Back from Scotland with some stitching progress - WOW!

We got home last night at 10:30 after deciding not to travel back today and lose most of the day on the road. Felt nice to be home, although we had a nice time with friends who looked after us very well.=) (Hi Pauline!!!) Back to the regular run of things now though, but at least work finishes for me on 6 Dec until late January and even then some things will be done by someone else - HURRAH!

Did some cross stitching whilst I was away and
<- here are the results so far. Finished the bottom bird and started putting in some of the background half-stitching. There's still one more bird to go in the big gap on the right hand side, but it's not joined to anything other than the background stuff, so I thought it was better to put some of that in (contrary to the normal procedure, huh?) so that I get the last main element in the right place!! I hope to get that done over the next couple of weeks. I want to get both that and the 'Branches' card done before the end of this calendar year and to take both the 3rd birds trio picture and some small, fun kits away with me when we have our hols in early January. We've settled on a cottage not too far from home rather than going abroad. Less fuss, expense and more relaxing. Less fuss about food too!

Didn't spend as much this time....

So, after blowing a good £70 at the last show only about 6 weeks ago, I was a really good girl and didn't part with much more £20 this time.=) I think that everything I bought is actually for the branches card. Even though the GAST & WDWs skeins and the Kreinik cord I got were more 'I like those' and collection builders, I've since realised how useful the 'bark' colour will be on making the tree proper look realistic and that the other might well come in handy too, but we shall see! The card blank also arrived today, along with some re-stockers in other sizes and colours.

Anyway, here are today's buys:

3 balls of Anchor pearl cotton #8 in tree brown shades, one each of WDW, GAST and Kreinik, a peice of gold kid to make a saxophone out of and a piece of gold-ish silk to make the octagonal door plate out of. The real office name plate is a gold colour with lettering in black, so I wanted this one to be similar. I also got a bunch of keys charm to either hang off one of the branches or appear in the 'lost property box' under the tree. Either way, it'll save a bit of work.

I also enjoyed looking at info about various stitching and textile related courses, such as City & Guilds and the display of A Level work from a local school. I hope I get a reply from the local art college about their Textile Design A Level soon, as this is really much more my thing than teaching. Oh, met the new teacher yesterday and gave her copies of everything we've done in class so far and so on. She has no experience of teaching Chinese, but she has done other subjects, (including English to Chinese people - and she is Chinese), and has a fair idea of what sort of work is involved and also a keen and willing to learn attitude. Although someone with more experience would have been better, I think she'll make a good job of it in time.=) She's very enthusiastic and excited about it all in a way I never could be, so that's just got to be good for the students.

We're going away now until Monday and I'm taking my cross stitch with me, so hope I'll have something to report back on there soon! At least with work soon to take up SO much less of my time, strength and attention, there'll be much more time for creative pursuits.

New design as promised

Remembered to get a photo of it today! It's the initial plan, complete with notes, for a leaving card for our team's manager who's also legging it soon to a very fancy sounding job up in Durham. The above is called 'Branches of Your Life' and, although a lot of it isn't quite clear here, it's going to have characters from the various languages we teach interlinked and hanging from some branches. The others have stuff on that remind us of him - mostly sporty things, the fact that he's known for losing stuff left, right and centre, (even managed to lose his bike once, although I dread to think how he managed that!), and some 'roots' things - i.e. the Cornish bird and crown for where he was born and the Leeds Uni logo and Yorkshire Rose for where he's been for the last 8 or so years. I ordered the necessary jumbo sized card blank from Impressive Crafts, who make the most expensive, but nicest card blanks. We're going for the sky blue one. I'm hoping to make a start on the Uni logo and the octagonal door plate soon as they need to be worked separately, then attached. It's going to be a challenging (although not too badly), but enjoyable project.=)

Moira, you asked where I got my Elizabethan Embroidery books. The first two I got from the Viking Loom stand at the October stitching show I went to, but this link takes you (hopefully!) to their on-line catalogue. The other two I ordered from the New Stitches Stitch Direct site. Each book is £12.95. Don't look on Amazon as the sellers there are asking STUPID prices. I even e-mailed one and asked him if he was serious in wanting £200+ for a £13 book!! The thing is though, that I understand they've recently been re-printed, so they're not as hard to get hold of now. At stitch shows, many of the specialist book sellers who have stands there sell them too. I bought mine on the strength of the stitched models that Viking Loom (a fascinating stitchery shop in York) had on display. If you drooled over the photos, you would be positively swooning over the 'real things'! I'll be asking them for some thread suggestions for the thicker metallics when I'm at the Harrogate Halls show next Thursday.

Latest Acquistions

Have I spelled that right? Sigh! The downside to typing and the computer age.

Well, it's been an interesting week and today has been a good old 'duvet day' so far, but now I'm feeling a little more invigorated, esp as the post just came with these->
One of the new Anchor multicolours in light green, 2 of the 3 new Kreinik green shades in the fine cord, 3 DMC Light Effects metallics from the Antique Effects series and 4 reels of DMC fine goldwork thread in 2 shades each of gold and silved. You'd think that there was only plain 'gold' and 'silver', but there are ever so many!

I also got my ticket through for the Harrogate Knitting and Stitching Show. I wasn't going to go this time as I bought so much at the October Fashion, Embroidery, Stitch and Hobbycrafts shows, but I just really wanted to, so I ordered a ticket and it's just here on the desk.=)

Done no stitching again, but I have sketched the design for a very interesting card that I will post next time as I've just realised that I totally forgot to photograph it! However, below are the 2 latest embroidery mags I bought: I got the French one in Hamburg railway station last month. It's quite simple as it's got 'learn to embroider with us' on the front, but the designs are mostly very pretty.

I also bought the other two in the Elizabethan Embroidery books series and these are they <-. There is another on the alphabet, but I'm not so into monograms, for all I bought the Country Bumpkin book on it recently etc.

The new teacher has been organised for next term and I'm to meet her next week to show her what we've been doing thus far in class. I also want to tell her what I had planned, what I'd 'promised' the students and also a few tips on making it easier for them. She's Chinese and will have all the 'instinctive ability' that I lack, not being a native Mandarin speaker, but she'll never have learned Chinese as a foreign language and her recent training in English language teaching will only have limited relevance for this post. Only 3 more weeks of teaching left - 6 classes, about 12 hours. I'm looking forward to putting it behind me immensely, but part of it, oddly enough, will be a tremendous wrench. There's n'owt so queer as folk, as we say here in Yorkshire. (Leeds, Sandra)

Have a look at this....

Remember two posts ago with the dining table looking like an office? Well, no need for that anymore! I finally had the good sense to realise what a profoundly negative impact my job was having on me, that I hated both teaching and lesson planning/materials creation and that I'd only done it as others had wanted me to, and resigned on Wednesday. Above is the dining table as it should look!

Not had chance to do much on the bluetits, but <- here's the current status. Pretty awful, over-red photo, but I need more time on Photoshop before I get this right!!!

More stitching soon.....=) Oh how nice it is to feel that I have my life back!

Bedding Bale!

Here it is at last, the bale of bedding for the now 5 weeks overdue wedding present.

We'll be giving it to the couple this afternoon, all being well and that'll be one more job off my mind!! I just love the ribbon it's tied up with - it's got cut-out hearts on it. I daresay the bride, who likes to make her own cards, will put that to good use later on.=)


Here too are the final parts of the stitching, the simple bits in the middle of the top edge of the sheet (above) and the 2 C monograms which are one at each corner.

I've actually been doing some cross stitching the last couple of evenings. I picked up the bluetits picture that I hadn't touched since July, last photo on this post. I'd done a tiny bit more since then, but have now almost finished the lower two leaves and hope to do the second bird over the next week or so, but that depends on how other stuff goes.

Work, work and more work

Well, here we are again after another gruelling week! To illustrate, this is what the dining area looks like much of the time, owing to my having to work at home!

I put Photoshop Elements on my laptop just now so I can deal with photos better and even create a good image banner for the top of my blog, so a re-vamp shouldn't be too far off now.

I finally finished the bedding monograms, but haven't yet got the sheet pressed up and photographed. That should come tomorrow or Sunday. In the meantime, I'll leave you with the card I did for friends who lost their mum last week:

Spend, spend, spend!

What about this for a haul of stash? I won't say how much it cost, as I really spent too much at the Fashion, Embroidery and Stitch show this afternoon, but I'm not sorry I got any of it. There are some great things here. The books are crammed full of the most gorgeous designs with goldwork, some raised elements and what not. Of course, I fell for them as the shop whose stall I bought them from had wisely brought all their models of the pieces too...... Will get to make up some of those over the next couple of years, I hope! If the eternal course writing ever comes to an end.....

Anyway, so I got 2 books, 4 kits - 1 'regular' goldwork, although the pattern needs some adaptation as it's not an accurate stringed instrument at all, 1 metallic in different colours called 'Goldleaf Dragonfly', 1 cross stitch kit which I plan to make up to put on/above my desk when I get one at work (10 new workstations coming next summer, one for me too, I should say!) and 1 small Brazilian piece. One of the reasons I never did that glorious 'Ariel's Heart' design for the wedding in August was that I outfaced myself with it, so I thought that getting a smaller kit to have a go at first would be the best idea. What else? 3 things of ribbon, 6 sheets of stickers, (many of which I want to use mostly as designs to stitch from), 2 packs of 5 10"x10" pieces of silk dupion, plus one more 13"x11" piece. That's it, I think! Don't even ask when I'm starting on any of them as I couldn't begin to imagine!!

Decided to take the bed linen stitching to Germany with me next week after all. At first I thought it was too big, but then I realised that it doesn't matter at all and I can take what I like!! I'll also be taking the cushion for my baby sis' to sew it up there and hope that I can clear one more job and get back on with another all in the course of yet another trip to Hamburg!! After that, stitching plans are to finish that blue-tits piece that I started back in the summer and probably also do the goldfinch one that goes with it ready to have them all framed for bedroom re-decoration during the winter hols.=)

Ribbons!

<-Put in a retail therapy order with Crafty Ribbons when I was feeling peeved last w/e and here it is.

It came on Tuesday shortly before I legged it to work. I dread to think when I'm actually going to have time to work any of these rather nice little kits, but at least they're a quick stitch.=) More stash likely to hit tomorrow as I'm going to the Fashion, Embroidery and Stitch show up in Harrogate, which has Hobbycrafts next door as well. As Sir and I are being paid at the mo, I daresay I shall not feel at all guilty about spending money I really shouldn't....... But more on that tomorrow.

Progress with the bedding set

Haven't done a lot of stitching of late, but <-here's the completed M:





And the transfers for the sheet.->

I'll post the quilt designs when I get to that bit!! The wedding is this Saturday and, had I nothing else to do, I could get it done in time, but given that the couple'll be away in Italy (how jealous am I???!) for a fortnight afterwards, they're hardly going to be wanting it straight away. So, I'll see them the day after they come back and hand it over then.

On the off-chance you come back again, Moira, thanks for your nice comments. The little cushion you were admiring is indeed a kit, made by the Royal School of Needlework here in the UK. If you Google search for their web-page, then look in the shopping section, you should find it, and the rest of the strawberry and rose collection there.