Back from the framers.

My two latest finishes, back from the framers.

New World – Papillon Creations

Lettres a mon Chat – Isabelle Vautier

Lettres finished!

I put the final stitches in Lettres last night, ironed it this morning and here it is (crease free for a change )

I really enjoyed stitching this design and have an evergrowing wish list of more Isabelle Vautier charts I would love to do.  So Claire, if you (or anyone else for that matter) would like to do another SAL some time, just let me know and I’ll be right with you!

It’s another wonderfully sunny day here in Swansea, Phill is already out the garden putting up a fence,  I have to do a couple of hours work, which I can do from home, while I wait for the sun to dry out the grass in our front garden before I get the lawnmover out and give it a cut.  Then I’ll probably work in the back garden for a couple of hours this afternoon.  Luckily we have no grass in our back garden, Phill designed it to be easy maintenance when he landscaped it seven years ago.  You can see pics here.   They were taken when it was first finished. It’s weathered really well though and a lot of the shrubs and trees are more than double the size they were then, also we don’t have as many planters full of summer bedding plants now,  they are a lot of work and we can’t always find the time to keep them looking good, we don’t have so much colour but we try to make it interesting with easy maintenance shrubs and trees.  

There are also some pics there of Ginger and Louis when they were tiny, just a couple of days before Ginger’s accident.  It’s hard to believe that they are six years old next month, how time flies!

I hope everyone is enjoying their weekend, and that the weather where you are is as lovely as it is here.

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 !!

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!!

Chocolate Shoppe happy dance

Lots of photos to share today!  

Firstly my order from Sew and So arrived which included the thread I needed to finish off Chocolate Shoppe.

 

Chocolate Shoppe - LHN

Also, I got my order from Univers Broderie, which contained the long awaited threads I need to start my SAL with Claire.  I am using plain white Belfast linen for this, as the red threads will look stunning.  Here’s a floss toss.  We are starting the SAL on Thursday, so Lettres a mon Chat will replace my UFO slot in my rotation.  I’ll stitch on my UFO’s on Fridays instead.

 

Lettres floss toss

On Monday I carried on stitching on New World and it stitched up really really quickly.  I have almost finished two pages of the chart (there are six in total but two of those are quite small pages compared to the rest.

 

New World - 9th February

This picture really shows off the colour of the fabric well.

Finally, if you aren’t bored already, I treated myself to a new chart from Sew and So.  My Dad gave me some money for Christmas which I hadn’t spent yet and I saw this design from The Drawn Thread and couldn’t resist.  It’s called Moonlight Garden.  It has a LOT of speciality stitches so will be quite challenging to stitch!  I have only stitched one other Drawn Thread design, An Open Heart, which I really enjoyed and the explanations of the speciality stitches seem very clear so I should be okay.  I ordered the fabric and threads at the same time as the chart, the fabric is called Stoney Point from Wichelet and the threads are a mix of NPI/Northern Lights and Dinky Dyes.

 

Moonlight Garden floss toss

I’m putting this one away until later in the year, but just wanted to buy everything before I spent the money on something else

I did actually get some stitching done during my lunch hour today.  Inspired by a recent entry on Claire’s blog I dug out an old UFO” Too Pooped” which I think I will leave in work to occupy my lunch hours.  I’ll take it home at the weekend and take a photo of it.  I started this ages ago and it came as a kit, which included Aida.  It’s a long time since I stitched on Aida, and it felt like holding a piece of cardboard compared to the linens I’ve been using recently  

Time for me to leave the office now and make my way home!  Tonight I’m going to stitch on Cirque des Carreaux.

Have a good evening!