There's the stitching and then the other stuff. This is supposed to be mainly a cross stitching blog, so I'll start with the stitching and then people who are only here for the beer, so to speak, can skip the rest.
The Cat is moving on nicely. I've done its forehead and, as you can see, have started on the other eye. I would say that I'm about three quarters of the way there, give or take a few stitches. I took this to Patchwork Group on Thursday, and they have finally accepted that it is supposed to be a cat. The deadline for this is just over a fortnight away, and then I'll have a couple of weeks to get it framed, packed and off to its new owner. I'm really quite happy with this piece, but am looking forward to finishing it and being able to move on to something for me.
Carnation is also progressing smoothly, with the regulation three blocks per week. This week saw the completion of the lily bud and the appearance of the tips of petals from another lily. I'm really proud of this piece - it requires real concentration and stickability, and it is going to be just cracking when it is done.
No new pictures of the Delft piece this week, but the chart for Chatelaine's Medieval Town Mandala arrived in time for me to take it to Patchwork to show them. Having had a good look at the chart and the instructions, it is going to be as big a challenge as Carnation in its own way.
That's the stitching covered, now for the other stuff. While I was on leave the other week, my car started making funny noises. By Monday this week just gone, they were loud enough for my neighbour to suggest that I had it looked at. It went to the garage on Tuesday - the head gasket had gone! This resulted in my having no car until Friday evening and a serious dent in my bank account. I am however looking on the bright side - if it had gone the previous Wednesday, when I had been doing 70 miles per hour down the A1(M), I might not be writing this now.
The other other stuff - my Dad went for blood tests on Thursday this week. The consultant haemotologist was not happy, not with the lumps he found or the weight Dad has lost. He said that with the lumps where they are, it could be one of a hundred things. They took four tubes of blood and we have to wait two weeks for the results. Dad will be 70 at the beginning of next month - what he really wants for his birthday is a clean bill of health. I'm keeping my fingers crossed!
Take a week off work and what does it do? Rains like billy oh! Every time you step out of the door, you look up at the sky and try to decide - coat, no coat, brolly, no brolly? It's been warm enough not to need a coat, but then you are taking a chance on getting soaked. On Friday, it rained so heavily that we had minor flooding just outside where I live. Admittedly I never crossed the doorstep on Friday, just opened the front door to see how bad it was and then went back in again, but it is getting beyond a joke. Who's nicked our summer?!
Other than that, this week I've made a research trip to Huntingdon, ordered new glasses, had lunch with friends, enjoyed enough lie-ins that getting up at 6am tomorrow is going to be hard, and done plenty of stitching.
This is not the best picture that I've ever taken of the Cat - as usual the colour of the fabric is all wrong and it is very creased - but it now has two ears and is obviously a cat and not a bird or a rabbit. The next job is to finish its forehead and start working down to the second eye. I have 23 days left to go so this is going to be my main focus of concentration for the time being. I will work on Carnation but the Delft piece is going on hold until I can see the end of the tunnel on the Cat.
Following on from my WIPocalypse post on Tuesday, this week's three blocks got completed and I am into row 5. Lots of confetti in the last block and in the next couple where I'm working on a lily bud.
I do find that both of these pieces look better in photographs, which I suppose bodes well for how they will look once framed and on the wall. Anyway, back to work in the morning, and here's hoping that there isn't too much of a backlog waiting for me. Good luck with your stitching.
Well, I'm back and I have pictures! I can't guarantee that they are good pictures as I'm still getting used to the new camera, but they are pictures. Getting to this point has needed an extra 1GB of RAM in the computer, a card reader and a new memory card for the new camera, and an uncounted number of hours of frustration and moderately bad language.
I'll start with a finish. The second
Delft piece was finished on 23 June, during the camera crisis. I'm
quite pleased with this as the French knots on the butterflies' antennae
actually worked first time. I've started the third piece, but there isn't a lot to see as yet.
The Cat is coming along nicely, although there is still a lot to do before 1 August. To make the counting easier, I've dug out the magnetic board and strips that I got as a free gift with one of my cross stitch magazines. I'm still hampered by the weather however - despite the temperatures being more summer like, we are having so much rain that the chances are that any green round here is just as likely to be mould as grass or leaves.
I apologise for this photo which has come out somewhat blurred - however, you will be able to see that Carnation is coming on. I still have two blocks to stitch this week, which will finish this row and move onto row 5. If all goes well, that means that page 2 will be halfway completed in a couple of weeks' time, on target for completion in October.
I have a confession to make - I have ordered stash. I was moseying about on the Internet, looking at stitching related sites and 123 Stitch had a sale on of garden themed products. Somehow or other a chart for Chatelaine's Medieval Town Mandala found its way into my basket and out through the checkout. Unfortunately this means that when it arrives, I shall have to start investing in more stash - beads, speciality threads and so forth. What a shame :-)
There will be little or no stitching tomorrow as I am leaving early on a research trip, However I will make up for it later in the week. I need to go and make my packed lunch for tomorrow, so will look at everyone else's WIPocalypse posts when I'm back.
This is just a quick post to let you know that, despite having bought a new camera, the problems have not gone away.
I went out on Saturday and bought an idiot proof camera - in fact, I bought the same model that my parents bought for my 6 and 4 year old nieces to share. Anyone would think that this would do the trick. But no! I got it home, charged up the battery, installed the software and bingo! My computer is too old and out of date to handle the graphics etc, etc. So despite having taken photos of my WIPs on Sunday with the new camera, I still cannot show them to you.
The computer goes to see the little man on Saturday to have its insides upgraded - it needs a new graphics card, more RAM and so forth. I will therefore not be posting on Sunday or indeed at all until I get it back, hopefully all singing and dancing and able to cope with the camera software.
In the meantime, I can report that I have finished the second Delft piece and will post a picture as soon as the technology has sorted itself out. I got my three blocks done on Carnation and more progress on the Cat. I am on leave next week and the Cat is high on my list of things to do, although I will be spending one whole day doing genealogy research.
Anyway, I will be back as soon as I can - please don't go away - it is so nice to know that other people like my work. All the best with your own stitching - I shall lurk as much as I can under the circumstances.
Edited to add - final total for Marie Curie Great British Tea Party - £1,156.99!
My camera has gone seriously on the blink - as in it won't turn on, regardless what batteries I put in it. So I apologise for the lack of pictures in this post. I have a nasty feeling that I am going to have to get a new camera - the current one is eight years old, but as I am still using the kettle that I took to University about 20 years ago, the camera does seem to have given up the ghost a tad prematurely!
So in order to spin this post out a bit, I'll tell you about my week. My colleagues both came back to work on Tuesday so the pressure is off in that area, which is a great relief.
On Wednesday I took the day off to go to a neighbour's funeral. It was a lunchtime funeral so I got some stitching done on the Cat beforehand. It was definitely not your bog standard funeral. There weren't a lot of people there as he had no family and had been quite frail for the last couple of years of his life. However, never before have I followed a coffin to the tune of "Who do you think you are kidding Mr Hitler?", nor have I left a funeral service to the sound of trains passing by (he was a train spotter) - it was an event which will remain in my memory for a long time. I then went home and made chocolate crispies for Friday.
It was back to work on Thursday and Patchwork Group in the evening, so that meant that I got more work done on the Cat. There was a comment that it now looked like a rabbit, rather than a bird which had been said on a previous occasion!
Friday was a very long day - 17 hours between the alarm going off at 6am and falling back into bed. I did get my third block on Carnation done before leaving the house shortly after 9am, which means that there are now three complete rows on page 2. I then spent the next seven plus hours helping out at my Marie Curie fundraising group's Great British Tea Party. I did a lot of washing up and drying up, keeping the clean cups and plates flowing, but it was well worth it. When I counted up at the end, we had made £954.99 and the pledges that we have received from people who couldn't attend should take us to about £1,100 - not bad for six hours work! I shall find out the final figure on Wednesday at our post event meeting.
I then went home, changed my shoes and set out to babysit my nieces while my sister and brother in law went out for a meet the bride's parents meal ahead of the wedding yesterday. My nieces were flower girls and my brother in law an usher. I was too tired to cope with the Cat so I worked on my Delft piece and made some reasonable progress on the borders. By the time my sister and brother in law got back and I got home and fell into bed, it was gone 11pm.
Saturday was a quietish, stitching day, broken by a taxi run to take my sister's family into town to catch the bus that was taking them to the wedding. My back seat is now covered in gold sparkle off the girls' dresses!
Today was a laundry , stitching and shopping day. More progress was made on the Cat, which now has an ear. Today was also Father's Day and my littlest niece's birthday. So Dad got a book on Samuel Pepys and the Royal Navy, while the munchkin got a digital photo frame to go with the camera that my parents bought. As everyone bar me had been at the wedding yesterday, we just had tea and birthday cake so that the kids could have an early night.
I hope to get my technology problems sorted out in time for my next update, and in the meantime wish you and yours all the very best.
Until my brother in law phoned on Sunday morning and invited me to tea, I had every intention of posting my usual update. However the chance to spend time with my nieces and not have to cook was something not to be missed. So here we are, normal service to be resumed.
I said in my last post that the Delft pieces would have to go on hold while I concentrated on getting on with the Cat in order to hit my 1 August deadline, and so there is no picture to show you.
The Cat however is showing progress despite another change of plan. Instead of working across the bottom, I have now decided, having finished the bottom left hand corner including the backstitch (but not the pesky French knots which will be done last of all!), to work up the left hand side to the top. The dark bit sticking up at the top left is the beginning of the Cat's ear, so maybe it will look more like a cat in the not too distant future. Now that the Delft is on hold, this piece is also getting attention at lunchtimes and in the evening as well as on Sunday mornings. The only problem is the poor quality daylight that we are getting recently as it makes it more difficult to see the different colours on the chart and to gauge which hole the needle should be going through. I do wish that this chilly grey rainy weather would go away and leave us some proper summer sunshine!
I also made some good progress on Carnation this week, having managed to get well into block 4, thanks to the way the colours were running. This week should hopefully see the completion of a third row on page 2.
However there are a few complicating factors. In addition to my regular Tuesday night Pilates session, Thursday night is Patchwork night (but I should get some work done on the Cat), Friday is the Great British Tea Party for Marie Curie and at night I am babysitting (possible/probable distraction of the TV - not having one at home, I tend to seize the opportunity when babysitting). Then Sunday is both Fathers Day and littlest niece's birthday. In addition to that, I have a funeral on Wednesday and have to make cakes for Friday, as well as taking the car to the garage again! On the bright side, my colleagues are both back tomorrow and I will no longer be doing three people's jobs! Well, I shall have to take each day at a time and it is International Hermit & Stitch Weekend again this weekend, so I shall sign up and see how it goes.
It's difficult to believe that it's June already and time for another WIPocalypse post. Where does the time go? It is Jubilee weekend here and I'm very grateful for the extra day off. Last week was extremely tiring as both my colleagues are on annual leave, so it has been non-stop just trying to stay within spitting distance of being on top of things. I have another few days of this to look forward to before they come back from their holidays, by which time I will be in desperate need of a holiday myself!
However, we should be talking about stitching. The second Delft piece has moved on, not as much as I would have liked, but nevertheless there has been progress. I need to finish the inner border, stitch the outer border and another butterfly in the top left hand corner. However it is now going to have to go on hold for obvious reasons.
The Cat is now slightly over a quarter complete, which definitely means that it will require some serious input over the next few weeks. There are a few berries to go in at the top left and another leaf and some berries to go in at the centre bottom, and then they need to be joined up with backstitching. Then I will concentrate on the Cat himself.
Finally Carnation has had its regular three blocks of stitching, finishing off row 2 and moving on to row 3. The next three blocks will include the very top of the little girl's head, and the rest of page 2 will be more flowers and lanterns.
My parents' road is supposed to be having a Street Party tomorrow afternoon, so I have to get up early tomorrow to prepare picnic food. I shall also have to keep my fingers crossed as the weather is likely to be unreliable. I also need to dye my hair, do a pot wash and get sorted for a return to work on Wednesday. So I will leave you now and update you again next Sunday. All the best.
