SATW Sister Japan gets a yaoi surprise

I've always loved the expression on her face when she sees Denmark and Netherlands "at it" again, especially when they include Germany as well. I found that the blood spatters after were a bit too complicated to do so I used the image just above instead.

 I had taken this with me when I went along as a chaperone for my kids yearly school trip and the kids (8 and 9 year old kids) asked me what I was making...

 I settled with "she's in love with a boy and she's just seen him", which they thought was lovely. I decided that they were definitively too young to know about yaoi *wink*

If you haven't realised it yet - this is what I was making last time I made a picture hehe.

Finished size: 3 5/8 high x 2 1/8 wide, that's about 9 x 5,25 cm according to my ruler.
Fabric used: 18 count / 7 squares per cm Aida.

Artwork from this comic by :humon: all I did was convert it to an embroidery pattern and make that.

Cupcakes, cakes and Cake kits..

Today was the last day of term and not just of term but also the end of the school year. Here we give the teachers a gift to show appreciation of the work they did in the year that's just past. Knowing that the teachers adore my baking we decided that a kit to make cupcakes would be a good way to go so I found some cheap 6 hole cupcake tins and got enough for the teachers we wanted to give a gift to. I also got a nice sized fridge/freezer box to put the mixes in as I didn't want the baggies etc lost before the teachers got home.

First I spent an age weighing out the right amount of each ingredient for each bag as I wanted to be 100% sure that each bag had exactly the same amount as every other bag. I was making 10 kits so I weighed out 10 x each ingredient for the chocolate mix and then 10 x each ingredient for the vanilla mix and put them in the baggies - I later (with the help of oldest) shook it all together in the baggie to make the mix evenly mixed before removing all the air and putting them in the little boxes.

  I then added some cupcake papers and the recipe, closed the boxes and wrapped them up.

It was really nice seeing the teachers faces - they were all surprised and happy with them so it was a gift well gifted.
 

---

Meanwhile I was also baking cupcakes for youngest to treat his class with because it's almost his birthday.  He wanted to do mini cupcakes so he could let the kids have more than just the one so i baked 72 vanilla and 72 chocolate ones. I then put them on sandwich sticks in pairs - some with both the same flavour but most with one of each flavour. I ended up with a huge basket of these which were enjoyed by the kids and also by the teachers as I had, of course, made far too much

I also baked 2 large cakes for the teachers as my personal gift to all the teachers at the school and sneaked into the kitchen when they weren't looking and put them there - it's something I do every summer as my way of showing them how much I appreciate the teachers.

 This one was iced with the help of oldest vanilla ring cake on top and chocolate on the bottom.

And this is a caramel 2 layer cake iced with fudge frosting and filled with fudge. All in all the teachers were spoiled rotten - as they fully deserve :)

Baking was a pain as my old oven was on it's last legs and it was taking 2 x as long as it should have to bake each batch of cupcakes/cakes. But today (after I *really* needed it) my nice new shiny oven arrived. You can see the packing material reflected in the door hehe. I had to put the oven on for a bit empty to get rid of the factory newness smell that would make food taste bad. I then made some cupcakes to try the oven with.

They were done in 25 minutes - half the time I'd needed for the mini cupcakes last night and they are perfectly done - light and fluffy - all the things I'd been missing in the old oven lately that on occasion made me feel uncomfortable about giving people my cupcakes.

I am again a happy baker :)

It's not what you think it is...

.. but what it really is I'll leave to your imagination for a bit *wink*

I'm a bit later than usual as I had to clean under my old washing machine in preparation of the arrival of the new one. You do *not* want to know what was under there - it was horrid! The delivery men liked me for taking the time to clean under there first and for giving the old machine a wipe down as they had to carry it downstairs by hand.  It now matches the drier I got last year - I was mostly out to make sure that they had the same capacity as it's nice when you can wash as much as fits in the drier after. I'm doing the first "brand new machine" empty run of the machine right now and the one thing I'm noticing is that it's so *QUIET* the old one was making a lot of noise as it was slowly dying but it never was very quiet any way so this is lovely. No more complaining kids as I run a late night wash hehe.

I also spoiled myself and got a new toaster to replace the old one that was almost at deaths door - it's shiny! and black!! and it BEEPS!!! *super excited* I made toasted sandwiches in it today to try it out and it easily takes a sandwich with cheese and ham in between (though I did put it in one of those little baggies for doing this with first - didn't want melted cheese all over my nice new toaster) Of course I forgot to take pictures of the sandwich before I'd eaten it and I'm pretty sure nobody wants to see a picture of it now *wink* (and if you do.. there are almost certainly sites out there with that stuff already :P )

SATW "Sister Sweden"

I finished SATW's Sister Sweden last night - it took a bit longer than I'd expected but that was mostly because my hands didn't really want to work much which made holding the needle somewhat complicated. I hate it when it suddenly gets cold in the summer - my "ageing" joints kick in and set up a complaints department.

Finished size: 4 1/8 high x 2 1/8 wide, that's about 10,5 x 5,5 cm according to my ruler.
Fabric used: 18 count or 7 squares per cm Aida

Artwork from this comic by humon all I did was convert it to an embroidery pattern and make that.

Almost finished!

Yes indeed it's almost finished - these little embroideries are really fast, especially as once the outlines are completed I can steam ahead and fill in spaces without needing the pattern to do more than choose the right colour to use next.

I've only got a bit of skin to complete and then the hair and it's finished and as it's pouring with rain the plan to go out this afternoon has been cancelled, so I'll have more time to complete this. We were going to go to an old communal bakery to see what it was like in the old days when people baked their breads there and then on to the fire engine museum. Neither the kids nor me want to get dripping wet on our bicycles getting there and the activities are mostly outside.

A new project

At last I can go back to the SATW project I started where I'm doing a load of the characters in cross stitch. I really love the style of art that humon, the artist, makes so I've been working very hard at making sure that the patterns are as close to the art as I can possibly make them given the restrictions of cross stitch being little squares and making them no more than 3 1/4 inches wide when completed.

This one is "Sister Sweden" and as you an see she's a pretty busty sex bomb :) and she will only need 7 colours to complete so it's pretty straight forwards. Once I've completed the black outlines I basically won't need the pattern much any more :)

Finally finished!

Several months ago I saw an artwork that I really loved the idea of : Iliad It was much too large for me to even try to re-create but I did like the idea of making something with a hidden message. I spend some time pondering things while I made other embroideries and one day I finally came up with what I wanted to make: my favourite cupcake recipe. Making the pattern took several days - it's hard work translating a written message into a pattern by way of an embroidery pattern maker - even with the symbols being the letters of the alphabet (on a side note - don't use lower-case letters for something like this - it is *really* difficult to read some letters when they fall off the edge of the square of the pattern).

I noticed that things were puckering up a fair bit while working on it so I had to add the white background, something I'd not planned so it's not in the pattern I made. I would also not have used the orange/brown I did for the spaces if I'd know I was using white as the background as I would then have made the spaces in white as well.

I am however really happy with the result, but have made a mental note to never do something like this again lol.

Size: 5 1/4 x 4 1/2
number of colours used: 58

Day 26

I have noticed that usually when I go to Dr's appointments or the vampires and take my embroidery along I don't get much chance to do much embroidery while I wait - not sure why but it always happens. Yesterday for example - one minute wait time at the Dr and when I got to the vampires I didn't even get time to look at my number before the number system went "ding", I looked up  and saw the number.. looked at my ticket and saw it was mine. Those vampires must have been desperate for my blood or something.

Any way - got 2 colours finished and the next started yesterday - I'll be surprised if I can't manage to *finally* finish this today as the last colour is only half the work of the ones I finished yesterday.

Colours finished:
3854
3855

Working with:
3823

Ecru (paused)

Day 25

Got the grid finished and I'm pretty pleased with the result so far even though I didn't get as much done yesterday as I'd hoped - the trip to the computer shop yesterday ended up taking up a large chunk of the afternoon. I did do a bit of work on the embroidery while standing at the bus stop waiting for the bus to show up with youngest sitting on the ground leaning his back against my leg as he was too tired to stand - must have been quite a sight actually lol.


Colours finished:
3853

Working with:
3823 (paused)
3854
3855 (paused)
Ecru (paused)

Day 24

In between making the Cherry wands yesterday I managed to get the top half of the border completed and a chunk of the grid done on the lower half - I'm hoping to finish at least 2 of the colours today, perhaps 3, depends on how much time is spent going to the computer shop later today to get my sons new tablet fixed that bricked itself when I ran the android update to ICS which we were supposed to have on the tablet already. *grumble*

Colours finished:
None.

Working with:
3823 (paused)
3853
3854 (paused)
3855 (paused)
Ecru (paused)

Cherry wands

A long time ago I made a "wand" from a bit of lilac wood we'd pruned from the lilac tree - it's not easy to whittle down to any shape and I ended up with a "wand" that was only marginally thinner at the top than at the base - not exactly a very convincing wand therefore. I'd promised oldest a new one and also youngest one as well and I finally got round to making them. I used some bits from the hacked off branches of the cherry tree to make these - the wood had been lying in my garden for a couple of months so it's not really seasoned but nice and easy to whittle still. I left some of the darker bits in place as I liked the look of it, especially after I'd sanded them down to make them nice and smooth.

The smaller one is just over 16"/41 cm
The larger one is 17"/43,5 cm

I'll be giving them some TLC with some beeswax polish I have in a bit to make them shine and keep them nice for longer.

The kids were thrilled when they saw them and rushed off to the garden to practice their spell casting.

Day 23

In between sleeping a lot i managed to get quite a bit done yesterday and if you look to the lower right of the border you can see what the end result will be for it as I couldn't resist doing a patch to see what it would look like. Hopefully I can get this half completed today and then I can move on to the other half :)


Colours finished:
None.

Working with:
3823 
3853 (paused)
3854 (paused)
3855 (paused)
Ecru

Day 22

I love how fast this is going now - done over half the outer border and the grid in the orangey brown, will complete the rest once I've finished filling in the grid so that I only need to move the embroidery once in the embroidery hoop. Working with the second colour now to fill in the grid. I will be *so* glad when this is done!

Colours finished:
None.

Working with:
3853 (paused)
3854

Left to do:
3823 
3855
Ecru

Off back to bed now.. not feeling too well today :(

Day 21

Yay!! Finished the central bit at last! Spent a while yesterday finding and filling in the last bits I'd somehow missed along the way - but then with so many scattered stitches it wasn't easy to spot them all while working on it. I've already started the border which will be as wide as the bit you can see at the top right. I've reached the easy bit now so things will hopefully go faster :)

Colours finished:
407
950
3774

Working with:
3853

Left to do:
3823 
3854
3855
Ecru

Day 20

While working with the colours yesterday I really noticed that they added some depth to the embroidery as two of them are a bit darker than the most of the other more used colours. I'm really surprised I managed this much as my body decided to slam the breaks on and force me to rest by way of a massive, migraine like headache which resulted in me going to bed at 5 pm and sleeping till 9 pm and then again (after a bit of being awake) till gone 1 pm. The headache is fortunately mostly gone now :)

Colours finished:
3827
3826
975

Working with:
3774

Left to do in the main area: 
407
950

Left to do for the border:
3823 
3853
3854
3855
Ecru

 When I did finally wake I wandered into the garden to see if the blackbird that lives there left me any strawberries for a change - I was pleasantly surprised as I found 180 grams (that's just over 6 oz in imperial money) so I washed and sliced them and had them with plain yoghurt for breakfast - heaven on a spoon!

Just after I'd picked them I'd taken them to my desk to take the photo above and the blackbird followed me into the house and shouted at me for a bit - he hops into the house a fair bit looking for crumbs in the kitchen but it's the first time he's ever that he's done anything but hop around and fly away when I look at him too long. I think he was objecting to me stealing *his* food lol.

Day 19

I got quite a lot done yesterday despite finding several "half" stitches and some stitches I'd overlooked somehow which all required fixing. I could have done more but I had to research a new oven and washing machine as both are on their last legs unfortunately.

Colours finished:
300
400 
402
3776

Working with:
3827 (half finished)

Left to do in the main area: 
407
950
975
3774
3826

Left to do for the border:
3823 
3853
3854
3855
Ecru

Day 18

Getting colours finished now is much faster since there is so much less to do than with the whites. I finished another colour yesterday and will almost certainly finish another today as I have a nice quiet day today :) 10 colours left for the main area so it's getting closer to completion as we speak.

Colours finished:
945

Working with:
402

Left to do in the main area: 
300
400
407
950
975
3774
3776
3826
3827



Left to do for the border:
3823 
3853
3854
3855
Ecru

Day 17

Yay!! I finally fisnished the whites! I had to stop after doing that to deal with the keyrings I posted about earlier today as they *had* to be finished today. Going to continue with the "missing" colours that you can see the spaces for and then make the border.

Colours finished:
B5200

Working with:
Not sure yet

Left to do: 
300
400
402
407
945
950
975
3774
3776
3823
3826
3827
3853
3854
3855
Ecru

"Hup Holland" keyrings with charms

Youngest's school has the tradition of not celebrating the birthdays of teachers on their actual birthday but all the teachers of a year (or sometimes more years) get together and plot a party that lasts either all morning or all afternoon of a school day (in older classes they also do stuff like a sleepover and a gala dinner) and the kids then usually take a small gift of some sort (the teachers try to encourage something home made from the kids but youngest isn't all that crafty unfortunately). I really hope the teachers like them :)

So this year I made keyrings/bag decorations in the colours of the theme of the party "Hup Holland" which is the football supporters chant at Dutch national football matches (that's soccer for the USA people who are wondering :) )

The large things hanging from ribbons are 4 different coloured  (red/white/blue/orange) 60 degree diamonds sewn together with a layer of leave in stabiliser stuck in place with iron on adhesive so that I didn't have to stuff the shapes but could keep them lightweight.

I also made little "delfts blue" hearts with blue and white fabric bonded to a little heart shape cut from the stabiliser. and strung larger beads onto the ribbons and tied them in place around seashell or sun charms

I bound the tops of the ribbons together with embroidery floss then wrapped it around the ring 3 times and made it pretty with a blanket stitch going all the way round and then over the bit I'd wrapped the thread round.

Lucky stars bracelet and earrings.

I wanted to have a go at making those little paper stars I'd seen people make and after a bit of searching Deviant Art for a paper I liked that was free to use I found this: DeviantART v7 Lucky Star Paper and thought it would be fun to use. I didn't allow my printer to adjust the image to the paper size so ended up with two not quite the same size stars that were smaller than the rest and I used them to make the simple earrings.

Day 16

Despite yesterday's distractions I did get a nice bit done on the embroidery and am now getting close to finally finishing all the whites, thank goodness!  I was getting rather tired of them lol. I have 11 more colours to use in the central bit then 5 for the border of the piece and then I will (finally) have finished this. I'm wondering if anyone has worked out yet what it is or even what it isn't ;.

Colours finished:
3865

Working with:
B5200

Size reference: 1 tile = 15 cm/6 inches

In other news I am now the proud owner of a shiny new bathroom sink tap!!  It's huge - about twice the size of the old one and unlike the old one it's not trying to fall off nor is it "rusted" in place so you can't twist the tap bit to the side. I admit that when the plumber the landlord had sent last week told me he had to order me a new tap I wasn't expecting anything of this size.

Day 15

A bit on the late side with my post but well.. it was just one of those days that result in "nothing" getting done that was planned on but lots of time was spent doing it. I'm afraid the photo isn't the best I've done but I had accidentally deleted the wrong one and as I only just noticed it's a bit too late to change the photo as I've done a fair bit of work on this since the photo.

Colours finished:
None

Working with:
3865
B5200

What I did manage to do yesterday was bake some spelt buns (need to bake them for less time next time as they were a bit too hard lol) using a recipe from the Times newspaper to have with dinner last night.  They were however delicious, especially with the additional 50 grams of pumpkin seeds I'd added. During said meal oldest screamed and panicked because he thought a wasp had landed on him and when I told him to sit still he froze like a statue. Turned out he didn't have a wasp on him but a very sneaky caterpillar. Once I'd removed it with some kitchen paper I took a moment to take photo's and see what it really was.

Top view

Side view

What you see above is the Orgyia antiqua better known with the non Latin names of Rusty Tussock Moth or Vapourer which when looked at from above really does look more like a wasp or bee - pretty nifty camouflage really for a moth caterpillar. Once he had seen what it really was he had a good laugh and then kindly returned it to our back garden where it hopefully it won't damage the apple tree *too* much lol.

Day 14

Did a fair bit of work yesterday in between plotting another pattern which means that I finally finished one of the whites! Not much more to say today so I'll leave it at that *wink*

Colours finished:
White

Working with:
3865
B5200

Day 13

Only got a couple of lines done yesterday - having forgotten my allergy meds the night before I spent most of my time sneezing so decided to work on the Lego demon I posted about yesterday. Fortunately I remembered them last night so I'm ok today.

Colours finished:
None

Working with:
3865
White
B5200

Lego Demon from SATW

So I got this crazy idea to see what it would be like to turn one of my Scandinavia and the World embroidery patterns into Lego. I raided my oldest son's Lego stash for the job as he was away on school camp and couldn't complain about the mess I made hehe (that youngest has less bricks has absolutely nothing to do with it *wink* ).

First I built it one brick wide and counted one lengthways stud as a stitch but my son just didn't have enough black and white Lego that wasn't already in use in other projects for me to do that so I had to take it apart and start again.

I then decided to borrow one of youngest's large grey base plates and used that as the base to build on and counted one stud as one stitch and I found that I had *just* enough black and white to just about complete it - I would have preferred to completely cover the baseplate with white but well.. I need to top up the kids Lego bricks first lol

Artwork from this comic by humon all I did was convert it to an embroidery pattern (which I made already as an embroidery) and make that in Lego. If you haven't read any of her comics before you are missing out - they are amazing!
Scandinavia and the World: satwcomic.com

Day 12

Was feeling a tad under the weather the past few days so didn't do any embroidery till yesterday when I worked a bit more with white #1 as I call it - better known as "White" by DMC lol I'm getting close to reaching the bottom now with this and then will be able to go back and do the skinny left hand side with it. Not having oldest around certainly helped me get rest as I wasn't getting disturbed by bickering kids all the time *wink*

Colours finished:
None

Working with:
3865
White
B5200

Top: done the wrong way - result is uneven stitching. Side: done the right way - result is nice even stitches.

I also found out what I was doing wrong with the "Light Effects" threads that made working with them so horrid. I did what I always do: take a single strand and fold in half using the loop to start the embroidery on the work, but with the "Light Effects" threads it has to be done differently to avoid the ends unravelling while working: you have to put the loop through the needle and slip the threads through the loop so the end is held firmly in place on the needle. When you embroider like this the thread behaves the way I'd like it to , no unravelling, no core threads jumping out of the outer layer..  everything one would expect from DMC thread in fact *grin*

Run off my feet..

Getting oldest ready for school camp has really made me run around a lot more than I expected *of course* he dropped at the last minute that his swimming trunks didn't fit and his slippers were broken (when asked last week he said they were all ok lol) so that resulted in another trip to town to get that stuff with money I had earmarked for other stuff.  Then of course there was the time spent adding name lables to *everything* so it doesn't get permanently lost if he forgets something or it gets mixed up with somebody else's stuff.

He did come home with some news that caused me to spend all evening and part of the night baking: ALL year 7 kids that had done their bicycle exam (similar to a drivers licence but without the "weight" of it - it just means that kids know traffic laws and can safely bicycle independently in traffic) and passed - it's rather unusual for the pass rate to be 100% so I decided that all the kids deserved cupcakes and got baking.

I made 3 batches of batter: one strawberry, one vanilla and one chocolate and somehow ended up with 3 different amounts of mini cupcakes: 34 vanilla, 38 strawberry and 41 chocolate. after baking I decorated them with a simple icing of water and icing sugar, adding strawberry flavour to the icing for the strawberry cupcakes and brown sugar to the icing for the chocolate ones.

Once the icing had set I split them into 6 bags of 18 cupcakes each as the kids were split into 6 groups for the bicycle trip to the school camp location and to make it easier for the teachers to share the cupcakes to the kids. The teacher I gave them to was thrilled - she loves my baking and had been disappointed that oldest had chosen to give his classmates ice creams on his birthday instead of cupcakes. (I just hope she does indeed share the cupcakes instead of keeping them for herself lol) Next time i need to start baking sooner.. I didn't finish till 4:30 am.

Day 10 +11

Yesterday things didn't exactly go to plan and in my rush to get ready for an afternoon workshop I didn't have time to do an update and when I got back I'd forgotten I'd not already done it. (more on the workshop later in another post) So here is the blog post I *should* have added yesterday. I'd gone to town again on Saturday as I now had more time to get the things I didn't have time for on Friday and also treated myself to a bunch of  "Light Effects" DMC embroidery thread, which took an age to get onto bobbins when I got home. I got all the "Jewel Effects", "Precious Metal Effects" and "Antique Effects". Both Fluorescent Effects and the Glow-in-the-Dark. I also got most of the "Pearlescent Effects" but they didn't have one of them in the shop unfortunately.My inner hoarder is happy for now <wink>. This all meant that not so much progress was made on Saturday and the photo above shows the progress made on Saturday.

Colours finished:
None

Working with:
3865
White
B5200

Sunday after the workshop I didn't work on this project at all so there is no update photo for this. What I did do was start a little sampler with the different "Light Effects" threads to see how they stitched and felt once done. First thing I found out was that I couldn't use the same length threads as I normally do but have to use half the length and even then it tends to get looser and unravelled near the tail ends while I work - not so fun really. The "Jewel Effects" are most effected by this with the "Antique Effects" and "Pearlescent Effects" begin the least effected of the ones I've tried so far. Still need to try the Fluorescent Effects and the Glow-in-the-Dark but they feel softer on the bobbin so will probably also behave better. The ones I have done so far also all feel pretty "rough" on the fabric once embroidered so are definitively not suitable for anything tactile.  Going to finish my little sampler and my workshop item before continuing with the secret project today. Also have to do a load of packing as oldest is off to school camp for 4 days starting tomorrow <sigh>.

Day 9

Yesterday I had to go by train to the next town along for some stuff and took this along with me. I tend to sit or stand and embroider everywhere - on the platform, in the train and anywhere I need to wait. This time it was the 50+ year old male conductor who stopped to ask what I was making and he thought it was nice but is more used to pictures with embroidery than this, so didn't really understand it hehe.  His talking caused the people in the seats around me to look at what I was doing too, they all thought it was clever but well... they didn't really understand the concept.

I got the last 2 colours I needed to complete my collection of the basic DMC colours at the shop in that town as well - unlike the one near me they have it ALL - everything <drool> the guy who helped me was very nice and gave me one of the DMC catalogues that they they normally sell (to avoid people taking them and throwing them away straight away) for free so I spent a bit of time yesterday drooling over that and getting idea's my finances won't allow lol.

I did however fix the worst of the errors I'd spotted yesterday -sadly ripping out stitches was the only solution -  and I got a fair bit of the different whites done. If you look closely at the photo (click to enlarge) you can actually see some shading differences. The more white I get done the less the embroidery shows signs of distortion :)

Colours finished:
None

Working with:
3865
White
B5200

Day 8

Unfortunately the different whites are not showing up as well as I'd like in the photo's but in reality if you look at them in the right light you can see the subtle differences between the three. Doing the white certainly is making the embroidery behave a bit better and stop distorting so I'm happy with that result and will keep plugging along with the whites to make the whole embroidery behave. Spaces left at the ends of the white lines of embroidery are to allow for colours I still need to do in the central bit. Again not too much done - I was so exhausted after not sleeping much on Thursday that I gave up and went to bed early. I can see the bits where I was so tired I messed up and I will need to see if/how I can fix it (hopefully without removing whole lines of work)

Colours finished:
None

Working with:
3865
White
B5200