A few spare days

For the last two weeks I have faithfully stuck to the rotation. The June Calendar was finished with a day spare and the Just Nan biscornu was finished with two days to spare. So what did I do with those spare days? Well I would love to say that I spent the time on my Teepee Teddies UFO and finished it, but I didn't. Instead I started and finished something else.

The something else was the 'How many UFOs are in your closet?' by Raise the Roof Designs. This is what it looks like if you follow the chart.


This is my version


Stitched on 28 count Cashel linen (lilac) I made the following alterations.

• Kreinik blending filament was used on the UFOs to give them a metallic sparkle


• The purple parts were done in The Gentle Art 'Hyacinth' rather than the DMC floss suggested


• Threadworx' Mythical' and Weeks Dye Works 'Mother's Day' (left over from the last two biscornu from The Sweetheart Tree) were used to make the fabric on the second shelf more interesting


• Instead of having another brown box above the 'to do' box I designed a very simple straw hat, blending two shades of DMC to give a textured, 'straw' look and used more 'Mother's Day' for the hat band and the feather


• I also blended the floss to make the basket and changed the colours of two boxes. The bottom right box ended up being stripped as I was running out of 'Hyacinth'

Let's say I had great fun!

Next job is to frame it. I'm going to have a ago at doing this myself. I bought a wooden 8" x 10" photo frame for £4.50, some wadding £3.00 a metre, and some spongy mounting board, sorry I have no idea what that is called, all I know is that an A1 size sheet cost £4.99 and they had it on offer, 'buy one get one free'! So at a rough estimate I should be able to frame it myself for about £6! Can't be bad. When it is done I will post the results.

Anyway, back to the stitching. After adding in this extra project, I still had some time left, Sunday afternoon and evening. So why didn't she frame it then? I hear you say. Well, The Other Half cut the board to size for me, so a start was made. Unfortunately, whilst stitching the words I stabbed myself and bled on to the linen, not much, but enough to show. So it was a quick soak in warm water, with a squirt of Fairy Liquid, which did the trick and the stain came out.

So to fill the gap I started the Boo needle book from the Just Nan 'Over the top and in the tin' range. You can find out more about the crisis I had with this one in my post on the Spooky Stitcher's SAL. This is as far as I got.


So this week it's Back to White Nights In St Petersburg. My aim is to finish Part 2! Watch this space.