WIP Wednesday

Last week the Weavers Tapestry Band Sampler looked like this. Normally you would not have to play spot the difference but as I mentioned yesterday I used the seam ripper as much as the needle and didn't get much of anywhere with it so I put it aside before I flung it into a bin.

WIP Wednesday

Last week when you saw this I was here having done as much as I was planning to on week four of the Weavers Tapestry Band Sampler SAL

WIP Wednesday

Last week the Weavers Tapestry Band Sampler looked like this and those of you who have seen the previous post will know that it's changed quite a bit since then...

WIP Wednesday

Last time I showed you this I'd done a few stitches towards this week's part of the Weavers Tapestry Band Sampler SAL. In the meantime as you may have seen in the previous post I did finish the stitching for the week.

WIP Wednesday

This was as far as I'd gotten with stitching this last week - obviously as it's a weekly update SAL you will see it posted every time the pattern is released but what most of you don't know is that I'm planning on getting to the point where I'm a few weeks ahead in case my health decides to get in the way of stitching. While I can post pictures that are spoiler free I will do so but otherwise it will be hidden.

WIP Wednesday! And a Freebie Because... Freebie!

A bit late in the day but still on Wednesday... the first WIP Wednesday post in a long while. I've just been too busy and I have to admit for a quick update Instagram has been easier to do than a blog post.

WIP Wednesday

As always I'm starting with my Vakje per Week. This time the pattern was a rather large one and my space rather tiny so instead of doing two whole and a partial shape I offset it all and did lots of partial ones.

Wip Wednesday - A Two Week Wrap Up

Unfortunately not everything goes to plan in life and last week's WIP Wednesday blog was one of the casualties of this. This week I have succeeded at making the post so I hope you enjoy the pictures! As always I'm starting with the Vakje Per week which you can see has had 2 weeks worth of stitching since you last saw it.

WIP Wednesday - Extended Version

It's been quite some time since I last did a WIP Wednesday post due to the summer holiday, some health issues and stitching up a storm trying to catch up and keep up with things - I even missed the TUSAL posts! Today is finally that post I keep starting and not completing due to lack of time to do the big ass post required for it.

WIP Wednesday: SAL Updates

Last week I showed you my Vakje per Week which looked like this with the trees being the most recent addition to the embroidery. This week's pattern was lovely and easy and I was able to finish it on Saturday - the same day the pattern was released!

WIP Wednesday: SAL updates

It's been a busy week for me and the weekend was even busier as my bf was over for the weekend! As a result I didn't get so much stitching done (I bet that was a surprise lol) but I did get some stitching done as my bf is wonderful and supportive. The first image is the Vakje per Week SAL as you saw it last week. Below you can see where I ended up this week.

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!

Halloween SAL with Leonore and The Gang - Week 1

Leonore wanted to do a Halloween SAL using The Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery's Halloween Spooky Sampler.  Leonore, Nancy and Carla are going to stitch a square per week starting last week. The rest of us girls are going to stitch whatever we choose AND SO CAN YOU! How? Read more here: Halloween SAL with Leonore and The Gang
(please note I shamelessly stole the title and the above paragraph, with a few changes of my own, from Carla's post as she wrote it so well <3)

I am not the biggest fan of the cute style of The Frosted Pumpkin, though I do admire what people stitch of theirs, it's just not my style, so I decided to do a couple of things from the Just CrossStitch Halloween special.

I am planning to do the owl from the cover, the crow on a pumpkin (I was sure it was a raven!) from page 80 and the Halloween Days sewing basket from page 88-90 if time allows. There are several other patterns that strike my fancy but I'm pretty sure I won't have time to do them too.

Over the last week I started working on the crow as the threads and fabric I'd ordered had arrived and I was keen to start something small and not green between all the green dots I have been doing for the Fob a Month project, which came so soon after all the greens of the August ornament. As my luck would have it the first colour I had to work with was green - of course lol. Fortunately it was a dark green so it was a very different green.

I am using The Gentle Arts threads for this, in the recommended colours but I'm not stitching in rows as I didn't want stripy effect one usually gets from doing this with variegated threads. Instead I'm stitching in circles - first doing the outlines and then filling them in, which causes the more blotchy effect you see in the photo, which I personally prefer and find more natural looking. It is of course slightly more time consuming than just doing rows and may well use a bit more thread but for something small like this when I've bought the threads specially, I don't need to worry that I'll run out of thread.

I am going to complete the next bit of the polka dot set before going on to do the monthly ornament which is due on Friday and then I shall be able to work on this again - this is the downside of this being a for fun project as it's the first to be set aside when deadline stuff happens.

Till next time! And don't forget: it's not too late - you can join in too!