Moonlight Garden

Not much stitching for me this week (again!),  it’s been extra extra busy in work trying to catch up with the work that wasn’t done when I was off last week.  Also, when I got to work on Tuesday something made me check the firm’s holiday spreadsheet where details of days taken, days left to take etc are stored.  I discovered that the two days I was off work last week for the colonoscopy had been taken away from my holiday entitlement for this year.   I appreciate that my employer is not legally obligated to “give” me those days off however, I have worked for this small firm for 22 years and in fact for the same person within that firm for the last 18 of those years, the same person in fact who is in control of entering information into the holiday spreadsheet.  I have also worked far above and beyond the call of duty on numerous occasions and without trying to sound big-headed the place (and in particular my boss) would probably run to a standstill if I was not there for a prolonged length of time.   I would guestimate that I have probably worked at least two weeks worth of unpaid overtime so far this year.  To be honest, this made me feel horrible (again) about my employment situation.  I wish I could afford to give up work or at least find another job, but jobs are scarce and at the moment Phill’s business is going through a quiet patch and he may have to lay his apprentice off if things don’t pick up soon so we really do need every penny I can earn, and the only good thing about my job is that I am very well paid.   Anyway, I immediately confronted my boss, who despite being a successful businessman, and a lawyer to boot, hates confrontation and gave him a couple of home truths – I now have my two days back.   Phew, if you’re still reading, thanks for listening and sorry for boring you all with my ranting!

On to prettier things altogether now.  If you have a look at Claire’s blog you will see a little suprise I made for her a little while ago – a mattress pinkeep.  She has named him Quills and has far nicer pictures over there!  The chart is a freebie from The Workbasket.

I stitched a bit more on Growth Rings and I also stitched on Moonlight Garden by Drawn Thread.  

Phill has just left to go to an open mic night, where he plays guitar so I”m going to find a good film to listen to and get some more done on Is That All?

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.

The new love of my life

My new waterbed!  It was delivered on Monday and just seems to become more comfortable every night.  Phill’s been wearing the nose strips which have helped, and he’s also stopped having a nightcap of Southern Comfort, which has helped even more!  I’m almost ashamed to admit that this morning I woke up at 10.22am, which has to be the latest I’ve slept in for about ten years    I was surprised how many of you ladies also suffer with husbands/partners who snore, it’s a much more common problem than I thought.    Phill handmade all the wardrobes and units in our bedroom himself, you can see pics here of it being made.

I have done some stitching this week, but also had a visit from the frogs and had to pull out quite a lot of Cirque des Carreaux because of one tiny miscount, but it would have looked odd if I had left it there because the design is so symetrical.    Yesterday I made quite good progress on Cirque des Triangles

And today I stitched one block of part 3 of Grand Marquoir.

I’ve also been very naughty and started a new design this week, which is Moonlight Garden by The Drawn Thread.   I bought the chart, threads and recommended fabric a while ago, and even sneakily put a few stitches in, but the fabric, Wichelet linen, which looked quite blue on the cover picture, turned out to be very green and the fabric itself was very stiff and quite unpleasant to stitch on.    I was very disappointed as I really really like the design.  But then I saw a picture of a WIP stitched on a Belfast Linen called Misty Blue, where the threads had been coverted to Hand Dyed Fibers silks.  It looked amazing!  So I bought a piece Misty Blue, used Vikki’s conversion to Hand Dyed Fibers and am really pleased with the way it looks so far.  There are lots and lots of speciality stitches in this one so it’s going to be quite a challenge.

For the rest of today I think I’ll carry on with Cirque des Carreaux and replace the stitches that I pulled out earlier this week.  I’m also getting ready to start a my new SAL with Claire this week, as she has finished her backstitching on Who’s Watching Whom, which looks absolutely stunning – you can see it here.

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!