The World of Cross Stitching 230 - Fathers` Day cards

Lol, please don`t ask about the granny square! Its growth can be measured in mm, rather than cm, since my last post. As always, Life has happened: am stitching 3 projects simultaneously, my own cushion idea and two commissions. The plan is to crochet at night, as a wind-down, but I`m at that early stage with the stitching when I do not dare to put it down, I just keep going until I fall asleep, because I don`t know how long each`ll take. Plus, with my usual acute perception of time - i.e. I never have any idea what day of the week, etc. it is -, the deadlines are not something tangible (yet) either, just random numbers sometime in the future. I was surprised the other day, when the librarian stamped the books and the return date is now in June - how did that happen? It was Christmas only a few weeks ago...? (By the way, am working on lovely Xmas pieces just now for the magazines, and being 6 months out of sync also doesn`t help someone as woolly-headed as me when it comes to Time - I usually tell what day it is by watching which bins the neighbours put out). #calendarbyrecycling

Anyway, I thought I`d better grab this opportunity to blog for a few minutes before the school run, since the latest issue of WOCS hits the shops today, and in it are the lovely Lucie Heaton cards I stitched. Actually, they`re not all cards - it was a great project to work on because all 4 classic car pics were of different sizes: a card, a bookmark, and two larger pieces. I started with the largest one of the lot (my DH would be shouting the name of this car now but he`s away to work) - shall I call it an Aston Martin DBXZ85874HKL? Whatever. Here it is:

Hehe, probably it`s a Jaguar. Anyway, here`s the whole lot of them together:

And this is how they`ve been made up in the magazine:

Well, the card and the bookmark were quite obvious, but I was wondering what they`d make with the other two - a glasses case and an iPad cover! I love this set, I think it looks awesome - as long as you don`t grab your tablet with gardening gloves or shove your glasses case in your dirty overalls pocket... but as hard as it is to find the suitable stitchy project for the men in our lives, I think these vintage cars are perfect. I remember thinking at the time I was stitching these, seeing Hubby`s eyes getting a bit misty, that I might stitch this... Aston-Jaguar-MG GT5XYZ (?) for him for Father`s Day - ha! Personal project?? When will I ever learn? ;)

However, on a more positive note: do you remember George, my cuddly knitted hippo?

You can read his story here, where I also promised to keep y`all posted: so the latest info is that George has moved to Ireland - the lady who`d originally commissioned him never got back to me, but last week a sweet Irishman bought George for his girlfriend - and, I hope, they all lived happily ever after! :D Happy stitching, everyone!

birthday birdies

Good job I `Liked` all the stitchy magazines` pages on Facebook - at least I get a wee reminder from time to time when one of my models appears, usually months after I stitched it, by which time I tend to forget about them. Thus I just spotted these little birthday birdies by Angela Poole in the latest issue of Cross Stitch Collection, out today:

Courtesy of The Making Spot, from Cross Stitch Collection 225

Oh, and the Kindle Fire cover I made on Sunday, so that the gadget would be safe when the Wee Man flies to Hungary in a couple of weeks` time? Well, he dropped the wretched thing last night and the glass broke to pieces. Now I can`t help feeling that I jinxed it somehow ;)

a weekend of Kindle covers

This, again, has been a busy week - maybe even more so than usual. Hubby and I celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary on Thursday and two days later it was my birthday - and yes, both strengthened my belief that one cannot have too much chocolate. I also happened to finish all my magazine work for the now so this weekend I finally got round to sewing jobs I`d been putting of for ages. Hubby got some new tee shirts at work that doubled as miniskirts and I`ve been meaning to shorten them for weeks. Yesterday I finally got my sewing machine out and sorted them, then swiftly moved on to my Kindle Fire Cover Project. But first, the inspiration: my Mommy-in-law asked me a couple of weeks ago to make a cover for her Kindle  and the other day I started to knit one (I had this lovely lilac cotton yarn and I thought the colour would be perfect for her). I measured her Kindle the last time we visited her - I hope I got the size right!

I`m glad she mentioned the Kindle cover, by the way, because it got me thinking: we`re going on holiday soon - to Hungary, as usual, but this time in instalments. My Mum`s coming here this Thursday and in ten days` time she`s flying back with Gregory, thus giving us, run-down parents a little breather, plus spending some quality one-on-one time with her grandson. Then, to save her sanity, and because by that time I`ll be having withdrawal symptoms too, a week later I`m flying after my wee boy. Finally, after a few days, work-committed DH is arriving with the car, and in August we`re driving back to Scotland, just before school starts again.

Anyway, back to the Kindle cover. So I realised that if Son wants to take the Kindle Fire on the plane, he`ll need a cover for that, so I got my scrap fabrics out and he chose these two (a brownish flowery one and a red linen one with some embroidered flowers). I made the actual cover padded, in case he bumps or drops the thing, and I made an extra pocket for the charger. I finished both sides with wooden buttons I got as a free gift with a knitting magazine and hand-made button holes, which I tried for the first time and considering that, they turned out quite OK. All in all, I`m pretty chuffed with the result:

I almost forgot: I`m so used to not being able to share photos of my stitching any more, as they tend to be super-secret magazine projects, that I`ve just realised that the commission piece I`m working on just now is for a private person, so I can add WIP photos! Yay! It`s a funky little sampler by Riverdrift House, called Dream a Little Dream. I`m stitching it for an 83-year-old lady whose eyesight is not what it used to be but she`d like to give this as a wedding present to her granddaughter. I`ve only just started it but I know I`m going to have lots of fun with this jazzy sampler! :)