This week I have mainly been stitching...

So what have I been stitching this week?  Karen's Sweetheart Tree Round Robin and LHN's Home of a Needleworker.  There was some confusion over the mailing dates for the RR and luckily for me Karen gave us all another week if we needed it.  I could have barged on and mailed on the date but I decided to take my time and do it nicely.  And stitch both floral rows that I liked rather than choose just one!

Photo to follow when bands complete

I'm stitching the Home on Home of a Needleworker which is no where near as much fun as the lettering!  Rows and rows of "typewriter" stitching, just back and forth.   Anyway it's looking good and I have the lovely alphabet saved for the end.  Here it is so far:

The prize I awarded to Anne my 2000th commenter arrived in Canada this week!  Yay!  The design was chosen by Christine as the August Challenge piece on the Needlecraft Haven and I thought it would be perfect for Anne.  I stitched it on 18count rose evenweave over 1 using a Stef Francis mercerised cotton in variegated purple.  Lovely isn't it?  I finished it into a pillow using some of the fabric samples as backing.  Anne asked if I'd stitched all the french knots on it myself - is she craaaazzzzzzyyyyyy!  No, at £75 a metre I expect someone else to programme a machine to do them LOL.  No, I didn't pay £75 a metre either, I was given a bunch of old sample books last year.  Each piece is 12 x 12 and makes great ornie backing.

The design came from the Samplers and Santas blog, I just removed the crown and fitted Anne's name in the space.  Good thing she's not called Anastasia or I'd have had troubles!  The link includes nice instructions on how to make a needle keep if you'd like one.

Has anyone else used Stef Francis' threads?  I think I bought them from my old LNS or maybe the Olympia craft show.  They come in a variety of weights, this one is NE 20/3 (I have no idea what that means!!) and some gorgeous colours.  The website is well worth looking at as they do a wide range of items for embroidery as well as cross stitch and other crafts.

I have been treating myself a little bit just lately (it is my Birthday month!) and today I bought two magazines.  The first was Cross Stitch Crazy for the Joan Elliott Christmas booklet.  The second was Cross Stitch Gold for the lovely Blackwork Angel by Lesley Teare and the I Saw Three Ships designs.

As usual I have added the contents pages of these magazines to the special page on my blog.  You'll find it at the top of the blog under one of the tabs labelled "Magazine Contents Page".  The idea is that I post a picture of the contents of any UK magazines I buy.  This will enable you to decide if you want to try find the magazine in your own country.  It's very hard if the mags are sold sealed up to decide if you want to spend the money.  Hopefully this will help you.  Please note the Big Red Disclaimer at the top of the page - I will not scan and email charts.

Finally, I'm trying to comment as much as possible on your blogs but Blogger still won't accept what I type into the word verifier no matter how many attempts I make.  If you have a word verifier because you're afraid of getting Spam then try removing it and the option to post "Anonymous" or have an email address available so I can comment that way.  At the very least warn me there's a word verifier before I type out a long comment and then it pops up after I hit "publish"!

A Blessing Counted

Remember way back when I stitched my first Travelling Pattern?  It was Shakespeare's Peddlar's Count Your Blessings and I asked people to tell me who their Stitching Blessing was.  Freddy's Mama (aka Kirsten) told me about her friend Irene and as Kirsten's name was pulled out of the hat I decided to make a little something to thank her "blessing".

The design and stitching was simple.  I like the quote "Stitching Friends are Friends who Count", it's a nice pun and a lovely sentiment.  I laid out the quote on graph paper in an invented font and added the symbols from the Travelling Pattern (anyone know the name for those 8 leaved symbols?).  Then I decided to make it into a padded ornament.  I stitched round three sides inside out then turned it the right way out, so far so good.  I stuffed it and slip stitched the final side.  Now I have two nice corners and two different corners.  So I decided to put cord around the edges, but I should have buried the cord ends inside the ornie before sewing it up.  So I was left with two ends.  Which I sewed together and tried to hide with some gold braid wrapped round them!!

I sent the ornie off to Irene with an explanation that this is my first and probably only ornie!  It arrived yesterday and as I remembered to take a photo before it went off to the USA I can show you all, here it is:

The back is made from one of the fabric samples I got earlier this year.  They make lovely ornament backings so I will include them with any giveaways I do so people who actually like making the things can do so!!  The thread is a variegated DMC.

I hope you're all enjoying the Advent Calendar and hopping over to the blogs to see what people have to say.  Isn't it funny how similar Day 2 and 3 are, and also that Joysze and I both chose the "hutch" designs to show?  We stitchers have so much in common.

Weekend's Stitching

I have followers!!  and comments!!  Thanks for both, ladies.  Dani - it took me a while to set up the blog how I wanted it to look.  It's all new to me and there was alot of trial and error involved.  The backdrop I found by accident, it's one of the standard ones but I really liked it so will keep it for a while.  I wanted to add lots of photos so there was plenty to see.  After a week I thought I'd better get round to posting something!

This has been a good weekend socially and stitching wise.  I finished my railway carriage (see below), started a cover kit and have done a good part of Bluebeard's Mermaid.  My week is up tomorrow but I want to finish more of her tail fin so will keep going until Wed or Thur.  I have decided that SAL weeks are decimal, they are actually 10 days long not 7.

This is my railway carriage - it is stitched on a piece of 14 count aida attached to a piece of upholstery fabric.  Earlier this year a man came into the hall where my Toddler Group meet with a load of sampler books from an interior designers.  They were free to a good home.  The cushion lady, the scrapbookers and I fell on them with delight!  We shared them out and I got all the smaller ones.  There are some beautiful pieces of very expensive material there (£75 a metre!).  My heart in my avatar is stitched on one.  I chose this red piece for the railway carriage as it was too dark and patterned to do much else with.  When I turned it over the name label said "Railroad effect".  Now that is what I call serendipitious :-)  These sorts of things happen all the time with my stitching, hence the name of this blog.

The design and words are all my own work, the threads are from my scraps bag, the railway line is a long piece of black threaded under the stitches in the sleepers.  It's a really nice effect and very quick to do.

I don't want to get too political (stitching is my stress relief!) but the main thrust of the campaign is to protest about the fare hikes planned.  Rail travel is the greenest way to travel long distances and we should be supporting it.  I commuted 30 miles a day for 17 years by train and loved my journeys.  I met so many interesting people, some of whom changed my life.  I read so many books and stitched so much too.  We also had two weddings thanks to our journeys.  If you're interested then check out the links for The Craftivist Collective

On a brighter note I spent this afternoon at a baby shower for a good friend.  We played games like Taste the Baby Food (they all taste of yuck) and Sniff the Nappy.  Not as gross as it sounds or looked.  The hostess had melted some chocolate bars onto nappies and we had to guess which ones they were!  Charming!

I took some booties along as I didn't want to go empty-handed but her present will be this cute cross stitch Nimue - The Baby Swing.  I ordered it from Violarium though I have since found you can go direct to Nimue on her French website.  Anyway Violarium sent me half a dozen free charts with my order which was lovely so I was pleased with that.  I just have to find the perfect fabric now, Dawn from Crafty Kitten is helping with that.  My friend doesn't know what "flavour" baby she's having (she has one of each already) so this is perfect as it's unisex.

Once again, thanks for all your comments, happy stitching!