A PIF and an Exchange

Over the last couple of weeks I have heard that my Xmas ornie exchange arrived safely at it's new home with Angela and I received a lovely surprise in the post in the shape of a PIF from Rachael.

Angela had sad that she liked snowmen and Prairie Schooler designs so I stitched her a design from Christmas Trees II.

Design: Christmas Trees II by Prairie Schooler

Fabric: 32 ct Belfast Linen Amsterdam Blue

Threads: DMC

Backing Fabric: Snowmen

Secondly here is the PIF Rachael sent me. It is a personalised Christmas ornie with my initials stitched on it. The design is from the Black Velvet Inscription Sampler.

As you can see it is already on my tree, although this isn't where it is living, I moved it to get better light for the photo. Thank you so much Rachael I love it.

Also thank you for all the replies I received about storing my beads. After reading them all I went into the bead shop which we have in my town and looked at the containers they had. In the end I purchased this bag which has a great set of lockable containers.

When I get a few minutes to spare I will print up some labels and move my beads into it.

Hopefully I will be back early next week with not one but two finishes to show you, both of which are for me and have a Christmas theme. I also need to take a picture of my jar for the TUSAL.

TUSAL & Framed

A couple of days late, due to post holiday sorting out and a visit yesterday by my parents, but here is my update on my TUSAL.

As you can see there hasn't been much added as I haven't had much sewing time in the last month. The only threads added are those from my Blogversary stitching and the ones left over from the cord I made for Jennifer's pin cushion.

I also picked up my Mum's birthday present in time for her visit for dinner yesterday.

I was really pleased with the way it looked and will certainly be going back there with any future framing I have. Mind yet again it proved expensive as the frame is resting on a piece of linen that I purchased to add to my stash collection. I have also found out that they have framed St Petersburg twice before and that it will cost me over £100.00 to frame it. It's just as well it's going to be a long time before I finish it. I'll need to save up, mind I already know where in the house it is going.

Whilst I was away on holiday I read The Other Queen by Philippa Gregory. A fascinating read for me as it was set in Chatsworth House, a place I know well and Wingfield Manor, which is just down the road from me. In addition it made several references to embroidery,what more could you want from a book.

Stitching

I have some stitching to show you.

As promised a picture of Celtic Autumn.

I have started working on the border but now she is on the scroll frame I'm finding it very difficult to work on her. This is the first time I've combined a scroll frame with my magnifying lamp and it isn't working. I need to buy a stand to hold the frame. I've seen the one I want, in fact I nearly bought it last year, but I'll have to wait until finances allow the purchase of it. I suspect progress on her will be slow for a while, we will see.

In the mean time I've picked up St Petersburg again. I was inspired by Jacky who has recently been there.

I'm actually working on part of The Church of Our Savior on the Spilled Blood. If you follow the link I'm currently doing the blue and green dome on the left of the church. This small bit of stitching is just one of the swirls and represents about 5 hours of stitching. There are an awful lot of sections of two or three stitches in this part.

As you can see I have a long way to go. I have finally sorted out how to handle this amount of fabric. I'm stitching using a hoop and rolling up the rest of the material and pegging it hence the state of the fabric. Whilst this will work for now eventually I'm going to have to find a better solution. Does anyone know where I can buy a massive roller frame?

I had hoped to be able to show you one of the PIFs I was working on, but I haven't heard that it has been received yet. I'm starting to get worried as it was posted on Monday by Husband, although he did send it 2nd class so maybe that explains the delay.

The new boots have been out for a test drive on a local 2 mile walk but it wasn't a great day so although the pictures are on my website I'll not put any on here. I'm hoping to fit a couple more walks in next week as we are going to the Lakes a week on Sunday for my birthday.

A New Start for 2009

Well I knew I wouldn't be able to resist starting St Petersburg once I had it, but oh what have I let myself in for!!!!!!!

Here are the first few stitches which involve 5 different shades of blue. It is stitched using one thread on 36 count linen and these few stitches took me well over an hour to do and meant the dinner got (slightly) burnt!!

One thing is for sure I had no idea what I was letting myself in for when I asked for this kit, the material alone is 90 cm by 70 cm and takes up half of the space on our dining room table which is large by most peoples standards.

I'm going to have to find some way of working with this large amount of material. Any suggestions anyone? It certainly won't fit onto my roller frame!!

The one thing I'm not too happy about is the way the silks arrived. At first glance they appear to already be threaded onto the cards until you realise they are all secured at the bottom with tape and once you have cut this to get at the first thread you find out they aren't permanently attached to the cards so you need to secure them all in place before they come off. If they do come off, before you do this, your in trouble as there are no DMC numbers, just the icons used in the chart.

I'm glad I didn't plan on finishing it this year, I think that could be beyond me.

Christmas

Well I hope everyone had a good Christmas ours was a little mixed, started out well and sadly went downhill for Daughter from early evening onwards.


After a late start to the day we eventually managed to drag Son and Daughter out of bed so as that we could open the presents.


In amongst the many presents under the tree were several books and Cd's for me. One of which was an Osmonds CD which has the two albums Crazy Horses and The Plan, it was a surprise gift from Husband and I'd forgotten just how good they were. Nice to know my first taste in music was actually quite good lol!! My brother had got me a book voucher so I have also ordered The Tales of Beedle the Bard, Nigella's Christmas and the second book in the Martin Edwards Lake District thriller series.


As you can see there were also several cross stitch related presents, including from Husband the Thea Governeur kit St Petersburg, which I'm itching to start. My dad ordered me all of the Celtic Lady charts thinking I'd missed out Celtic Autumn from the list so I'm hoping I can swap that for Cirque Des Triangles when Thread Bear opens next Friday. The Little House Needlework's chart was from Daughter.

Husband's speciality is wrapping presents up in strange ways and this 'spade' was for me but it had absolutely nothing to do with gardening and most certainly wasn't a spade. In fact it was an add-on for my digital mapping and only the bit at the bottom was the present the rest was cardboard.

Once the presents were all opened it was time to start thinking about the dinner, which went without a hitch, a big relief after Monday when my oven had packed up.

In the evening I was meant to be picking up Daughter's boyfriend put he then decided not to come over, so of course we had tears and then the next day he very kindly broke up with her.

Then as if she wasn't having things tough enough yesterday somebody broke into the 'crew-room' at MacDonalds, where she works, and stole her (favourite) bag with her I-pod, Blackberry, purse, keys and favourite make-up bag with her (naturally) expensive lip-stick in it, think Chanel and Dior. Whilst her purse, keys and cards were found and later handed into a local police station we have still had to stop all of her cards, lock her phone and replace the front door lock. Tomorrow we are going shopping for a new Blackberry for her and I think after the rough deal she has had I might even stretch to replacing one of her lipsticks for her and a new handbag. You may of course recall that I hate shopping and shopping during the sales is definitely not how I want to spend my time but in these circumstances I'll try my hardest not to moan when Daughter, who's number one favourite past-time is shopping, is dragging me all over Derby tomorrow.

What I haven't yet mentioned is that the week before Daughter came home she had a more expensive I-pod pinched from her handbag whilst she was Christmas shopping on Oxford Street and of course her friend died a couple of months ago. I really wish I could stop all of this happening to her, I feel so completely useless at the moment. She is feeling so low that last night she opted to spend the evening with Husband and I watching TV in the living room rather than be in her bedroom!! Thankfully she has plenty of friends who are also supporting her and keeping her company so hopefully the smile will back on her face soon.

Today in an attempt to stop me putting anymore weight on during Christmas I dragged myself out of bed early and headed for the pool and managed 50 lengths. I haven't been for a while due to the fact my swimming costume had become very, very baggy and needed replacing, which I finally got around to doing yesterday. One of my goals for 2009 is too reduce my weight by at least 3 stone and to get much fitter, so not gaining any over Christmas is a good start, I think.

All Things Yellow

Yesterday I managed to fit in a couple of hours on Celtic Autumn. I finally took the plunge and started some of the stitches using the braid which is new to me. Not sure that I'm going to enjoy working with it as it seems very fiddly to use and it was for ever coming out of the needle. Maybe I should use a needle with a smaller eye but then threading the stuff which is difficult enough already would become even harder

Regardless of the trouble I had with the braid I'm finding this an easy piece to work on and still enjoying it. However I'm going to reluctantly put her aside for the rest of the week and do some work on the JA SAL that I have done nothing on yet.

Yesterday whilst I was killing a bit of time and following a link on the computer I finally found a good reason to stitch one of the Ink Circles designs. I quite like these designs but couldn't see the point of stitching one if I couldn't think of a home for it. Whilst I was on the Ink Circles website I came across one of the designs used as a footstool which is something I have wanted to do for ages.

I have decided I'm going to add the Cirque Des Triangles design to my wish list and I will probably do it on a dark, possibly black, linen with gold or orange thread, which means it will fit in with the colour of our settee. Its quite appropriate as if I doddle I tend to create patterns out of triangles so I think I will enjoy this far more than doing the circles.

A word of warning to anyone planning on buying an orange/reddy coloured 3 piece suite - DON'T. The suite was purchased by Husband before we lived together and as it was in far better condition than mine moved in with him. When we had the house extended and hence the living room decorated it took me months to find the right colours to go with it. The wall behind the settee looked like a display area for Dulux as I'd bought that many different colours and shades before we finally found the one that worked. If ever we sell the house and the new owners strip the walls they are going to be amazed at how many different coloured squares they will find on one wall. Actually thinking of that I wonder how many threads I will purchase before I find a shade that goes with the settee!!

I think I have also finally decided on which of two kits I would like for Christmas. As they retail at £70 plus each it has to be a Christmas present as even I can't justify spending that much on a cross stitch design everyday of the week. A few months back I fell in love with two Thea Governeur designs, one of St Petersburg and a Tutankhamen design as well.

I've been tossing around between the two but the St Petersburg one has won this round. Mind that doesn't mean that old Tut won't make it onto a birthday or Christmas list later on.