White Nights progress report

As you know the houses making up Part 5 of White Nights have been getting me down. I started stitching them in January and have managed one house a week on the rotation. One good weeks I've managed to stitch some of the corner sections making up Part 6 as per the cunning plan put forward by my Mum back in January.

At the start of the school holidays my Mum came up with yet another suggestion which was to stitch White Nights during the day and do the rotation pieces in the evening as normal. So for once I actually listened to my Mum and did what she suggested! I am please to report that Part 5 is finished!


As is Part 6.


And half of Part 7!


The whole thing looks like this so far.


Despite all this progress this week has not been a productive week stitching wise. On Tuesday I had to go into work as it was GCSE results day and yesterday we went on a 'Steam Special' called 'The Fellsman' from Preston to Carlisle and back over the historic and picturesque Settle to Carlisle Railway. This was a fantastic day out. I would recommend this trip to anyone as the scenery is beautiful. The weather was on our side. Here are some photos from that trip. Firstly the loco Leander, which pulled our train, standing at Carlisle station.


Next a view of Pen-Y-Ghent from the train.


Some of the people who had turned out to watch the train.


These people, and many more were watching the train go over this...


... Ribblehead Viaduct. Started in October 1870 this viaduct took five years to build. A temporary brickworks was constructed nearby making 20,000 brick a day for the viaduct! You can not get a good picture of a train on a viaduct whilst you are on it yourself so this is one I found taken of our trip here, a spectacular sight!



I will finish this post by returning to White Nights, the success story of the summer. Glass of wine and a happy dance tonight!

Another tree to add to the festival

Before going away for the weekend I was able to put the final beads into the Victorian Tree.


Over what turned into a busy 'Railway Weekend' I was able to put a few stitches into my Tuscan Gardens UFO.


The replacement pin for Just Nan's Summer Wings Humbug also arrived. So here it is complete with pin.


This week it's back to White Nights progress pics on this one on Thursday.

Happy stitching

The Green Santa is finished...

... with the exception of a small bit of cording between the buttons and the blue bird's eye, only noticed this as I uploaded the picture. I have made a small start on the next figure.


I still have one more evening to go on this so I'm hoping for more progress tonight. Last weekend was spent away so there was little opportunity for stitching. However, I did make some progress on the Victorian Tree. Only the beading and the candles to do on this one.


Some questions have been asked in the comments to the last few posts. Here are the answers. The frame that White Nights is being done on is an Elbesee floor frame whose rollers will take fabric 36" wide. White Nights is 31" wide so the smaller 30"
frame would have been too small. The frame came from Sew and So and about this time last year (here)stopped White Nights becoming a UFO.

I would like to hang some Halloween ornaments on the light tree but I don't have any. Only two Just Nan WhimZis in their frames which might be too heavy. An excuse for dropping everything and remedying the situation?

The new 'Happy Chair'

As mentioned in my last post, here is a photo of my new chair.


When I ordered this chair back in April I felt really stupid in the shop, checking out where the legs were and how wide it was. Why? Because the chair had to be narrower than my largest stitching frame and the legs had to be far enough back so that the frame could be pulled as close into the chair as possible. The lady in the shop probably thought I was mad. Anyway, it is the new 'happy chair'(term lifted from Spinster Stitcher's blog) The eagle eyed amongst you may notice some of the progress that has been made since it's arrival!

Last week on the rotation it was Just Nan week. After finishing Floral Fifteen I made a start on her Summer Wings Humbug. I chose this one rather than The Spring Frills Humbug as I thought it would be a faster stitch. It took just over a week of evenings to complete. Here it is before being 'finished'.


I stitched this on 28ct over dyed linen from DoveStitch, I've no idea what the colour is called. The next photo shows the humbug made up but without it's pin as mine had a crystal missing and has had to be sent back. A replacement is in the post.


This week on the rotation it's back to Witches Riding By.


For those of you who are into Halloween stitching check out some of the latest designs by Just Nan. Called 'Spooky Spirits of Tombstone Hill', this is my favourite!


Next week it's the return of the Green Santa to the rotation. He missed out last month with my being away on the field trip. Here's hoping he gets finished and I make big inroads in to the next one. For now it's back to the happy chair for me and
the first episode of season four of Ugly Betty which started last night.

Happy stitching!

Floral Fifteen is finished!

Here it is!


This is the other side.


I stitched Floral Fifteen using the recomended DMC floss on 28ct Zweigart Antique White and Mint Green Cashel linen. Each small square took just under an evening to stitch and the whole thing the best part of a day to put together. I enjoyed stitching this so much I'm tempted to start Merry Fifteen!

Over the weekend I stitched the August motif for the My Little Heart SAL. This time there was a choice of charts. I chose the sunflower.


I also managed to add some more stitches to Witches Riding By. I'm really pleased with how this one is turning out.


I'm off to choose a 'new start'. progress pictures next time and a photo of the new 'Happy Chair' as Spinster Stitcher would call it!

Trees and viaducts

This week we have had a few days away in the North of England, Berwick-Upon-Tweed and Durham to be exact. When The Other Half mentioned our plans to a friend from 'The Railway' last weekend he went home and got us a suitable book entitled 'Borders Railway Rambles' and a map showing disused railway stations of interest, many of which have now been turned into homes. Well, that was it. We spent the first two days finding old stations and, more interestingly, disused viaducts! This is a picture of Twizel Viaduct followed by one of the view from it.




The most spectacular was this one. The Leaderfoot Viaduct with nineteen piers, the tallest being 120' high.


We did do other stuff. The Ford and Etal Estate is well worth a visit with it's working flour mill and fantastic buildings. Oh,did I forget to mention, it also has a narrow gauge railway!


I did get to do some non railway related things, like re-visit the Angel of the North.


We also had a fantastic day out at the Beamish Open Air Museum. This is a photo of the biggest digger I have ever seen. The cab was the size of a small house!


I knew that we would be spending a lot of time driving around and I thought I'd packed suitable 'in car stitching'. This was not the case. I had intended to stitch Witches Riding By but the 36ct linen was too small a count to stitch on whilst moving. I did manage to complete the Cardinal Tree form the Mill Hill Festival of Trees range and I've made a start on the Victorian Tree.


I said at the start of this post that we were staying in 'The Borders'. This was an easy walk away from our hotel.

Hopefully, I will have more stitching to show next time!

School's out for Summer!

Today I got back from the field trip and it was the last day of term. No more school until September 1st, with the exception of going in for results days in August. Unfortunately, it rained constantly for the first two days of the trip. There was a let up in the rain yesterday when the Sun came out for a bit but the rain returned this morning. Despite this I think everyone had a good time and more importantly learned something about ecology.

Here is a picture of where we stayed, on a sunny day!


What with a two hour coach journey to the centre, all the rain, and not being actively involved in the delivery of the sessions, the centre staff do that. I was able to do a fair bit of sewing. As the trip was an ecology one I took Forest Tree from the Mill Hill Festival of Trees series.


I did make a small start on the next ornament bu t not enough to show. This weekend it's back to Wales. Let's hope the weather improves!

Festival of Trees

This weekend I ditched the weekend rotation, Timeless Elegance ornaments (Saturday) and Tuscan Gardens (Sunday) in favour one of the charmed ornaments from the Mill Hill Festival of Trees range, part of the stash enhancement from last week. This one is called the Snowflake Tree. Measuring 2.57"w x 3.57"h this took most of the weekend to stitch. I say 'most' as I also completed house number 7 of White Nights as well as doing the usual house cleaning etc.


Here is White Nights, only one more house to go! Thank goodness for the rotation as without it I would have been doing these for the last seven weeks! In fact, before starting this project, I did a bit of research and looked at a number of blogs where stitchers were doing White Nights and quite a few gave up at this stage.


This next week I'm on a biology field trip in Betws-y-coed, North Wales. I have decided to take another of the Festival of Trees ornaments with me to stitch as they are small, and being stitched on perforated paper, do not require hoops or frames. Maybe I should have taken this one, considering the amout of time I've spent thinking about what to take. Who would have thought that having stash would be stressful!.

Houses and history!

The houses are back! In the end I decided to stitch White Nights this week. This is progress after one evening.


Unfortunately I had to frog the first fifteen minutes or so of stitching, the wall to right of the door and the side wall up to the roof, as I stitched it in the wrong colour! When I realised what I'd done I was sorely tempted to put this project away for another week or so and start something new, especially as I have been enhancing my stash recently.


Enhancements featured are, Summer Wings Humbug, Pretty Winder Pocket and Twilight Pearls Leaf Ball from Just Nan, all six Festival of Trees ornaments from Mill Hill, ABC Halloween from Lizzie*Kate. The Silver Needle Night Crabbiest Castle on the Beach was a gift from my Mum. No decisions have been made yet as to which will be the first to be stitched.

And now for the history.

At school, the timetable for next year has been done on a computer. For the last few years it has been done using a combination of computer and peg board, and prior to computers, manually using the peg board alone. The peg board measures about 8' wide by 4' high.

Every member of staff has pegs with their initials on, enough pegs for all the lessons they teach, so at the moment I have 31 pegs. Each room has a peg with it's number on it. We have over 64 rooms and there are enough room pegs for each lesson, of which we have 49 in a fortnight, so that's over 3136 room pegs alone! Then there are pegs for each subject, year group and so on. Thousands of pegs!

What if the board fell off the wall and all the pegs got scattered? Nightmare! A previous timetabler used to take photographs of the timetable whilst it was under construction just in case. Anyway the peg board has stopped being used and is, in the next few days, going in the skip. The member of staff who does the timetable asked me if I would like my pegs. I took one peg with my initials on it, one with my teaching room number on it and a B and an S peg for the subjects I teach, biology and science. Here they are with a DMC floss band so you can get an idea of their size.


It was strange taking my pegs out of the board, I felt like I was deleting myself!