I have about 5 wips on the go at the moment, and earlier in August, I had 2 weeks holiday where I planned to make tracks into at least one.  I had hoped to get the “my big toe” design finished before I went back to work, but that didnt happen, unfortunately.

However, it looks like I’m going to finish today! Hurrah!.  It’s not perfect – I gave up trying to do that after I spent as much time frogging out as I did actually do the stitching, so in the end gave up and just plodded on.

I’ll get it finished, washed, ironed – may even get a photo before long, which I will look to post up here – and then consider about framing.  It’s a big item, so professional framing will be expensive, but after putting the effort in I say why not!

I’m still in the first week of a 2 week staycation, and it’s been interesting how little stitching I’ve been doing.  I was down at my parent’s place dog sitting on the weekend – did a lot of stitching on the Saturday, not much on the Sunday.  Had things to do both Monday and Wednesday that took me out of the house for several hours on both days, but Tuesday and Thursday (today) have been stay at home days.  Nevertheless, not a great deal of stitching done.  Reading, yes.  Sitting outside, yes. Meeting friends, yes. Doing housework (housework?!) yes.  Stitching, well not a lot.

Much has to do with the fact that summertime daytime TV is crap.  I do have limits as to the crap I will watch and this is lower than I am prepared to go.  Much also goes to that the weather is…..so-so.  Rain some days.  Sunlight but cool other days, like today.  I can sit out on a bench for 30 mins or so reading a book, but the grass is damp to sit on, and I cant relax enough to stitch on a wooden bench when it’s 20 degrees out.  (Why stitch when outside and cold, when you can sit in bed inside and read?!).  I could sit in bed and listen to the radio when stitching I suppose but I’m not there yet, and am not aware of the radio schedules enough to find something interesting. It’s still early in the week for the long podcasts I subscribe to to not be available yet, and I’m also trying to plan slightly ahead, in that I am going away for a few days early next week to somewhere different, and dont necessarily want to “use up” all my interesting podcasts ahead of time……..

Meanwhile, I’m still trying to chunk my way through the “Reflections” sampler from My Big Toe designs – I’ve had to order even MORE blue thread for this (talk about a complete mis-judge in terms of what’s needed by moi!).  Had hoped that I could have concentrated on this sampler enough to get it completed and into a framers during this holidays, but perhaps not.  Bummer!

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.

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!

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?

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.

When you start a new work do you look for something small, do you look for another huge project or do you consider your UFOs?

It really depends on what I’ve just finished. The vast majority of my projects are large and often take months to complete. When I finish a large one, I like to sit back for a while and do nothing, especially if I’ve been working to a deadline, and am all stitched out.

Sometimes I am in the middle of a large item and just want to have the feeling of actually finishing something – ANYTHING! I then grab something small – I have a pack of items from Tante’s Zolder that can be made into lavender sachets for instance – and can do in around a day. When I have enough of these completed I then pull out the sewing machine and make them up.

I’m trying to make sure that when I’ve finished another big one, then I at least *look* at my outstanding WIPs and do at least a few stitches on them before considering starting another large piece of work – I only have 3 outstanding at the moment!

Want to know where I got this? Look here

well I’ve just looked at the date, and it seems I’ve not been posting here a lot since the new year. Other things have been occupying my time that has meant that I have had little interest or energy in sewing, photography, cooking or blogging! In fact I seem to have spent the last 3 weeks surviving on adrenalin and sugar, and all else has suffered. Hopefully things will have turned the corner and will change.

The dark nights have prevented me from doing much photography, but I have tried to keep my hand in on my cross stitch. I spent several weeks working on Lavender & Laces’s “Celtic Christmas”, then got bogged down in doing the beading, so left that to one side. I’ve gone back to L&L’s “The Quiltmaker” which seems to be coming along quite nicely but I have the sneaking suspicion that I left it down before for a reason (I usually leave WIPs because I’ve stitched something wrong), and I’m going to put in a lot more energy and find I’m going to have to unstitch a large swatch of effort.

I still have “Beautiful Balloons” as an item to finish, but that’s on the back burner for the momen.

I did finish off a quick item off “Tantes Zolder, which gave me a break from working on one of the bigger projects. I must get around to making these items up, I just dont want to get the sewing machine out for just one or two small items. I have plenty of Lavender that will be good for lavender bags, and I also have some Rosemary, which should also be good for lining linen closets with to fragrance my bedlinen with

me a bad blogger.

I’ve been busy doing other things the last few weeks, which has resulted in me not feeling in the mood to post here. I’ve still been doing some stitching, when I get some time to put my feet up, and have been mainly working on the L&L “Celtic Christmas”. Whilst the kit does include the Metallic Blending filament, I decided not to use it as I hate working with it. I decided to use some left over gold DMC, but ran out half way through. Didn’t want to send off over the internet for just 1 or 2 skeins (and certainly didn’t want to spend money doing a full Stash shop), so went looking in town. Could *not* find anywhere that stocked DMC, but the local House of Frasier does have a limited Haberdashery and they did have Anchor, with a conversion chart nearby. You cant tell the difference in these 2 particular shades.

It does worry me to a certain extent about how badly Stitchers are served by Bricks and Mortar shops. There are none I know of dedicated to Sewing in the city centre, and there are only small concessions in one or two of the bigger department stores. Since we lost our Beatties, I think we’re down to HoF only. I believe there are other shops dotted in the suburbs, but that means me traveling for an hour or more to pick up one or two skiens that I could spend minutes getting off the internet. Shop owners would say “we’re being forced out by the internet shops, so it’s no longer viable to exist” (a certain amount of this is true I have no doubt – it must be a tough business to keep afloat), but likewise stitchers could say “we only buy on the internet because we cant find a local shop to service our needs”.