Spring Has Sprung, The Grass Has Riz

I wonder where the boidie is?

The Boidies is on the sampler!

Little Fat Blue Boid

Hiding Bunny Wappit and another Blue Boid

The whole piece!

Spring Typography by Just Nan is now a finished piece.  I stitched this on 32 count Dark Reed Green linen from Willow Fabrics using the recommended DMC and DMC conversions.  I recharted the animals to be over one as per the previous two Typography samplers.  I am particularly pleased with how the little fat birds came out compared to the over two versions.

I also followed the pattern of the previous two Typographys to change one of the words.  We had Awesome Autumn and Winter Wonder.  Can you spot the Spring change?

I'm currently painting a frame for this so I can get it on display while Spring is still here.

Everyone seemed to like my latest start, another Just Nan design but a spooky one this time.  Scream Girls is now a quick finish!

stitched on 32 count Mid Green linen

I'm going to pop this one in the printer and try scanning it to get a better picture.  The green from the previous photo was much more realistic.

I was smiling when I stitched this one because of the title - Scream Girls.  How do we know the ghosties are girls?  They look just like all of Nan's other ghosties apart from one thing - eyelashes!  Yes, in the world of cartoons, eyelashes signify female.  Male characters do not have eyelashes.  Don't believe me?  Check out the exhaustive investigation done by The Malcontented Mother.

And what do two finishes mean?  Time for another start!!  I did debate over this one, whether to have another start or continue on with Little Snowy Silver/Gray Cottage and then I thought "It's the Fifth Friday in my Four Weekly rotation so it's a bonus week, let's go for the new start."

stitched on 28 count burgundy linen

The photo is rather blurry because that was the only way to get the colour accurate!  Trust me to pick another hard-to-photograph fabric.  This is going to be Ornament Number One from Teresa Wentzler's Byzantine Ornaments Collection.   Heather Silver Lotus is stitching these for her smalls this year which was my inspiration to start them too.  Typical TW, there are two lots of blended colours in here already and a lot of fractionals too.  This is all the cross stitching, the rest will be speciality stitches.  I am also thinking of adding metallic backstitch to bling it up a little.

I did stitch on Little Snowy Gray Cottage earlier this week and here is where I am now:

stitched on 32 count Blue Hydrangea opalescent from Crafty Kitten

Little bit more hedge on the right and the same amount of hedge and wall on the left side.  Some Blue Rays as snowflakes and fallen snow and then the beading!

I have put together my usual Pie Chart for the month's stitching but realised that I hadn't included my Stitching Spend last month.  So here is March and April.

March
Just Cross Stitch subs	£ 30.73
April
365 motifs book	£   4.50
EBay Fabric	£ 13.71
Discworld Map	£ 37.00
Hallowe'en Happiness Dragon Alphabet	£   5.20 £   6.87
Mill Hill beads 32 Belfast Pink Fabric JN Hallow'en Chart	£   1.35 £ 12.95 £   5.39

Total for April - £ 86.97   Good job I am not doing Stitch from Stash this year!

The 365 motifs book, the eBay fabric and the first two charts were impulse buys because they were bargains!  The Imaginating Hallowe'en chart will do for the Hallowe'en Blog next year and the Dragon Alphabet for the Alphabet Club when I finish the Stitcher's Alphabet.  Nothing like planning ahead!

The Discworld Map was unmissable at 20% off introductory offer and is an investment! 

The beads I need for the Brooke's Book's Stitcher's Alphabet and the pink fabric is for Summer Typography which a little kookaburra tells me is my Birthday present this year.  All I needed from SewandSo was the beads but you can't waste postage on that so I thought I'd spend some of my overtime money on fabric and another JN chart for the collection! 

Finally - Time for Pie.  Fairly predictably Nora Corbett dominates the chart again with Just Nan coming second:

April WIPocalypse Listening While You Stitch

WIPocalypse is hosted by Measi's Musings

Each month we have to share the projects we want to complete before the End Of The World.

The focus of my WIPocalypse will be my "16 in '16" which are 16 projects I particularly wanted to concentrate on in 2016.   The full list can be found on my WIPocalypse page where you can also find my secondary list "16 Series in '16".

My main goal is to keep to my rotation of one small every Friday and the rest of the month working on my focus piece until it is finished.  I also have a number of SALs I want to keep up with:

The Alphabet Club - a different letter on the first Saturday of each month

Gifted Gorgeousness - post anything gifted on the 15th

Hallowe'en Ornie Blog - a different spooky theme each month

Christmas Ornie Blog - a different festive theme each month

Smalls SAL - last Thursday of each month

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And now for the progress report:

I have worked on 4 out of 16 projects since my last WIPocalypse, plus 4 from my series list.

4. Little Snowy Cottage by Nora Corbett - WIP

stitched on 32 count Blue Hydrangea opalescent Murano from Crafty Kitten

I got bored with the silver so moved onto the bronze in the windowframes.

11. Elizabeth Shephard by The Scarlet Letter - WIP

stitched on 30 count linen

I worked on the bottom right hand corner

12. J by Nora Corbett - Finish

stitched on 32 count Love-in-the-Mist Murano from Crafty Kitten

16. Counting Bats by Just Nan - WIP

stitched on 32 count lilac linen

And the series:

1. Christmas Cubes by The Primitive Hare - WIP

stitched on 35 count Country Mocha from Willow Fabrics

I am stitching these out of order to fit in with the themes on the Christmas Ornie blog

6. The Stitcher's Alphabet by Brooke's Books - WIP

stitched on 28 count afghan

9. Spring Typography by Just Nan - New Start

stitched on 32 count Dark Reed Green linen

very bad photo of the colours!

15. Alphabet Fairies by Nora Corbett - see above.

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Measi always gives us a topic to discuss too:

April - What do you listen to while you stitch?

This is an interesting one because last time I answered it, the TV was on a lot of the time.  This year, the Small Boy has decided the TV is not allowed to be on during the day!  So when he is at home the Large Boy and I have taken to sitting at the kitchen table and watching YouTube together.  Sunday afternoons we watch a film via the disc-drive or YouTube.  The rest of the time, it's either comedy clips or I have started following some FlossTubers.  He likes their accents and the way they get excited about projects ("it's so purrty!", also "flaaass taass", he loves that one).

Here are a few favourites who blog regularly:

Kow Girl Kate

(amazing Lavender & Lace conversions)

The Stash Queen

(365 starts this year!)

Corrie Berry

(She's British and looks and sounds like the Reception teacher at the boys' old Primary School)

(Her parents have a farm and she shows sheepies and stuff too!)

Tracy P

(She's hilarious, there's one where she's showing off her Lego and making up stories about it and another where she talks about dating.  Very funny!)

I rather like having someone in the room with me chatting about their stitching and stash.  The rest of the time I still listen to Planet Rock on the radio, which is what is on at the moment as I type this out.

Talking about other media brings me to Bloglovin' which is one of the popular ways of following blogs.  I have been getting emails from Bloglovin' telling me about new followers but only recently found out where the whole list of them is!  I have 245 extra followers!  Well, not actually because some do already follow me "properly".  So my request is - if you follow via Bloglovin' could you possibly click on the Followers button to the right of my blog.  And leave a comment too, it's nice to chat with my followers.  If you have a blog yourself, I promise to return the following too.

Finally, my map chart arrived!!  It's really well presented and laid out.  I will do a full review once I've had a proper peruse.

30 pages of chart and 2 pages of key!

Lyndisfarne Cross Stitch Designs

Elizabeth in the Hermitage

Back in 2011 Joysze of Random Ramblings coined the phrase International Hermit and Stitch Weekend where you spend as much of the weekend as possible stitching.  It always commences the Third Friday of every month and there is a sign-up post on Joysze's blog.

Here are the guidelines for IHSW and here is April's sign-up page.  You can also copy Hermie the crab onto your blog to show everyone you have joined in.

The focus of all my IHSWs this year has been Elizabeth Shephard by The Scarlet Letter.  This is a long term project started back on Day 14 of the DUCJC 2015 and worked on each month since then.  She is a Quaker so you get a mini Happy Dance with each complete motif.

This is the part I focused on this weekend:

These brown motifs are in the bottom right of the design.  So I have completed 3/4 of the whole piece now,  Just one more whole motif and a few half motifs round the edge.

The centre six motifs are stitched in green with the edge ones in brown.  I wonder if this was a deliberate design choice or if Elizabeth ran short of the green thread?  She couldn't take advantage of next day delivery from SewandSo like we can!

Here is the full piece so far.  Next month I'll finish the current motif and start the final whole one which features a traditional swan.

stitched on 30 count linen

I've been making steady progress on Just Nan's Spring Typography too.  The next step is to find my graph paper and rechart the animals to be over one like on the other Typography designs.  Here is the part I have been focusing on:

stitched on 32 count Dark Reed Green linen from Willow Fabrics

That is a white bunny appearing behind the pink I and N, not a ghost; this is Spring not Hallowe'en!

Finally, I was rather enabled this weekend.  Kaye from Kitten Stitching had shown us a picture of a Map of Westeros she had recently bought and I commented that I had never stitched a map although I do enjoy drawing them.  And then this popped up in my newsfeed on Facebook:

Isn't it awesome?  Bonus points to anyone who identified it without reading on.

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It is designed by Lyndisfarne Cross Stitch Designs and is on special offer until 25th April.  You can buy the chart, the full kit or a partial kit which doesn't include all the blue of the sea so you can stitch it on a hand-dyed fabric.  There are More photos on Facebook.

Of course, I sent the photo straight off to Dawn from Crafty Kitten.  "I need a blue gradient fabric, light blue in the centre getting darker as it spreads to the edge."  It won't have the distinct line between the two blues but that would be almost impossible to get in the right place.

I have also emailed the designer (who is lovely) and checked that it is charted by eye and not CGI.  You know how much I hate the confetti style computer generated stitching.  There are 32 pages of chart and on 28 count it will measure 60cm square (24 inches).  Slightly smaller on the 32 count I plan to use.  A page a month will mean a three year project!

Have you guessed yet?   It is the Discworld as created by Sir Terry Pratchett, map assistance from Stephen Briggs and drawn by Stephen Player.  And once payday arrives on Wednesday it will be mine!

Blingely Blingely Bleep

Q: What's this?

A: a tin full of Bling ORTS!

From this:

I've been working away on Nora Corbett's Little Snowy Gray Cottage although to be honest, it should be Little Snowy Silver Cottage there's so much metallic sparkle in there.  Even the fabric is sparkly, Blue Hydrangea from Crafty Kitten.  I've been trying to alternate the Kreinik with the plain thread but the Kreinik is actually playing quite nicely and I'm enjoying the stitching.

In the evenings I am working on Just Nan's Spring Typography, approximately 30 minutes per evening while the Small Boy is splashing in the bath.  NB do not sit too close to the tub!

Here we are today:

stitched on 32 count Dark Reed linen from Willow Fabrics.

Last weekend was the second weekend of the month so my rotation piece was The Christmas Cubes by Primitive Hare which I am stitching for the Christmas Ornie SAL.  The theme this month is Ornaments and Decorations so I stitched the T cube:

I'm stitching them on a lovely 35 count linen called Country Mocha by Willow Fabrics using the recommended DMC.  I have changed the white to B5200 rather than Blanc because it will pop more against the neutral fabric.   I made a few changes to this one.  One was a forced change because I made a booboo with the placement of the central ornie which meant the snowman was also too low down.  Luckily there was enough room for the T to fit in.  The other change was adding a Santa charm instead of the rusty bells shown on the cover photo of the chart.

The snowman is not stitched with any features but I asked the Christmas Ornie SALers and the consensus of opinion is "add eyes" so, the ayes have it and I will be adding eyes next time I stitch on this design.

(It's also responsible for the one tiny strand of red you can see in my ORTS tin.  Yes, all the red in this ornie and I only "wasted" one tiny piece.  That's how parsimonious I am with my threads!)

Finally, the Big Birthday Blog Hop which I'm thinking of calling The Days of Jo's Life as a nod to the soap opera made famous* by Joey Tribbiani in Friends:

Dr Drake Ramoray

Anyway, 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.

* ps Dear American friends, yes, I know, I'm joking ;-)

April 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 right we have Just Nan's Spring Typography:

stitched on 32 count Dark Reed linen from Willow Fabrics

And on the left we have a new WIP!  This is another Nora Corbett design called Little Snowy Gray Cottage which I won in a giveaway an embarrassingly long time ago.  All the Kreinik, beads and Aqua Ray threads were included.  I started this one for Day 19 of the DUCJC2015 and stitched this much:

stitched on 32 count Blue Hydrangea Opalescent from Crafty Kitten

Here is my continuation:

Usually I would stitch all the plain thread, then the Kreinik and then the beads.  But this is nearly all Kreinik!  There is one Waterlilies silk recommended but at over £5 a skein I have substituted a Jodyri thread called Emerald Forest instead.

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The Easter Treasure Hunt Blog Hop

This took place as usual on Good Friday and was so much fun!  Fun for the Picture Posters who put a lot of effort into displaying their letters, fun for the Hoppers who got to visit some new blogs and revisit old friends, and fun for me to laugh when people couldn't work out the phrase even when they had all the letters!  It is always satisfying to stump a few people.  Mwah haha, evil laughter.

The phrase that all you found (and Googled) was The Ukrainian Pysanka Egg.  The beautifully decorated eggs from the Ukraine - "it is an Easter egg decorated using a wax resist (aka batik) method. Its name derives from the Ukrainian verb “pysaty,” meaning “to write.”  (“Pysanka” is the singular form; “pysanky” is plural.)" - source Pysanka

As in many of our Easter traditions the eggs represent a blend of the old beliefs and the new Christian beliefs - "The design motifs on pysanky date back to pre-Christian times–many date to early Slavic cultures, while some harken to the days of the Trypillians, my neolithic ancestors, others to paleolithic times.  While the symbols have remained through the ages, their interpretation has changed, in an act of religious syncretism. A triangle that once spoke of the three elements, earth, fire and air, now celebrates the Christian Holy Trinity.  The cross which depicted the rising sun is now the symbol of the risen Christ.  Sun and star symbols once referred to Dazhboh, the sun god, and now refer to the one Christian God.  And the fish, which spoke of a plentiful catch and a full stomach, now stands in for Christ, the fisher of men. Even so, under this Christian veneer, there still lurk the berehynia and the serpent, the sun and the moon, the old gods, the old ways, and the old beliefs."  - source Pysanka

source - Wikipedia

An unfinished pysanka ready for the black bath of dye. It bears the Ukrainian Easter greeting: "Christ is risen!"

source - Wikipedia

Evalina told me there are Polish versions of these eggs known as Pisanka - Wikipedia - Pisanka and that her aunt was a very talented decorator of the these eggs.  It seems that many Eastern European countries have a version of the craft.

I also found some lovely cross stitch versions in a recent issue of JCS magazine:

Just Cross Stitch - April 2015

If you are interested in learning more about this beautiful art, Wiki is a good starting place as ever and the Pysanka website has some great information too.  This page in particular has some lovely photos - Pysanky - Types.  If you do decide to stitch one or have a go at making a real one, let me know and you'll get the Star Position for the Treasure Hunt next year!

I decided to give a chart as the prize this year, Picture Posters get one entry into the draw, Blog Hoppers get one entry into the draw, anyone who does both, gets two entries.  My son picked out one name and the winner is:

Cathy - The Stitching Grandma

Congratulations to Cathy, a new entrant to my World Of Blog Hops and hopefully a future regular.

Which brings me nicely to the topic of the next Blog Hop.  Usually this would be Summer Postcard Hop which takes place throughout the Summer.  But this year will be different!  I am celebrating a Big Zero Birthday in September and have planned a BIG BLOG HOP for the event.  My plan is to attempt to get one Person per year of my life and allocate each person a year.  I will give you a Fact About Me from that year and ask you to base your post on that fact.  So you might get 1971 - "I am five years old and I start school".  Your post could be about you being five, you starting school, you in 1971 (if you were born by then) or some world event which is relevant to you from 1971.

Finally, I will ask you to post a photo of something you have stitched which will appeal to me!  I think you all know my tastes in stitching by now and I'm looking forward to some eye candy and probably some stash acquisitions too!  Got to have something to spend that Birthday money on.  So if you want to be in the Hop, please leave a comment or email me.  Because we need so MANY participants for this one, please feel free to share it on your blogs and invite your friends to join in.  The more the merrier!  We can always share eventful years or skip the dull ones depending on how many people we get.

The Imaginative and Intriguing Alphabet Insiders

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.

I is for Inky Darkness from A Dark Alphabet designed by Julie and Becky's Note of Friendship blog.

I is for Intarsia as shown in the Brooke's Book's Stitcher's Alphabet piece I am stitching for the Alphabet Club SAL:

Intarsia is a method of knitting with a number of colours, in which a separate length or ball of yarn is used for each area of colour (as opposed to different yarns being carried at the back of the work).  Here is an entry on Wikipedia about it  - Intarsia

I is also for Incomplete which is what my H block was last month, so here it is, fully completed:

I added the metallic for the hook and a little beaded heart.

I couldn't really think of an I theme for my stitching, icecream?  icicles?  igloos?  There is IHSW - International Hermit & Stitch Weekend for which I have been stitching Elizabeth Shephard, so here she is:

This is a very old one from the archives - Imperial Dragon by Serendipity Designs:

(I did not get my blog title from them, I had not even realised that I had stitched something by them until I started cataloguing my old pieces!)

  

No WIPS or UFOs for I though!  I did fare a little better when I came to designers.  Phew!

Mystery SAL by iStitch

Margaret by Indigo Rose

(bands stitched for a Round Robin)

Autumn by Indigo Rose

(also for a Round Robin - we stitched half a season each)

The final designer I am so surprised that I do not have a started or finished project because I love the designs - Ink Circles.  I think it is because I have bought two charts for myself rather than being Gifted them.  So they got put to one side in favour of the Gifted Gorgeousness projects.  These are the two I own:

Little Alien Schoolgirl Sampler

There is a fascinating story behind this sampler which Tracy tells on her blog here.  There are also various blog posts where she tells us more about how she set about deciphering this valuable sampler.

Masquerade

My blog roll is equally slim for I blogs - thanks heavens for the weirdness that is 

Ishkabibble

and the slightly more normal

Intricate Stitches

It's Geek to Me

It's Daffycat

I Love to Stitch

The Inspired Stitcher

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Finally I will include my progress on Just Nan's Spring Typography, this is three days worth of stitching:

stitched on 32 count Dark Reed linen.

A nicer green than the picture shows!