I’m finding myself struggling with the idea of blogging lately. So pictures, not words, today. A finish from Amaryllis Artworks – Tranquil Sky.
I like it, it’s pretty, but… 164 frelling eyelets? What was I thinking?!
Funny that I would stitch something ‘tranquil’, when I’ve been feeling anything but.
Niamh’s birthday on Sunday. Will report back with photos, hopefully.
Posted in Counted Stitchwork, Finished
Tagged Amaryllis Artworks, cross-stitch, Tranquil Sky
Be wary – the little people, they strike when you are least prepared. And nick off with your latest finish!
Haha. Moments after this shot, Niamh was ‘posing’ the ornament up against the wall, just like Mummy :giggle: I have photos of that too, but they’re just too blurry, and besides, this one captures that glint in her eye just perfectly!
So here then is my latest finish – Scissors Keeper (only it isn’t) from the book ‘Hardanger Embroidery’ by Jill Carter. It’s stitched with one of my hand dyed #8 perle cottons and a couple of DMC pinks which I don’t think were perfect choices, really. I just grabbed whatever I could find because I was itching to start this. Both sides are identical, and it’s finished this as a pillow-style Christmas ornament instead of a fob.
Can you spot the suspended beads in the Dove’s eyes? How about now:
Good trick, no? I like this a lot, and I’m planning to do another in a different colourway, and with larger beads (again, I just grabbed what came easily to hand). There are a couple of other pieces in this book that I’d like to stitch, too. Next up – the Pincushion, I think.
Posted in Counted Stitchwork, Family, Finished, The Kids
Tagged Family, hardanger, Jill Carter, ornament
Tooooo tired from the weekend (which was excellent). But I had to pop in for a little minute to tell you about my babes. Today we had two firsts – somewhat coincidentally on Mother’s Day, so I am bound never to forget 🙂 Niamh took her first steps! Four or five times she took a single step, sometimes landing on her knees, sometimes staying upright, and twice she took two consecutive steps. Stay tuned for craziness just around the corner :giggle:
Finn quite possibly outdid that, however – with his first poem. Popping out from inside a cupboard, he told me it made him think up a poem, and then reeled off this little gem:
I like to hide in cupboards
It’s very fun to do
It’s dark when I close the door
Then I come out of it sometimes
When we wrote it down together, we changed that last line to
Then I come out of it and sometimes say ‘Boo’!
Just so it would rhyme. Afterwards, I felt terribly guilty for even raising the suggestion, because the original version had such wonderful spontaneity about it, and besides, poems don’t have to rhyme, do they? But Finn has become quite attached to the rhyming version, and has read it several times over, so I think the ‘Boo’! version is staying.
Did you know that, according to my Mister Smartypants 4-year-old, “because” is no longer an acceptable answer? Just yesterday I was asked to provide a “real answer” to his question – “because” just didn’t cut it.
Sigh. I’m going to have to start using my brain again, aren’t I?
Thankfully Niamh has not acquired skills of logic yet. Her communication is still mostly in the point-and-squawk category. Though she does have recognizable (to me) words for hello, bye-bye, duck, ball, vrrooomm, and woof (did you know a duck says woof? So, apparently, do most animals!)
Thank you for all the wonderful compliments on my Dragonfly Jewels piece. (The most comments on any single post on this blog, in fact!) Please know that I read and appreciate all of them, though I haven’t had opportunity to respond individually to you all.
The last ten days or so have been a blur of schools, ill health, and preparation for Dermot’s birthday celebrations, happening this weekend. I think we’ve finally settled on a school for Finn (so far I’m managing to hold the my-baby-is-growing-up teary thoughts at bay!), we all seem to be on the way to health again (lucky Niamh managed to avoid the gastro and most of the cold – yay for extended breastfeeding). We head off today to get the party started – we’re hosting a weekend away in my Mum’s ‘second house’. So far I’ve baked and iced the birthday cake. I have lemon tart to do tomorrow, and chocolate & ginger mousse on Saturday – can you see where my culinary interests lie?! The sweet I’m good with – the savoury I’m leaving up to Dermot. (Yes, I’ve finally dispensed with the ‘OtherHalf’, and ‘outed’ my husband! 🙂 )
There has also been stitching – and even another finished piece, if you can believe that! I’m not showing you just yet, because for once, I’m going to do the actual finishing before I show it off (it’s just a Christmas Ornament, don’t get excited). I’ll give you a clue though – I borrowed this book from our local library, and couldn’t resist stitching something from within. There are some very nice projects in this book, and nice, easy to follow stitch instructions and diagrams. So my dalliance with Hardanger continues.
Now… I’ve just got Finn off to kinder, and Niamh off to bed, so I’m off to pack stuff for the weekend. Enjoy yours!
PS. Sorry for the v.rambly and parentheses-laden post. I really just wanted to get something down so that you know I’ve not disappeared off into the ether just yet!
Wheeeee! I’m happy dancing again – and this finish comes complete with sparkles and dragonflies. Allow me to present Dragonfly Jewels by The Cat’s Whiskers Design Studio:
So, so, so, so pretty. Technically not a complete finish, of course – the complete design requires four flaps to be stitched which are then attached so as to hide the message until they are untied. While I am fascinated by the 3-D finishing method, I just can’t see myself shelling out the $60 for the box to mount this in just yet, so it will have to wait. Also, I really love the design as is, so perhaps I’ll end up just framing it instead.
There is nothing I don’t love in this – the colours, the silks, the over-one words – and those dragonflies. The eyes! The legs! Look at them! They’re just so damn cute and sparkly, I love them to bits! This may well just be my favourite finish to date 🙂
These last few posts may have you believing that I have my stitching groove back on. I’m thinking it’s probably just a temporary thing, myself. There’s so much on the burner at the moment. Home improvement-y things we have to do; sewing I’d like to fit in; school selection/enrolment blahblah for Finn; a thirtieth birthday weekend to plan for OtherHalf and a FIRST birthday celebration for the littlest one. So I’m pretty sure the stitching is going to take a back seat again for a little while. But I have finally made myself a goal for 2007 (me – goal making – the horror!). I’d like to have at least 12 finishes – one per month. Small, medium or large, doesn’t matter. So far, I’m on track… we’ll see how the rest of the year goes.
And now… ahem. I am up really really late, and so there’s no one but myself to blame tonight for too little sleep. So g’night.
Posted in Counted Stitchwork, Finished
Yes, my UFO has come home. You may remember Noah’s Journey headed off looking like this? Well, it’s come home looking like this:
Much more finishable looking, don’t you think?
Thank you Tracey, Suz, Laura, Juli and Claire, for the many stitches you have put into this. I’ll be making every effort to finish this before the year is out (ie before Finn turns 5), so watch this space!
Posted in Counted Stitchwork, In Progress
With good intentions, I sat down after my last finish to work on an existing WIP – the Wee Beasties dragonfly. I think I managed about three hours or so before I gave in to the temptation to start something new instead :giggle: To be honest, that dragonfly is not fun stitching. It’s full of finicky little fractional stitches and lots of blending filament. I need more concentration to work on it than I usually have in the evening after the kiddos are asleep, so it’s slow going at the moment.
So, I started, and then finished, Teenie Hardanger I by The Sweetheart Tree, instead. Pretty, no? The chart for this was a gift from my Secret Stitcher last year, Allie. She sent me II and III as well (among other wonderful things).
I’m much happier with my cutting this time. Well. Except for that one bit. That bit where I snipped one thread too many. Whoops! I ended up having to reweave a piece of linen so that I could do the woven bar properly. But all’s well that ends well, hey?
Hardanger-y goodness part two is this:
Haze stitched me this lovely candle wrap and mat for the Hardanger exchange on the Rotation BB. It’s taken a little while to arrive, it’s been on a bit of a world cruise, actually 🙂 Thanks Haze, I love it!
Posted in Counted Stitchwork, Finished, In Progress
Tagged Dragonfly, exchange stitching, hardanger, Teenie Hardanger I, The Sweetheart Tree, Wee Beasties
Many moons ago, I made the Big List, coming clean about my WIPs. I also planned to start a Rotation in order to get my number of WIPs under 10. Ha! Every time the word ‘rotation’ is mentioned, I seem to run screaming. In fact, I’m convinced it’s what causes stitching slumps (for me)!
Nevertheless, I have managed to finish three from the list since then – Kaitlin, Bumblebee, and just yesterday I put the final stitches in the November Sampler Accent by Periwinkle Promises. See… Fridays the 13th aren’t all bad :giggle:
Annette gifted me with this design in a Seasonal Exchange a while back. I’m so glad I’ve got around to finishing it, it’s lovely. I plan to finish this as described in the instructions – as a little tasselled cushion.
In a little bit of a departure for me, I actually stitched the personalisation details. I changed it a little bit, as I didn’t like the way the year was originally split. I think my way works nicely.
Now… would anybody out there like to have this chart and the leftover silk threads it came with? (The threads are probably not enough to finish the design a second time). Just say the word and I’ll drop it in the mail for you 🙂
Hmmm… what to stitch on next…?
Posted in Counted Stitchwork, Finished
Tagged blog giveaway, cross-stitch, November Sampler Accent, Periwinkle Promises
Well. Our Easter break was… slightly more than we bargained for, since our car ended up in parts in my father-in-law’s front paddock for several days!
When we arrived on Thursday afternoon, we had planned to do a fairly simple strut replacement job before heading off camping. As soon as FIL got a look at the underneath of the car, it rapidly turned into a drive-shaft-rebuild-needed-asap job. One of the drive shafts turned out to be a bugger to detach, so we weren’t able to get them into the rebuild place before everything shutting down for the long weekend. Nevermind… we loaded our considerable cargo into a trailer and FIL’s car, and took off from Friday through Monday for a lovely few days of riverfront camping.
On Tuesday morning, we had the drive shafts rebuilt, then FIL and OtherHalf spent the afternoon getting the car back in working order. And here we are, back again. Chocolate-bloated and laden with half a ton (it seems) of dirty laundry, but back.
Here then, are some promised catch up pictures. First, the two pay-it-forward packages I didn’t show you earlier:
Next, the final UFO that I stitched on for the round robin. This is Tracey’s Royal Holiday. It was nice to finish on another Mirabilia design:
Before:
And after:
And that, boys and girls, marks the end of so-called ‘obligation‘ stitching for me. For the time being, anyway. I joined this round robin because I knew I would go through a bit of a stitching slump while Niamh was little, and I figured this would be a good way to spur me into doing a little bit, better than nothing at all. But I have to confess, I’m not sad to see then end of it. I was growing a bit resentful of the time spent stitching on other people’s work (though I will no doubt feel differently once my own UFO gets home, and I see first-hand how much has been worked on it). Each time as the deadline approached, I felt pressured to stitch, even though I didn’t necessarily feel like doing so. I have done very little other stitching for the whole year so far – I completed the Hardanger exchange, I’ve spent a couple of hours on Lilly, and just in this last week I’ve come very close to a finish on one of my smaller pieces (hopefully I’ll dance this weekend). But that’s all. So I’ve decided to opt out of any more exchanges or round robins for at least the rest of 2007. How much or how little stitching I will actually do, I can’t predict, but I just don’t want to feel the pressure of deadlines for a little while.
Posted in Counted Stitchwork, Dyeworks, In Progress, Other Craft
Tagged embroidery floss, hand-dyed, mirabilia, Pay It Forward, round robin stitching, Royal Holiday
Can you believe my baby was ten months old yesterday? No, nor can I :giggle: Ten whole months have gone by in a blur of Niamh-induced-sleep-deprivation (Finn’s latest ‘excuse’ for everything is “I’m too tired“. I wonder where he could possibly have picked that up?!)
She’s doing pretty wonderfully. She waves bye-bye, sometimes hello, and claps her hands, especially to music (and in time, what’s more!) She’s got the “baba-baba”, “mama-mama”, and “dada-dada”s down pat. She has four sharp teeth, and we’ve been expecting more for months. She likes to chew on everything, so mind your fingers (I had blood drawn just this morning). She loves water, and adores the great outdoors. She’s absolutely fearless and downright cheeky with a wonderful sense of humour. Whenever we turn our backs for just a moment, she gets very busy – unfolded laundry is removed from baskets with great speed, CDs are pulled from the rack, Finn’s bookshelves are emptied…
Two weeks ago she stood unaided for the first time 😮 Only for a couple of seconds, but a stand nonetheless. Since then she’s done it a few times, and progressed to 4 or 5 seconds at a go. We all know what that means…
But… and here’s the big one… she sleeps. Finally, she sleeps! A big round of applause please! Since coming back from Port Fairy a few weeks back, we moved her cot into Finn’s room. The preceding several weeks had been pretty dreadful, and the only way I was getting any rest was by co-sleeping half the night. Which was fine by us really (and I do kind of miss it), but possibly a little counter-productive. So we moved her in with Finn and got serious about settling her in her own bed, and allowed her a little bit of fussing (a very much gentle-ified version of “controlled comforting”). Anyway, the long story short is that most nights, she sleeps from 7pm to at least 2am – sometimes she needs a settling down around then, sometimes a little drink of water. Or even more lately, she sleeps through longer – to 4 or even 5am. Unfortunately, mornings don’t seem to start any later than 5.30am, ever. Which is kind of sucky (no, I’m not a morning person), but at least I’m frequently managing to get six hour stretches of sleep for myself. Hooray!
Have a happy Easter weekend – we’re off camping again tomorrow 🙂
PS. Thank you for all the kind thoughts following my grandmother’s death, I appreciate them very much.
