I'll begin by hoping that you all had a wonderful Christmas and that Santa brought you all that your heart desired. He kindly brought me a new printer as my old one had become defunct, a book that I really wanted and lots of pairs of cosy socks for my perennially cold feet.
This being the last WIPocalypse report for 2012, I have just updated my finishes page for the year - link here. They were fairly few in number and on the whole not for me, but the recipients liked them very much, so I will count 2012 as a success.
Stitching this week has been more or less completely overtaken by the festivities. I was away for two nights staying at my parents and I have also spent a fair amount of time looking after my nieces. I do have a couple of update photos to show however, so here goes.
As this has been my travelling piece, the watering can bouquet is now finished, apart from the backstitch - it does not look too bad now that the flowers are done, and will hopefully look better when the backstitch is complete. The next one is flowers in a wheelbarrow.
Carnation has suffered due to my visit to my parents. I have only managed to complete two blocks this week, but am not too worried as I am still on target having done an extra block back in mid November.
I have already signed up for the 2013 WIPocalypse, and currently my plans are as follows:
Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose - finish page 3 on or by 25 May 2013 (second anniversary)
Turkish Challenge - start and finish by Easter - 31 March 2013
5th birthday present - start, finish and have framed by 17 June 2013
Guardian Angels - finish by 18 November 2013
Bouquet pieces - work on throughout year
Train of Dreams - work on throughout year
I also intend to continue participating in the International Hermit and Stitching Weekends.
Wishing you and yours a very Happy New Year and may 2013 bring you more joy than 2012.
Just a quick post with a finish finish and some WIP updates.
Snowman A and Elf H are now finish finished, courtesy of Mum, using the cream fabric with gold stars shown. They are slightly padded with wadding. They are also wrapped and waiting for their new owners.
Significant progress on the watering can bouquet over one lunchtime and one long evening's babysitting. I'm still not overly taken with the colours but hope that the backstitch will improve it.
Despite all the Christmas shenanigans the usual three blocks on Carnation were achieved, with some nice overlap to make things go quicker in the future.
Anyway all the presents are wrapped - bar one which hasn't arrived yet :-( I just need to pack my bag for an overnight stay at my parents. And most importantly wish you all a very Merry Christmas with your loved ones!
I'll see you again for the final instalment of the 2012 WIPoclaypse. May happiness be yours.
Hopefully Joysze will forgive me for joining up last minute. The stitching has been somewhat last minute as well. Two reasons for that - the first being Christmas - the time needed to do the shopping, the card writing, the parties and so on and so forth.
The second - well, this is not a good time of year for me. Things start going downhill when the clocks go back and only start to pick up very slowly after the Winter Solstice. So Christmas comes round when I am already scraping the bottom of the barrel - Christmas, with its expectations of festive cheer and goodwill to all. I am not a Scrooge or a Bah Humbug - I love my family dearly and enjoy spending time with them. It's just that life would sometimes be easier if I could hibernate until the sun comes back.
I have some progress to show on the watering can bouquet, which still looks nothing like a watering can. I hope to be able to give it a handle and/or a spout this week - at the moment, it looks like some kind of strange jelly!
Here is Carnation with the usual three blocks of progress. Next week will see me into row 5 of this page, so steady progress.
I have a full week of work this week, but this does include our floor's lunch-time fuddle (faith lunch) and possibly a team lunch (should be tomorrow but apparently postponed due to demands of work). The powers that be have given us Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve off extra - the cynics amongst us reckon that it's cheaper to give us the time off than to open the office for one day. So I finish on Friday, am back in work next Thursday for one day, and then off until the following Wednesday - two five day weekends with only one day in the office - I might even manage to get some stitching done :-)
So I will wish you all the best with your remaining preparations (if you are celebrating) and all the best anyway if you're not.
Unfortunately there isn't a lot to show you this week in the way of stitching. This is for a number of reasons.
Firstly, after I finished last week's post, I got sucked into the Internet and didn't manage to escape and turn the computer off until 5.15am on Monday morning. This meant that I got no sleep, did no morning stitching, was too blurry eyed to stitch at lunchtime and proceeded to have an early night in order to lower my sleep deficit.
I did get some stitching done through the week, but then on Friday I had a day off to go to Newark Antique Fair, so I was gone nearly all day and it was so bitterly cold that I developed a really sore throat which meant no stitching in the evening and very little sleep at night.
Then on Saturday it took a while to get going, followed by a somewhat futile trip into town to attempt some Christmas shopping so no stitching at all that day.
I did get a little done on the watering can bouquet during the week. The colours aren't coming up very well - the pinks are a lot more lurid than that.
I finally managed to get this week's block 3 on Carnation completed just before tea tonight, but there is some helpful overlap into the next block to give me a bit of a head start in the morning.
Neither Train of Dreams nor Serena were touched this week for the reasons given above. Also I'm fairly sure that I have a touch of the winter blues - my daylight bulb is helping when I'm at home, but I get no natural daylight at work and find this time of year really quite hard to cope with. On the bright side, Dad is still not smoking!
Apologies that this is a few days late but I would have had nothing to show you if I had posted on Wednesday.
However this is my new start. It doesn't look like much now, but it will eventually be a bouquet of flowers poking out of a lurid pink watering can. I am hoping that it will look more attractive once it is finished and made up into a card. It is the first of six designs from a World of Cross Stitching magazine, which I am stitching for my Marie Curie group.
Moving on to Mum's angels, I have made some progress on Serena. There is a column of plaited stitch in DMC 3743, which required a lot of concentration to work correctly. There is also a column of normal cross stitch and some stitches at the bottom in 3042. The stitches at the bottom mark are the bottom edge of Serena's dress. I am not making the progress that I would like with this, mainly because I only work on it once the week's blocks on Carnation are done, but also because it is a bit scary with all the special stitches, the Kreinik threads and the beads, so I procrastinate about it.
Today saw another two blocks finished on Train of Dreams. The blue bell in the top right hand corner is starting to come in quite clearly now. This one is also a slow burn. Considering that I started it in mid August and have only done 2000 plus stitches (mainly on Sunday mornings between loads of laundry), I'm not really doing very well.
And then there is Carnation - another three blocks done and into row 4. This is the one that really matters to me - the one with a real deadline to hit - finishing page 3 by the second anniversary in May 2013.
And then there are all the other projects that I want to do - the Joan Elliott Renaissance ladies, Lesley Teare's recent bird series, my HAED purchases and so on and so forth. Looking forward into 2013, I also have to bear in mind that I need to sort out my niece's 5th birthday present and my piece for the Turkish Challenge. There just aren't enough hours in the day, especially when you work full-time.
Update - Dad is still not smoking and I'm so proud of him. Mum overheard him telling my uncle on the phone that you just smoke the last one and then don't buy any more! Love him to bits!
