Quick Cirque update and Giveaway!

A very quick post this evening as I’ve had a really rubbish day at work and need to get away from the computer and put my feet up with Is That All?, my Thursday SAL with Claire.

I’ve only worked on two WIPs this week, both Ink Circles designs, Cirque des Triangles and Cirque des Carreaux.  I’m actually toying with the idea of concentrating on Carreaux to get it finished, apart from my SAL days (currently Saturday, Sunday and Thursday).  I’m probably about a third done at the moment –  I’m still giving it some thought.

Good progress made on both these this week..

To cheer myself up I have decided to have a giveaway.  I have a piece of fabric from Dyeing4U (sadly no longer around, they did some fabulous colours), it’s Belfast linen, so 32 count, 13×18,  the colour is Butter Cream and it’s an opalescent so has a beautiful sparkle running through it.  There’s a picture below but the colour doesn’t show well at all, it’s such a dark gloomy day here.  In real life the colour is very pale creamy yellow.  I’ll try and get a better picture of it tomorrow.  Just leave a comment saying you want to take part on this post with your name and email address and I’ll pick a winner on Monday.  Feel free to link to this post in your blogs to spread the word around.

Moonlight Garden

Yesterday, Bank Holiday Monday, I spent most of the day stitching.  I may have go up once or twice to make a cup of tea, or to make us some food, but the rest of the time was spent on the sofa, catching up on all the TV we’ve recorded and watching some DVD’s we hadn’t seen.  All in all, a great day!

I made massive progresse on my new WIP, Moonlight Garden.  

And also spent some time re-stitching the part of Cirque des Carreaux that I’d had to frog last week.

Tonight I’m firmly back on track with my rotation, and will work on Growth Rings.

I had some lovely mail last week, an order I’d placed with Vikki Clayton of Hand Dyed Fibers.  I ordered some linen, a d-bag (which is basically skeins of mis-dyed, mis-labelled thread), and also a set of sample tags, which is an 18 inch piece of every solid colour in the Hand Dyed Fibers silks range.  HDF are beautiful threads, so lovely to work with and the conversions from DMC are very very good.  They are also very reasonably priced.  

 

Sample Tags

 

Fabric

D-bag

The last picture also shows some spools of thread which I bought from someone on the HDF forum, some beautiful colours.  The dbags are a complete surprise, you never know what colours you are going to get, but I am very pleased with the ones I have received so far, some very useful colours in there.

Long overdue update

I’ve been very slack in updating my blog over the last week, partly because I’ve been busy at work but partly because the weather has been very nice in this part of the world and there’s been lots to do in the garden and around the house.  The biggest disadvantage of having a partner who enjoys DIY is the fact that bank holidays always seem to turn into major projects which he’s been planning for a while LOL.  Also I recently started reading Twilight by Stephenie Meyer after hearing so many people say how good the series of books were.  I finished the first book in a bout a week, the second in a few days, the third over one afternoon/evening and the fourth involved a very very late night.  I can’t remember the last time I picked up a book and just HAD to finish it with no interruptions and thanks to Phill for busying himself building a workshop for himself in the garage I was able to sit down and read to my hearts content.  

I have done a little stitching though, on Cirque des Triangles and Cirque des Carreaux and here’s my (bad) progress pics on both.

I have also got a lot done on Lettres at Mon Chat.  I forgot to post an update pic last week (oops!).  I am so close to finishing this that I may carry on stitching it this evening to finish it off. I only have the rest of the cat and a paw print to finish it off.

You can see Claire and Jenny’s progress on their blogs, here and here.   Both are close to finishing too.  As you can see my cats now have whiskers

Glad to see the weekend!

I am so glad it’s the weekend!    I have hardly done any stitching at all this week.  I managed to make a little progress on Cirque des Carreaux and Lettres but that’s about it.  The rest of the time has been spent starting to organise my stash and sleeping LOL .  My boss went away on holiday this week and has left a mountain of work for me to do while he’s away (Sheila – the files were stacked in boxes, started at my desk and ended up on the landing!) so I’ve been extra tired when I’ve been getting home this week.  But I do have some pics for you ….

First Cirque des Carreaux, not a huge amount done but progress none the less.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Second Lettres a mon chat – the first page is complete and I have now moved on to the second page.  What I have noticed today is that I haven’t stitched the whiskers on two of the cats!  Ooops.  See Claire and Jenny’s progress in this SAL.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lastly, some pictures of my new craft room.  It is a bit of a shambles still as I haven’t really had much time to work in there this week.  I have sorted through my threads and organised them into storage boxes.

Each of the plastic boxes on the top shelf is about the size of a shoe box and they fit on the shelf perfectly.  On the bottom shelf to the left is a box I found in B&Q (DIY store) which holds a full set of DMC on plastic bobbons.  I have a box of DMC to the right of that box which still needs to be wound on to the bobbons.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s surprising how many threads one of the shoe boxes can hold  These are my Needle Necessities (now called Threadworx).  I am slowly going through all of my threads and making an inventory of what I’ve got, putting them into floss away style bags and putting them onto a floss ring so they are easier to look through to find the right colours.

 

 

 

 

 

 I’ve already done this with my Hand Dyed Fibers ( to the left) and my Dinky Dyes cottons and silks (to the right).   I’ve got a long way to go but hopefully over the Easter weekend I’ll be able to get a lot done!

 

 

 

 

 

Okay, I’ve done my housework, got a load of washing nearly finished and another one ready to go in.  Time for me to finish my cup of tea, go and visit my mum and dad, come home and settle down with Daniel Craig and Cirque des Triangles!  (We bought Quantum of Solace last night – just in case you thought I had the real Daniel Craig stashed in my craft room )

Have a great weekend and thank you for all the lovely comments you left about my new room – Phill’s still having trouble getting his head through the doors!

Weekend update

It’s been a very busy week at work and at home so even though I have some progress pictures I haven’t done that much stitching in the last few days.  I did work on Cirque des Carreaux on Wednesday and the more I stitch this design the more I like it!

 

Cirque des Carreaux

Thursday was Lettres SAL day with Claire.  We are at almost exactly the same place on this design, she has stitched one more letter than me

 

Lettres a mon chat

Finally, I had a day off on Friday because we had a busy weekend in sight.  Phill’s mum was 75 on Thursday and his brother and sister in law were coming down on Saturday to celebrate, with us all going out for a meal last night.  We had a great time with lovely food, especially the Vanilla Cheesecake!   

Phill also made a bit of work for himself when he offered to do some work in our spare bedroom, which is little more than a box room really.  At the moment there are odds and ends of furniture in there, the ironing board (which doesn’t get used that often and all of my cross stitch stuff.  The room is so full of stuff that it’s hard to find anything.  I have been trying to organize my stash a little better so that it doesn’t take me so long to find everything so Phill put his thinking cap on and has planned a craft room for me!  We have bought some kitchen units in a lovely walnut colour, and some black worktop and he’s going to put them up for me today.  I can’t wait to see it done as I’m going to have so much room in there I’ll be able to organise everything exactly how I want it.

Today I am out all day, my mum and dad are picking me up at about 10 o’clock and we are driving to see my sister Sheila who is staying at a cottage in West Wales for the weekend.  Today is Sheila’s birthday and I have a little suprise for her, which is safe to post here as she doesn’t have her computer with her.  The suprise is the Hearts and Flowers tuffet which I finished up on Friday.

I’m looking forward to seeing how she is getting along with her HAED project and I am taking a few of my WIPs with me for her to see in real life and also a few goodies I found yesterday when I was clearing out the bedroom ready for Phill to start work in there today.

Have a great weekend !!

Thank you Mylene!

I had a lovely surprise when I arrived home today and saw what the postman had left me.  Look at the lovely package I received from Mylene!  I was lucky enough to be the winner of her March giveaway and won this lovely mattress pinkeep and scissors fob (which I have attached to my favourite pair of Gingher scissors)

 

Mylene's March giveaway

I wish you could all see the finishing on both these items, it’s just perfect and makes me feel hopelessly inadequate!   Thank you Mylene, I really do love them!

I have a few progress pics to share with you, first of all Saturday’s Cirque des Triangles. I did get quite a lot done really, and filled in a few of the empty triangles.  As usual the picture isn’t very good, as I always seem to end up taking pictures at night and the light in our lounge isn’t that good.

 

14th March 2009

Next, on to Sunday’s Grand Marquoir.  I’m stitching one block per rotation slot, which should take me nicely to the release of part 3.  This time it was the letter C.  I’ve taken a picture of the whole thing this time, so you can see how it’s coming along.

 

Grand Marquoir

I spent the rest of Sunday finishing the stitching on Hearts and Flowers tuffett.  I haven’t got a pic at the moment as I took it in to work so I could go to town and buy a button for it (which I never managed to do) and I have left it in my desk.  I had meant to pick up some buttons on Monday when I went in to down to buy some of the supplies for finishing What a Hoot, but was a little disappointed in the selection at the shop, they were all huge and quite plain, so I am having a look online to see if I can find any.  Any suggestions of where to buy buttons and general finishing items, particuarly fabrics,  online would be appreciated.

What a Hoot!

I’ve finished all the stitching on Ozzie the Owl, now comes the hard part!  I still have’t made it in to town to buy the supplies I need to finish him into a scissors keep, but hopefully I can do that next week sometime and have a go at finishing him next weekend

 

What a Hoot!

Here’s this weeks progress on Cirque des Carreaux,  I got quite a bit done and I’m thinking about adding  an extra slot in my rotation to this design as I was thinking of entering it in to the Silkweavers Showcase competition this year.  

 

Cirque des Carreaux

Finally – Lettres a Mon Chat.  I haven’t seen Claire post her progress pic this week, she normally beats me to it .  It doesn’t look like I got that much done but those little cats are quite stitch intensive, they take ages to finish!

 

Lettres

I have to work for a while tomorrow, and I am working on day on Monday ;-(,  so today I was up and about early this morning to get all the housework done out of the way.  I’m going to see my mum and dad this afternoon for a while, it was my dad’s birthday yesterday, but once I’m home it will be me, Cirques des Triangle, a bag of mini eggs and maybe a fat ginger cat for the rest of the evening.

Have a great weekend, and a big thank you to everyone who takes the time to leave a comment – I really do appreciate it.

SAL progress

Just a quick update post from me this morning, I have to work today and the sooner I start the sooner I finish!

Here’s my progress on Cirque des Carreaux from Wednesday night.

 

Cirques des Carreaux

Thursday was the start of my SAL with Claire of Lettres a mon chat, a design by Isabelle Vautier.  I made good progress apart from one tiny mistake which I was going to unpick but in the end I decided to just leave it as it is.  

 

Lettres a mon chat

The Pomme des Pin threads are a joy to stitch with, so I think i may order a few more of them in other colours, just in case

Hopefully I will get some time later to work on Cirques des Triangles, it depends how long I have to work and how tired my eyes are after working!

Have a good weekend!!

Back to normal

Well, the snow has all gone, even though we were supposed to have some more last night it didn’t materialise so everything is back to normal.  It was pretty while it lasted though, and it would have been really good to have another day off work LOL.

Last night I stitched some more on Cirque des Carreaux, it’s going really well and stitching up faster than I thought it would.  I really didn’t want to put it down!

I had a nice suprise when I got home from work yesterday, a magazine I had ordered from Ebay had arrrived.   It’s the March/April issue of Just Cross Stitch and I bought it because there’s an Ink Circles design in there which I love.  It will be a perfect companion for New World.    It’s called Growth Rings and here’s a pic

I’m definitely not going to start this one until I’ve finished one of the larger projects in my rotation

Cirque des Carreaux

Last night I stitched on my final new start (for the moment anyway) Cirque des Carreaux.

I  have taken a photo which I thought I had uploaded ready to put in this blog, but I think I must have dreamt that because it’s not there!  I’m in work at the moment, so will upload the photo when I get home.

Edited to add photo

I’m using a Silkweaver fabric called Summer Sunset and my favourite hand dyed thread of all, another Threadworx called Desert Sunset (it used to be called Sequoia in the Needle Necessities range).

I really am enjoying everything I am stitching at the moment, and have more enthusiasm for stitching than I have had in a long time.

I’m still trying to resist the temptation of starting one of the Isabelle Vautier charts which arrived earlier this week.  Wish me luck in staying strong enough to resist!

Tonight is UFO night in my rotation, and I think I will carry on stitching on Judy O’Dells Attic Collection Accessory book.  Stitching this chart is the easy part, the worst part for me will be the finishing the stitched pieces into the Accessory book.  The instructions look clear and easy to follow but I’m still very nervous that I will make a complete hash of it.