I Believe I Can Fly/Finish

Yes, we have another finish for you all!  Joan Elliott's Believe, one of a series of four affirmations with the others being Hope, Dream and Imagine.

I stitched this one on 28 count opalescent Robin's Egg evenweave by Silkweaver.  I have enough fabric to stitch all four.  I only have about six packets of Magnifica beads but by happy chance I had the one colour the chart needed!

This is going to be an end-of-term gift for the Small Boy's class teacher and TAs.  Because there are a mixture of girls and boys in the class I changed one fairy into a boy fairy.

Tuesday was Satsuma Street SAL Day so I continued on Pretty Mini London:

stitched on 28 count black evenweave

Sorry Linda, I stitched loads!!  The light pink infill on the Eye, the lilac skyscrapers, the grey arches and the mauve of St. Paul's Cathredral.

Linda and I were discussing how many companies are now doing these City themed designs, they are definitely "On Trend" as the magazines put it!  Then I saw the launch of a new website for the town where I live, and look at their logo:

Wouldn't that make a perfect Satsuma style cross stitch?  Even the colours tone.

I was in the mood for beading so on Wednesday I started the little Mill Hill sampler Rosey sent me:

Frosted Heather Rose

stitched on 28 count evenweave

Unfortunately I forgot that the Small Boy was off school on Thursday and he does not mix well with beads!  So for Thursday I thought I'd make a start on June's ornie for the Hallowe'en Ornie SAL.  Despite choosing the themes myself I always forget what they are so I popped over to the blog and saw those dread words "free choice".   Nooooooo, how can I possibly chose from all my Hallowe'en charts and magazines?

I decided to choose one magazine and stitch my favourite design.  I picked the oldest issue of JCS I have as a hard copy (couldn't get on the PC because of the aforementioned Small Boy) and chose a Blue Ribbon Design, Boo Mansion:

Stitched on 32 count Twilight Blue linen

Finally, my Summer Postcard Blog hop again!  The theme this year is Pets.  All you need to do is email me a photo of something you have stitched on this theme plus a little message about what pets mean to you.  Once I have a few I will start emailing them to the participants who will display them on their blogs.  The Blog Hop lasts all Summer so don't worry if you don't have anything suitable stitched yet.  I'm going to be finding some freebies online to inspire you.  Today's choice is fish, goldfish and tropical fish:

My-cross-stitch-patterns - Goldfish

Cross-stitch-pattern.net - Fish

The End of Term Approaches...

Only two more days of one school and three more for the other.  The Small Boy did his last day of term at his mainstream school today so I had to remember the wine for the teacher and his one-to-one TA and chocolates for them to share with the other two TAs (and a random work experience girl!).    No-one gets a cross-stitched gift this year because he will be continuing in the same class next year.  There will be wine and chocolates for his other school next week, he is going up a class there next year but I didn't realise in time to stitch something so it will have to be done over the summer for the first week back!

The Large Boy has had a brilliant teacher this year, she has really made their final year in Primary lots of fun as well as working them hard.  The league tables and SATs results are making headlines in the UK this week and our school is celebrating with a big improvement since last year.  In fact we believe we came top out of all the Primaries in our area, not bad for a school which got a "requires improvement" at its last Ofsted inspection.  Hah, what do they know?

Anyway, a brilliant teacher deserves a brilliant gift and hopefully this is it:

Teresa Wenzler Futurecaster conversion

I wanted a dragon and I wanted books, maybe a little dragon sitting on a pile of books?  So I googled around and found this conversion on Deviant Art.  She took the standard Futurecaster chart and changed the crystal ball to a book!  Perfect.

Teresa Wentzler designed this dragon to be easily converted into any colour scheme you like.  There is an ornate border and she recommends choosing a variegated thread for it then matching the colours for the dragon.  I left the border off and chose a scheme based on one in the Gallery.  Here are my colours:

A - 3817

B - 3816

C - 3815

D - 501

BS - 3818

1 - 745

2 - 743

BS - an orange, didn't note number!

+  927

BS - 924

Book - 919

Pages - white

Gold - 5282

Green Metallic - E703

Beads - 10023 green

02011 gold 

Finally, the Summer Postcard Blog Hop is now taking place, for more details of how to join in click on the garden picture to the right.  Here are the links for the four cards sent so far, why not pop over and leave a comment?

First postcard from Marcy goes to Gracie at Needles, Pins and Dragonflies

Second postcard from Krista goes to Jocondine at Jocondine

Third postcard from Michelle goes to Sharon at Shebafudge

Fourth postcard from Mouse goes to Vickie at A Stitcher's Story

Theme-a-licious June Update

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!

June Jolt

School's out for the summer! Let's work on things with sunshine in them or REALLY bright colours. Summer is here!

As soon as I saw that first sentence I thought Alice Cooper!  Actually my first thought was "no it's not, in England we don't break up until the third week in July" but then I thought Alice Cooper!  I found a great monochrome design of his face but it was for beading and didn't translate directly to stitching.  I'd have to rechart it to get the dimensions right, he came out very long and thin so I abandoned that idea.  I did consider buying this one from PixelPower but I'd left it rather late in the month.

So what did I stitch this month that could possibly fit into the theme?

These lovely Summery Joan Elliot butterflies:

 

These were stitched as the centre part of the new JE Faces SAL on FB

Fabric is Snapdragon by Crafty Kitten

The rest of my stitching consisted of an Autumn Fairy, some Hallowe'en Countdown pieces, three different Winter projects and the Bride of Frankenstein's Monster.

(Two Winter projects do feature B5200 which is Bright White...)

Today, however, I did start a piece that will come in for the end of term in July but I've started it in June so it totally counts.  Each year I have stitched an end of year sampler for the Large Boy's teacher.  I always try to get something suitable for the person, something they like or a topic they have covered that year.  This year was tricky, she is new to the school and is a brilliant teacher.  We've got on really well and have chatted about books alot.   She recognised the influence of Terry Pratchett in the last piece of written work the Large Boy did so I decided on a Fantasy Book theme for her:

What I was looking for was a small dragon on a pile of books but googling around didn't come up with anything.  Then I found a dragon reading a book on DeviantArt.  The dragon looked familiar, and lo and behold the stitcher revealed it was a Teresa Wentzler freebie, amended to be holding a book instead of an orb.  Futurecast was designed for stitchers to choose their own colour scheme and Teresa has given great instructions on how to do so.  She also has a Gallery of finished designs so you can use their schemes if you want.  The school colours are green and yellow, there was a lovely dragon there in those exact colours so that is the one I went with.  I won't be stitching the border because I want to add the teacher's name and the school's name and year.

Finally the Summer Postcard Blog Hop (which fits in nicely with the Theme) is now underway.  The second postcard went to Jocondine and her eponymous blog.  Follow the link to see her card, message and who sent it to her.  There is still time to join in with the Blog Hop, just click on the garden picture on the right hand side bar to find out more details.

Final Teacher gift

This is the final teacher end of term gift.  The large boy has had this teacher on Fridays for the last two years.  Last year she got a sampler with a Celtic dog (she loves dogs and is quite "celticy" in her dress) and the school name and dates like the other two I stitched this year.  I decided not to do another in the same format but did have a little plastic coaster from SewandSo in my basket.  The design is a Joan Elliot from her card book and fits perfectly.  I used the same mint green pearlescent aida I stitched First Snow on and swapped the beads for petite beads so they fit under the coaster better.   The large boy will be making a back with her name and the dates on.  He will.  I have told him he will!

I'm developing a slight obsession with SALs in part works.  Since I made a resolution not to start any large projects which weren't on my 11 in '11 list I've had to find different excuses.  A SAL in parts is clearly not a large project, it is a number of smalls all added together.  There is no rule about smalls in my resolutions therefore I can start as many SALs in parts as I want!

So, as well as the Castles in the Air, which requires ALOT of thought and decision-making I have started on this one - Periphaeria  It is a lovely Scandinavian themed sampler by a Finnish designer.  They are upto part 6 already and just over half way through.  Luckily I prefer to start stitching in the middle of a project so it suits me fine.  I have decided to go for a purple theme.  I got a lovely piece of Purpleberry Spludge from Sparklies website.  To keep costs and size down I decided to stitch it over 1 (I love the delicate look of over 1 and it's not really alot of bother unless there are large, dense areas of stitching (eg C is for Coven!))

The colours I've chosen are 333 purple and 973 yellow.  The purple was easy but I couldn't decide on an accent colour at all, pink, turquoise, lime green or silver all went through my mind.  In the end I asked the large boy and he decided on the yellow.  So yellow it is.  Aren't children useful?

My first ever RR piece arrived, it's a gorgeous Teresa Wentzler Band Sampler, it's been round the world once and is off on a new adventure.  I can't wait to get stitching on it, it's a little daunting as I've never stitched for other stitchers before (except my Mum!) so I want to make it extra lovely and carefully stitched.  I think I have decided which band I want to stitch, Sophia has kindly included loads of samples of TW bands to choose from.

As usual there are lots of giveaways going on this week.  Unfortunately I haven't made a note of any of them to specifically mention them here.  Look down my bloglist and see who mentions Giveaways in their titles!!  Also GoS has a huge kit sale going on.

There aren't enough photos is this post, so here are the previous 3 teachers' samplers:

That one is all in metallics apart from the black outline.

She collects Rhinos, what can I say?

I also stitched a Vulture for the teacher who organised the "Culture Vulture" theatre activities but forgot to photograph it.  Hands up anyone else who has ever stitched a rhino, a vulture or an aardvark?

Horseman and Numbers

And speedily moving onto H is for Headless Horseman:

The Horseman was a nice speedy stitch.  Once again I "tweeded" part of it, the horse has the bottom /// in light brown and the top \\\ in a darker brown.  Nice effect.  I've been looking at Julie's finished squares and am rather envious of her moon in C.  She's been using hand-dyed threads and the moon is lovely.  I'm almost tempted to frog and restitch mine but not quite!  Frogging over 1 is a nightmare and it took me long enough the first time!

I think it'll be a while before "I" comes out so this one is having a rest while I pick up Bluebeard's Mermaid for the first time in ages, I've missed her so much.  It took me 10 minutes of looking and staring to remember where I was and what the symbols were colour-wise.

This is the 2nd teacher's sampler.  My son's year group are streamed for Literacy and Numeracy so he has a different teacher for Numeracy to his class teacher.  Hence the numbers:

 This is the design my son drew for me and coloured in.  You can see the finished piece is pretty similar.  We tweaked some of the colours as he'd duplicated a couple.

His class also have a 3rd teacher on a Friday.  They had her last year too and then I stitched her a celtic dog.  This year she's getting a coaster with a Joan Elliott celtic design in, because I like it!  I thought about asking for last year's sampler back and unpicking the dates but thought better of it hahahahaha.

I've been following people's progress with Papillon's Castles in the Air project.  This is a gorgeous two year SAL which I thought I'd totally missed the boat on becoming aware of it at about part 19!  However on the site she says the charts will be available for a little while yet.  Unbelievably it is only 1 Euro to buy the first chart then you can download all the rest for free.  I thought you had to post pictures to get the subsequent ones but NO!

Now we come to the problems.  There are two versions - cross stitch and speciality stitch.  I love a speciality stitch but cross stitch would be quicker and it's a big project.  What the heck - it's A EURO - buy both and have the choice.  So I pay my 2 Euros and get to download 48 charts!   Then I see there is a choice of pictures for the centre, either little vignettes or floral designs.  I knew I preferred the floral designs (or so I thought), but the little vignettes are sooooooo pretty....maybe I could stitch them as smalls?  THEN I notice she gives an option for cutwork on some parts!  She even includes a free bookmark design to practise your cutwork on.

And all that before you have to decide what colours to use, some are coded with DMC some with colour suggestions - light green, a floral colour etc so this piece will be 110% original for everyone who stitches it.  And then there's fabric....

My "stash-sort" for the week was to sort my small picture frames.  All 40 of them.  I have a slight addiction to buying small frames.  It's hard to get square frames so I tend to grab them when I can.  I now have a nice neat list with all the dimensions on them so I can see instantly if I have the right size for a project or which count I need to stitch a project on to fit the intended frame.

IHSW

Here's the latest progress on Baby Swing:

The pale green backstitch is all in metallic DMC Jewel effect 703.   The flowers on the hat are straight stitches over a cross stitch in 1 base.

Here's the second project I've been working on - edited for internet security!!  I always stitch a small sampler at the end of term for the large boy's teacher/s.  I try to make it tie with their special interests and this year the teacher made it really easy - she's a big Bagpuss fan!  For my international followers who may be unaware of the saggy old cloth cat here's a useful link - http://www.smallfilms.co.uk/bagpuss/

The Bagpuss chart came from an old edition of Cross Stitcher magazine (Aug 2002) and the nice little border was from a more recent issue.  Alot of people have been criticising the magazine just lately for being more about sewing and craft rather than straight cross stitch.  Personally I would rather see more needlework if they want to diversify rather than sewing and felt craft.  I have found there are less projects I want to stitch and the free gifts are not really me but it is useful as a "design library".  This is not a very good scanned picture so doesn't do the patches justice.