Friday Freebie: Power Flower Ornament

Sometimes the oddest things can lead to inspiration and end up as a pattern - this is one of those times. It all started with my bf having no power at his work and tweeting about it, me responding and saying I'd have a coffee for him and Vicki of the power company responding to that. It was a fun convo and set my thoughts on the right track to creating this little ornament - though it doesn't look much like power any more, it did when I started it.

Journey: Day 9 - Is It The End?

Last time you saw this I'd just finished adding the dried river bed and I was considering the next bit to do. I stopped to get the Friday freebie and the usual Saturday Vakje per week made, which meant I got some time to consider what to do next.

WIP Wednesday

Last week saw the finish of a row of mini squares on my Vakje per week - this week sees the start of a row of slightly larger squares. The pattern was challenging, despite my love of Algerian eye stitches, as the directional change kept on throwing me off - and let me tell you that it's no fun ripping out tiny Algerian eyes!

Journey: Day 8

Having finished the roadworks on the left it was time to add that road on the right - or river as I mentioned yesterday. I had a think about things and it seemed to me that it would be more logical for the river to be dried up as this is a desert scene and if the river was a water filled one then there would be little point in having the choice of the oasis in the middle.

Journey: Day 7

When you saw this yesterday I'd started a road and like all roads this turned out to be quite the project. Aside from having to restrain myself not to make the split stitches in the edges far too big as I got closer to the edge of the image there was another challenge awaiting me.

Journey: Day 6

So last time you saw the embroidery it had just received sky and there was still a lot of surface to cover. I had a few days where I didn't work on this as I like to try and stitch up the Friday freebie when I can and I also want to keep up with the Vakje per Week that is released Friday night.

WIP Wednesday

This is where I left off last week with the Vakje per week: just one box left to fill the row. Last week's pattern was fortunately a LOT easier to do, with the most difficult part being where to place the repeat.

Journey: Day 5

This is where I left off yesterday having ripped as I wrote the blog (not sure if that was clear from what I said yesterday), we shall not speak of the hill incident again.

Journey: Day 4

It's been a few days since I last worked on this, as predicted, but I got the deadline things done on time so it was worth it.

Journey: Day 3

Day 3: I plugged along doing the long and short stitch - got 3 more lots of thread in and not much seems to be done for all that thread.

Journey: Day 2

This is where I left off yesterday. With the kids home from school for the May holiday (yes I know... that's the Dutch for you hehe) I somehow don't get as much stitching done.

WIP Wednesday and finishes

Here is a little reminder of where I was last week with the Vakje per week. This week I continued with the trend of small squares - very happily so as the pattern this week was a darning pattern and I have found that I'm not such a fan of doing them.

Journey: Day 1

Day 1: I decided that since I was going to have an oasis in the picture I may as well start with that.

Journey: A new project

All journeys start somewhere - this one started with the fabric. It wasn't always this colour - it used to be off white but with the help of some brown Dylon fabric paint it is now this lovely shade.

WIP Wednesday: The SAL's and More!

Having done those really big boxes last week on the Vakje per week I realised I needed to be more careful as it was only April and I am getting close to the half way mark of the fabric. So this week I went the opposite way - instead of dividing the width of the fabric in half after removing the 3 stitches I have between each box. I first removed 3 lots of 3 stitches and divided the rest into 4 to make 4 mini boxes. Unfortunately this did not create 4 equal boxes - I get 2 x 20 and 2 x 19 stitches wide - by 20 high. But it will work out as long as I keep them mirrored.

WIP Wednesday - The SALs and more!

The nice thing about the Vakje per week SAL is that it's easy enough to spot the difference between one week and the next just by looking at the pictures. This week's pattern was simple but finding the easy path to use as little thread as possible without having to start and stop for every bit was a bigger challenge - I can't say I was fully successful but I did my best.

WIP Wednesday: The SAL's

As always I like to start with a photo of what things looked like last week so you can more easily see the progress made rather than having to go spot the difference between this post and last week’s post.

WIP Wednesday - The SAL's

So... having finished the giant shawl I was itching to get stitching, I picked up the raven I'd started last year which I'd set aside at exactly the half way point to do the shawl. The pattern itself Raven Spirit is one I found on Ravelry - not exactly the place you'd expect cross stitch patterns but I've found that tapestry crochet pattens work nicely for cross stitch too. The Floss is "Nevermore" by Jodyri Designs and the fabric is a bit of white Aida I had dyed with some orange Dylon paint. You can can see how to do that here.

Hello Monday!

It's not often that Monday brings good things, it brings the end of the weekend for most people, which means getting up at ugh o'clock if you are not fortunate enough to be an early bird, so I thought I'd brighten up the start of the week with something nice to embroider - not cross stitch this time but blackwork, using a traditional pattern worked in 3 bright greens which will brighten anyone's day!

WIP Wednesday

I thought I'd use today to give a bit of an update as to what I'm actually working on, and also share a few recent finishes.

First of all I'll start with the photo at the top, it's Theresa Wentzler's Castle Ridge that I started last year on January 1st at the stroke of midnight. The last time you saw it it looked like this:

I picked it up again on Sunday and as you can see I have made quite a bit of progress since then - when I;ve finished the bit I'm working on now I'll have done ~1000 additional stitches. What I had done before was roughly 800 stitches. I plan on working on this till Saturday when I will pick up the next project, probably Mike's Mushrooms, but I'll update about that at a later date.

Before I picked this up on Sunday I spent around a week working on another project The "a border a week" better known in The Netherlands as "randje per week" I was planning on keeping up as best as I could but it wasn't to be, so many other projects pushed this out of the way. The last photo I have of this that was posted on the WIP page of the blog is this one: 

Made some time in the spring. I worked on and off on it in between other stuff when I needed something simple to work on. It now looks like this after last week's work on it:

The different motifs were ones I added myself, the butterfly and ravens are both from old magazine cuttings I have that were originally in other colours, the lizard I found on this site: amintkipattan.blogspot.com (linked to the page with the pattern) I'm not certain which language this is but the language of cross stitch is universal and I'm sure you will enjoy the patterns this designer offers too!

Another thing I have been working on recently is crochet. I am currently working on a purple and black hooded cowl for my oldest son. It doesn't look like much yet, but I'm only on the 4th round so that's to be expected.

I'm using Stylecraft DK special, the shade you see here is 1425, Emperor although it's a bit richer/darker in person. Purple is such a difficult colour to photograph. I'll be adding some details with the black I have of the same make and ending up with some rows of black too. It was mean and decided to be an infinity cowl, which I tried very hard to avoid, but somehow managed anyway. it has made the adding of the desired pattern more difficult but I'll muddle my way through. I started with a chain of 300 so it's pretty big.

Time for a couple of recent finishes!

First of all is the pesky backstitching issue I had with the spray of Jasmine when I used the colours in the pattern they just didn't show up at all, probably because I chose a green linen and not the asked for white Aida.

Ripping it out was so difficult it ended up in the drawer of doom and sat there till I unearthed it last weekend. I decided on the colours to use and I'm ok with the result but even now it's not as obvious as I'd have wanted, however I still dislike this piece as much as I did last time I worked on it, so disappointing. Interestingly enough the linen looks almost grey in this picture, which it definitively isn't in reality as it's a lovely pale green. This will now be moved to my completed list.

Then there is the ornament pattern I wanted to do for the Halloween SAL with Leonore and the gang, which didn't really go as well as planned due to the enormous amount of other things that needed to be stitched. When you last saw it it looked like this:

Some time in January I finally completed the last stitches, I'm not yet sure how i want to finish this so I'm leaving it as is for now.

Because I didn't want a stripy effect from the threads I'd worked the cross stitch area's in a circle instead of rows. I'm quite happy with the way this turned out.

That's all for now - see you next time!