It's finished!

The Cornflower Biscornu is finished! Here are pictures of the front and back.




Here is the usual picture taken on the mirror.


Now for the details. This was a bespoke chart from Faby Reilly. I stitched it on 32ct antique white linen using the suggested floss (DMC) and beads. I really, really enjoyed stitching this, the colours are fantastic.

I also managed another finish this weekend. The Pale Blue Santa! Here he is.


Today was also the day for putting up the Christmas decorations. Here is one that has been up since Tuesday.


Its called the Christmas Advent Calendar (with charms) and is from Bucilla. I finished this about six or so years ago at about 23.59 on 30 November!

I will post more of my Christmas finishes from the past next time, and hopefully a decent picture of the Christmas Tree. As its Sunday I'm off to stitch Mary Wigham for a few hours. I still have to decide what I'm going to stitch next week - watch this space.

The Pale Blue Santa has a face!

Here it is.


So far this week I have managed to complete all the cross stitching on him. Last night I started the backstitch. I still have two more evenings to go on this so it will be interesting to see how much further I get.

My Mum and Dad have come to stay for a few days and my Mum brought me this:


From The Cross-Eyed Cricket the chart is called 'Open House' and I have to say I am tempted to drop everything and start it tonight as I have all the DMC floss needed and some suitable linen. Anyway the decision has been made. After next week the rotation stops and I'm just going to do spooky stuff for the whole of October!

Two down two to go!

I managed to complete two out of the four projects mentioned last week. Firstly, the September Calendar.


Secondly, the poppy card.


I'm not convinced about the frame but it's the only one I had.

As of today the Knotted Garden Biscornu looks like this.


I was pleased with the progress made on the Pale Blue Santa. All he needs is a head and a lot of backstitch!


Yesterday I managed to complete two more motifs on Mary Wigham. I have recharted some more of the medallions to make them symmetrical. I will post them next time. As I stitched I also noticed some errors on my recharted version which I will also go back and correct.


I've enjoyed reading the comments on the TUSAL post. Heaven knows what I will do next time.

No stitching for four days, things must have been bad!

What with one thing and another last week I haven't felt like doing much stitching. So to get me out of the doldrums I decided to start something new.


Called 'Poor Jack' this Just Nan freebie came from The Silver Needle with an order for 'Scream House', an early birthday prezzie from my Mum! This only took a couple of hours to stitch, if that, and I did it yesterday in between completing the backstitching on Ed Hedgehog, what is left of my Country Companions Sampler UFO (You can find out more about him here), and Mary Wigham.




Last week on the rotation it was the turn of the 'Pale Blue Santa'. I didn't pick him up until Thursday and did no real stitching on him until Friday. Four days without stitching, things must have been bad! Here he is.



This week it's back to White Nights but because it's the school holidays I'm going to stitch on something else in the day, up to 3.00 pm and then then the normal rotation project after that. So the day project is Simply Autumn form Waxing Moon Designs.

By the way, my Headteacher at school really liked the Hardanger Angel I stitched for her. By coincidence lots of the decorations on her Christmas tree have memories attached to them. She said that her children, now grown up, ask why she is putting some tatty old decoration on the tree and she replies, because they made it when they were five. So it seems I hit the nail on the head with my choice of leaving gift for her.

Happy stitching

The Big Finish Weekend!

I had promised myself that the next weekend I was at home I would 'finish' all the projects that had been completed recently. This was the weekend.

Here they are.


From left to right they are

July Calendar ~ Mill Hill

A Pair Tree ~ Sue Hillis Designs (completed December 2008)

How many UFOs are there in your closet? ~ Raise the Roof Designs

Boo Needle Book ~ Just Nan (see here)

Teepee Bears Door Hanger ~ Joan Elliott for Bucilla (UFO for 12 years, see here)

This week was the turn of The Pale Blue Santa on the rotation. The frogs are all gone and I am quite pleased with the progress.

Another two items for the UFO pile?

That's how I felt on Thursday afternoon!

Let's start at the very beginning...

... a very good place to start. OK I'll try not to turn into Julie Andrews.

So on Thursday we packed up our stuff and set off to The Railway for 'Steel, Steam and Stars II'. Estimated departure time 09.00, actual departure time 09.30, not too bad. We got to the top of the road and I realised that I had left my allergy pills at home. As much as I like going to The Railway I am actually allergic to the place, or something there that's not at home. So false start No 1. We set off again. We managed to get a little further this time when The Other Half said that he had left his razor behind. False start No 2. So about fifteen minutes down the road I decided to get the Pale Blue Santa out. I then had a Victor Meldrew moment,

'I don't believe it!'

I had gone and left every single floss colour, and there are many at home, bar one! I think The Other Half did contemplate doing a U turn in the middle of the road but before he could put the brakes on I said that we were not going back, impressed? Well don't be. I had the Rhodes Butterfly Biscornu in my handbag, plus the one I'm going to do for May. I also knew that at my Mum's were the Red and Purple Snowmen from Shepherds Bush and four Jim Shaw Snowmen, I have been indulging in some more stash enhancement. Anyway the one floss colour I had was pale blue and that's the majority of the Santa. It was some hours later, whilst at my Mum's that I happened to notice that I didn't seem to have enough pale blue left. A quick check on the chart and I found that everything I had done in pale blue should have been done in two strands of white and one strand of turquoise. I frogged some of it and gave up. This is what it looks like.

The pale blue on the left hand side needs to come out.

So I changed to the Rhodes Butterfly Biscornu, and guess what I made exactly the same mistake on side two as I did on side one. More frogging! This is it corrected and added to.

That was Thursday. On Friday morning I opened the curtains and this was parked ten yards in front of my window.
If you don't know much about steam locomotives this one is 6100 Royal Scot and she is COOL, even without the name plates, which were put on later.

We had a fantastic Railway Weekend. All over the country photos are probably being uploaded as I type and there will no doubt be some great videos on YouTube. I've already dropped a few names in to this post but this one is the best, I had a long conversation with Pete Waterman, described on the radio this morning as 'Britain's most famous trainspotter', but the rest of the world know him from Stock, Aitken and Waterman, the pop production team who made Kylie famous. How did this one start? I said how much I had enjoyed his TV series on railways and in particular the bit where they showed you how British Railways made a ham sandwich look like it had two slices of ham in it when actually there was only one!

One last thing, in honour of my new blog my Mum got me a blog warming present, can't wait to get started!