summer cottage, unicorn, sunflowers and more Rome

You wouldn`t believe the last 2-3 weeks I`ve had! 🙈 It all started so well: I dug out Rome and enthusiastically threw myself into stitching, but I also wanted to make the most of being temporarily commission-free, so I equally enthusiastically started working on projects around the house that I never have time for, from going through drawers and cupboards to painting the bathroom and the bedroom... and then, just when I had the bedroom half emptied, the front door blocked by big bags and boxes of stuff ready to take to the charity shops, my few hundred magazines neatly organised and two of the three bookcases taken out... I first had a sciatica flare-up (piriformis syndrome, to be precise) and I couldn`t move for days, then out of the blue, first I got the dreaded lurgy (not covid, the other one that`s like flu) and now my two boys are sick too. 😞 Luckily, though, I`m well enough now to look after them and just as well because the `holiday` is over, and I thought before I get too absorbed with work again, I`d better post here re. the most recent publications, the first of which is WOXS 322, with Susan Bates`s summer cottage on the cover:

This lovely colourful project took 75 hours, and after finishing the XS on Pattern Keeper...

... I added the backstitch detail - and just in case the difference doesn`t jump out at you from the first two pics, I add a photo of my paper chart that I marked with felt pens, I think the amount of backstitch shows up better on that.

Also out this week is issue 20 of XStitch Magazine, with this magnificent unicorn by Climbing Goat Designs that was a joy to stitch - I love the clever colour choices, the confetti sts blend so well that there`s more glimmer to this design than to many projects I`ve stitched where I had to add metallics for some extra sparkle.

Apart from not being able to sit in my craft chair for many days, then having a fever, and now having this weird side effect of the lurgy that makes my eyeballs ache (#WTF?!?), a lot less private stitching got done than I`d have liked - but to ease myself back into `stitchy mode` gently, I finished this little cover kit because I needed a needle case...

... and pre-lurgy, I also added more to Rome. I`m actually quite pleased with how it`s coming along, the Spanish Steps are almost completely finished now, and once page 10 in the bottom right is done, page 5 in the top right corner should be a doddle, just a few vertical lines, basically. Hopefully, I won`t have to wait too long before I can work on this again - here are a couple of pics of where I picked it up at the end of May and where I am just now, happy stitching, peeps! 😊

sunflowers, tv cushion finish and museum shelf update

Issue 359 of Cross Stitcher is coming out next Tuesday but the digital copy is already available so I thought I`d better add my piccie of the Maria Diaz sunflower fields here before I forget - the way my sense of time is getting warped these days, by the time I remember `next Tuesday`, it`ll probably be mid-August. 🤪

I love everything about this picture 😍, the feel of it, the colours, the fact that it`s a whole field of my favourite flowers, the blue skies, the depth created by clever use of half stitches and even by leaving some of the fabric unstitched... everything! It took 35 hours to complete, which surprised me a little bit for a 22x16 cm picture that uses only 25 colours - I guess I spent a few extra hours on the confetti of the greens and yellows in the foreground and then the backstitch around the petals. 😉 But I def enjoyed every minute of it - so much so that one day I plan to stitch this for myself too.

And while on the subject of making things for myself: I finally, FINALLY, finished the cushion cover that I`d imagined for my cross stitched tv test card! 🤩 I`m really chuffed with it, even if it took me over 5 hours of faffing about, involving everything from searching for bobbins to taking apart and then putting together again the sewing machine. However, after a few hours of struggling, I emerged victorious - I`ll even include a boring pic of the back here because I`m almost as ridiculously impressed with the slip cover (for I would never even dream about tackling the insertion of a zip! 😳) that I managed to sew the right side out as I am slightly awed by my mitered corners at the front - I really can`t stress enough what a great achievement this cushion cover is from someone who doesn`t like to sew! 😂

Finally, I`ve had a bit more time to work on my HAED Museum Shelf 🤗 I`m up to 48 hours and the bottom right corner is starting to look good, especially since I`ve finished Nefertiti and a bit more of the frame 😃 I`ll add the previous photo I took at 22 hours and also what it`ll look like finished, as a reminder 😉 Hope you`re all staying safe, happy stitching! 😊

sunflowers, returned stitches and Monarch update

Just a quick post because I`m in a stag-stitching frenzy, but issue 283 of The World of Cross Stitching is out now, so I can share my one and only pic of these cute little sunflowers in vases that are this month`s free gift:

Created by Fiona Baker, this cheerful little motif has been turned into a lovely wee needle case:

On Monday, I had another Super-Postie: two of my old stitches have been returned, both by Carol Thornton, the ladybird and the Spring cottage - yay, can`t wait to have these framed too!

Framed `too` because a couple of weeks ago I had some returned pieces framed - I`m not sure if I`ve added pics of that great event here or not but rather than scroll back, I`ll just add them here:

And finally, a quick update on The Monarch of the Glen: I finished Page 6 of 12 last night and am about to start on Page 7, woohoo! Happy stitching, peeps! 😊

Vermogh key fob

Despite of piling up commissions, I was hit by sudden inspiration the other day so I dropped everything and gifted myself with a key fob. 😊 If you follow this blog, you may know that I hardly ever stitch anything for myself, but having seen these beauties in the latest issue of Cross Stitcher (342), I felt I just had to.

It started with Becky Spencer`s interpretation of Van Gogh`s Sunflowers (naturally. How could I not stitch that?!?). 😉 Since I don`t have the frame used in the mag, first I wanted to stretch it over a mini frame that I`ve got (one of those 10x10 cm wooden frames with its own little easel). But by then I fell in love with the idea of stitching the Girl with a Pearl Earring as well and somehow display both together - so I decided to sew them together, add a little stuffing and turn it into a key fob to hang on my handbag.

My only problem was that I wanted it to look like the original by Johannes Vermeer:

Obviously, the mag`s challenge required Cheryl McKinnon to use only 8 colours, so she had to repeat some of them, i.e. the red of the lips on the turban or the green of her eyes on the dress - but I didn`t have such restrictions so I tried to pick colours closer to the original.

(For those of you who want to stitch this 31x40 design from Cross Stitcher, here`s a list of the DMC threads I used: 793, 794 and 3047 for the turban, 351 and 352 for the lips, 3828 for the eyes, 3045 and 3046 for the dress, 945 and 948 for her skin, Blanc and 3799).

To save time, I didn`t stitch the background with 3799 as the mag suggests but rather used a piece of dark navy, almost black, aida instead. I`m absolutely chuffed with the end result and I`ve already hooked it on the strap of my bag so I can see my little key fob every time I go somewhere. 😊 Happy stitching!

autumn woodland - The World of Cross Stitching 272

This week the latest issue of WOCS is out and in it is one of my favourite projects to date: Amanda Butler`s stunningly gorgeous woodland walk (a companion to her `Bluebell Woods` from issue 255).

Autumn is my favourite season and a huge part of the reason for that is the glorious range of warm red, yellow, orange and brown colours of the leaves on the trees at this time of year. I`m also very fond of these wee bridges going over babbling brooks, there are plenty of them here in Scotland and this one reminds me of a recent trip to Perthshire, where I took a photo of my son standing on a not dissimilar little bridge just outside Blair Castle. But if I remember correctly, after the vivid colours of the foliage, the next thing I noticed in this pic was not the bridge - probably like 9 people out of 10, I squealed "Bunny!!" too as soon as I saw it. 😂

This project took 82 hours to stitch and I took a progress pic every 10 hours but rather than adding 8 photos one under the other, I put them together in a mini-film (`as usual`, now I can say again 😊). But before showing you that, here`s the fruit of my 1,5 day off last week, a. k. a. private stitching: I decided to personalise my plain green backpack, so I stitched a couple of sunflowers on hessian patches for the bottle holder mesh pockets on each side, and I also made a wee key ring for the zip, using one of Durene Jones`s autumn leaf designs from the latest issue of Cross Stitch Crazy (246). Have I mentioned I loved autumn leaves? 😃 Happy stitching!

sunflowers - Cross Stitch Gold 148

This week the new issue of Gold is out and in it there`s this lovely bunch of sunflowers, designed by Fiona Baker.

I love, love, LOVED everything about this project! I`m pretty sure I`ve mentioned before that sunflowers are my favourite (she said, with tongue firmly lodged in cheek 😜), so the subject matter was ideal, to start with. I also love the cheerful Smurf-blues of the vase and the butterflies that complement the cheerfulness of the flowers, and I loved working on the natural evenweave - oh, and I love the finish too, it looks awesome framed in that hoop! 😃
Good news: I`ve managed to find a movie maker app, woohoo! (I`m saying it as if it was hard. No. Finding the app took about 8 seconds, it`s just this is the first time in ages that I actually had time to look into the matter). So here are my progress pics strung together in a mini-film - enjoy! (It`s probably better to switch on Full Screen first so it`s not too tiny.) 😊

penguins

I guess it`ll be a while before projects I stitched after the summer holiday start to appear in publications so if there`s an even bigger gap between my blog posts, it`s because of that (the otherwise lazy blogger said, unashamedly) 😉 Anyway, here`s one of the last pieces I stitched before the summer, these 8 cute penguin gift tags by Tiny Modernist that are this month`s free gift with Crazy 235.

In other news, there`s not much happening: summer`s definitely over, heating`s on, wee man`s back to school - erm, to be more precise, he`s almost off again (after next week, we`re all looking forward to a fortnight of the autumn break and galavanting all over Scotland with my mom who`s also arriving next week). And by the time G goes back to school, it`s almost Halloween, which is almost Christmas, which is almost 2018! 😲 Anyway, as quickly as this year has rushed by, at least I have a framed Van Gogh now to show for it - please excuse the artfully angled photo, I didn`t want to fill the screen with one big flash-explosion. 

Oh and I just remembered that before I got a bit snowed under with commission stitching (again!), I had started Save The Stitches too - although I didn`t get too far, atm it looks like a strange and failed attempt of a maze designer. 😂 (That reminds me: found this site accidentally - worth checking out if you like mazes, you can generate your own! 😉 http://www.mazegenerator.net/). Happy stitching... and maze solving! 😁

Sunflowers finished and MORE Christmas

Just a quick post as I promised - for now I have a finished Van Gogh, mwahaha! OK, not exactly as promised - for `tis not framed. Yet. I had every intention of running out today and not returning without a frame but, alas, in my great excitement I forgot that I was skint. So no frame, I`m afraid, until I get some money - in the meantime though, here`s the finished picture:

It took 23 days, on and off, and I can`t tell you how excited I was when I stitched that blue signature last night! 😀 Not only is it my own personal Van Gogh but it`s also the first piece in a very, very long time that I stitched just for myself - and I`m so happy with it I don`t even feel guilty! 😉

In other news, I got my subs copy of Crazy 234 yesterday, with the little Durene Jones Christmas stocking freebies in it - how sweet are these? I`ll def stitch them again because this time I can finish them with the red/green pieces of felt included in the kit and these`ll look adorable on the tree - tee hee, I`m not even thinking about giving them away! What monster have you unleashed, Vincent... 😂

tree of life, a bit more Christmas and sunflowers

This week there are two new publications out in the UK shops and, in a way, my stitching`s on the cover of both. 😀 One of them is the free gift with the latest issue of The World of Cross Stitching, and the other is this folksy tree of life cushion in Cross Stitcher 322.

As I have mentioned many times before, I love, love, LOVE stitching blocky designs... and folksy designs... and designs with shades of red, green and brown, so this Amanda Butler cushion felt like it was made for me. It grew so fast that I could hardly believe it (have I mentioned how much I love blocky designs? That`s another reason: because you can actually see it grow). It took roughly two weeks and it was one of those projects where I felt sad when it was finished, I enjoyed it so much - from the green blocks to the vines and flowers to filling in the gaps with DMC 352.

3,5 hours

16 hours

23 hours

38 hours

45 hours

58 hours - finished 😊

Deer on the flip side 😁 - love the texture of the dark green leaves` back!

And here it is in the magazine, all made up into a folksy wee cushion, complete with cheerful yellow bobbles:

 Next up, after all the autumn colours, here`s a bit more Christmas: the free gift with WOCS 259 is a set of 3 cute cards, designed by Helz Cuppleditch, of a moggy playing with a stocking, a robin and a cracker.

I like how the cards repeat the snowflake motifs of the stitching:

Finally, in other news: I`m plodding on with my Van Gogh Sunflowers. I`ve been away on holiday and had another commission stitch finished in the meantime (also by Amanda Butler but this is a wildlife pic, just wait until you see it in WOCS, amazing and cute rolled into one!!) so according to my calendar, I`ve spent 17 days so far working on this and I reckon another 4-5 should do it so fingers crossed, by the time of my next post I`ll have it framed...? #wishfulthinking 😂 Happy stitching, peeps!

Indian elephant and Van Gogh

I almost did something else again! But if I don`t post now, I never will. *puts on determined face*

I`m so busy having fun with my own stitching these days that I keep forgetting about other stuff I`m supposed to be doing. Not to mention the wee man`s school programs - and crocheting: have I mentioned I`ve learnt to crochet sunburst granny squares? I enjoy them so much I`ve started mass-producing them:

I`ve decided it goes faster if I do the same round on all of them - but when that gets too boring, I switch back to completing each square individually, it makes a change to swap between colours and stitch types. Hopefully, one day I`ll have enough squares to make a blanket.

So. There are some publications out there this week (last week?) that have my pieces in them, including this gorgeous Indian elephant in Gold 139, designed by Carol Thornton.

I love the vibrant colours and the straight lines that were especially soothing to stitch, as was all the filling in with that gorgeous pale yellow. Elephants are my favourite among favourite animals, so I was really pleased when this project came my way.

5,5 hours

11,5 hours

20 hours

32 hours

50 hours

67 hours - finished! 😊

I don`t always take pics of the back but I love how tidy those straight lines make this look

There`s also issue 257 of The World of Cross Stitching in the shops, and this month`s free gift is the beautiful butterflies card... that I think I`ve posted about already but here it is then, as a recap:

This week I was also excited to be able to pick up my parents` "Christmas" present from the framer - it looks just the way I pictured it in my head so I`m over the moon with it and I hope they`ll like it too. I`ll find out in about a fortnight - and when I come back from holiday, I can finally put some photos of it up here too.

What else? Finally, after 5 long years of owning the HAED chart of Van Gogh`s Starry Night, I managed to get round to having it re-printed in the library - I thought, why struggle when I can have the chart on A3 pages? So I had them done and last week I was ready to go:

I started from the bottom right corner and after 7 days I had my first page finish:

But then as I was showing it to folks on Facebook, I began to realise that I wasn`t happy with the colour scheme. 😩 I chose Starry Night not only because I love Van Gogh but also because blue is my favourite colour - as opposed to purple, the only colour I don`t like. I put my chart and a picture of the original painting side by side...

...and decided to abandon this project for the now. I think I`m going to chart it for myself, using blues instead of purples, and I`ll try to make it the right size so that I can still use this nice big piece of aida, which is still going to be quite large, even after I cut this stitched bit off (as there is no way I can unpick it). But so as not to be without Van Gogh in the meantime, last night I started his Sunflowers (I`ve had this Maria Diaz design for ages, it`s in the July 2009 issue (172) of Collection).

And while I was working on the bottom right corner of the purple Starry Night, I also realised that if I`m going to spend months and months stitching such a confetti-heavy piece, I`m going to need something (crafting-wise, I mean. At the same time, I`m also translating but that`s a different kind of challenge and satisfaction), so I`m going to need something that gives me instant gratification, i.e. a project that`s made up of blocks that can be finished in a day. So I had a look on the internet and found this amazing blackwork sampler (called `Save The Stitches`, free to download from Elizabeth Almond`s website), and I already have the fabric and threads - I`m going to use stranded cotton 301, 415 and 3821 instead of the metallics and no beads, either, I want to keep it simple and non-blingy. So in a few months/years/decades, I should end up with something like this:

How gorgeous is this?? 😍 I think I`m going to start this today 😉 Happy stitching!