Thursday 26 January 2012

26 January update

Not feeling on top of the world due to some sort of cold (that, interestingly, induced only 3 or 4 noseblows all day but I still feel so washed-out), so anyway, due to this "feeling poorly", I hardly stitched today. It is now 6 o`clock, I`m sitting here waiting for Hubby to arrive with my medicine (= pizza), and this is the state of my birds:

Wednesday 25 January 2012

update on Celtic birds

Just a quick photo update after the one I put up here yesterday (24 January) morning; I was working on my birds all day yesterday and today... It`s 5 p.m. now and my eyes are bleeding so I guess it`s time to stop. This is how things stand just now:

Tuesday 24 January 2012

next Celtic challenge

Here`s what I`ve been working on since last Friday... well, actually, the weekend doesn`t really count since Hubby`s got manflu, i.e. looking after him (=mostly putting up with his mood) and entertaining the 6-year-old... I mean THE OTHER 6-year-old in the house was solely my responsibility for those blessed 48 hours... So anyway, this is how far I got with my next Celtic challenge (next, as in "after the Celtic chessboard" and challenge, because I want to finish it in January - hahaha!):
And just in case you can`t figure it out what it is yet, here`s a photo from the magazine (Mary Hickmott`s New Stitches, issue 194) of this lovely Celtic cushion:
I think it`ll look stunning, I can`t wait to see the finished cushion!!!

Thursday 19 January 2012

Shades of Africa

I just finished Joan Elliott`s design from issue 152 of Cross Stitcher (October 2004) which I started last Tuesday - yes, a mere 9 days ago. Not bad going, methinks. On the other hand, I guess it`ll take me a lot longer to find a powder-blue picture frame to fit it in... but who knows? Maybe this will be my lucky year (although judging by the start of it...!). Oh, and not to mention that this is supposed to be the last year on Earth... should I even bother framing this lovely African lady? I think I will!

Tuesday 10 January 2012

plums

You may remember that a few weeks ago I finished the apple-kit I got from Janet in our local stitching club (you can see the picture and read about it here: Cross Stitch A to Z: I`m back!).
Since then I managed to do two things: 1. I also finished the plum-kit, which my Mum took back to Hungary to give it to my Gran for her nameday (in case you didn`t know, the 21st of January is Agnes... among other things and names and all...). And 2. I also managed to have a look at the cover of said kits - yes, indeed they are from America, made by a company called `Cross My Heart`, although whether they still make them, I do not know (these two kits were made in 1993).
So, in the hope of my Gran NOT seeing this before the 21st, here`s the picture of this `Favourite Fruit Kit` completed:

Thursday 5 January 2012

post-Christmas post

Now that the holiday`s over ("aaaw"/"yeay!", depending on my mood), I can finally share some more photos with you that until now were in the hidden vaults of my camera on account of being somebody`s Xmas prezzie. That is, I HOPE I can share them (still not happy with the way Blogger`s working for me at the moment, although I`m beginning to suspect the problem is with MY laptop).
Anyway, here`s a cushion I made for my friend Jo and her family - more exactly, I bought the cushion in ASDA, I only sewed my wee cross stitch on it (when I say wee, I mean not the size but how much actual work was involved which came to next to nothing. Note the big blocks of colours that make up the two dancers - a piece of cake, indeed. If you`d like to have a go at this design yourself, you can find it in Cross Stitcher Issue 211).

Another Christmas present was this blackwork picture of a street in Hythe from Mary Hickmott`s New Stitches magazine (Issue 183), which I absolutely adored and made for my parents - who, incidentally, brought a picture for us from my uncle this year, and since my Mum wrapped all their presents here to save the wrapping paper from getting torn in the suitcase, we exchanged almost identically wrapped pictureframes at Christmas. (For the notoriously curious among you, ours is a holographic/3D-kinda sailing ship, which Gregory absolutely adores. And here`s the one we gave to them:

Finally, here`s another present that Tam and I got but it`s also home-made. Long story short, this year I asked for flannel duvet covers but because of the different pillow sizes in Hungary, my Mum didn`t want to buy whole sets and then throw half of them away, so she bought the material instead and - knowing that I`d been longing for a decent sewing machine for a while - she bought one for me as soon as she got here. So here are the Xmas prezzie duvet covers that I made for ourselves with my brand new Argos sewing machine: