Wednesday 29 November 2023

BFF SAL 14 back to green

 I finished off the colour I was working on for the vase and then as planned moved back to green and the leaves.


oddly  the vase looks less "vase" with more stitches than it did last week with just a few on one side.

My Bff was noting a similar feeling on a different aspect of her project.

Pop over to her blog to see how things are going with her version, Click here

Sunday 26 November 2023

Sunday stitching's a touch of blue

 Most of it a full cross stitch, but the rest is a start of the half stitches the form the upper half of the design.


Today at Church we had two lots of welcome visitors. The first a family, the mother had been a missionary sister in our branch 28 years ago and she was back for a visit. Our building did not feel familiar to her but then we have had an extension and redecoration since she was last here.

The other visitors have not been with us for four years, they spent three of those years as the Mission President couple of the South Adriatic Mission, covering 5 countries and even more languages. It was nice to see them and hear their stories. 

Thursday 23 November 2023

BFF SAL 14 time for a change

 from the flower to the vase.


it makes a difference to the look of the piece, even with just this outline.

Normally this is the point I give you a link so you can see my BFF's progress on the SAL, well here is the link  Click HERE and once you have read her post come back and CLICK HERE for a reminder of why her counter offer had me loosing five minuets stitching time laughing!

Monday 20 November 2023

A round box

 I started on this box some time ago. I had been gifted a spool of nail foil, you put the varnish on wait for it to get tacky press on the foil wait then peel off the back and have pretty nails.

Nope, not for me, it did not work. So I had the bright idea to varnish a box, wait for it to get tacky and try the nail foil.

It was only fractionally more successful then om my nails. So I only did one strip along the bottom. Then varnished it with a gold tinted varnish. The rest of the sides with normal varnish and back to the gold for the top.

And I waited for it to dry, And then forgot all about it, drying up in the loft.

Of course a trip up to the loft for something else (purple paper which I never did find, must have used it already) got my eye on it and thought need to get the inside of the box sorted.

Had some nice material, bits from some trousers a lady at work gave me (wow that was some years ago) after she had already chopped bits off to line a bag.

It was a shade of purple or maybe you might call it pink with a hem of gold. It was the hem of gold that made me think it might be a good match.

And As the box had a fret work top, the lid needed a double sided piece.


The inside.



The trickiest
thing to get one was the little tassel, getting the ring through the ring on the catch.



Its not fully finished because I don't know who it is for yet, and once I do, well the base might get a touch of pyrography and some varnish or it might just get some green stickyback plastic ( I can't think of that without thinking of Blue Peter makes).

Sunday 19 November 2023

Sunday Stitchings

 A nice block of colour completed today.


all there was to do in that shade.

Saturday 18 November 2023

Fitted Mount

 I have previously shared the finished cross stitch of the modified Durene Jones pattern (its a free one from her Facebook page) when I finished the stitching part.

I had a frame in mind, one from a charity shop that came with a piece of encaustic wax art. Just colours not a specific picture.


I had intended to just use the frame, then I though I might use the waxed card as a normal mount, and then well..I decided to do a shaped mount. 



I traced out around the character and marked it on the back of the card and cut through with a craft knife.



Then back into the frame.


I still like the frame however, I am not at all sure that the way I cut the mount does the character justice. Perhaps I would have been better off  just going with the square mount.

It was well stuck and gifted as is anyway. It did lead to me using that technique much more successfully for a Peter Rabbit framed up at the same time which inspired me to recycle a card as a frame for a Robin both of which you will have seen if you have joined me for past blog hops.

Posting this fully finished waited at first for it to be gifted, and then I sort of forgot that I had not shared it. Then it waited some more for my brother to remember to take a picture for me of himself with the item.

And well by the time he remembered there has been a bit of a change in his grooming .


He looks a bit happier in his hat in the original picture he sent me of him wearing it . And Oh! It had just dawned on me he has changed the frame! That's so funny, I was looking at the picture he sent me for such a long time before that sunk in. I might even get round to asking if that was a décor choice or something befell the original.

Wednesday 15 November 2023

BFF SAL 14 in full bloom

 I may not have been filling in the leaves like my BFF but I was rejoicing in filling in the pink this week.


 the lighter pink on the edges is still fading into the background a little but I am sure the backstitch is going to work wonders.

I have a plan for next week to start the vase and work my way down to the bud which looks so nice on my friends version. There are more leaves at the top but I would like to finish the greens all off at the same time.

Click on the link at the top of my post to see how my BFF is progressing. An maybe Later I will presuade her to tell you of her Paint-A-Long with Bob Ross Evening Adventure.

Sunday 12 November 2023

Sunday Stitching

 This is a little odd, I did do some stitching during church last Sunday however it was all white fill which does not make for an interesting update picture.

This week I did no stitching at church, we had a shortened service because it is Remembrance Sunday and that allowed for members to then attend either the local remembrance parade or watch the national one on eth TV.

As we did the latter I took that time for a little bit of work on my current Sunday Stitching piece.


I am still very much enjoying this stitch although at the moment it does not have much visual impact.

Wednesday 8 November 2023

BFF SAL 14 a rose by any other name

well its not a rose as such but my grandmother always referred to these flowers as a Peony Rose.

My title is inspired by the Shakespeare quote my BFF used for the title of her blog. I am wondering if our conversation about the 400th Anniversary of  the first portfolio of the Bard's plays(brief as it was and relating more to a certain Dr Who actor being interviewed by the BBC about that most famous of playwrights and not being able to talk about Dr Who as it is now a joint BBC Disney project and the actors strike) was the subliminal influence. 

Oddly we actually talked more about Shakespeare last week and which plays we had either studied or seen.

So tonight's stitching, more hot pink which was very helpful when I came to filling in with the mid pink.


it is looking more like a flower now and less of a splat I think. I still have two shades of pink to add to the flower and more leaves so whilst it is further along it is not quite finished yet.

CLICK HERE to visit my BFF's blog and see how she is progressing.


Thursday 2 November 2023

BFF SAL Variations on a Theme 1 : Christmas

 month three:

And as anticipated nothing was stitched on this project off screen since last month. And had it not been for the SAL goodness knows how long it would have languished before I picked it up and decided how to progress.

There needed to be a little adjustment to the Robins tails due to the stitch out error from last time but at least there is progress and a slightly better chance of some off screen stitching occurring in the month to come.


Click Here to see my BFF's progress...she has quite a bit to share.

An as an update you can see what the next stage was buy Clicking Here as it became the image for my 2023 Advent.