Long Time No Blog – a catch up!

The last couple of months have passed by in a blur of holiday excitement, illness, exams, cricket, more exams, crown green bowling and yet more exams!

There are quite a few photos to follow. In April we took delivery of our new toy – Winnie. 

Here she is on her first night away from home – we took her on a little trip to Castle Howard and York. We had a lovely time and the weather mostly behaved. She is very comfy to sleep in and riding along in her is huge fun!

During April, I didn't achieve a great deal of stitching because of the holidays and because of the aforementioned poorliness which is still ongoing so my stitching progress has slowed considerably. I did however manage to start and finish the first part of SamSarah Designs new monthly stitch which is called The Flock.

I LOVE the colour of the linen – it's called Red Pear. I got all my bits and pieces from Karla at The Patchwork Rabbit and am looking forward to stitching part two when it arrives.

I have also stitched month 2 of Lynette Anderson's new BOM In Full Bloom and have almost finished part 3. Here are the two stitcheries for part 2 – I love the little bumble bees!

 

There was a school bag emergency in April – the handle of Catherine's bag snapped for the second time and I decided it was time to make a new one. I used the All About Anna pattern from Stephanie at Loft Creations to whip up this little cupcake special…

I also made a matching pencil case which turned out to be more of a pencil pouch as it was rather large…not managed to take a photo of that yet. I wasn't allowed to photograph the bag model's head! I did however snap this quick pick of said model up on the roof of Winnie after a kayaking session 😀

I've been working on stitching together some 2" hexagons on and off over the last couple of months – easy stitching when feeling grotty and it's looking quite pretty. I'm using Kate Spain's Verna with a few extra pinks thrown in – so wish that I had bought more of Verna when she was available, she's so lovely.

Finally for now, I allowed myself to be drawn into stitching the Around the World SAL by Papillion Creations. I knew that Carole was going to stitch this and had decided that I couldn't fit it into my schedule…until I saw it stitched up! I started last weekend and have so far stitched the first heart of part one. It was a pleasure to stitch and I enjoyed it all except for Berwick Stitch which totally defeated me and so I resorted to using my good friend blanket stitch instead 🙂

You can see in the pic that I am just now stitching the tulips for part two – I thought I might as well while I had the dark green out to stitch the second heart. I spent ages choosing which fabric and threads to use and managed to pick the exact same fabric as Carole is using! It's a 28ct Jobelan and the colour is Bone – it's lovely to work with. Thread colours so far are…

Dark Green  -  Weeks Dye Works Moss in perle no.8 and stranded cotton

Medium Green – DMC 370

Light Green – Gentle Arts Cornhusk

Floral 1 – Crescent Colours Wild Berries (an all time favourite of mine)

Floral 2 – Crescent Colours Clay Pot

Floral 3 –

Floral 4 –

Floral 5 – Gentel Arts Grape Arbor

Floral 6 – DMC 3835

Floral 7 –

Floral 8 –

Metallic – Pink Petite Treasure Braid

Bead 1

Bead 2

I did have a full selection of colours before I started to stitch by I'm tweaking it slightly as I go along which is why I've left some of colour choices blank for now until I make a final decision.

That's about all for now. We're off on another jaunt in Winnie next – I'm really looking forward to it. We're hoping to visit Cragside and maybe one or two other National Trust properties and just generally relax for a few days.