Procrastinating….

I have a new box of stuff to make Artist trading cards (something I’ve never done before but thought I’d try out for the Kyle Cassidy Challenge).  However, it’s sitting there mocking me, and rather than looking at doing something about it I’m thinking of multiple ways of doing other stuff.   I saw a Debbie Bliss book in the shops yesterday and of course want to knit something from there, depite not being a strong knitter.  I was in Monsoon the same day, and whilst I love their clothes (especially the kids clothes), the thought “I do have a sewing machine at home, why not……” keeps flicking through my head, despite me not having made any piece of clothing since about 1981.

Meanwhile back to one of my 5 cross stitch wips !

EEEP! What Have I done?!

For reasons too complicated/boring to go into, I am a friend of Kyle Cassidy on Live Journal.  On the weekend, he posted a “so do you wanna do something creative together?” post .  I was dumb enough to reply “yeah, ok!”.  I have NO idea what I have gotten into or who I could be linked up to do what with!

What have I done?!

(Thankfully this seems to be a frequent refrain in the comments so I understand I’m not the only one….)

If interesting or successful enough I’ll post the results here…..

Well I seem to have spent as much time frogging this design as stitching it! Another few hours was spent taking an additional 2 characters apart. I’ve never had an attempt that’s so wrong so early. All I can think is that this is an American kit, so you start in the top left hand corner and stitch page by page (where I’m used to stitching from the middle out). My failures seem to be consistently on the cross over from one page to the next, where I manage to get a handover wrong (too many stitches or starting in the wrong place) and it goes down hill from there. Sigh.

post by email

Well this makes a nice change!

Sometimes, things prevent you from updating when you really want or need to update.  Thankfully wordpress have now introduced the ability to post via email, and hence this little missive!

Still working on the Big Toe Design – or should that be “unworking”? Last night was spent unpicking 2 – yes 2! – whole letters that I’d managed to off set. Only slightly but enough to cause trouble later, as the letters are only 1 or 2 rows apart from each other. It’s being done on 18 count Aida, as I hate evenweave with a vengance, but it still meant that stitches were tight and at the end my fingers hurt.

Back to proper stitching now and here’s hoping I dont get it wrong again!

My Big Toe – why all the effort?

Well as if I didnt have enough WIPs on the go already, I decided to start the “Reflections” sampler from My Big Toe designs the other week, thinking it was going to be a relatively nice easy job – only 3 colours, a couple of alphabets and plain sailing right? I should be so lucky.  Over a week later, having frogged the top left letter M more than 8 times, and I’ve still got it wrong. What is it with my counting and the inability to get this right?  I’ve done more than enough samplers in my time and for some reason cant get this right. Aarrgh!

It’s Spring!

And therefore a round up of the wips that a currently sitting out there that may need daylight to help me out (because try as you might, daylight simulation bulbs are never the same really are they?)

Anyway, I’ve been dabbling recently with the Anchor kit for “Queen Nefertiti”, and not done too badly, but gotten a bit bored. Searching through my WIPs it seems I got a little bit further with the equivalent for “King Tut” before abandoning, so I’ll have to finish that at some point.

I did a status review of “The quiltmaker“(lots of dark blue, and black, and in looking only to remember why I hadn’t completed it…..quick drop into www.sewandso.co.uk to order some DMC (cos the local shops dont stock), and onto the next pattern.

Celtic Christmas is almost done, but still needs some work, especially around the beading.

Have decided to work on the Mary Hickmott pattern “Pride of the peacocks” which is coming along nicely.  Somewhere (I dont know where!) is the “Beautiful Balloons” which is nearly done too.  Is that not enough?

So what’s happened since I’ve been away?

Well it seems like quite a lot on WordPress!  New Dashboard, lots of different colours and stuff – just trying out the text editor to see whether I like what’s output. The main thing still lacking is that it seems you cant change the font size.  Hmmmm.

Oh Lordy!

Havent been around here for a while, mainly as I havent been doing enough stitching to brag about.

Currently working on “Pride of the park”, which is a Hickmott design of two peacocks and am about a 3rd of the way through.

Have the day off today and have just spent an hour or so clearing out my wardrobes.  Couple of shirts to throw away, and I’m half tempted to rip out the buttons (you can never have enough buttons, right?!) and for the cotton shirts, cut them up and maybe use for patchworking.  One of these days I will actually make up a patchwork….thing.  I’m sure I have enough fabric, just no design as yet.

Despite not being a huge knitter

I’ve found another way of wasting my time – I’m now on Ravelry.  Damn

Beautiful Balloons WIP

DSC_0026, originally uploaded by Nordie.

I’ve been putting some time in whilst waiting (still waiting!) for an engineer to turn up.  Of course it’s gone 6:30 in the evening and he still hasnt turned up, and I had to take a day off to wait for him.  Gah!

The cross stitch is still a work in Progress, but I’m getting there. It’s now at the stage I hate, where there are little stitches here and there that need to be done, followed by the rest of the back stitching. I hate it because I’m always chopping and changing, and no matter how often I think I’ve checked, I always find a rogue stitch missing somewhere!

And sorry for the apparent shake of the image – for some reason my camera is playing up and refusing as often as not to take a picture.