Happy Dancing

Woo hoo - I'm dead chuffed with this! Yesterday I completed part 5 of Medieval Town Mandala - yay!


It's only taken me 2 years to stitch these 4 turquoise and gold corners. As there are still another 7 parts to go, it looks like it could be another 14 years before I finally finish this one!

Anyway, I'll keep going with it for now. I don't have a lot of time at the moment to dig through my stash and plan anything new to stitch, so it's quite useful just to plod on with this and I'm quite enjoying it. There is lots of planning going on in my head - I just hope I don't forget it all before I can do something about it!

So MTM is the main focus of my stitching, but there are bits and pieces of crochet going on too. I put this together last week, having seen similar on Flickr.


And someone I know was very pleased with her new pink sunglasses last week!

Penny rug style

I love penny rugs (see www.flickr.com/groups/pennyrugs/) but I've never got round to actualy making one. It's yet another of those things on my mental to-do list that I never quite get aroun to. The closest I've come is this candle mat I made last year. It occurred to me recently that you could create a crochet version as it's easy to crochet circular pennies. The end result works rather well. And there are a whole lot of crochet shapes that would work really well in this way, so I have lots more ideas. Crocheted using 4 ply 100% cotton yarn and a 1.75mm hook.

Niamh

.... joined our family 2 weeks ago, weighing in at 6lb 12oz.



She looks a lot like her big sister, but her eyes aren't quite so big. Temperamentally, she's also different from her sister as she's the kind of baby who likes to let you know when she's hungry or thirsty or something's wrong. And she doesn't much like the current hot weather! But her big brother and sister are both absolutely thrilled with her.

I crocheted a couple of blankets for Niamh before she was born.



Since Niamh's arrival, I've managed to pick up both crochet hook and needle and am particularly enjoying stitching on Medieval Town Mandala!

Hellooo!

Still here - still pregnant - still working (but only until the end of this week) - still stitching? (Umm, not recently). Still blogging? I just haven't felt the inclination to share the thoughts rattling around inside my head.

Anyway, I've seen the rebirth of the SBQ on several blogs and thought I'd join in!

Suppose we say that there are two types of stitchers.

There are those who enjoy the “process” of stitching. They stitch for stitching’s sake and if something gets finished, so much the better, but it’s not necessarily the end goal. Primarily, it’s the application of needle and thread to cloth that makes them happiest.

Then there are those who are “project” stitchers. They move steadily through their projects, certainly enjoying their stitching time, but finding their greatest joy in the completed stitching.

If you had to pick one to describe yourself, which type of stitcher would you be? I imagine that we could all say that we fall somewhere in between, but really think hard about this and try to pick just one. And once you’ve decided whether you’re a Process or Project stitcher, tell us if your recognize that approach in other parts of your life.

I think I'm a 'process stitcher' - I do enjoy thinking about the what, how and why. But for me the process extends beyond just the stitching itself into the finishing too - I just love trying out different things!

Thanks to Lee for getting things going!

Talking about trying out different things - I've been having lots of fun trying out different things in crochet over the last 6 weeks or so! Here are a few of the things I've been working on.



The thought of stitching has been floating around over the last few days, but hasn't been persistent enough yet for me to actually do anything about it!

A Working Mum

One of those mornings this morning where you have to make the choice between work and children. Work won because I knew Iona would be absolutely fine once I left and she had the chance to settle down. She wasn't very well yesterday and extra-clingy this morning because of it. But I had to leave her in tears and it was tough.

I was reading Barbara's blog a week or two back and how she loves to post cute pics of her kids, and I realised that I don't post many pics of my own cute kids.


Iona and I went for a walk in the Botanic Gardens to see the crocuses and I asked her to sit by the pond and give me a big smile. So she sat and stuck out her chin and screwed up her eyes and nose in a funny big smile, but you just don't get to see her beautiful big blue eyes!


Alexander, now, wouldn't be so happy to be referred to as cute - he's growing up! But he is wonderful with his little sister.


Alexander and I were having a little chat yesterday and he was commenting on how big my stomach is getting, or my lump as he likes to call it! The way he's talking you'd think I really was the size of a baby elephant, but I do think I must be at least 4 to 6 weeks ahead of the size I was with Iona. I told him just to think about the size of women expecting twins, triplets or more!

I'm feeling a bit better about crafty stuff this week and have been enjoying some crochet. I just haven't managed to get round to taking any photos of it!

Not in the mood

 
I just don’t seem to be in the mood these days for blogging – don’t really have anything I want to say.
 
I’m struggling a bit with this pregnancy too – I’m sick of people telling me how wonderful it is to be pregnant or how wonderful it is that I’m pregnant  when I didn’t choose to be pregnant in the first place and even at the best of times still feel rather ambivalent about it. And with the tiredness, grumpiness, lack of sleep, breathlessness, wind and heartburn it just feels like heavy going. I feel like I’m already the size of a baby elephant and I still have over 3 months to go. And this baby really loves to give me a good kicking!
 
We also have builders in at home extending the house to give us a much larger kitchen and dining room plus extending one bedroom and adding a new one. It’s quite exciting seeing what’s going on, but I’m not particularly looking forward to all the work that we’ll have to get started on in 6 weeks or so when the building is finished. I think we’ll need to get one bedroom finished and the kitchen sorted before the baby arrives.
 
Anyway, here are a couple of recent finishes.

 
This hanging ball of roses (from a Betz White tutorial) is dedicated to Alexander who persuaded me to persevere, that it was worth finishing, one evening when I was feeling particularly apathetic.


Peaches and Cream sampler from the Victoria Sampler - love the design, but I really lost the inclination to work on it when I was in the middle of stitching it. But I really love the drawn thread bands - I was surprised just how much they lift the whole thing.
 
I’m now working on a bit of crochet, inspired by something Lucy at Attic24 was working on.

The pursuit of perfection – or taking it a bit too far?

For the last few weeks, I’ve been working on a plastic canvas box. It’s taken me longer than I expected – it’s my own design and that design keeps changing as I try different things. This time, however, I’ve come up against what is, to me, a major design flaw. Just when I thought I’d finished the actual stitching on the box and was putting all the bits together.

My starting point was this.


Winter Snowflakes from Kick Back and Stitch. I stitched it a while ago, but it’s never been finish finished as I couldn’t think how to do it in a way that would show it off the way I wanted to. Then, a few weeks ago, I saw this post on Craftypod and all of a sudden things clicked together in my mind and I came up with the idea of making a plastic canvas box with my Winter Snowflakes in the lid. And I could use the many of the same threads, stitches and so on in stitching the box that I used in the original design. I still think it sounds like a fantastic idea!

So, first of all, I made this for the base of the box. It’s far too nice for the base of a box, but hey-ho that’s what it’s for.


Then I made some box sides.


The diagonal stitch pattern used here (can't remember what the stitch is called) appears in the Winter Snowflakes design, but I’ve used my own choice of colours. Then I decided that the box sides weren’t going to be tall enough for the type of box I wanted to try. So the box sides became the sides of a box lid.

And when Winter Snowflakes was mounted on some stiff card and fitted into the lid, it was perfect!



So I stitched some different, taller box sides, stitched them to the base and stitched up the sides.


Then, full of anticipation, I popped on the lid.


Looks OK in this photo, but it’s not perfect! The lid doesn’t come as far down the sides as I’d planned – it’s supposed to come down to the darker area between the two horizontal bands. And the box is now just too tall for what I wanted!



So I’m not sure at the moment what the next step is. I suspect it will involve dismantling the box sides and possibly stitching something completely different. But all this stitching on plastic canvas used a mountain of thread and I’ve run out of the dark blue #5 pearl cotton I’d been using. I don’t know, if I completely frog the sides, whether the threads will be re-usable. And I’ve also run out of one of the colours of metallic braid I was using too and I really didn’t want to spend a small fortune on making this!

Cake, anyone? You're all invited!

Come in, come in and welcome! Take your coat off and make yourself at home. There's plenty of birthday cake to go round. Soft drinks and crispy nibbles are in the corner over there by the window. Kettle's on so tea and coffee will be just a minute.


Welcome to my virtual stitchy birthday party! What are you stitching on today? I'm still plodding along on my latest project - you'll see a little sneak peek later. My slump took a downturn at the start of the week- too many interesting things to stitch and seemingly little point in doing any of it. Fortunately things seem to be picking up now.

I had a lovely surprise from the postman about 10 days ago when this gorgeous fob arrived from Anne, as I was a winner in her blogaversary draw.


You can see it there modelling my current project. Spot the plastic canvas. Although, the plastic canvas is rather a means to an end rather than the end in itself. I'll explain better another time.

When my fob arrived, Iona thought it was maybe a bracelet, and had to try it on first. Unfortunately for her, it was too big and luckily for me, it's been living on my favourite pair of scissors ever since!

Anyway, I have to get back to work now. Feel free to stay as long as you like and eat all the cake. I'll pop back later to tidy up.

Why blog? A spot of rambling

For some reason, ‘Why blog?’ is a question that keeps bothering me at the moment. Sometimes blogging is easy, I’m full of thoughts and ideas I want to share. Other times, the ideas are few and far between, I struggle to find something to say, and I can’t think of a good reason why I should say anything.

Similarly, when I’m in a bit of a blogging slump, I also go into a blog reading slump. Not that I stop reading blogs, I just struggle to find them as interesting or inspirational as I do when I’m not in a slump. It’s not that I can’t admire beautiful needlework, it just doesn’t inspire me as it does at other times.

So I’m in a bit of a slump at the moment and wondering why I blog and why so many of the blogs I read just don’t grab me in the way they used to.

As to why I blog, I’ve come up with 3 main reasons, some of which give some insight into what I want from the blogs I read.

• To share my needlework
  
• To ‘meet’ people with similar interests
  
• To discuss the stitching process –from choosing what to stitch to finish finishing, what I learn from stitching a particular piece, what I particularly enjoy (or not), what I find inspirational in my stitching and what puts me off, why we do the things we do, stitch the pieces we stitch

The last point is particularly relevant to my blog reading. I’d rather read a blog that discusses the stitching process than one that simply parades an endless array of finishes as if to say ‘look how clever I am’. And I think the discussion is important to bring meaning and context to the finishes themselves – after all, it’s the blood, sweat and tears that go into stitching and/or finishing a piece that really give it a personal significance to us as stitchers.

And I’ll hold my hands up here and say that I completely forgot to include the process bit to my post on my SB finishes - it can be far too easy to get distracted and forget!

And while I’m on about it, can I have a moan about smug bloggers? There’s one particular blog I read (which shall definitely remain nameless) where the smug tone is just driving me nuts at the moment! I keep reading as I love the things she makes and she has some fantastic ideas. But the endless perfect photos and smug rambling about how perfect her life and family are just drive me up the wall at times! Can anyone’s life be that perfect all the time? Like the blood, sweat and tears of stitching, it’s the trials and tribulations of life that make us who we are and give us the opportunity to learn and to grow and are reflected in the things we choose to do and to make.

It’s not that I want to know all the gory details of other people’s personal problems – personally, I’d much prefer not to, although I know we all like the chance to let off steam every now and again. We just don’t do our stitching in a vacuum and real life interferes sometimes, often more than we might want. It’s important to acknowledge where the stitching and real life do collide. And that then influences the stitching process – the what, when, how and why.

And back to my blogging slump – I suppose there are other things in my life (like being unexpectedly pregnant) that have greater priority than blogging. And I admit that I still have days when the completely unexpected part of my pregnancy still gets to me and I’d rather spend time and effort doing other things. Sometimes I do resent the fact that I can’t chase Iona round the house the way I’d like to and join in all the silly games, but from May, I’ll have a lot more time just to be with her.

And it’s annoying me that I can’t think of any baby names I really like!

The Production Line

My stitching mojo seems to be back with a bang - I'm rather amazed at what I've achieved over the last 10 days! As the nausea lifted and the desire to stitch returned, I promised myself that I wasn't going to push myself too hard, just make a point of enjoying the stitching.

I seem to have stretched that promise a bit more than I expected with 3 Shepherd's Bush finishes in the last 10 days!

First up is my Family Sampler, although I've realised that I can't finish it completely before June as it includes the initials of my family!


(Not ironed as it is just being folded up and packed away again until the summer!)

Next, while I was waiting for a stash order to arrive, comes Sweet Pea which I also have the Jill Rensel mat for.


Then, as Sweet Pea didn't fill all the waiting time, I started Quaker Heart which I finished last night. Much as I do like the others, I really love this one. And, at this point in time, the words really appeal to me.



I'm still waiting for some floss to arrive, so it's on to something different tonight, but not another SB piece!

First finish of the year

And here it is, Medley by Carol Tinson of Heirloom Embroideries! It was started on Christmas Eve and finished on 2 January.


It had been in my stash for a while and I'm glad I finally got round to stitching it. I found stitching the border a bit tedious, but enjoyed stitching the inner motifs. The only difficulty I have with it now is that I find the colours very cold!


After my finish, I drifted a bit, not sure what I felt like stitching next. However on Friday, after admiring Karen's Holly and Ivy Sampler, and having drooled over someone's Quaker Heart (oops - just can't remember where I saw it now, I know it was in a blog header - gorgeous too!), I was in the mood for some Shepherd's Bush stitching. So, over the weekend, I rediscovered my SB Family Sampler! I haven't stitched on it since early last year, but am quite enjoying it so far. Most of the motifs are complete, and for now I'm working my way round the border.

AWOL

Well, that’s just what happens sometimes when life catches you out. And I was certainly caught out big time in the middle of November! At the end of October I has a tummy bug which seemed to take it’s time clearing up. By mid November, I was still feeling a bit rough and combined with one or two other things, planned to visit my doctor to get things sorted out. I just had one thing I needed to check before I saw the doctor.

And that was the point when, to my (and my DH’s) enormous shock, I discovered that I’m pregnant. It’s completely unplanned and unexpected. I would have thought that my body would have struggled to achieve this considering my age and the contraceptives! Whoever it was that said that it’s practically impossible to get pregnant after the age of 40 had obviously never met me. So I’m now at 16 weeks and baby’s due 21 June.

I’m still not entirely sure how I feel about having another child. Until now, I had no plans to do that at all. While, in theory, I’m quite happy to be pregnant, I think I’m just very unsure about how this one will fit in to my family. Long term, we’ll all adjust and we’ll be fine. But in the short term, I’m just rather unsure about it all.

So there I was, mid November, suffering from constant nausea that completely turned me off many things including stitching and any other crafty activity, and blogging too. Fortunately, the nausea started to clear around mid December so it didn’t spoil Christmas. But I’m not completely back to normal yet, and not overly enthused by stitching, although I have completed my first stitchy finish for the year!

And I do know that I certainly don’t want to stop blogging, although for now, I may be a very intermittent blogger.

And a really should say a huge thank you to everyone who left such lovely comments on my Bluebird box, even though the thought of the box still makes me want to throw up!

Quick hello

Just popping in with a quick hello! Sorry I haven't been around much recently. I wasn't well a couple of weeks ago and have been feeling rough ever since. Hopefully things will get back to normal before too long.

For now, here's a pic of my Bluebird box.


I haven't made the bluebird for the top and I'm not sure that I will. For now, it stays as it is.

And perhaps the fact that I've felt like blogging today is a good sign!

Unexpected

This week has taken on a slightly unexpected twist as I'm now having my second day at home with Iona. I'm loving having all the extra time with her, she's such fun to be with!

Anyway, I just popped in here to say that I've finished the stitching on my bluebird box.



I'm slowly getting round to the finishing. Slowly for 2 reasons, the first being that I want to stitch one or two sample ornaments for the after school club which will start a week today. My second reason for only getting round to the finishing slowly is that I think I'm going to have to do some blocking. I've never blocked anything in my life and it sounds way too scary! But at the moment, the stitched outline of the design does not quite match up with the outline of the card for the box (that was part of the finishing kit).


So I'll just have to block it into shape! Oh well, at least the box is stitched in DMCs and so it should at least be colour fast! But don't hold you breath if you're waiting to see the finished box. Maybe I'll just avoid the blocking issue completely for now and go and stitch the bluebird for the top!

Ups and downs

Things have been a bit rough at work since I went back in January. It came to a head a couple of weeks ago and as a result of that I have a meeting on Thursday. I don't know what's going to happen but I'm keeping my fingers crossed that things will change for the better.

Anyway, it's all got me rather jittery and depressed at the moment. I feel like I don't know where I'm going. I just focus on my two beautiful children and make the most of the time I have for my stitching.

So I've been having fun with my Bluebird box and am really surprised at how quickly I'm getting through it.


Progress has slowed this week as I really need to get organised for the after school club I'm going to be taking!

And I haven't shown you this.


A fifteen sided bircornu in felt - I just wanted to see how it worked out in felt.

And as you might have noticed, it's now settled that I'll be teaching an after school club at Alexander's school from the end of this month. We're going to make Christmas ornaments. I bought a book to put together some ideas.


A Cross Stitcher's Countdown to Christmas - I'm really glad I did get this book - there are so many designs in it I'd like to stitch!

There she goes!

Finally, over the weekend, Iona decided to walk on her own!


I'm so proud of my little girl! She was all ready to walk 6 weeks ago, but had a couple of little tumbles which knocked her confidence. But over the weekend, she's just taken off and it's really given her a confidence boost - she's becoming quite adventurous! And she's such a funny little sweetie!

My bluebird box is still coming on well, although it's almost strange to be concentrating so completely on cross stitch at the moment!


I really couldn't be bothered when I started those little buzzy bees - they're so small and fiddly to stitch! But after I'd finished them, I could see what a difference it made and am glad that I stitched them after all!

We had a wander around the allotment late yesterday afternoon - there are some really beautiful flowers on some of the plots! And as it was lovely and sunny, I took a few photos. (I had my camera as I'd been trying to get photos of Iona walking!)