Serendipitous Jo's Thirty-Fourth Frolic of the Year

Last weekend was IHSW and I would usually be working on Elizabeth Shephard but she is finished!  I just can't decide on a replacement for her.  I am veering towards Joan Elliott's Faces SAL or maybe a series of smaller designs.  I just can't decide!

Anyway, this IHSW fell towards the end of the Olympic Challenge so I continued with that.  Friday's theme was Silver and I had nothing with silver in it so that called for a new start.   I got out my collection of the JCS Christmas Ornament Specials (2010-2015) and discovered this one from 2010:

stitched on 28 count Colonial Blue evenweave

The design is by Forget-Me-Nots in Stitches and is called 1862 Snowflake after an antique beadwork pattern they had.  The charts suggest using all beads but I have substituted silver for the crystal beads to fit the Olympic theme.

I worked all day Sunday and Monday so I haven't got a finished cube to show you.  I will have to do two next week!

Serendipitous Jo's Thirty-Third Frolic of the Year

Last Friday was the second Friday in the Stitch Maynia Olympics and the theme given was The Triathalon, or stitch three different projects.

No problem for me, I do two a day anyway and it just meant adding one more in.  Here are my three pieces:

In the morning I worked on Gathering Honey by Jannlynn:

In the afternoon I worked on Christmas Cubes by The Primitive Hare:

In the evening I worked on Ghostly Mandala by Ink Circles:

And on Sunday, I made another cube:

Two down, seven to go!

Back to Denmark ...

Well, this FF I thought that I should pull out my Danish Bell pull again - only about four more motifs to go and this very long term project would be finished.  You can read all about its provenance in this blog post - The Tale of Three Hatboxes.


This is what it was looking like on Friday before I started stitching again (sorry for the crumpled linen)....

Unfortunately, a bit of frogging went on but eventually I ended up here...

... and then by Sunday evening, I was here - just some backstitching to finish and another motif will be finished!

Well, that is all for me this week - off to work today to earn some money to pay for more stash!  lol!

Have a great week everyone, 

hugs, Kaye

Serendipitous Jo's Thirty-Second Frolic of the Year

Last Friday was the first day of the Olympic Stitching Challenge in the Stitch Maynia FB group.  The admin there have given us a theme for each day and Friday's was The Olympic Rings - Blue.

So I stitched some of the blue on Little Snap Dragon by Kustom Krafts.  Not as much as I wanted because I was called into work to cover someone in the morning.  But I managed some:

stitched on 32 count Murano Evening Sky from Crafty Kitten

Close-up to show the area I worked on: 

On Sunday I spent the afternoon doing some finish-finishing.  Last year I stitched the Hallowe'en Cubes by The Primitive Hare and this year I am determined to finish them properly to display in time for the spooky season.  I decided to make a "low-sew" cube.  Not a "no-sew" because I still have to whip stitch the edges on these ones but they work well.  This one took over two hours but hopefully I will get quicker the more I make.  The plan is to make one every weekend and then start on the Christmas Cubes so they will be done by this Christmas.  Posting on here each weekend might help me keep on track!

This post shows my technique - "low-sew" cube

Here is H:

The orange fabric came from Plush Addict and I got the same design in purple and black so I can vary the colours.  I also bought some wadding to add a padded front to the cube.  Gosh, don't you get a lot of wadding for your money?  I spent £3.95 and got loads!

Flashin Scissors' (6)

Hello my friends!

A brief recap for anyone who hasn't seen my stitching of the Cocoa Sampler previously. The pattern, by Sue Cook, appeared in The World of Cross Stitching magazine in 2004. I eagerly started stitching as soon as I discovered it, but put it away some years ago as I never seemed to have the time for stitching at home and it was too big to stitch while travelling. I only started again when I discovered the cross stitch blogging community.

I've stitched lots of other smaller cross stitch patterns in between times, however, until now I didn't have the enthusiasm to continue, but with the encouragement I've received from  my bloggy friends, in their kind comments, I am now determined to finish as soon as I can, as its been hanging around far too long, and I'd like to enjoy seeing it displayed on one of our walls!

Last time

During the last week I worked on the heading, stitching more of the chequerboard, the framework and some of the centre, although last Friday I was only able to stitch the stepped grey squares in the centre of the heading. Then horror of horrors .....  I found I had run out of the grey I was using in the heading! Not only that, I think I might have used dark grey instead of light in the stepped arch. Arrgh!!!

Not to worry though ... DH suggested we took a trip to a local sewing store! Problem solved?????? No way!! Turns out I wasn't using the colours stipulated on the pattern, as I had originally substituted other threads from my stash rather than buying new ones, so, although this week I bought 2 skeins of the stipulated greys and one close colour ... just in case .... not one of them is right!! Darn it! So all stitching is on hold while I search my cupboards to see if I have any other greys hidden away with samplers that I'm not going to stitch!

Now you can see little lamby's face, stitched last week.

Afraid I didn't manage to stitch this week, as this Friday I was busy "with the frog" and those grey stitches!

LOL!

Thank you for visiting!

I'm sure if you are reading this you be visiting, if not joining in with,  Jo's "Tenuous Shoehorn blog party"! A week long party, starting Monday 8th August, where the theme is, .... My Summer Holiday ... and, guess what.... we link our Summer stitching posts! For more detail visit Jo's blog, Serendipitous Stitching.

I'm off to write mine now!!!!!!

Barbara xx

Friday Frolicking on a Magnificent Obsession....

... last night I stitched on my Magnificent Obsession ... you can read all about it in this post here.

Winter Wonderland

Mill Hill Kits

25 ct Wedgewood Lugana

DMC threads and Mill Hill beads

... I am so close to finishing - maybe tomorrow or the next day.

hugs,  Kaye

Serendipitous Jo's Thirty-First Frolic of the Year

Last Friday was the Fifth Friday in the month of July so as I'm working a four week rotation each Friday I get a bonus project!  I have chosen the Teresa Wentzler Byzantine Ornaments as my Fifth Friday projects and started work on the second one this weekend.

Here's my progress:

stitched on 28 count burgundy linen

This one is so much quicker than the first one, seen below.  You can see I have totally changed the colour scheme again.  I'm using the charted gold colours but the accent colour is DMC 321.  I've added some extra splashes of red too.  And yes, I am aware that one satin stitch diamond is incomplete, I used the end of the length and I'm going to finish it when I use that colour in the outer diamonds next.

Byzantine Ornament I