Grow Your Blog Party Post - Welcome!

This event is being run by Vicki of 2 Bags Full and I hope at least some regular readers were able to join in and enter their blogs.  As a representative of the Craftsy team told me that they were rather short on embroidery blog entries to their Blogging Awards, it would be especially great to see what lesser known stitchcrafts blogs are out there waiting to be discovered!

Hi!  Welcome to Sew In Love. I'm a 42 year old (even though I look more like an overgrown 12 year old) textile hobbyist living on the southernmost tip of Sheffield in South Yorkshire, England.  I'm originally from 30 miles north of here - from Leeds in West Yorkshire.  I've been married to Martin, whose originally from Germany for nearly 15 years.=)

I love to travel and have visited 19 countries to date, if you count England, Scotland and Wales as being separate countries, and I'd love to get to 30 or more some day.  Maps showing which countries those 19 are are on our travel blog, Brauns on Tour, (which needs updating) and one of my main dreams is to have the 'need' to increase its scope somewhat.  I've lived for a total of about two years in Taiwan and a couple of months in Germany as well as here in Yorkshire and have a passion for foreign languages, especially Mandarin Chinese, which I used to teach too.

You can find out a bit more about this blog on my About page (link above, under the header photos) and you'll have got some ideas from my header photos and those I've included here what I do on this blog.

On Mondays I try to post my weekly update from the Needlequest challenge which I run and which you're most welcome to join in.  Participants spend some time each month working on a certain design theme or embroidery technique.  Sign up on the challenge page here on blog.  This month we're all trying our hands at needle-painting, and next month is dedicated to Japan as a theme.  Here's my latest effort from the challenge.

Many Wednesdays find me posting to Sharon B's Work in Progress Wednesdays event.  It's not exactly a challenge, more of a Weight-Watchers weigh-in for stitchers where we can show off how far we've got with a long-term project, an unfinished/long neglected piece or something like that and I've completed three neglected pieces so far.  I even started my current WIPW project partly to be able to continue joining in and this is how far I've got.  I hope to enter the finished piece into the Sheffield Fayre in August this year. From this you can tell that I love a bit of cross stitch as well as the more complication forms of embroidery.  I like to include lots of variety in my stitching diet.

I don't just embroider, I also do some knitting here and there - although I do tend to embroider on my finished knits!  Here's a close-up of a baby cardy I knitted last summer.  It's a nice design in itself, but looks so much prettier with the flower buttons and stitched stems and buds.  I loved baby knits as I was able to learn so much doing them as well as complete so many pieces in a relatively short time.  Trouble is, I've run out of babies to knit for!!=)

Sometimes I post tutorials and things on other pieces I'm working on and have created a whole page of them for you to be able to find what you want most easily.  There's also a page dedicated to feature articles, such as the series I posted on Korean stitchery and costume recently.  I'll be starting a Reviews page and posts soon, on which I'll be posting about books (and a few kits here and there) that Mary Corbet hasn't covered on the Needle'n'Thread reviews page.

My style tends to lean towards the classic, but I have been known to do and enjoy some more contemporary pieces as well and may well even develop that later on - especially through the Needlequest challenge I mentioned above.

Other than that, here are some random facts about me:

* I'm vegetarian with serious vegan and raw foodist tendencies.
* I learned Mongolian for an academic year when I was at university.
* I'm verging on fanatical about things being straight!!  I can't bear curtains or bed quilts to be skew, table mats not to line up on the dining table or books on the shelves.
* I learnt the basics of playing the viola back in 2007-9, but never got very far.  Maybe one day...  My favourite viola piece is Galzunov's Elegy, which I can only dream of being able to play, other than via a CD!!
* I'm mad keen to see Liechtenstein and the other tiny states in Europe.
* I love colourful eye make-up, although I rarely get to use it much myself, and have a Pinterest board dedicated to rainbow looks.  (I also have a few needlework ones too....)
* I hate the words 'beverage', 'persons' and, most of all, 'purchase'.  What in heck's wrong with 'drink', 'people' and 'buy', huh?
* I have a Squidoo account and have created five lenses there.  I'd be grateful if you'd visit some of them, vote in the polls, leave comments and, if you have an account, Squidlike them, esp the one on healthy grocery shopping on a budget, because if they get no traffic and activity, they go back to WIP status and it's really annoying having to re-activate them every so often.=(  The others are on stumpwork embroidery, finishing up stalled craft projects, starting a needlecrafts blog and budget beauty shopping.  I'm planning some more on other embroidery styles such as thread painting, hardanger and goldwork.
* I am actively looking for shades L310, L739, L779 and LEcru in the DMC Linen Threads, which are now discontinued.  If you have some and are interested in parting with it, please leave a comment with contact details...=)  Ditto the chart for Anchor's 'Birds and Seasons' cross stitch picture.  I have all the materials, just need the chart!

I also have an art blog, Art Excursion, which I really need to do more posting on - and more art to post, but I suppose that type of art doesn't really hit the spot with me as embroidery and textiles do.  There's something deeply nurturing (to me) about textile arts, a feeling I don't get from the paper based variety, much as I admire and like them.  I think the reason for this could be that I'm not very good at them and haven't the patience to practice....!!

I find goals lists help me enormously in being productive and keeping my activities focused, so I maintain annual goals lists and here's the current one.  I'm a big list maker and get a real kick out of crossing things off them as they're done.=)  I don't like part-finished things hanging around or to work on too many pieces at once.  Ideally, I like two on the go at any given time so that I have a choice, but it doesn't get out of hand or mean that I never finish anything.

So, do stay for a couple of minutes more and have a look at some of my gallery pages (links just below the header photo series - most people seemed to like the Raised Embroidery and Stumpwork one best) and leave me a comment telling me about your work and where to find you.  I'm always on the look-out for more textiles and embroidery blogs, but I also sometimes follow others, so you just never know!

Many thanks for coming around to see me.  There are a number of ways you can subscribe, if you want to, other than by using the 'Follower' function, (which I don't think tells us very much after the demise of Google Reader), including the Bloglovin' service and e-mail updates that there are options to sign up for on my sidebar.  I have a dedicated page on Google+ and there's a sidebar widget to follow that too and that's more useful to blog readers than circling me.

Hope you'll call in again soon....

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2014