KNITTING AND STITCHING . . . .

THANK YOU to everyone who commented on my last post, your comments are so appreciated and very inspiring.

I have finished my chunky knit cushion, WOW! did this knit up fast and a fraction of the cost of shop cushions:

It's just simple stocking stitch with buttonholes and my choice of wooden buttons to complete, I enjoyed knitting it so much, that matching cushion number 2 is already half-done!

So in full flow of cushion-mode, finally I sat down last weekend and turned my Mouseloft cross stitch projects into a patchwork cushion:

This was definitely a little more tricky!  I had no sewing pattern to follow but had an idea of what I roughly wanted to achieve.  I used fabric pieces left over from cross stitch pillow finishes to make up the patchwork squares and chose a beige & cream heart design for the backing which has a simple envelope finish, I just need some buttons to sew along the opening!  I am pleased with the end result, the Mouseloft designs were all pretty small designs and as I had completed 8 of them, framing and my usual pillow finishes seemed a bit excessive!!!

This weeek is a bit of an emotional roller-coaster ride for me.  Tonight is DD's achievement evening at her school and she will be presented with her certificates for all her recent exam passes - DH and I are very proud of her success and she has settled very well at college.  Tomorrow is my birthday and DH and I are having a day out with a visit to every craft shop I can think of high on the agenda - (OMG! another year gone and I'm still only 21! but so looking forward to it).

Friday will, without doubt, be horrible! after much deliberation and a lot of research I have decided to have Tilly spayed  As my regular followers will know I lost my beloved Buttons earlier in the year to a tumor and even though he was the fantastic age of 10, I still feel if he had been neutured in his early life this may have been preventable and he would still be here with me today.  A female rabbits's chances of getting uterine cancer between the age of  3-5 are greatly raised if they have not been spayed and although, like any operation it comes with its risks, I don't want to lose another bunny in this horrible way.

I will take her to the Vets at 8am on Friday and if everything goes well and she is eating and drinking after she wakes I will be able to collect her in the evening ~ please keep everything crossed for her, she's a little darling, so so affectionate, I hope she forgives me for putting her through it?

Two things to look forward to though for next year:  I love my music and live concerts are the best so, as part of my birthday prezzies, DH has treated me to tickets to see both Kylie Minogue and Take That with Robbie Williams!

I have seen Kylie before and she puts on a fab show, I'm going with DD and we shall have a great girlie night out in our glitter and glam and are staying overnight in London.  Later in the year we shall see Take That who are now reunited with Robbie (yum!)  I am so lucky to have got tickets for this one as on the day they were released the mass response for tickets caused all tickets sites to crash and the telephone network jammed but after only 10 hours of persevering we got our tickets!

So as a thank you to DH and also because I've wanted to stitch this little cutie for so long here's:

'Love Ewe' by Lizzie*Kate stitched on 28-count natural linen with Gentle Art threads and finished with a grey and cream gingham to match the sheep and burgundy daisy print backing to match the lettering.

Another Lizzie*Kate stitch is in progress at the moment but lots of frogging yesterday as I ran out of Oatmeal sampler thread and when the new skein arrived it was a completely different shade!

Thanks for stopping by and until next time

HAPPY STITCHING

xxx

Better Late than Never . . . . A WINNER!

A big thank you to everyone who left such complimentary messages on my last post! ~ they all mean a great deal to me xxx

A very BIG apology for the delay in posting a winner of my 'Little Owl' kit but AOL very kindly decided to close our Intenet connection down on Monday without any reason or notification to us and after some very long and heated telephone conversations (steam literally coming out of DH's ears) and a 3-day duration of no internet we have now received an apology and normal service has been resumed so without any further ado . . . . .

Sixteen entries . . . . .

Tilly ~ please pick a winner . . . . .

Number 1 ~ Crystal ~ Midnight Stitcher

With no internet available on Monday my random generator AKA Tilly decided ticket number 1 was rather tasty so Twin II and I had fun and games trying to rescue the piece of paper before having to unfold the other 15 to see which one had nearly been eaten ~ success!

Crystal please let me know address info and I will get this in the mail to you as soon as I can.

Now, down to stitching.

  As I said in my last post, 4 spooky stitches have been waiting for completion and again with no internet

connection and time to spare I squeezed a fifth in!

First up is 'Fright Turn' by Lizzie*Kate from her Halloween Highway collection stitched on 28-ct Antique White evenweave fabric with my choice of Gentle Art threads.  The star is stitched in Madeira gold metallic thread and the pumpkin fabric was from my recent fabric stash addition with brown ric rac and bronze seed beads to finish:

Next is another Lizzie*Kate design ~ 'Hats Off To Halloween' which I stitched last month.

I stitched this on 28-ct Sand Minster linen again with my choice of Gentle Art threads and have used a spider fabric to finish as a pillow:

A small design next but really cute and love its smiley face!

This is 'Itty Bitty Pumpkin' by Twisted Threads which I stitched on 28-ct Natural Linen with the suggested DMC threads.  Sorry, but yet again I finished it as a small pillow with pumpkin coloured fabrics and a raffia decoration pinned at the bottom:

'Spooky Row' by Bent Creek was another piece stitched last month and due to its size I was a little unsure what to do as a finish so a wall hanging seemed to be the best idea and 'at long last' I hear you say it's something different from a pillow finish!

I found some nice black fabric with white spots which I used for both the back and front and added some tabs at the top for hanging but found it also looks good hanging from the mantlepiece over the fire with candles sitting on the tabs holding it in place.  I added some self-cover buttons to each corner with the orange fabric used in Itty Bitty Pumpkin and they match the stitched pumpkins in the design perfectly!

And finally (hope you're still there?) a small design using two patterns from cross stitch books ~ Boo and a Black Cat.  I coffee-stained some 28-ct white linen and stitched the design in just black DMC, frayed the edges, gave the kitty 2 silver seed beads for eyes, added 4 small purple buttons with matching ribbon at 2 corners and a loop to hang and finished ~ yep! you guessed! ~ as a pillow with the same fabric as Spooky Row above.

That's me done for Halloween!  I an now in knitting mode and have just started a chunky knit cushion cover which is done on 10mm needles so literally grows before your eyes.  Knitted cushion covers in natural colours are very much in fashion here at the moment but they can cost as much as £45 (ouch!) so with this pattern only needing 3 balls and costing only £12 this is a great saving but a great temptation for Tilly who's decided to move on from eating my Gentle Art threads and feels a balls of wool is much tastier!

Take care everyone, Happy Halloween to you all for the 31st and until next time:

HAPPY STITCHING

xxx

AUTUMNAL TRIO

After almost 4 weeks since my last post I'm finally back into full swing again and the troublesome tooth is behaving itself and the rotten cold long gone.

My stitching mojo has waivered a little recently and no large projects have seen light of day but a trio of Autumnal stitches, all quick and easy are now complete . . . .

The two owls, both the same, are the 'Little Owl' Blackwork design which I had in kit form.  I didn't fancy stitching them in the black thread provided or on the 14ct Aida so the top one is stitched in DMC chocolate brown on cream 28-ct linen and the bottom one in DMC autumn tones on natural 28-ct linen with wooden buttons for his eyes.

Both are pillow finishes with decorative braiding to match the thread/fabrics used.

This was my first attempt at blackwork stitching and I really enjoyed it which is why I stitched the same design twice, I'm tempted to stitch a third owl with White Whisper thread and give it a Snowy Owl effect, maybe save that idea for a Christmas finish!

If anyone fancies having a go at stitching this cute little owl then I have the unused kit to pass on, I always work from a photocopy (just in case of 'coffee' spillages ~ yep! it has happened!) so the kit is complete ~ just leave a comment on this post and I will draw a winner next Monday, 25th.

This little fellow is a Quaker Hedgehog freebie and I stitched him with Gentle Art Sampler 'Sable' on a piece of 14ct mottled AIDA fabric.  Again he is a pillow finish with a caramel wavy striped fabric which reminds me of woodgrain and has 4 little buttons to complete (pictures do enlarge if you click on them!)

Temperatures here in England now definitely tell us Autumn is here and I've finally given in and the central heating is on and doing its job!  The past few days have been lovely and bright and are perfect for stitching but the nights are really, really chilly and next weekend on Halloween night will see the clocks go back 1 hour and the evenings dark by 6pm.

Halloween already?  I have 4 completed stitches and none of them finished to hang up or display so guess that's my next job or they'll be sitting in 'that' draw until next year.

Thank you for stopping by, I'm well behind with reading your blogs but it's Half-Term next week so I hope to catch up with you all then.

HAPPY STITCHING . . . .

SYMPATHY PLEASE!

Firstly a huge thank you to everyone who wished me better after my raging tooth infection, unfortunately my tooth wasn't listening and I was back at the dentist on the following day and prescribed stronger antibiotics with root canal treatment booked in for that Wednesday. 

Still my tooth didn't listen and despite numerous injections to numb it still it raged on so I had antibiotics injected as a last resort (still with me or if you're anything like me out for the count when it comes to injections and needles) and thankfully this worked BUT made me throw up so back I went on Friday and another concoction prescribed and thankfully it has now settled and I have a week off before returning.

So instead yesterday I went down with a rotten cold and have now been up since 2am with a high temperature, continual runny nose and my usually very controlled asthma has made an unwelcome appearance too!!!

Yep, I'm feeling very sorry for myself (lots of aahhs please) and Tilly has missed her fun playtimes whilst I've moped around . . .

Tilly, we need something to cheer us up . . .

and Lesleyanne (Lesleyanne's Life of Stitches) did exactly that with a RAK delivered by the Postie on Tuesday morning

Lesleyanne had contacted me to say she had something in her stash which although she loved would probably never get round to stitching and it was screaming my name at her ~ Bunnies Galore by Brittercup Designs, it couldn't have been more perfect, I love it and it's taken position high up the 'to-do' pile once my Autumn and Halloween stitchies are complete ~ thank you so much Lesleyanne, bunnyhops and smiles all round xxx

Sleeping seems to be something I once did a long time ago and having such a painful mouth meant it even hurt to put my head on a pillow so I've burnt the midnight oil (and much beyond) on many nights recently stitching Spooky Row by Bent Creek . . .

It's over 2ft wide so not easy to photograph hence the extra 2 pics below :

I stitched this on 28count natural linen with DMC threads rather than GAST and have a few ideas what to do for a finish but will leave that for a later post.

I managed to have an afternoon out with DH on Monday, it was our 24th Wedding Anniversary but after feeling so low recently we are going to have belated celebrations at a later date when I will be able to have a glass or two and actually eat something so instead we went stash hunting and did really well :

Autumnal and Halloween fat quarters and ric a rac

Green felt for pumpkin making, a Halloween sign with paints (meant for kiddies but as I'm the biggest one of them in our family!) and some gingham ribbon

AND

3 cross stitch books, all in perfect condition and never used for the fantastic price of £1 (who could resist?)

The weather is horrible here today and noticeably much colder but the leaves are turning those gorgeous shades of Autumn and I now don't need an excuse to light the fire in the lounge at night!

I'm off to renew my Passport tomorrow and need a new photograph ~ I look like Rudolph with my sore red nose at the moment and the gang are all laughing at me ~ still I'll only have to live with it for another 10 years!!!

HAPPY STITCHING . . .