but not a final finish. Backstitch completed, with some individualisation to compensate for the skinny head of my cow.
made for an interesting expression.
We had a slightly different stitching arrangement for the night, Roni can tell you about that. And we both felt perhaps a pointy needle would have made the backstitch easier.
Then thinking of the differences between out finished stitches I suggested they would make a good spot the difference game which lead to our attempts to take pictures of both together. Mine in hand and Roni's on screen.
I think Roni's picture of hers in hand and mine on her screen will have worked better once she posts it.
In 2022 I burned a dragon on a box the dragon was holding a sphere and I thought I would make it look like it was holding the world.
Except when I took a picture of it, well to me it looked like the head of a bear and my BFF thought it looked like a wolf.
In an attempt to make it look like the world I coloured it blue and green. That did not work, just made the creature, whichever you saw look mouldy.
A re think was required, and whilst I did that it went up into the loft as I had a stand or perhaps mount thought going on in my head.
That got paused, I think I wanted to do some extreme sanding and then could not be quite bothered.
So, whilst I was in the loft over Christmas and working on something else up there (expect that something to get a post of its own later when it hopefully gets to its intended placement) I came across the box whilst looking for a pencil.
Down from the loft it came. I am not sure what I intended to do with it. It sat, and I looked at it and it sat.
Then I thought I would just go over the sphere with a white marker pen. A few times, until the blue and green went away. I did, it sort of did and I wondered "would it look better if the background was all dark". Getting out the pyrography stuff takes a bit of time, and preparation and organising ventilation, its winter and cold. There just happened to be a black marker pen in arms reach.
"just to get an feel of how it would look" I tell myself.
"Hmm not bad" was quickly followed by "people sometimes colour the pyrography perhaps?"
The metallic watercolour paints also happened to be within arms reach and one thing leading to another..
...painted dragon, it even has metallic blue over the black, just to see how it looked, background.
The question of if it is progress or not, I do wonder what was the point of doing the woodburn in the first place if I was just going to paint it?
It is not even finished. The sides need something doing to them, and the inside of course and that mount/stand whatever may need a rethink.
At least I have a new Forestella Song to add to the musical background of my ongoing contemplation.
I wonder if perhaps the title of the previous song might be something the box is singing as it waits to be finished.
I have mentioned that finding square frames is quite tricky so if I see some then I buy them.
Of course most of the time they are then not the right size for anything for ages however, I digress.
I bought two identical square frames from the charity shop, still in their original wrapper with the original price on there. The charity shop price was half the original and about normal charity shop pricing.
I had nothing in mind for them until in our last BFF session my friend and I were chatting and a particular Christmas themed piece I had completed was mentioned. The thought came to me later that it might fit one of the new frames.
And you know it did!
It stayed in the "mount" I made from an old Christmas card which I thought might have just been for display purposes when it was my day in the Advent link up. in 2022, so it has been waiting for a frame.
Although it will have to wait till Christmas 2026 to be displayed.
Pleased as I am with that I am even happier the whilst getting out the Robin I also found The windmill and thought this too is of a size for the little frame.
Wow you think that has been waiting since 2013, erm no that is the year I started blogging and did a post about it. It was started and finished in a year that started with 19??
However, its wait is over and it went up on the wall immediately.
And for the Forestella song ? Nocturne and words from the Wind
I think that this January has had more posts than any previous January, which is strange as I don't feel like I have been getting that much done.
There is an odd sense of achievement in having got from one end of this month to the other this year.
about our cross stitches, generated by me making a mistake that has resulted in my figure having a thinner head that the pattern intended.
"Skinny Cow" my friend said "Fat Head" I replied and we both giggled at the descriptions of our stitching that sounded distinctly insulting and yet are true.
So here is my skinny cow
I finished the cross stitching, my BFF has dispensation to complete hers off screen so we can both backstitch next week, Roni did loose some time showing me a suggestion for a future "big" BFF SAL, not the next one as we have a plan for that but a next, next erm possibly next one when we are set to upsize from cover kits a bit. Oh and I have dragons finished, I feel the need to have them finished before adding something new to the collection of WIPs.
CLICK HERE to see the cow with the right sized head.
I was doing a lot of that to get the threads into my new box.
Something I usually find soothing, but then usually I am not doing this many at once.
Or thinking " I could be stitching dragons" , it needed doing, so do it I did.
They look pretty sideways in and thread showing.
And just in randomly as they were wound.
However, I do prefer them stored in number order and thought I might try them numbers up to see if I like it that way.
It is not the full set of numbers and the gaps in the sections are reflective of that.
Still it will be a good basis for any patterns I chose to use this thread for, repeats of cover kits or cards that much as I might hope otherwise might not be kept. That sort of thing.
I have shared this Forestella link before, the title fits and I am rather fond of this one
Last week I finished having unpicked everything and restitched it and with some off screen get back to where I would have been time.
at the mid point of this evening my BFF said she was taking a picture as hers looked oddly invisible. So I stopped and took a midway picture as well.
At this point I had just finished stitching the small section of green. Roni having finished the larger lower section spotted there was more green but oddly small upper and lower larger had different symbols but only one green identified as green in the kit!
So with the reason for that discovered I proceeded to the large green before I forgot and followed suit. Then the sections the pattern calls grey but the thread looks more like an oily green.
The eyes are in the same odd shade and at this point I realise I have made an ohps with the nose. I am not fixing it I am going to work around it.
As for the purple and green item, at the moment, without its backstitching the thing it most looks like to me is a K-Pop / Korean Group style light stick. The purple makes me think of BTS whilst the green of the most delightful Forestella and they are both expecting to release new albums this year.
If you have visited with me before (or looked at the labels list) you know which I will most likely be buying.
CLICK HERE to see my BFF's progress and play spot the difference.
which is of course short for approximately meaning in English not completely accurate but close.
But first the dragons update
it is getting to that oddly slow stage. There are less stitches to do than have been done and yet it feels like it is taking forever to fill it in.
Right the reason for the concerns about aprox. I am getting set for that All Our Yesterdays project and unusually for me have the frames I want to use before I have started the stitching. So I need the stitching to be in the right count to fit the frames. Which state they are 4" by 6" (approx.) and 5" by 7" (approx.), Now here is the thought about that word in brackets and the definition of close. When looking at 4" I would not consider 3.5" as being close. Indeed the approx. measurement on each frame is a half inch out on each side. It will make a difference.
A half inch might not sound much, and if the measurement was in feet or miles that half inch maybe would be a slight figure and be classed as close. but when it is the equivalent of an eighth of the promised measurement, that's not close! And goodness knows I am challenged quite sufficiently by my own measuring deficiencies without outside assistance.
I am just glad I checked and did not believe the big numbers without wondering what impact the little word in () would have. I would have ended up with completed pieces that did not fit in the intended frames and have to buy more and hope they were telling the truth!
I am not sure at this stage if the originator of this particular themed link up will be hosting it this year. Due to circumstances certain hops and linkups had to be paused last year.
I did note however that more than one blogger still posted on the 15th of the month any items either gifted to them or intended as gifts even without the link being available.
I expect we all received something craft or stitching related last month so January might produce a few posts in the blog world on this theme.
For me, a gift from my father, one he spotted and chose himself for me.
I am fond of a box
This is a very nice box. And what will I put in it? Well I will put in it those numbered threads I was previously gifted inside a very nice cardboard box. I made a few cardboard bobbins, but that was irksome so I bought 100, that should do the trick .
And the drawer at the bottom, variegated threads may well find a home there.
I have plans for the top but after the dragons and the All our Yesterdays projects I think.
Click here to pop over to jocondine for her GG2026
and another cover kit, we looked at the pattern before we settled on this one. It met out current criteria for a SAl.
Not too big, not to much dotting about and not too much backstitch, even if it isn't just outlining backstitch.
Added to all that we had previously considered a Toffee Cow (they will always be that to me because of the Highland Toffee from my childhood with a picture of this breed of bovine on the wrapper) of much greater complexity.
I had already sorted the thread for this so I did a bit of bobbinating, well one skeins worth whilst Roni sorted hers then we made a start.
Just not my night for it, I made a single stitch mistake on the bit in the middle. I was going to leave it and just work around it. Then I realised I had my thread card turned around and ended up using the wrong brown. So out it had to come, back to the point I went wrong.
and then start stitching again. To finish the night here.
As per our ohps agreement I can have the time that did not equal productive stitching back off camera.
well sort of, worked up from the tail and met up with the working down from the head and it joined in the right place.
Still some dotty filling in to do on the tail and the wing struts. This is confetti filling in and so will be quite slow.
wondering about the backstitch now, not sure if the one strand of normal DMC will be too thick and I think there is maybe a bit much to do with my usual alternative. Plus the availability of the darker strands is reducing and even if I do find sufficient not sure dark brown will be dark enough.
the second of two booklets with threads I bought longer ago than my brain is willing to acknowledge.
The first was a booklet of Country Companions Designs and I discovered quite quickly that not all of the shades of threads in the keys for the patterns were in the kit. I reiterate I had no expectations that the thread that came with it would be sufficient to stitch all of the designs in the booklet. I had however thought that there would be at least a length of each shade needed.
As noted that was not the case so I approach this one with greatly lowered expectations and the assumption I will need to dip into the thread stash.
Here is a picture of the booklet, which as you can see is All Our Yesterdays.
And the thread bundles, and there is quite a lot of thread there just a question mark over what might not be there when I need it.
It is making an appearance as I have something specific to stitch for. But the specific something will be a gift so it won't get any updates at all till it is all finished and gifted. I don't think the intended recipient is a visitor to the blog but just to be on the safe side.
For the Zoom attendance at our Church meeting. The experiments with various equipment have found a winner. Nice clear picture and oh sound that stays, not breaking up and best of all for my mother the sound stayed fixed for the music and singing.
I on my stitching noticed that there was no a lot of the shade I was using left, which felt strange as otherwise so far the kit has been reasonably generous.
Oh, ah I appear to have at some point mixed up the shade represented by a capitol A for the shade represented by a black triangle. Hmm, well it does mean that the patchwork blanket is less shaded than it should have been up at the top of the kittens head.
Am I going to unpick it and fix it. NO. I won't run out of thread, as there is not that much left to stitch in the A, it won't change the overall look too drastically and its just not going to bother me that much. (Well especially as I have no intention at this point of keeping it when it is finished)
So here is todays update, a little more purple (the right shade in the right place) but a bit less done due to the ? over the ohps needing to be checked and considered.
If you came here from Roni's blog then this first image will surprise ewe.
yes it is a sheep in a Christmas hat! This is the RAL part, as I had already started the backstitching on the SAL when last we were working on it. So I finished off the cross stitch and backstitch on this first whilst Roni caught up.
Then I moved onto the Wreath Mouse. I found one ninja as I was backstitching the mouse, some ??? placed ones whilst doing the holly leaves and decided that the backstitching in the random greenery was excess to my requirements.
Not that sure the yellow bits look like the bells I supposed them to be, even with the bit of gold blending filament, perhaps they are baubles?
I did not feel bad stopping backstitching at this point and not finishing the stitching as per the pattern as after some discussion my BFF also decided to limit the amount she was adding.
Here is mine with an idea of how it will look in it's felt frame from the kit, but as Roni noted we have an over abundance of time to sort that, it will most likely be gazumped by other more time sensitive projects ( then next thing you know we will be complaining how Christmas crept up on us and be in a rush)
CLICK HERE to pop over to my BFF's blog (well if you did not start from there) and see how her variation looks.
And yes that is the dragons in the background, I was showing my BFF my progress, I will update on that one separately later.
We think we have a plan for BFF SAL 22, but plans can change.
on the dragons, and a note of the double benefit of the heated over blanket I bought . Not only does it keep me warm but the mag with the pattern in slides off less often than it does just on my knee.
by looking back at 2025. It has not been an easy year, it got progressively more difficult and those issues which came to light in November will inevitably result in more challenging times ahead for 2026.
What that will mean for the crafting and the blog I do not know. The blogging community has become quieter of late and I don't want to become part of the encroaching silence.
The crafting is my meditation, my safe place.
However as noted in my previous post some crafts, such as the quilting take more space, more preparation and planning so may fall somewhat by the way side.
Having completed the Mini Brother felting project I may have, with kits left, have done with that, I will wait a bit yet and see.
Looking at into 2025 well Hark the Herald Angels got some stitching done, but I am still working on the robes. Millennium is still stalled on the comet and the Earth. The illusion quilt remains unquilted
The a year in flowers is finished, but unframed. The ties for the tie quilt have been unpicked and the BFF quilt completed.
Do I have projects for the year ahead?
Yes, the dragons to finish, perhaps some progress on the two projects with angels.
Things to frame ideas swirling in my head, but what will get done or worked on, well only time will tell.
And for today, well I think more on the dragons, the right dragon appears to be a little less bitty so it looks like quite good progress, also I have been stitching it whilst watching "normal" TV with my parents, and it does go much faster when I am not trying to read captions as well as watch something and stitch at the same time. Much as I am still enjoying the Korean and other Asian films and programs.
And there is still Forestella with the prospect of a new album sometime in 2026 hopefully, there might be inspiration for some further crafting links to songs or logo images.
And the BFF SAL and RAL is indeed holding steady through its own challenges and changes.
