Cross-stitch roundup

When I got home from Carcassonne my crojo was screaming at me to crochet: I've bought Lucy of Attic24's Fireside blanket pack, and I was desperate to get it out and get started. BUT before I went away I had started a Hallowe'en stitch-along and I was determined to get it finished and not leave it languishing in the ever -growing UFO pile. As you'll see from this blog post I have form when it comes to not-completing cross-stitches. I definitely suffer from startitis - starting shiny new projects before the previous one is complete. So this past week I've been a very good stitcher and carried on with the stitch-along - I had gotten behind on the holiday week so I had lots to catch up on. Its the "Cabinet of Curiosities" stitchalong by Alyssa Westhoek of Stitchonomy - she has a pattern club of which I am a member, and for $8 a month you get access to all her patterns, and then several times a year she runs a free stitchalong, one of which is the Cabinet of Curiosities. Alyssa releases a little image pattern every day over a month or so and then you end up with something like this ...

Don't you love it ?! Aren't the little picture so cute ?! Which is your favourite ? Mine has to be either the brain in a jar - such fun!  or the phoenix feathers. Some of them are a little hard to tell what they are - frogs legs and mandrake I'm looking at you here, but I think most of them are fairly obvious. This cross-stitch is going to be framed and given to my all-things-Hallowe'en-loving son for his birthday.

Finishing this gave me such a sense of achievement I decided to root through the UFO pile and finish some more. So next is this wedding cross-stitch which I did for my cousin's wedding 5 YEARS AGO! I'm a terrible person. I never gave it to them (obvs seeing as it was incomplete). All I had to finish was the bits and piece hanging off the back of the car so the end was really nearly in sight. However when I got it out of the cupboard I found to my horror it's got a massive stain on it !!!! Noooo!!!I have no idea what it is (tea maybe?) or how it got there but I'm fairly sure after 5 years it won't be coming out any time soon, so I've decided to stitch over it with some green to make it look like grass below the car. So this one isn't quite done yet (though I did finish the bits and pieces at the bottom).

Next we have another wedding one. This time for friends of ours who got married 3 years ago. Can you see a pattern emerging here ? Honestly, I put so much work into these then sort of fall at the last hurdle. No idea why, but its really annoying. Anyway, I discovered that this one is actually complete so all it needs is framing and then it can be gifted to the lucky (?) couple.

Now we have a slightly smaller one, and again I found this one to be complete. Its a picture of Dornoch Cathedral, a cathedral in the highlands of Scotland and actually where Madonna and Elon Musk got married (but not to each other!). It's for my Mum for her birthday - Dornoch is the place where we spent our childhood holidays. We used to go every year with some other families from England, Scotland and Northern Ireland - we only all knew each other from going to the same hotel in Dornoch every year. Every summer  spent 2 weeks there, from when I was 5 until I was about 30 and I stopped going. My parents kept going though for another 20 odd years, until my Dad passed away. It was great fun, in the group there were about 20 children and we had a blissful time playing golf and tennis, going to the beach, swimming, playing in the hotel gardens, it was wonderfully freeing, and I feel very blessed to have grown up with such memories. So Dornoch is very dear to our hearts. The cross-stitch, small as it is, is very definitely recognisable as Dornoch Cathedral, so I know my Mum will love it. Again it just needs framing. (All this framing is going to cost  small fortune!)

This next one is actually just for myself, and I spent a few happy hours finishing it off this week. It's just a Christmas sampler which I started a few years ago. When I dug it out I realised there wasn't really a huge amount left to do - just from the sort of house shape downwards wasn't done, but the top 2/3 was all complete. I'm not sure what I'll do with this one, maybe get it framed and hang it up just at Christmas when we decorate the house.

And finally we have my ongoing project (excuse the creases!), which I may have blogged about before. This one is a real labour of love (and secretly I hate it a tiny bit ...). It's a Millenium cross-stitch which my Mum bought me for Christmas in the year of, yes, you guessed it, the millenium, back in 1999 (gosh that feels weird to write a year beginning with 19!). So I've been working on it, on and off, for 22 years! To be fair it has been packed in a box during two house moves and I've had 3 babies since then so life has had other priorities, but I dig it out every so often to work on it. I do feel now that the end is in sight. As you can see there are 16 little images and I've only got 3 left to do. So near yet so far!

Once this is finished its definitely getting framed and I might give it to my Mum for Christmas if I can finish it by then! We shall see!

So that's a roundup of my current cross-stitch progress. I still have a few incomplete ones but I shall leave those for another day.

Til next time, have some crafty fun,

Jillxxx

Carcassonne Crochet Retreat

During the first week of October I was lucky enough to go away on holidays to France on my own for a week. I say on my own but actually I was with my bestest oldest friend (we have known each other for 49 years!!!) and a group of 12 others on a lovely relaxing crochet retreat. The retreat, which was organised by Stitchtopia and run by the wonderful Lucy of Attic24 fame, took place in the beautiful city of Carcassonne in southern France.

We set off very early (I got up at 2:30am - yikes!) on a Monday morning and got off to a great start with bucks fizz for breakfast at the airport...

We met everybody at the departure gate and before long we were touching down in Toulouse to beautiful sunny weather. An hour or so on the coach and we were afforded our first view of beautiful Carcassonne...

... and yes it really does look like that - just WoW - a beautiful, historic, medieval, walled city perched on a hill surrounded by rolling green fields. (Well on a few sides anyway, there is also a newer area of town but we'll come to that later.) 

Entering the city is by way of a huge gate which would have had a portcullis and drawbridge, as there is a dry moat ...

Once inside the city, which is made up of lots of little winding roads and alleyways made of cobblestones, its very peaceful and quiet as there is no traffic (hence no traffic noise), and of course everywhere is safe for pedestrians. Everywhere you look there are little restaurants and boutique shops, its just so quaint and pretty.

Our hotel was actually inside the walled city so it was very handy for all the restaurants, and lovely and peaceful at night. We stayed for 6 days - 4 days of crochet (yippee!!!) and 2 days sight-seeing (with a little crochet added in of course!). During our crochet days we had workshops run by the lovely Lucy, who taught us about colour theory, and then gave us a wonderful pattern to follow for a cushion cover. We were challenged to be bold and brave with our colour choices, and to step outside of our comfort zones. And how lucky were we - we were each given a pack of Scheepjes minis to work with (photo nicked from Lucy as I was to excited and forgot to take one !) ...

Ooooh my! Amazing! Such gorgeous colours and such cute little balls, just such fun for messing about with and playing with colour. The front side of the cushion was a little experimental with some blending first of all ...

 

... and this soon grew into nearly a competed front cover ....

... it was wonderful to see how everybody else's cushion covers were so different despite working from the same palette...

... we added some little flowers to the middle of the front, here is mine completed ...

... to be honest I'm not wildly happy with it, too much orange maybe ? But here is the reverse and Oh My GoSh I LoVe It ...

I feel with the front I let myself overthink it whereas with the reverse I just went with the flow a bit and as a result it feels much more balanced. Or maybe its just that I love brights so much! Nevertheless the workshops were such fun, lots of lively chatter and laughter, and soooo good to spend time with like-minded people, and during down time we could relax in the sweet little hotel garden ...

We had a couple of days of sightseeing, and the old town of Carcassonne is so beautiful - I took a gazillion photos. One lunchtime we went for a tour of the chateau and ramparts - the walled part of the city consists of over 50 towers, and its possible to walk around the ramparts a fair way. 

We made it into the new area of town as well, and had a lovely afternoon shopping ...

... and we went on a little boat tour too ...

On our second sightseeing day we went to Lavantel to the Musee de Textiles .... 

... and we saw some fascinating spinning and weaving demonstrations ...

Over the week we had lots of lovely food and of course vino!

But all too soon it was time to go home again. Going back to the reality of laundry and cooking was a bit of a shock to the system, I can tell you! 

I've been a terrible blogger this year, but am hoping to get things started again with this post - so watch this space and next time I will have some crafty happenings for you.

Til next time, hope you have some crafty fun,

Jillxxx

Some April finishes

Hello everyone and how are we all doing ? Thanks for all the replies on my previous post, if you missed it I released my first podcast epsiode! Please do go watch and give me a comment or a thumbs up :)

Its Easter school holidays here so the days feel very lovely and relaxed with a slow pace. Spring is firmly here, in fact Summer is putting in an appearance, we were at a barbeque yesterday all day, and this afternoon I got a wee bit burnt in the sun - oops!

I have a few finishes to share with you. My local crochet group, the Barkham Hoookers, make post box toppers for all our local postboxes, so I decided to participate and made one for the post box down the road from me. I measured the post box, it was about 20" in diameter, with a sort of ridge which was a couple of inches deep. In my stash was this hideous (in my opinion!) Grass Green Stylecraft Special DK. I think someone must have given me it, I definitely didn't buy it, that's for sure! My plan was to crochet a plain green topper and decorate it round the edge with flowers. The post box is quite tall and the top wouldn't be very visible so I only really needed flowers for the edging. Using the Grass Green I crocheted a large flat circle. A couple of times I took it to the post box to try it on, feeling very silly and self-conscious! when my circle was around the size of the flat top of the post box I ran out of Grass Green and decided then to switch to some Cypress, also in Stylecraft Special DK, and of which I had a half ball in my stash. With the Cypress I carried on crocheting but did no further increases so it started to come down at the sides into a cylinder shape. 

Eventually I ran out of Cypress too, but by that point I reckoned the topper was big enough, so I whipped up a coupe of dozen little flowers and attached them onto the Cypress section as you can see in the photo above. And then it was time to put it on the post box - excitement was high let me tell you! And amazingly it fitted perfectly ...

Its fastened on by a long chain of chains which is then woven through the trebles of my last round, and then pulled taut gathering the edge in.  I am so chuffed with it, doesn't it look great! Honestly I wasn't sure it would fit, despite trying it out several times, but it's spot on.

The tag that's on it says something along the lines of "We hope this has brightened your day, if you'd like to brighten someone else's day please use the QR code below and donate to our Ukraine charities". The tag has a QR code on it which leads to a justgiving page or similar for Ukraine charities. So a worthwhile cause too.

Speaking of Ukraine I also crocheted up some blue and yellow hearts which were going to welcome packs being given to Ukrainian refugees in our area. More are arriving every day and so more hearts are needed too. I won't dwell on it, what's happening is awful, and I only wish there was more I could do.

Another Ukraine fundraiser is the Fields of Gold blanket by Jane Crowfoot. I bought the pattern purely as the profits go to Ukraine charities, I had no intention of making the blanket, and instead I decided to crochet one of the sunflowers into a mandala. I just used Stylecraft Special DK from my stash so the colours are slightly different to Jane's original colours. I used Gingerbread, Gold, Tomato, Dandelion, Claret, Parchment, Cypress, Meadow, Teal and Lapis.

I love the 70's vibe of the first few rounds ...

Whilst crocheting my mandala I happened to read Lucy of Attic 24's blog post about the very same mandala - Lucy had put her's into a hoop, and I loved the idea, so I ordered a 30cm hoop off amazon - hurrah for prime - it arrived the next day, just in time for me to finish my mandala. I think it was more luck than judgment but it fitted perfectly.

I've also been making some much bigger mandalas, another Barkham Hookers project, a secret one (the same one as my bunting in this post). This time the mandalas were made using Stylecraft Special Chunky, in Midnight, White and Lipstick. I used a couple of different patterns from this book...

... and I ordered some humungus hoops off ebay, the ones I chose are 92cm in diameter. As I was using chunky yarn the mandalas worked up pretty quickly, and then I used a long chain of chains to weave the mandalas into place ... I'm pretty pleased with them ... 

They look rather fabulous hanging up in the sun ...

I've been working like a mad woman on my lacy scarf. If you remember this was from a pattern from ThePoshCrochet, a Ukrainian etsy seller, which I bought as a digital download. Its crocheted along the length of the scarf - the starting chain was 450 - and so is only about 24 rows.  You can just about make out the pattern - its in need of some severe blocking I feel,,,

I finished my first skein at about row 20, and decided to start a second skein, so I've had to do a couple of pattern repeats on the fly. Its a bit tricky as the stitch count increases so I'm totally winging it, I've made sooooo many mistakes but either spotted them and reectified them, or fudged it, and it seems to be working so far! 

I seem to have been working on it forever though and it feels like I've not got very far, but when I lay it all out in folds you can see that I've actually done quite a lot. Hopefully just another couple of days should do it though, especially as its Easter and we have no plans, allowing lots of quality time with my hook!

Hope you all have a lovely Easter,

Til next time,

Jillxxx