Trick or Treat ? Halloween blog hop 2020

 here we are in this most strange of years doing familiar things which give us a certain comfort.

In  this instance the Halloween hop as arranged by Jo over at Serendipitous Stitching. Click here for link. Now if you have not arrived here having hopped your way from Jo's blog you might like to go there to get the starting point for the blog and your letter collecting.

This year I completed a small stich from a free pattern which oddly enough was gridded fifteen by fifteen stitches not the normal ten by ten! Which I did not notice till I started, it was quite odd.

I also changed the spiders silk which on the original was in full stitches to the single strand, and a bit of a change to its legs for the same reason.

I stitched it on white, but played around with the filter option on the edit to give it a little bit more spook for the occasion.

Now had I not already sewn it ready I might have tried to complete Durene Jones free Halloween Sal when it came out. You may recall I used one of her designs for last years hop.  Maybe another year I will give that a go. This year it would have been a little too much for me to have felt confident I would get it finished in time unless I worked my fingers..

to the bone, as the saying goes. The above is a little peek at an ongoing project of mine.

Here is my letter and punctuation mark (note that latter is important) punctuation is always important.

 

I hope you can see the letter and punctuation mark this tiny backstitch black cat and its ball of wool represent ...but just in case (as it was quite typically one of the less clear letters in the cat alphabet) here it is again in a more legible if less fun format E,

Now you have your letter head off to the next stop in the hop theflashingscissors to collect further parts of the target word or maybe it is a phrase this year and enter it at Jo's blog.

Good luck....

An impulse purchase

 I bought this spool of fine cord from a charity shop.

the picture shows a normal sized spool for comparison

I had no idea what I was going to do with it, there was a brown "rust" stain on the bottom which was perhaps why it was priced at 50p.

I thought why not, even if I just have it to hand when I want a bit of string it will be worth it and when the brown bits arrive, well that's string for the garden.

It has however found another purpose in a long term project, and for that alone it was worth the price.

There are times I have seen things in charity shops and think I should not get something unless I have a planned project to use them on like the The Hat rather than just adding to the stash.

Quite often I regret those strange  decisions and the items left behind.

In this instance I am pleased it came home with me.

I am not quite ready to post the project that it is forming part of...that's for the future.

The joys of nature

 lie in their infinite variation, well that's what I say every time I find I have made a small mistake in the bark of a tree or the foliage or the grass on this pattern.

Well its nature, no one is going to notice, not even me after a bit of time has passed.

So what was tonight's progress?

Well my friend and I worked separately on whatever took out fancy at first and I did

A bit more tree, these big trees take time to grow you know.

A bit of path, in the same shade as the tree.

Some big Bluebell leaves.

Some small of the very small bluebells in the light shade and then  as the spaces under the medium trees was getting on my nerves we turned to one of the variegated threads. Previously we had used this as one strand, this time it was two.

I managed to finish all of that colour before the night was done.

It has not added to the overall look of the image at this point.  Indeed the large Bluebells have lost some of their impact.  I trust that the backstitching will bring it back.

Mind I was impressed to have managed what I did due to a level of hilarity disrupting our normal stitching calm prompted by a little technological experiment. 

As the tech girl, the coding ninja I am leaving it to my BFF to give you details.

LINK to BFF's Post

 

Too tired

 to think of anything to say this week so here is the progress picture

imagine it painting those thousand words.....

oh and here is The Link my BFF may be feeling a bit more with it!

Unlike a Siberian Tiger

I am not embracing trees.

I did start out doing some tree trunk, going on up into the sky but stopped to finish my apple trees (well that's what they have become in my version) and had good intentions of going back to those big trees.

Perhaps if I had a length of the brown cut I might have managed it. However there was no brown cut and I just did not want to be working on those trees.

Or grass

or green (there is some variegated to go bottom left of the same shade as the trees top left  but noooo)

I wanted something different

I wanted blue....

BIG bluebells, that what my heart yearned for now.

so that's what I did

the BIG bluebells are made up of three shades of blue. I have completed the two darker shades, just some light bits and the flowers will be finished.

Then mostly it will be back to the greens and browns (oh and the variegated).

Now my post today skirts a song lyric or two (not sure if you have spotted them, it is tenuous ) but to find out about the one song that the pale grass brings to mind week in and out pop on over to my BFF's blog and see her progress by clicking on THE LINK

Unintentional apples

 or manzanas as my attempts to learn Spanish would have me say.

I started with the big bluebell leaves, moved back to big tree trunks then together my friend and I ventured into the medium tree tops once again with the variegated.

I was feeling a bit dotty so that's what I was doing dotting the variegated about and well, looking at it I have ended up with apple trees, green apples (we have not got up to colour in my little on line Spanish lessons). 

Initially I was feeling a bit dismayed my handling of the thread was not going to look anything like the stitched example of the design, even if I did not look at it until after the appearance of little green fruit. However, the more I look at it the more I like those unintentional apples, they are growing on me as well as on my medium trees.

My friend and I were both surprised not to get the filling in of the tree tops done, even with a fifteen minute over run of our normal sewing time. We underestimated the amount of space there was to fill.

To see my friends progress and the variegated on her trees pop over to her blog via THE LINK

Six Sunbonnet Sues

 all together going for a snooze.

there are pink blanks already cut (Mrs Jackson again) nine I think so there may be more of these little ladies ahead but I expect it will be some time before that as my attention turns to more seasonal projects as the nights draw in and the time towards Christmas reduces apace. 

Diamond Painting..progress?

 pick, stick, pick, stick, try not to get hair or hand stuck and repeat over and over and...

this is where I am up to, the picture gives me the distance to better see the developing image as close to it remains a bit disappointing.

Once finished it is going to need a large room to be displayed with sufficient distance for suitable viewing.

Oh here is an update..I was not enjoying this, gave it to my BFF and CLICK HERE to see what happened to it next

Conference stitching

 I had high hopes for the completion of Everest and its reflection (I know there isn't one in real life but there is on the pattern) but alas I under estimated the amount still to go or over estimated my stitching speed.

Although this is just two sessions of conference, Saturday and Sunday mornings. The others will be sufficient I am sure, well if I can keep my eye in whilst listening.

Finding the right neutral

Now that might sound odd but a neutral tone is still a tone and you need the right tones to make something work just as you envisage. 

I had intended to take some of my Chorley Material (link to an explanation of Chorley material ) and make postage stamp style panels, then join them up and see what size it reached and go from there to whatever happened.

So strips cut from the fabric squares, sewn together, cut into strips (of squares) and sewn together.

I was tootling along OK then something was just off, with the number of strips and the lengths. Must have cut one of the strips just that bit thinner, making the block from that set shorted. 

A bit muddled about the best way to proceed I paused, with four  sets of large blocks finished a couple of sets of four strips sewn together and several single strips. 

Sometimes when a project decides to assert its individuality and desire to be uniquely different from what I had planned the project and I need a bit of a time out.

With one thing and another that was quite a long pause this time and was only ended due to a combination of things.  A trip to the loft to look for a picture frame in the stash of frames was not in itself successful, but as I was up there anyway a bit of material stash sorting happened, and as oft is the case I came across a bag with bits and thought the weight of a large piece of mostly cream (with a green line leave pattern on it) might go with the Chorley blocks and perhaps work to get me back on track.

Down it came and was spread out on my equivalent of a design wall (top of a double bed) and the blocks and strips laid on top to get a feel for them together. 

It was a no go, it just was not working, I did have what I felt was a nice arrangement for the Chorley bits but not with the loft material.  It needed a plain material in a neutral shade. Alas I did not have that to hand and thought there was going to be another long pause.

However, the very next day I popped into a charity shop (suitably masked of course and hand sanitiser at the door) and spotted a curtain, just the one but it looked to be big enough even disregarding a patterned bit at the top,(click here to see what happened to the patterned top) the right weight of material possibly the right colour (although without a bit of the other fabric with me this was a leap of faith). And bonus it was lined (lining is always good, depending on the quality it can be lining for bags or the base for an embroidery  test material for dye pens oh lots of things. 

I bought it, unpicked it, cut off the patterned bit and back to the design bed.....this was going to work.  I did have to do a bit of unpicking and sewing on the Chorley blocks to get them to size.  With a few little bits left over which are destined for the current bits a quilt

The result of finding the right neutral on this occasion.

Now I could just say get this laid out and with a bit of contortion may even be able to get it sandwiched, but not feeling in a contortionist mood and I have yet to decide on a quilting plan.  Always much easier to put the quilting plan onto the top before sandwiching.  So it will once more wait however, I have at least the material for the backing and binding picked out, going to use a dusty lime green. 

Birth sampler all done

 It took me three attempts to get the stars to work, it was the order of the stitches that was the key to getting the lines to stay put. I have obscured the date on the sampler for the child's privacy.

it sat in the frame just nice and was off to the mother via intermediaries due to the various lockdown arrangements.

She let me know via Facebook Messenger that she was pleased with it, indeed she included it in a montage picture when she updated family and friends on her baby's progress.