WOYWW 799 - Madam YoYo

 Hello again

I'm not very good at keeping up with the blog.  I'm doing better this year than the last couple of years but we're a work in progress that far.  Actually remembered on Tuesday that Wednesday is WOYWW (previously hosted by the lovely Julia and now by the equally lovely Sarah Brennan at Sarah's Craft Shed), so here I am prepping a post for tomorrow. 

The trouble is that there's never a lot of movement on my craft desk, other than to pile things higher!  

The dolls' house is still hanging out on the dining table.  I'd like to get that cleared before Xmas but unfortunately it's more likely to be the new year before that happens.  There's a few spanners in the work between now and then but things will ease up in the new year and I'll have more time for fixing the behemoth,  More on that next week.

I did finish Three of Crafts but I'm not sharing a pic of that until it's fully finished off (FFO'd).

Dragon With Embroidery has moved along a little....

As has the World of Cross Stitching's SAL.  Will I ever catch up?  Of course - however the last part will be released next month, and I'm considerably behind (4 parts - yikes), but it's been enjoyable to stitch.  

Will I do another one next year?  Not sure - I have a lot of works in progress (WIPs) and I would really like to reduce the number and get some finishes in.  I've got a couple of really big pieces to work on that are going to take a couple of years at the current rate and so I'd like to give them a bit more time and attention.

I've also worked on Lilith of Labrador - here's her current state next to a pic of what she's supposed to look like finished.

I'm off to the Bristol Stitching Day in Clifton on Saturday with some friends, and will take her with me to work on.  She's part of WIPGO for September and I'm running out of days to get my 5 day quota worked on.

Energy levels here are pretty low.  We just had a week's holiday in Tenerife to rest and recharge our batteries, and both ended up catching stinking colds - typical!  Nearly over those now though but it did spoil the end of the trip for us a bit.

So a bit of a brief catch up, see you when I next see you!

Morti

x

WOYWW 790/10 - a tentative hello

I've been AWOL for 9 weeks....

I've thought about joining in with WOYWW (hosted by the lovely Sarah @  Sarah's Craft Shed) again for the last couple of weeks, but today I've finally made it.  I feel a bit like I've been driving through fog and am just coming out the other side to clearer skies.  Grief is a bizarre thing in the way it affects people in different ways, and one of the ways it affected me was with inertia.  A need to just stay in one place and not move unless I had to, mentally as well as physically.  There were weeks with no stitching, and weeks with lots of stitching, there was a week of mad clearing, sorting, packing, moving to get Mum's bungalow cleared.  And weeks of overwhelm - at the sheer amount of stuff my mother had (nearly two dozen boxes & bags of fabric and trim gifted to a local theatre group for costume, for example) and which now needed rehoming, mostly into my house it seems.  We hired a Luton to bring everything home and we filled it.... sigh.  My dining room has disappeared under a dolls house.  Yikes....

Ah yes, the dolls house.  The first place we went to declined the offer of our donation, citing a lack of available space for display (to be fair, true), and on reflection we decided to bring the behemoth home to make repairs (turns out some are significant) before sending it to its forever home.  We have our eye on a couple of National Trust venues, so fingers crossed they take it.

Crafting wise, it's mostly sorting out books and supplies Mum had.  She had a Bisley drawer unit just full of trims, which I'm enjoying stroking (LOL) and coming up with ideas.  There was a whole drawer of golden supplies just for Goldwork, and another with loads of silver fabrics and thread too.

I've worked on a few pieces of stitching - I won't go into great detail here at the moment about who/what and when, but will just leave pics of where I'm at with each.

Maybe in the next couple of weeks I'll be able to get to sit at my craft desk and do something creative aside from standard stitching.

Speaking of which, though, I'm a bit busy over the coming weeks.  This weekend coming is Big Stitch 24, the first big stitching convention in the UK.  Up until now we've had smaller retreats where the maximum attendance I think has been 60 attendees - BS24 has over 200, and from overseas as well as the UK, with a guest speaker (Jacob from Modern Folk Embroidery) and vendors from lots of locations. All very exciting and just 2 sleeps before travelling up to Rotherham... eek!

I'm also away in Brixham for a weekend in August with the girls from school.  We've known each other as a group for 42 years, although a couple have been friends since the age of 5.  Lots of years. Mr B is going to stay home for a weekend by himself with the fur babies.

And then in September we're off to Tenerife for a few days, followed by a visit to the final  Overlander show in Stratford Upon Avon.  Time to pick up some campervan conversion ideas for our new van, Gomez.  

More on him in a later post.

I think that will do for now - plenty enough to be going on with!

Happy Hopping!

Morti x

WOYWW 781 - All change, please!

 Gosh.

I missed last week - reasons themselves being fairly obvious from the previous week's post, and I was disappointed to have missed the week and the ATC swap (Helen, I still owe you an ATC and you WILL go the ball.... um.... I mean you WILL have your card!), and also to have not made it to the crop.  Turns out I ended up in Braintree on house clearance duties, but also visited Mum at the chapel of rest and did some Executor business type stuff with my sister on Saturday morning.  Saturday evening and Sunday were spent in some frantic house clearance - more on that in a mo...

Helen’s ATC

And so I logged on today to celebrate WOYWW which hithertofore (good word, that) had been hosted by the very lovely Julia on Stamping Ground (stamping-ground.blogspot.com) but found that as of the 15th Anniversary (last week), the reins have now been handed over to the equally lovely Sarah at Sarah's Craft Shed (sarahscraftshed.co.uk)

Slap me sideways and call me a gurnard.

I have GOT to stop missing weeks!

So - congratulations/good luck in your "retirement", Julia.  May your desk ever (never?) be tidy, in the spirit of WOYWW.  May your rotary cutter stay sharp, and your ink pads never be dry. A toast to Julia Dunnit!

Sarah has been a long time desker herself, so has able control of those reins.  Change being as good as a rest I'm sure, and a new path in life I suspect may well be a welcome distraction from the trials and tribulations of life.  I'd say "welcome" but you've been here a while, my lovely.  But instead, very well done for stepping up and letting JD step back - Bravo!

My crafting bug has understandably taken a bit of a hike, but I've made the effort to get some stitching done at least. I hope to get my WIPGO done this month, but not much else of anything will be undertaken.

I have at least worked on the Snowman Pirate a bit....

But last weekend was all about Mum, really.  Amongst the things we sorted out, we had a good squint at her dolls house, and now starts the task of finding a home for it.  I don't think I've ever mentioned it before, because I don't have the appropriate labels, but Mum (and my late Dad) were model makers and Dad built this amazing dolls house for Mum starting in 1994 up to his death in 2007, and she decorated and furnished it.  I won't go into massive detail here but a couple of photos will suffice.  I'm in contact with a museum local to her, and hopefully they'll take it on.  If they won't, I'm sure somewhere else will, and as a very last resort, we'll just have to open our own museum.  Not quite where I thought my life was going but there you have it. Admittedly, it does need a little work to smarten it up a bit, but we'll see where it's going to end up, first!  

The loom is fully functional, if you have the patience to set it up…

I've also been passed a partially completed piece of needlework that Mum left, which she'd been working on during the last few months, and which I sadly think will need some unpicking of the most recent stitches, and I will complete it ready for framing.  I have a matching one she'd finished before that, and it also needs some TLC.  We'll get there, though!

I think I've waffled on enough for this week.  Not sure if I'll be around next week but I'll give it a try - we travel up to Essex again next Thurs, as my beloved Mum's funeral is on the 31st.... so see you again soon.

Happy Hopping!

Morti x