stitching by a Cornish Seashore is signed up to make this embroidered-cabinet-of-curiousities.  I would love to be able to join her.  Alternatively I'd use the money to pay someone to do my housework then time would be less of an obstacle anyway!


What is the first movie you remember seeing at the movie theatre?
Bambi, in Singapore, when I was about 4.  I clearly remember standing outside the cinema waiting in quite a long line with my Dad. 


What was the last video game you played?
Does Spider Solitaire count?


What are you good at? In other words, what makes you unashamedly yell, "I can do that!" 
Stitching!!


What is your favourite holiday that you've ever taken?
A stitching retreat I did years ago, 4 days of stitching and chatting, all food cooked for us and beauty treatments in the evening.  Bliss! 


If you could have unlimited money to spend at one store, where would it be? 
Libertys of London, they have clothes, stitching, home furnishings, the lot!


What's the best book you've read recently? 
This week it has to be The Consadine Curse by Gareth P Jones, a book about a very strange group of cousins.  It's aimed at the 9-12 age range and I read it in one day.  Very interesting ending!


Star Wars or Star Trek? Why? (NOTE: You must pick one. Flip a coin if you have to, and I will be appropriately dismayed. ;) 
No contest - Star Wars!  Why?  Captain Kirk LOL.  I do know that fans of Star Trek are called Trekkers NOT Trekkies though.


What's the best Halloween costume you ever wore? Or, if nothing sticks out...the best one you ever saw.
The best thing about being a Goth Hippy is that we just wear our normal clothes at Hallowe'en and everyone thinks we've made an amazing effort!
The year I was pregnant with Small Boy I was on the door at our music venue (too big to work the bar as I would usually have done!).  I wore a black hoodie with a kangaroo pocket, hidden inside was a baby doll's leg which I used to "kick" anyone who patted the bump, then I'd slip the leg out of the pocket and scream "My baby's getting out!".  That was fun!


If you had to leave your home quickly what 2 items (besides family, pets, and necessities) would you take with you?
Depends on how long I've got!  If there's a fire then I'd grab my New Rock boots and my leather jacket for practical purposes.  If we're fleeing the country for tax reasons then my stitching, books, earring collection, photos etc.


Here are my 11 taggees:


Heather It's Geek to Me (because I want to read her answers to my questions LOL)
Julie and Yes Dear (because I love her writing)
Shirlee the Easily Influenced Stitcher (because she makes me stifle giggles when I read blogs late at night)
Mouse (because she'll make us all a cuppa when she posts)
Topcho Bla, Bla? Bla! (because she has great taste in books)
Alicia Crafty Princess (because she's a stunner!)
Joyce Random Ramblings (because she's like Blogging Royalty)
Sarah-Beth Cross Stitch Blog (because she lost her furbaby recently and deserves cheering up)
Minnie All XXs (because she might include a photo of one of her collections of figurines which I love)
Karen StitchyWoman (because she helps me come up with mad ideas for projects)
YOU! (because I can't choose between about 10 more people so if you want to be number 11 then leave a comment.)  (see, I told you I cheat LOL).


Of course, none of you are obligated, and I fully realize some of you may not be "in" to this kind of thing. No worries, I am not offended (in advance).


My questions for my taggees: 


1. Watch the film first or read the book first?


2. Which book would you most like to see made into a film?


3. Who would play you in the story of your life?


4. What was the first live band you saw?


5. Who is the most famous person you have ever met?


6. Did you embarrass yourself by blushing/clamming up, saying something stupid?


7. Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner or Breakfast, Dinner and Tea?  or some other random names for your meals?


8. Does your family have a word for something which no-one else in the world uses?


9. What is the worst job you've ever done?


10. How did you get out of doing it?


11. What is the theme song to your life?


Finally, don't forget my Wish You Were Here Summer Postcard Blog Hop.  Click on the picture to find out more.