Back from the framers.

My two latest finishes, back from the framers.

New World – Papillon Creations

Lettres a mon Chat – Isabelle Vautier

SAL Update

On Saturday I had a small happy dance on Cirque des Triangles.  The chart is six pages in total and I have finished page 1!

It’s taken four weeks to finish one page so it should take roughly five more months to finish the whole design.  Not too bad, as it’s a large design.

Sunday/Monday I didn’t get too much stitching time.  I did manage a little bit more on New World and am almost at the half way stage on this one.

Tonight would normally be LHN night but as I have finished Chocolate Shoppe I decided to stitch a little on a UFO tonight – Tutankhamun.  I will have a pic of that next time.

I’ve also made a slight alteration to my rotation.  I have added Lettres a mon chat on Thursday evening and have decided to concentrate on one UFO on Friday evenings.  I narrowed it down to between Celtic Autumn, Tutankhamun, Judy O’Dells Accessory book and Too Pooped and asked Phill to choose one.   He chose Too Pooped (I think he knew this was one of my oldest UFOs!) so I will now work on that every Friday night, and also during my lunch hour at work when I have the time.

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!

Snow Day!

We had some quite heavy snow last night, we don’t normally get much as we are so close to the coast but with that first fall came the promise of more during the night.  This morning we woke up to around four inches of snow.  This may not seem much but the whole city seems to grind to a halt after about an inch or so.  There were no buses running and 99% of the schools were closed.  I live in a very hilly area and even though we are on a main road which is fairly well gritted the side roads and in particular the road leading down the hill were particuarly bad.  After numerous text messages and phone calls between my work colleagues, one of my bosses texted everyone and told them not to even attempt to drive in to work.  I was so relieved, I really don’t like driving in the snow.

 

Back garden

Tomorrow we’ve been warned to expect dangerous road conditions because of ice so I’m really not looking forward to the journey to work tomorrow morning.  Also, we’re supposed to have an even heavier fall of snow on Thursday and Friday.

The good thing about the snow of course is that I had an unexpected day off and lots of stitching time!

First, here’s the progress I made on Monday on New World.

 

2nd February 2009

Today, I almost have a finish to show you.  I ran out of one colour (DMC 3865) on Chocolate Shoppe or else I would have finished it.  I will order some tomorrow and finish it off at the end of the week.

 

3rd February 2009

All it’s missing is the cake stands on the three cakes in the middle of the picture so it won’t take me long to finish this off

Fully charged.

My camera is up and running again so I can now post some photographs.

First is a picture of a biscournu I stitched for Kate last year as part of an exchange on Jayne’s Attic forum.  I used a Chatelaine freebie design called Martina’s Roses.

Next is my progress on the Marquoir alphabet

My floss and fabric choice for Papillon Creations New World, which I may start tomorrow.  The fabric is one that I have had in my stash for ages, from Dyeing4U called Whipped Cocoa and the thread is from Threadworx called Fantasy Island.

Finally, Little House Needleworks “Needlework School” which I started last year and finished up yesterday,  I used the recommended DMC threads and a Sugar Maple fabric called Muffin.  It looks slightly wonky in the picture but that says more for my photography skills than my needlework skills LOL.

The rest of the day is my own,  the weather is still not great, and Phill is enjoying a few games of Call of Duty World at War, so I’m going to get some more of the Marquoir alphabet done!