Rhodes Butterfly Biscornu

Well at last I managed it. The Rhodes Butterfly Biscornu, which at times had UFO potential, is finished.

This week it's the June Calendar on the rotation but there's not much progress on that one as Monday evening, being a Bank Holiday, was classed as a 'Railway Weekend Sunday' so I stitched on the UFO for my UFO blog (see top of sidebar for details). On Tuesday I finished the biscornu, just because I had to get it out of the way. Hopefully there will be more progress to report in the next post but with another 'Railway Weekend' coming up who knows?

Steam and Stitching

As I had hoped I managed a couple of 'finishes' this weekend. I finished the sewing on the Rhodes Butterfly Biscornu, and the pin-cube for Stitch-Creations' SAL all I have to do is put them together, hence the inverted commas. These are the sides of the pin-cube.

As mentioned in the last post we were off to the North Yorkshire Moors Railway (NYMR) for the weekend, not for a bank holiday break but to work! We had volunteered to help out a friend who owns a couple of carriages, one of which contains a small bar and the other a kitchen from which tea, coffee and cake can be served. I ended up manning the bar car which for various reasons, too long to go in to, wasn't very busy. So when not serving or collecting the First Class Supplement payable to travel in the carriage I was able to stitch. Here are two photos showing the interior of the carriage and, I'm sure you'll agree, I spent the weekend stitching in what can only be called splendid surroundings!

The Rydale Bar

The Rydale Bar - Saloon

And this is what I managed to do

Impulse purchase!

So what do we do when we have a weekend way from The Railway? Go and visit another railway and work on their trains! Yes we are mad!

With a longish journey in prospect I decided to sort out my handbag stitching. The pin cube (Stitch-Creations SAL) will probably get finished, the Rhodes Butterfly Biscornu, with a bit of luck will be finished this evening and anyway it's not suitable for doing in the car. So that means I can start my Dutch Delft biscornu, I've been looking forward to doing this for ages as it's a bit different. But horror of horrors on closer inspection it's not symmetrical! Now do biscornu have to be perfectly symmetrical , that is, all four corners the same? So I went searching for something else. Eventually I hit the Kreinik website where I found a couple of freebie charts that have biscornu potential, for example Pearl Drops by Judy Dixon.

Then I came across this, called Midnight Ride,

Well needless to say I liked her straight away. Now I'm not normally one for impulse buys but ten minutes later all the necessary braid and blending filaments, some of which glow in the dark were on order. I'm thinking this will be my project for the Spooky Stitcher's SAL, despite the fact I have other Spooky stuff already in the stash.

The Rhodes Butterfly Biscornu looks like this, some backstitching and the beading to do.

Fingers crossed that I can get some stitching done this weekend. I had play with the chart for the Dutch Delft Biscornu, colour photocopy scissors and glue later and it looks like this.

I am still not happy with certain bits but I can correct them as I go. By the way the original design came from a book called 'Blue and White Cross Stitch' by Helen Turvey, published by Hamlyn.

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Another two items for the UFO pile?

That's how I felt on Thursday afternoon!

Let's start at the very beginning...

... a very good place to start. OK I'll try not to turn into Julie Andrews.

So on Thursday we packed up our stuff and set off to The Railway for 'Steel, Steam and Stars II'. Estimated departure time 09.00, actual departure time 09.30, not too bad. We got to the top of the road and I realised that I had left my allergy pills at home. As much as I like going to The Railway I am actually allergic to the place, or something there that's not at home. So false start No 1. We set off again. We managed to get a little further this time when The Other Half said that he had left his razor behind. False start No 2. So about fifteen minutes down the road I decided to get the Pale Blue Santa out. I then had a Victor Meldrew moment,

'I don't believe it!'

I had gone and left every single floss colour, and there are many at home, bar one! I think The Other Half did contemplate doing a U turn in the middle of the road but before he could put the brakes on I said that we were not going back, impressed? Well don't be. I had the Rhodes Butterfly Biscornu in my handbag, plus the one I'm going to do for May. I also knew that at my Mum's were the Red and Purple Snowmen from Shepherds Bush and four Jim Shaw Snowmen, I have been indulging in some more stash enhancement. Anyway the one floss colour I had was pale blue and that's the majority of the Santa. It was some hours later, whilst at my Mum's that I happened to notice that I didn't seem to have enough pale blue left. A quick check on the chart and I found that everything I had done in pale blue should have been done in two strands of white and one strand of turquoise. I frogged some of it and gave up. This is what it looks like.

The pale blue on the left hand side needs to come out.

So I changed to the Rhodes Butterfly Biscornu, and guess what I made exactly the same mistake on side two as I did on side one. More frogging! This is it corrected and added to.

That was Thursday. On Friday morning I opened the curtains and this was parked ten yards in front of my window.
If you don't know much about steam locomotives this one is 6100 Royal Scot and she is COOL, even without the name plates, which were put on later.

We had a fantastic Railway Weekend. All over the country photos are probably being uploaded as I type and there will no doubt be some great videos on YouTube. I've already dropped a few names in to this post but this one is the best, I had a long conversation with Pete Waterman, described on the radio this morning as 'Britain's most famous trainspotter', but the rest of the world know him from Stock, Aitken and Waterman, the pop production team who made Kylie famous. How did this one start? I said how much I had enjoyed his TV series on railways and in particular the bit where they showed you how British Railways made a ham sandwich look like it had two slices of ham in it when actually there was only one!

One last thing, in honour of my new blog my Mum got me a blog warming present, can't wait to get started!