The final finishes of 2011, the first of 2012 and a Wedding Sampler!

Happy New Year to everyone.  Just a quick post as this is the last day of the holidays and I want to get in as much stitching as possible.

Before Christmas I finished the Silvery Tree from the Mill Hill Festival of Trees series.

My Mum gave me a stitching project on Christmas Day. I don't usually see my family until New Year, and this Christmas Day sewing project has become a bit of a tradition. This year it was Santa's Sleigh Ride by JBW Designs.

This was stitches as charted with a mixture of the recommended Weeks Dye Works floss and DMC alternatives on the 28 count Antique White Opalescent linen provided in the kit.  I did Santa's beard in cross stitch instead of the recommended French knots.

My first finish of 2012, completed this morning, is The Pink Snowman from Shepherd's Bush.  If you remember, I left the original kit on the train, but fortunately not the stitching itself!  Anyway a replacement kit arrived from America just before Christmas so I have been able to finish it sooner that I thought.

This Year the rotation is back, and Farmville on Facebook has been blocked, as this was seriously eating into stitching time!  At the moment to rotation is looking like it is going to be White Nights, a Christmas project, a Halloween project, and something I haven't decided on yet, each for a week.

For Christmas my Mum gave me the stuff to do the Heirloom Wedding Sampler from The Victoria Sampler. Here are some photos of my progress so far.

As I am getting married on April 7 and I want to have this completed before 'the big day' the rotation may not quite work to plan as I will need to do a little on this every week.  This is what I will be working on for the rest of today. Hopefully more progress photos of this weeks stitching on Thursday.

Happy Stitching!

A different type of stitching?

Today I finished my final Christmas ornament, another Santa from The Prairie Schooler. I've stitched this one five times now!  I ran out of gold beads so two of them were finished with green ones.

My gift from 'Secret Santa '  this year was a small stitching project which I started yesterday and finished today, Appropriately most of this was stitched on a train. I made sure I left nothing behind this time!  I'm not sure how I will finish this one.  At the moment I'm thinking of buying a paperweight, I think Framecraft do them, and finishing it that way.  I changed the aida for linen but apart from that this was stitched as charted. The design is called Steam Train and it is from a company called Mouseloft.

My next piece of train stitching will be The Silvery Tree from the Mill Hill Festival of Trees series. This is the last one to stitch as I did the other five last year. As you can see I've made a small start.

The cross stitching may take a back seat over Christmas and New Year as I have a different stitching project to do.

Yes, it's Sara Lund's red jumper from the second series of the Danish thriller 'The Killing'.  Only as you can see I'm doing mine in a teal like colour, not red. 

This is likely to be my last post before Christmas and possibly until the New Year.  Next year the rotation is back!

Until then I hope everyone has a great Christmas and a happy New Year.

The final finish of 2010 and the first finish of 2011

Between Christmas and New Year, despite entertaining The Other Half's relatives I managed to finish a couple of things. Firstly, Chessie's Fern Pincushion & Fob from Chessie and Me. This was a gift from Father Christmas and was started on Christmas Day.

I also finished the Stitcher's Favourite Biscornu from The Sweetheart Tree. This project has been lurking in my handbag for what feels like the best part of twelve months, I know that is an exaggeration, but a long time at any rate. As you can probably tell I'm pleased it's finished!  Here are the usual shots, firstly the completed stitching followed by the finished item.

I finished this late on New Year's Eve so it only just made it as the last finish of 2010!

That brings me on to the first finish of 2011. Again a project that has been lurking in my handbag for a few weeks if not a couple of months and, yes, my handbag is reasonably large!  This is the Old Fashioned Tree from the Mill Hill Festival of Trees series.

So what does the New Year bring on the stitching front? I was very lucky as Father Christmas enhanced my stash with some really interesting projects which I will share with you as I get round to doing them.  But firstly I have decided to suspend the rotation and blitz some of the things that have been hanging around too long, mainly the St Nicholas Tree Skirt, followed by the Timeless Elegance Ornaments and my Tuscan Gardens UFO. The ornaments will probably remain as my weekend stitching but I'm trying to go with no new starts until the other two are finished!  With so much lovely stuff in my stash I don't know how long that New Year's resolution will last. But first I need to finish Festive Fifteen. Four more squares to go and the final finishing. I didn't hit the last target on this one, maybe next weekend?

I hope everyone had a great Christmas and New Year and I hope Father Christmas enhanced your stash too!

A festive finish

Last week, despite other Internet commitments mentioned in my last post, I managed two finishes.  First was Sylvia's 'My Little Heart' SAL.  I changed the December picture from the nativity scene designed by Sylvia to a Christmas tree.

Here is the completed piece.  Thanks go to Sylvia for providing this fun SAL.

The second finish was 'Be Jolly By Golly' from Waxing Moon Designs. I stitched this on the recommended fabric, 28ct Wichelt 'Star Saphire' linen, with the suggested over dyed floss.

This should be off to the framers this week so, with a bit of luck I might get it back before Christmas.

I also managed a few stitches on a Mill Hill Festival of Trees decoration. I actually made better progress on this than shown. Only I made a massive error and had to frog quite a lot!

A fortnight ago progress on White Nights was not great so I'm leaving any photos of that project until next time.  Back on the rotation this week it's Just Nan's Festive Fifteen.

Happy stitching!

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?

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!.