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

Day 7 - First week is over!

As always it pays to save what you are doing on a computer - I'd been marking my progress on the pattern on my computer in Paint.NET but apparently completely forgot to save it *at all* and when my computer started acting up for other reasons I completely lost all progress that I'd made. After thinking about things for a long time and re-marking the colour I was working on at the time I decided to skip re-adding everything and just work on the colours I still had to do as I had kept the colours I still had to do separate from the finished ones. This caused a fair bit of lost time of course so I only completed the one colour yesterday.

I noticed that between the lines of the embroidery things are not as flat as they should be (yuk) so I decided that instead of leaving that space uncovered I'd add some stitching there too and chose to do a strip pattern in 3 shades of white. In the photo above the colours do not show so clearly but there is a tiny difference (I can just hear the guys say "Difference? There's a difference??") that is admittedly more obvious in sunlight (which of course is hidden behind the clouds right now).

Colours finished:
3772

Working with:
3865
White
B5200

Going to be working with these three for a day or so but I'll still post an update photo tomorrow :)

Day 6

I didn't get as much done as I'd hoped but then I'd forgotten that yesterday afternoon was the last chance to go birthday present shopping before oldest's birthday tomorrow so that needed doing as well (I hate doing it before then as it's rather difficult to hide stuff here so I end up putting it in the larder for the duration, with the obvious complications of doing that and having to hide the key). Admittedly the colours I'm did had more than 30 stitches each with the most being 103 stitches and the colours I'll be working with today will stay in that range.

Colours finished: 7
433
434
543
632
712
801
3860

Working with:
3772


There are 11 colours left that I haven't worked with yet for the main part of the embroidery.

Day 5

Yesterday after the sleepover party had ended I was able to put my feet up and have a rest, which meant I could zoom ahead with my embroidery while I did so. After I'd finished some of the colours with the most stitches I decided to work on the colours that didn't have many stitches as many have less than 30 stitches. As a result my list of completed colours is rather on the long side hehe.

Colours finished: 25
436
437
738
739
779
838
839
840
841
842
898
938
951
976
977
3031
3064
3371
3773
3857
3859
3862
3863
3864
3866

Working with:
801

With my joints playing up today (as predicted) I'm not going to be able to do much more than embroider so hopefully I'll put another dent in the list of colours I still need to do.

Day 4

As predicted I didn't get much done yesterday but I did get a bit done and managed to finish the colour I had almost completed yesterday and also get a bit done on the next colour.

Colours finished:
3770

Working with:
3064 (33% completed)

The sleep over kids are still here and will be wanting pancakes for lunch (not the small American kind but the large English kind) but I have a feeling it will become brunch because they are showing no interest in actually eating breakfast lol. Either way I'm going to be kept busy for a bit longer and will be more dead than alive when they are gone.

Birthday sleepover

It's almost my oldest son's 11th birthday and he wanted a sleepover party - I wasn't too keen on the idea but I decided to give it a go anyway and see how things went. (it's actually going better than expected lol) Any way - with a party there is party food and I spent the greater part of today in the kitchen baking, decorating and preparing food. First there was the afternoon party with a couple of friends who weren't allowed to spend the night but did want to come> I had baked a sponge cake and filled it with raspberry jam, made 4 kinds of cupcakes (melon, lemon, peach and popcorn) and 2 different types of biscuits (that's cookies if you are American ;) )  One batch was using an "Animal crackers" recipe and was first letters of the names of the kids coming to the party. The other batch was sitting dogs that due to the black splodges I gave them looked more like cows, stegosauruses and fish made with a sugar biscuit recipe. On top of all that I also served a "Chinoise" a French style "cake" made with mini rolled up brioches filled with French cream and then baked - I cheated and bought this in the shop though hehe.  I gave the kids a choice of orange, strawberry and blackcurrant lemonade to drink.

For dinner oldest wanted home made pizza - ones they could "decorate" themselves. So I spent an age cutting stuff up for them So I made the tomato sauce for them, red/yellow sweet peppers, spring onion, normal sliced onion, sliced cherry tomato's mushrooms, tuna, boiled back bacon (the dutch call this casslerrib) , raw back bacon, leftover kebab from last night, some mince I cooked specially, salami and ham. I offered 4 cheeses: old Gouda, young Gouda, a special blend of "gratain"  cheese and last but certainly not least: mozzarella. The kids had a load of fun making their pizza's and then spent the next 20 minutes complaining that it took so long to cook lol.

In a short while I'm going to be a good mum and make the kids a midnight snack, not entirely sure what yet but they will enjoy it :)

Day 3

Yesterday I didn't get as much done as I would have liked because I was up to my eyeballs in getting ready for my oldest son's sleepover party today - the house hasn't been this clean in ages - but that's mostly due to the kids *both* having their rooms clean at the same time for a change lol

Colours finished:
3861

Working with:
3770 (75% completed)

Not sure how much I'll manage to do today - got a load of baking to do for the party and then the party to deal with.

The Bathroom...

A couple of weeks ago I finally managed to get the landlord to see that the "wall" in the bathroom was about as safe as walking across thin ice over a tank of hungry piranha's and he sent a builder over to remove it. The guy got out a chisel and a hammer, put the chisel against the wall and leaned on it just before giving it a big whack and almost fell through the "wall". He was horrified at how bad it was - I suspected it was bad but didn't realise it was *so* bad. 

As you can see it didn't look too good after the builder went through the wall - he even took photo's because he said "My boss will never believe me if I don't take a few photo's." It didn't take him too long to take the rest of the wall down - it was water logged, mildewed and rotted through in many places and the only thing holding it up was the tiles lol.

Once the wall was gone we had the rail to remove and that left a nasty hole in the ceiling that I had to fix myself. Fortunately I CAN do that so once I'd worked myself up to do it I managed to do a decent job - it's not perfect but the only way to get perfect was to plaster the whole ceiling as the previous tenant had kindly used that nasty paint with bits in it and I just don't have the physical ability to do that.

Once that was dry and sanded I first painted the area's that needed it with anti mildew paint and then it was time to paint the bathroom a nice bright shade of green. As it's mostly tiled I could get away with a brighter shade than I could have if there wasn't so much white and I LOVE colour! 

Only about 75 cm / 30 inches at the top could be done and I chose to also paint the ceiling the same green as you can see in the image to the right

This is the bit to the right of the door above the sink and to the right of the shower.

 And this is the shower with the shower curtain that I installed yesterday after my shoulder had recovered from the painting - it's always fun to get out my power tools to do a job that far too many men *still* don't think that a woman can do - or should do in some cases. It was nice to have a shower with the shower curtain in place for the first time as I'd had to shower without for a couple of weeks before I was able to get started on this.

Day 2 of the project

I got a fair bit done on the project in-between doing other things around the house (more on that later). It's now 4 x 3 1/4 inches and for now that's not going to change too much as the basic outline is now done.

Colours finished:
3853 (will need more of this for the border)
301
435

Working with:
3861

A good friend of mine told me yesterday it looked like a slide with bacteria on it lol.

Secret project...

Or not so secret as I will be posting pictures...  however I'm going to leave you to guess what I'm making *wink*

What I can say is that it's small - the entire piece of 18 stitches per inch Aida I'm using (that's a type of embroidery fabric for the non cross stitcher's out there :) ) is 8 x 7 inches, the pattern is 81 x 96 stitches and I'm using 53 different shades of brown in it. I also didn't need to buy a single colour to make this hehe.

I started this yesterday (well the 2 stitches I did the night before don't really count ;) ) and this is what I have done so far:

Area done so far: 3 3/4 x 1 7/8 inch (which happens to be about the same size as my phone)

Next update: Tomorrow with a photo taken before I start embroidering :)

Update time...

So life has been busy and I've not really been remembering to post here... not that I've not done anything - just not posted it all here too.

Cooking wise I've mostly been doing stuff I've posted about already so you don't need to see it again ;)

I've lately been more into embroidery than into quilting so that's what I've mostly been doing. Below are some pictures of what I've been making instead - many of the pieces are inspired by humon's SATW comic which I LOVE.