DALD sampler finished!

*sigh* (That was a huge sigh of relief). Even though I loved every minute of stitching this sampler, I`m also glad in a way that after 4 long months of looking at it, it`s finally on its way to the (hopefully!) happy owner - a lovely 84-year-old lady who commissioned this for her granddaughter`s wedding. /I also hope that the granddaughter will like it too, lol!/

Since this was my pet project in between magazine works, I revelled in the luxury of not having to keep track of any detail, therefore I don`t know how many hours it took, only that I spent a total of about 2 weeks out of 4 months stitching this. And here is the end result:

 Apologies for the worse-than-usual photo but I finished it last night and couldn`t wait to take a pic - it would`ve been pointless to wait for the bright daylight anyway, it`s been so doom and gloom here lately. So the colours are not as vibrant as they should be... maybe a couple of close-ups will help:

Well, these don`t really do justice to the colours either, but at least I can illustrate what I enjoyed most about working with 2 strands on 18 HPI aida (tbh, this was the ONLY thing I enjoyed about stitching on such a high count fabric): the fact that every single cross sits there like a tiny little pearl. I think they`re awesome!

DALD update

An uncharacteristically short post as I`m crazy-busy stitching the Dream a Little Dream sampler which I fully intend to finish this week (I kinda have to since I have other things in the pipeline). So here`s a wee recap where I left it off after Go #3:

And this is where things stand just now, at Go #4:

knitted hat #1 finished

Isn`t the Internet an amazing thing? If this was a diary or a scrapbook hidden in my drawer, nobody would ever read it, which wouldn`t in itself be such a great loss to the world but... then I wouldn`t have met Sandra, for example - a lovely lady from Kansas who was so helpful to me yesterday, despite of being slightly caffeine-deprived. While musing re: how it made my day and the wonders of the Internet in general, I also realised that I unnecessarily overcomplicated things in my last post by adding a photo of mine with 4 different items on it, and at the same time referring y`all via the link to another photo which also had 4 different hats in it. Why didn`t I just show you a picture of the pattern - doh!?!

I have no excuse, except maybe that I had the Mother of All Headaches yesterday, it took me two horse-strength pills and most of the day to get rid of it. On the bright side, though, I don`t know which ingredient of those tablets affected me so but by the time my head was OK, I became so alert that I couldn`t sleep till almost 2 in the morning. As a consequence, my first hat is finished:

Unfortunately, it is almost an inch shorter than it should be, and while I secretly congratulate myself on judging so accurately where I should start shaping the crown that I have about 2 metres of yarn left, it also resulted in this slightly teacozy-ish shape. Whereas it should look like the top left hat in this photo:

Now, I refuse to call it yet another Hat Fail. Actually, I`m beginning to suspect that the problem is not with the hats I knit but my head. I tried this one on a dozen different ways but, obviously, I`ll never look like the model in this photo. Thanks to the K1B knitting, it`s nice and stretchy but no matter which way I`m pulling the excess material, it looks nothing like this on my head. Instead, I have managed to imitate the look of Papa Smurf, a member of the French Resistance, a demented Highlander, Tommy Cooper in his fez, and even somebody with a KFC family bucket on their head.

Never mind, after a bit of stitching done - I must crack on with the DALD sampler! - I`ll tackle the green yarn and the same pattern but this time I`ll follow it to the letter... maybe that`ll help..? If not, I guess I`ll just have to change the shape of my head somehow..?

knitted hats

I should really go out more often (NB. I probably would if I could somehow stitch on the go). There are so many wondrous things one can learn in the course of a short walk - for example, if the pavement is reduced to half of its width due to roadworks, there WILL be some disgusting stuff in the middle of it which thus you cannot avoid. Also, a fellow mum from the school WILL NOT recognise you while passing you in the street; however, you can baffle a complete stranger into greeting you by simply smiling at her (if a weird noise between a hiccup and a burp... a hiccurp?... can be classified as greeting). And yes, I DO have every single issue of various cross stitch magazines the town`s charity shops have to offer.

But my biggest achievement for today (not counting the posting of my latest magazine piece this morning) is that I finally managed to buy a set of 4 mm circular needles!!! I know it doesn`t sound much, but after spending my entire Saturday hunting for wool in the right shade of green, followed by wasting half of my Sunday dropping in and out of shops to get the required needles for said wool, it is a major fete. (True, there is only a limited number of shops that are open on a Sunday but the fact that I even barged in a furniture store (!) should tell you all about my desperation).

Anyway, this whole Hat Saga started last week with this:

In the top left corner is my Epic Hat Fail - a real shame because it`s a beautiful yarn and the hat is a perfect fit but, alas, when I put it on, I look like the only thing missing is a shopping trolley full of aluminium cans. The rest is just some of my finds of this weekend-long hunt for yarns and needles: with the speckled creamy one, I started this Sirdar pattern (the nutmeg coloured pull-on hat in the top left corner of the pattern pictures), and I`m going to knit the same hat with the green speckled yarn too (now that I have the UK 8 needles... I have several pairs but they all have something on them, and I prefer circular needles anyway). The cute sock wool was practically thrown at me at Lidl`s - after I bought 4 very similar skeins in a charity shop... Oh, and in the course of my wanderings, I also became the proud owner of about half-a-dozen circular needles of various sizes (everything except 4 mm, obviously).

See, the calamity all this knitting can cause? I`d better stick to cross stitch! 

Cross Stitch Crazy 183

My Mum`s arriving today!!! Yay!!! I`m so excited, can`t wait to see her again! And I`m sure she`s just as excited to come and see me cross stitch again... ;)

As usual, I`m a busy little bee, working on all kinds of commissions: I`ve just finished some Mothers` Day (!) cards for Card Shop and a Maria Diaz landscape for Collection, and right now I`m stitching another Maria Diaz - my absolute favourite and most glorious project so far, something I`m sure will take your breath away when you see it in the magazine (it`s that kind of stunning). I was so overwhelmed by its beauty - and, at the same time, simplicity from a stitcher`s point of view - that I felt compelled to write to Maria and thank her for it. I was not a little surprised when she, busy as she must be, answered me within half an hour, thanking me for the feedback - what a great lady!

Anyway, since I already hear it calling, plus I have some cleaning left to do before Mummy arrives, I`d better crack on with this post. Among all these big projects, I have almost overlooked some Christmas minis I`d stitched a couple of months ago for Cross Stitch Crazy: some traditional toys by Jenny Barton and 4 floral letters by Susan Bates.

Elsewhere, in the knitting world: I haven`t had too much time lately to play with my yarns but I did get on with the rainbow entrelac a wee bit, plus I started a Fair Isle hat just for the fun of it:

Cross Stitch Collection 228

I have a lovely new follower on Twitter who complimented me on my blog - what a great way to start a day! It also immediately kicked me into gear and made me realise that I`ve been neglecting my posts here, again, for quite a while now... My feeble defence is that I`ve had a couple of emergency jobs lately, one self-inflected and the other a `real`, i.e. magazine one (I had to quickly finish a project another stitcher had started, then she was taken to hospital). I`m about to post it back today and I thought before the next two arrive - they way things work, this month I`m getting 2 projects at the same time -, I`d better tend to my blog before I get snowed under again.

I`ve got more piccies for you, yay!! Cross Stitch Collection 228 came out last week and my autumn cottage is in it - I simply loved every minute of working on this one! Not only because it`s by my favourite designer, Maria Diaz, but because it reminded me of our little white cottage in Hungary. So, without further ado, here are the progress photos I took in June... :)

A tentative start with roof and gate...

Some foliage added...

Getting stonewalled...

Beginning of the `shepherd`s warning` sky...

All the little crosses finished...

And the completed picture with backstitch :)

Dream a Little Dream update

I`ll be honest here: I`m having a naughty weekend. Nothing kinky, I just decided to have a few days off, despite the fact that I`d sent the latest commission stitch back on Thursday and that the next one turned up with Friday`s post - luckily, with a very generous deadline, so I thought I`d better get a move on with the DALD sampler. Even though I started it over two months ago now, this is only my third go at it, due to magazine commitments, so here`s a wee recap of the progress:

Go #1: Just a few hours, to get a taste of this sampler malarkey :)

Go #2: Finished the house in the middle and started to stitch the motifs along the fold lines of the chart
so that I could separate it again into four A3 sheets for easier handling

Go #3: This weekend I concentrated on the top right A3 - getting there!

 Elsewhere, in the knitting world: I took the plunge and FINALLY tried my hand at entrelac! I have no idea (yet) what it`s going to be - depending on the finished size, it might be a scarf, or a bag, or maybe a cushion cover - but at the moment I`m just enjoying seeing the design grow, so whenever I`m not too tired after stitching all day, I knit another coloured row in the evening. As you can see, there have been 3 such evenings so far:

First attempt at entrelac knitting, a.k.a. The Mystery Project

Cross Stitch Gold 105

Those of you who are lovely-sweet-kind enough to follow my occasional ramblings or mere outbursts on Facebook as well, might remember that a few months ago I moaned a bit when I started my fifth hour of stitching French knots with metallic threads (I know, I`m such a wimp!). Anyway, the result of this Metallic Marathon is in the shops now - my beautiful little advent calendar picture which I absolutely adored working on, despite those few (one hundred and thirty-four, but who`s counting?) French knots. And that`s not all: issue 105 of Gold features Lesley Teare`s unconventional, super-girly Christmas stocking - also stitched by yours truly. So let`s see some before-and-after pictures, shall we?

A nice and easy stitch for a `last-minute` stocking 

All made up, complete with some funky fabby 

And a more traditional Christmas scene, with 134 (!) metallic French knots

The finished advent calendar, complete with the 25 numbers I stitched - I love the idea of these tiny drawers!

Cross Stitch Collection 226

I`ve been so absorbed by my current project for Cross Stitch Gold that I almost forgot to show you another one that appears in the current issue of Collection (226). Although these three cute designs by Maria Diaz are small, I thought they wouldn`t be turned into Christmas cards as soon as I saw the size of the fabric I got from the magazine, and I was right: they became gorgeous little gift bags... I wouldn`t mind getting one of these, filled with sweeties, for Christmas! :)

The photo I took when I finished all three of them...

... and as they appeared in Cross Stitch Collection 226

ingenious husband turns wife into happy stitcher

And this is not the only headline for this week! After 86 hours of work, of which I spent the last 20-odd backstitching (and literally working my middle finger to the bone, so I had to use plasters to be able to finish the job on time), I finally managed to send the latest magazine commission back yesterday - hurrah!

So, today I`m a lady of leisure - which means I took the Dream A Little Dream sampler out again and let me tell you, words cannot describe how relaxed I feel while stitching it: the fabric`s light, the cross stitches are full, not a single backstitch in sight and I can pick it up/put it down whenever I feel like it, without having to make a note of the exact time.

Not that this is such a big deal, mind you, but it started to bug me a bit, especially at the weekends, when (sod`s law) as soon as I took a note of the time and picked up my stitching, I was dragged away and had no idea how long I`d been away looking for a toy or a spanner. Anyway, long story short, my lovely Hubby devised me a gadget to make my life easier: it`s an old wall clock that we never used, to which he added a switch and now all I have to do is flick the switch every time I start stitching and turn it off when I stop (a bit like a chess clock, just bigger, lol!).

Looks like I`ve been stitching for 4 hours - time for a cuppa!

Then last night I started to whinge again because I found the sorting cards that came with the DALD kit too clumsy for frequent colour changes - so my knight in shining work clothes rushed to my aid again and made this sorter for me out of some scrap wood and a (sadly, empty) chocolate box:

I just cut up the sorting cards and put the corresponding strips into the wee boxes

Now whenever I need a new colour, I just pick up the right one and off I go. I`m so much faster and, therefore, more productive this way - well, you have to trust me on this because I only started to use the new method this morning so you`ll not see too much progress yet:

I`ve done a bit above the black cat and some flowers in the bottom middle

And, as I`m writing this, postie`s just turned up with the next commission project so I`m afraid my joy over this clever thread sorting was short-lived - or, to be precise, my enjoyment of it. The poor sampler has hardly resurfaced from the cupboard but thanks to DH`s ingenuity, now at least I know that I`m going to fly with it the next time I pick it up! ;)

symmetrical cushion from Cross Stitch Gold 104

Well, well, where did this summer go? It seems like yesterday that school broke up and my Mum was coming, then we had the heatwave (yeah, I know, in Scotland!), and then I went to Hungary... and learnt what heat really meant, by the way... then Hubby followed and now we`re all back in our little house in Fife and part of me is wondering if it was really only a few days ago that I was suffocating in the 42 degree Hungarian summer...

I have to say, one of my favourite parts of coming back home is the Going Through The Piled-Up Mail. There were all kinds of goodies waiting for me on the carpet (as the bills are all addressed to DH), including the long-awaited prize books by Rowan that I`d won with my knitted sleeping puppy a few months back. I also got my Tesco vouchers (happy days!) and, most importantly, all my stitchy magazines - among them the latest Cross Stitch Gold, with my kaleidoscope cushion in it. 

This is the project I was working on around the Spring/Easter break, when my Mum was here and I did all kinds of naughty knitting instead of stitching - little did I know at the beginning that it`d take me 180 hours to finish this project! I had a wee giggle to myself when I read the magazine`s advice about taking regular breaks on a biggie like this - I still remember the weekend I finished the backstitch, working 15-16 hours a day non-stop, just so that I wouldn`t have to ask for a second extension on the deadline.

Anyway, enough words, now onto the photos - my favourite bit! Finally, I can share some progress piccies with you, yay!

Pic 1: Only a few hours into the project, still sailing through the symmetrical bits

Pic 2: A few days later, I was still lulled into a false sense of security by the symmetry, eliminating colours one at a time

Pic 3: Days/weeks/months/a lifetime later - yep, the 4 shades of pink were NOT symmetrical
(actually, their motif also repeats in the 4 quarters but you still need to follow the pattern closely)

Pic 4: After 30-odd hours of backstitching, finally the finished product :)

Pic 5: And finally, as it appeared in Cross Stitch Gold Issue 104

knitted glasses case

This is my last post for a while now, I`m going on holiday tomorrow - yay!  And I thought I`d leave you with a farewell prezzie, to make my almost 3 week absence more bearable *pretends not to hear the sighs of relief*

The other day I decided to make a new case for my sunglasses, instead of the cheap plastic rubbish I got from somewhere as a freebie and which I hated with a passion - not only was it ugly but my shades always fell out of it too, so I might as well have chucked them into my handbag the way they were, the case was useless anyway.

I punched in `(sun)glasses case knitting pattern` into Google and to my great surprise, I was struggling to find anything useful. Being short on time, I decided to design one for myself - and here`s the result:

I used double knitting because I wanted a nice thickness to protect my shades, and I sewed the two double-knitted pieces together so as to show both colour combos. I don`t know how to make clever PDF, etc. attachments, but I thought I`d share the pattern in case there are others out there, looking for a simple glasses knit pattern - so here`s a photo of it:

As you can see, the design is 22 sts wide and 9 sts high - to this I added 4-4 sts on the sides (thus casting on 30 sts) and 4-4 rows above and below. Using standard DK yarn and size 7 needles (4.5 mm), my glasses case measures 17x9 cm (7"x3 1/2"). And, as I didn`t want my shades to slip out of this one too, I finished it with a short piece of I-cord, sewn into a loop, so you can pull the opening tight, like on a drawstring bag.

Hope all of you are having a fab summer holiday, see you again in August!  

Gloria

Well, do you remember this?
Alan Dart`s hippo, whom I named Gloria

I don`t blame you if you don`t, it`s been a while... Still, that doesn`t matter now, the main thing is that SHE IS HERE!!! Are you ready for a gorgeousness overload? (You might want to sit down first...?)

As you might have noticed, I substituted the grey yarn with light brown - this is more of a hippo-colour to me. Also, I have omitted the `finger and toe` nails because I hate sewing and the mouth + nostrils + eyes and generally making her up was more than enough for me. (May I just add here, on a personal note... not that my whole blog is not personal... anyway, probably the greatest factor in Gloria being finished today is the fact that this morning I spent about an hour and a half frogging a commission stitching, practically half of what I`d done so far, so I thought I`d better give cross stitch a break and get on with my knitting - but I`m not a masochist so I didn`t want to sew too much). You might also notice that I changed the eyes - the black pupil with white circle around it freaked me out a bit so I just used black yarn, and also stitched her a few eyelashes, for extra gorgeousness. Finally, I gave up on the sunglasses, and let this be a lesson for all of us, shades knitters of the future: if the pattern says spray it with hairspray, use that and don`t try your luck with spray-on starch - it won`t stiffen the yarn at all. And if you, like me, are crazy enough to switch on your iron in this heat, that`ll make things ten times worse: even on the coolest setting, it`ll make your already limp wool flat and shiny to boot. Thus, alas, there are no cool shades for Gloria but I think she looks stunning even without them - crazy summer heat or not, I might just go back for another cuddle... ;)

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! :)

a get-well cat

Yet another short post from me (I planned to have a day for my own stuff but Superfast Postie thought otherwise, and he turned up at 8.30 this morning with my next commission - more Xmas stuff and quite a lot so I thought I`d better start it straight away). So I`ll just quickly show you what I`ve been working on for the past couple of days - a little cat for the wife of one of Hubby`s friends, who, as Iain Banks had said, is now `officially very poorly`. I hope she`ll like it - her husband said she would ;)

Durene Jones` Cat Cards from issue 98 of Cross Stitch Gold