Updates!!

Lots of updates, here they come.................

Liberty...............
Happy Dance!!! 
I stitched this straight through.

Winter Watergarden...................
I'm currently halfway through part 10 of 12, the tiny birds are wonderfull, clever Martina.  I'm going for a Christmas finish.

and Stargazer!!!!!.................
An exciting new start, what do you think?  Stitched on 28Ct (loads of beads) Spring Greens linen from Sparklies.  I'm a bit sad that the pictures don't show up all the sparkle in this fabbie, it is seriously blingy!

 

I haven't stitched on anything else, my chicken giveaways are currently on hold until the spring buy I will finish them and I will give them away!

Tomorrow I'll shar my Chrimbo decs, I've got loads of new ones to match the new house colours, Its turquoise and brown,  Ergh!

WWG Part 7 Done

I've finished part 7 of my Winter Watergarden.  Part 7 was the big corners, the grey scrolls and the 4 corner snowflakes.  I've already done about half of Part 8 (the gates) and some of Part 9 (the top leaves) so hopefully I will manage to catch up this month.

This is the current state of my house!! So all progress is good.  My stitching is living in the kitchen cupboards with the food when I;m not doing it, because simply EVERYTHING in our house is covered in a fine layer of brick and plaster dust, even upstairs in the bedrooms!  I can't wait for it to be finished. 

Another great weekend

I just had another thoroughly enjoyable weekend.  My sister-in-law and her husband came to stay and we relaxed, bbq'd, drank wine and went shopping  :-)  (the men did man things while we were shopping and knocked out our old gas fire ready for our up coming house renovations)

These are my new shoes and bag!  I don't buy things like this often so I'm very excited.

I even managed to stitch a little.  Martina gave us the password for Winter Watergarden three days early so I was able to start Part 8. Here it is in all its sparkly glory.

So, given that clearly I failed to get Winter Watergarden finished including Part 7 how did I do with my other July goals?

1) Finish Parts 6 and 7 of Winter Watergarden.
Part 6 got done plus half of Part 7 and quarter of Part 8.

2) Complete at least a further 20% of my Sacred Cranes.
I managed 10%

3) Start and complete at least 50% of Peony.
Yeah!! 

4) Complete at least 600 stitches in Ghostwind
Yeah!! I actually did 1000 stitches.

5) Get Autumn Tree of Stitches upto date.
Yeah!!

6) Complete Barnabees Bride (I did treat myself!!)
Yeah!!

7) Not loose any more needles ;-)
Yeah!!

So that 5 out of 7, but still close on the two I missed.

August Goals are....

1) Finish Parts 7 and 8 of Winter Watergarden
2) Finish Peony
3) Finish the penultimate page of Ghostwind
4) Make start on Maggy, however small (my new HAED)

This is quite a short list as there is alot of stitching there and I'd like to complete them all.

My lovely sister-in-law is currently stitching her second Mirabilla Athena and I'm really impressed so nabbed a picture for my blog.  Athena stitched by Suzy on the recommended fabbie...... I love the colours, she is so vibrant. Keep stitching Suz!

Weekend Stitching

No more horse posts for a bit, sorry about going a bit OT! but thanks for your lovely comments.  I was so happy and excited :-)

This weekend I've stitched my Barnabees Bride!  I started her on Friday night and I managed to get her finished over the weekend.  Thats one of my July goals done. 

I've also done a bit more Winter Watergarden but Part 7 is quite big.  I'm aiming to get my 600 stitches done in Ghostwind next.

WWG Part 7 and a birthday

I've finished Part 6 and I've been stuck into Part 7 of Winter Watergarden.  Its fairly time consuming putting in all the different speciality stitches and colour changes in this part.  I hope it comes together more when the beads go on at the end.  Because I have all four corners to do this part is likely to take me quite a while!

Yesterday was the Bumpy Dogs birthday!! She is now 8 and she had a carrot cake.  Spoilt!?  Me!!?

First bits, Part 6

These are my first few bits of Winter Watergarden Part 6.  This part is the 8 'corner' pieces next to the gate posts, the 8 gate posts and a little urn and snowflake on top of each gate post.  Here are a couple of pics.....

Part 5 done

Here is my Part 5 finished, together with its alternative birds.  I will stitch all the rest of the birds on the design exactly as charted giving me 7 different winter birds in total.  I will need to miss a few stitches out of the top gate as the black bird is a little big but hopefully it will only be a few and it will still look ok.  I'm very happy with it.

I'm back

It has been a moth since I updated this blog as I had a massive stitching mojo loss over lily of the Valley.  I really started to dislike the background colour I had picked for her, then my stitching was very slow then stopped!  But I have been rescued by Part 5 of Winter Watergarden.  I am changing this part slightly as I have purched the chart for Winter Guests in a Snowy World  I will be stitching all the european birds instead of the cardinal and I will not be rotating them aroung the centre, I'm stitching them more as a sampler style.  This is mainly because I wanted to incorporate the delightful Goldfinch as a tribut to my amazing old horse who died about 6 weeks after the online class started.  Hope you like them.  I will post as picture of the whole thing so you can see how it will work just as soon as I finish up the corners.  Thanks to my faithfull followers for not leaving during my absence of posting xxx



WWG - 3 & 4 done

Here are parts 3 and 4 done!  Its very very fresh off the Q's so sorry about the wrinkles.

Skeleton Leaves

Part 4 of Winter Watergarden is an absolute delight after stiching those bare trees in Part 3.  They were a bit of a pig to count and I have to admit that I still have 1 pair left to do.  But that didn't stop me making a start on Part 4!  In fact I already have 3 of the 4 leaves stitched so Part 3 and 4 will be finished before the end of the weekend.  However I couldn't wait to show you one of these finished leaves.  They are lovely, thank you Martina. 

 

Part 3 Start

This is my first tree! 7 more to go..... 

Part 2 Complete

Part 2 is complete and just in time!  Part 3 is out and it looks very exciting.  There isn't any time for the first few stitches tonight as it's bed time so I have that to look forward to tomorrow.  If you haven't already please scroll down to the next post and help me with my fabbie choice for my next Chatelaine.  I could do with your help!

Part 2 - A Start on the Reeds

I have finished one of the four reed beds and I'm hoping to have done them all before Part 3 is out.  I'm really pleased I waited for the Gloriana to arrive instead of making do with the DMC alternative.  The Winter Brook Gloriana is lovely and really makes this part I think, although I also love the shine of the marlit and the treasure braid in the 'snow'.  I'm sad that Anchor are stoping the marlit.  This is the first time I have used it and I quite like the stuff.

More Part 2, Now Stuck!

Part 2 is half finished.  I now have to wait for the Winter Brook Gloriana to arrive so I can stitch the plants and reeds.  I'm not going to give in and stitch it in the DMC conversion as I did for the Heirloom Blue in Part 1 because i'm a bit disapointed with how different my DMC is to one i've seen in the silk.  I'm still not sure if i'm going to frog that colour, which would be a huge amount of work.  Here are a couple of pics of it as far as I can get.  It is so subtle and looks just like soft glistening snow, I love it.   I can't wait for my thread to arrive.  Hope that you are having a good weekend.

A Start on Part 2

Part 2, day 1. 

Ghostwind and Part 2!

Today my car had a puncture so I had to stay at home until DH could fix it for me, I can't possibly get nasty dirty car grub on my lovely clean stitchy fingers! This meant I unexpectedly got in a day of stitching.  As I had put away Forest and Part 2 of WWG wasn't out I got Ghostwind out.  This has been my only ever long term WIP but I'm determined to get him finished this year.  Today I finished up a section which had been bugging me for ages so my mojo for him feels well and truly boosted.  Just slightly less than the last 3 pages left to go with him now.

But he is back in his box again now because Part 2 of WWG has arrived, and bugger!!  would you believe it I'm short of a silk AGAIN.  And it is out of stock like the last one.  I think stitching a Chatelaine in the UK must be one of the most frustrating things ever!  It is so hard to find all the fibres and I haven't even started on kitting up the beads yet.  I think there is a bit I can be getting on with so a photo in the next day or two for sure I think.

Thank you for your lovely comments on our party frocks, but you would have laughed if only you could have seen the back of the gowns and all the pins holding them on!!  We had nearly all got a little bit bigger since our wedding days, only one of the dresses was actually done up.

Part 1 Complete

Here is my part 1 finished, can't wait for the next part.  I spent ages trying to get a good picture of this but I can't.  No picture I take can show how loveky it is IRL.  Martina is a genius!  I'm thrilled that Andie will be stitching this too, I love having stitchy friends.

I'm going to do a bit more of my cranes now and try to get over this loss of mojo currently have with it steming from my angst about my first few crewel stitches!  I'm telling myself how much better it will look with some more progress.

My Poor Husband

My poor husband hasn't had much attention since I started this project on Monday.  (I did cook duck for him last night as a bit of consolation)  But every cloud has a silver lining and this is it.....

Part 1 isn't quite finished yet but I wanted to share, I'm like a child in a sweetie shop with this, all the different fibres and stitches!!

Winter Watergarden - A Start

I have started my first ever Chatelaine!  Its fun stitching with the speciality threads, I've used Dinky Dyes silk Perle, some Waterlilies and Treasure Braid none of which I had even seen before. Kreink used to be adventurous for me! I'm still 1 colour down which is on back order so I'm really hoping it arrives and I can finish part 1 before part 2 is out in February.  In the mean time I have plenty to do.  The 'pond' needs filling in, there is quite a bit of blackwork and about 100 tiny silver snowflakes to stitch. 

I don't think you can see much from these pictures but I was so excited that I wanted to post my very first few hours.

Breaking News!

(Most of) the stuff for WWG has just arrived.  I'm starting tonight!!!! (Can you tell I'm excited)