Finally!

You'll be glad to know, after having to see me bitch and moan about this for the best part of a month I have finally finished my page. I moved on from the brown and found some other colours, some oranges and pinks, and I've finished it, woohoo! It's now tucked away and I'll move on to something else. Dragon Rider is back out next officially speaking. But I've got a mini stitching retreat next week (ie I've hired a cottage with a couple of friends) and confetti is not my friend when there's gossiping happening, so I'm going to take something simpler along with me.

Nearly there

This is actually working up pretty quickly, the love of a nice repeatative pattern, it makes up nicely and I don't have to concentrate to hard on it (a good thing for my poor sleepy brain), and I'm starting to see the progress in my rainbow as well, you can't quite see it in this slightly poor picture but it's just starting to edge into green at the top, green is where my favourite colours start, greens, blues and purples make me happy!

This one is the same as I say every week, it's getting there, the end of this page is in sight, I can survive the brown. I have a duvet day planned on Thursday (as long as I manage all my jobs on Wednesday) in which case there is the vaguest of possibilities (I know, I said it last week as well) that I will finally get this page finished, I can't remember the last time a page felt so much like it was dragging, but slow and steady and all that. It's not like I'm going to finish this in the next ten years or anything.

Little bits

 The blanket is growing, and I'm really loving it now. Because of how I'd ordered the colours it turns out that all of my least favourite colours were in the first 10 stripes, now that I'm past those it's all bright and happy, and I'm really enjoying it, I've started the rainbow and this is one of my go to patterns anyway. Cosy Stripe by Attic24, with a slight modification as my second row of Granny never seems to be very well defined.

Second up, I'm really loving my spinning. I've finally got into it and am starting to manage to make something vaguely passable. The two on the left prove that I've got very definite tastes. They were from different places but it turns out that their colours were almost identical, although I like one a lot more than the other. My original plan was to ply them together but because I like one so much more than the other I'm still deciding what to do. I've had some suggestions from a spinning group so I'm sure I'll make a decision one day.

And finally, some stitching progress. I'm blaming the above two pictures for the fact that I don't have as much stitching to show as I would like, but it's coming on, I'm starting to get over just how brown it is, and hopefully another week or two will have my page finish. It's brown which isn't my favourite colour (in case that hadn't been clear from my recent moaning about it) and there isn't really anything happening on this page so I'm struggling to get through it, but I'm getting there, slowly but surely.

Slow and steady

 The crochet is back out, a combination of my spinning and the slightly cooler weather means that I've been able to get yarny projects without feeling like I'm going to melt. I put this away when I got about eight colours in to it and realised that there was a mistake in it, it was definitely tapering in. So I pulled it back to the first row and started it again and I'm now at the lovely point of doing new bits, I'm not just repeating the bits that I did wrong the first time, I'm now doing new bits. It's not looking like a blanket yet, but it's starting to get there. Plus if if was too blankety I wouldn't be able to work on it because, despite the fact that it has got cooler I don't want to be working on something that is still a massive blanket, so I can probably work another five to ten rows before I start to melt and need to wait until October before I can work on it.

The stitching is growing, although not as fast as it should be. The brown continues, it continues to be worked on and it continues to be so brown, but as I had pointed out to me a few days ago, there are other colours I just haven't quite reached them yet, and sadly I won't reach them on this page, but at least I know that they're out there, waiting for me, one day.

I'm so easily distracted

First up, my stitching, because there isn't really any colour variation in this page, it doesn't really look like it's growing at all, it was brown and black last week and it's still brown and black this week, but in a slightly fuller week. As some who's loving colour at the moment (and let's be honest, I'm a bit of a colour junkie all the time) I am struggling with this page at the moment, just because I want something to pop out with some brightness, However, I'm hoping to have a bit of stitching time this week so hopefully I'll have something more exciting to show next week. (Well, this week, running a little late this week).

And here's my pop of colour for this week, seeing as I am missing it from my stitching this week. Last September I treated myself to a Spinning Wheel at Yarndale, I had a bit of a play, but it wasn't clicking for me, and I didn't really have the time to practice and try and get better at it. The spinning wheel has come back out in the last couple of weeks and it's sort of clicked some now I'm spinning and it's not instantly falling apart, and I've managed to spin two different colours and ply them together and it almost looks like yarn. Don't get me wrong, there are flaws, but for my first and second attempt I'm pretty happy with these. The one on the right looks awesome (I'm so modest) in the hank, but I know that the colour jumps are too abrupt because I how I spun it (I literally jumped from colour to colour). I'm slightly disappointed by the one on the left. It was a beautiful rainbow fibre, but because all of the colours are trying to blend together it's come out a little bit brown. If you look at it up close you can see the different colours in there, but at this distance it's come out a bit brown. What am I going to do with these? I have no idea! I'll think of something, and I need to choose my next fibre for spinning, I've already got a pretty massive stash, and it's less than 8 weeks to Yarndale, lucky I've been saving. I came home with a wheel last year, who knows that I'll come home with this year.

I'm not good an evening photos

That fabric is a very light cream. I can't work out if it's my camera of my terrible photography, I suspect that it's my incredibly bad photography skills (at least I hope it is).

The Steampunk bookshelf doesn't look like much, but it's grown a bit. I didn't think this start through, I'm loving colour at the moment, and a whole lot of brown was not the right choice, but I'm getting there.

I do have lots of other things to show in the next few weeks, but nothing was up to my poor evening photography. I've done some dyeing in the last couple of weeks but I don't think it deserve to suffer that orange colouring (well some of it is awful and deserves to suffer, but not all of it.

I've picked my crochet up in the last couple of years, and the spinning wheel is out, but there really isn't anything to look at there yet.

Woohoo and ooops

 I think you can probably guess what both parts of that title means, but lets do this in order. Firstly Aratama, woohoo, I've got my page finished already, I think this might be a new record for me, less than three weeks. Granted it was a nice easy page, with very little confetti, but a page finish is a finish, and I know that it's mostly pink and red, but there is a cream and orange patch on the left, and that is the beginning of her her beautiful kimono. It doesn't look beautiful yet, I am aware of that, but it will do, one day, quite probably any years from now, but beautiful is definitely there in potential.

Secondly, yes, we all knew how this was going to end up, especially with my complete and utter startitis (I've just been told that I've been stelling that wrong for many years) at the moment, look, it's a new start, and not just a new start, but a wholly massive new start. This is one of Aimee Stewart's truly humungous Bookshelves, this one is the steam punk one, and it is completely amazing, or again, it will be, one day, possibly when I retire if I'm honest, but I don't need to worry about that now, so it's fine.

Happy stitching!

Told you I'd done more

I said when I posted earlier this week that I had already done more and here's the picture to prove it. I've finished the page, woohoo! There were only about three colours left when I posted last, so thankfully this was actually quite an easy page finish, there was just a lot of it. So, this has now gone away for a while :-( along with the majority of my own projects, and I'm now on gift duty for a while. Hopefully it won't be long before I can get back to my own projects again, I have lots of progress on existing projects and new starts planned so I need to get busy!

Happy Easter everyone, hope you have lots of time with friends and family and stitching/crafty time as well, sadly I'm working most of it so I probably won't have much to show.

A little late

I meant to post this about a week ago, and didn't quite get round to it, but there's actual progress to show for once, so I'm posting it, despite the fact that I'm now further on than this. Once this page is finished I'll be on quite a long gift run, so it'll be a while before I have anything of mine to post on.

I promised myself a new start after this page finish, which will still happen, but it'll be a wedding present now rather than one of mine. But that'll happen eventually (give me a couple of months to feel less over-whelmed by the gift crochet/stitching).

But anyway, here's Heroes and Heroines, this is page four and I can't believe that it still doesn't look like that much, I can't believe that I'm working on something so big that you can hardly work out what I'm working on.

And we continue...

 The blanket continues, and I've actually got progress to show, I still think I'm being a little optimistic with when I want to have it finished by, (late May), but at least I can see actual progress, but look at all the ends that need darning in, it's so depressing. I was being really good to begin with, but as you can see that's sort of died off a bit. Oh well.







And Heroes and Heroines is growing, I've finally finished the frame on this page, and I have done a little bit of cream on the peacock, but it doesn't show up very well on the picture. But next week I hope to have new colours included, it's all fun and exciting.
And I've got all those new starts planned, so I really need to finish this page off at some point.

Mmmm, orange

Only a little bit of progress this week, although since it's only about two hours work at least it's visible progress (oh how I love tenting). I've been spending more time on my crochet this week as suddenly there are a lot of projects in my future (hmm, where have I heard that before), but I try not to post my progress on crochet too often as I'm aware that it's not the most interesting thing to see, look, another stripe of colour. And I can't believe that there's still so much orange on this project, it's taking over the world. Sadly, I don't think I'll have much time for stitching this week either, couple of evening events at work, sigh, but I hope to at least be able to finish the frame off (best laid plans).

The reason my crochet is the the fore at the moment is I have the blanket I'm making for my grandad, the one for my mum, then three friends with babies in my future, and a friend who is also a (much more talented than me) crocheter asked me what I was doing. Erm, no idea, ooops. So there's a chance that I've spent more time today that I should have done mulling over ideas and colours.

Talking of which, she (the more talented one, henceforth known as Fluffy, has recently started her own blog which is full of lovely stuff, and can be found here! She's only just started out with her blog, so it would be lovely for a few more people to see it.

Progress!!! Actual progress!!!

 It feels like it's taken me a long time to get here, finally, a page finish on Dragon Rider, it seems like I've been promising this for ages, but I'm finally here. And it suddenly came together at the end. As is often the case when I was up close and stitching it I couldn't work out how all these blue and grey colours were going to look like anything other than a mess, but then I stepped back, took a picture and suddenly it's the shiny metal of his motorbike. He's gone away for a while but I'm sticking to (some) elements of my rotation (more on that later) faithfully this year, so it won't be long before he's back out to play again.

Next up, Heroes and Heroines has had some work as well, who knew there were so many shades of orange in the world. I had to go and do some of the green just for a bit of a change. It turns out that I don't really like orange, although that could just be when I've not my nose three inches from it, I haven't realised I had an aversion to it before this, but there's a white space where the peacock will one day be, and he's not orange, and there's green in there as well, and I am nearly done with the orange on this page now.

I could get used to having all this time off, it means that I actually have progress to show, don't get used to it, I'm back to work next week, so it'll be back to having nothing much to show.

And finally, the blanket reappears, I did promise that it would, and that it would have actually grown, which is has. It hasn't grown as much as I was planning for it to after my week off, but at least I've actually got some progress to show, and I will have more to show next week as well.

So rotation, cough cough. So, as I said, Dragon Rider will stand firm, every third page that I work on will be Dragon Rider, because I'm determined to finish it one of these days, but there may be some new starts sneaking into my future, in fact there may be quite a few, so much for no new starts, I'm so weak!

Hello blanket

I realised that it was a long time since I updated on my blanket, although it's also a while since I've had much time to work on it. However I've had the time to get back to it again and am loving it. I did all of the light green, finished the pink and started the dark green yesterday, so all in all it went well. 

And secondly, Heroes and Heroines appears as my HAED challenge on the Supersized page, I haven't managed much, but I have managed my 400 stitches, in fact I think this is about 800 (although once again I feel like 800 should look like more).

Hey look, a week of finishes or sorts

First up, I finished the dress, woohoo, so here's a pic of us before we headed out to LFCC for the day. It was good fun, and the dress stayed intact for the entire day, which is some kind of miracle. There isn't a single photo of me on my own, so this is me with the very talented Steffi who is an amazing Elsa, amongst other things.

Also, this is interesting. The SyFy channel does a SyFy Fan Cam and it's kinda cool, even for the unphotogenic like me, just because it's fascinating to have that frozen shot from all angles. You can find Steffi and I's shot here.

I'm already planning my next costume (it may be a little bit addictive), although this time I intend for there to be a lot less sewing involved.

Secondly, I managed to finish my third page of Heroes and Heroines, which means that I have moved onto another (new) project. I love how this is stitching up but after three pages I was starting to wane, so I've moved on before I lose the love, Next up, ExMachina, but I'll be back t this very soon as I do absolutely love it!

So close...

I was aiming for a page finish this week, but as you can see that hasn't quite happened, although I am quite close, and the staircase is definitely starting to look more like a staircase, rather than just random stripes.

Also, the fact that I'm back working on this means that the dress must be finished! It is, I'm so relieved! I'll try and get a decent picture of the finished article some time this weekend and so hopefully I'll have something to show what it looked like but next week!

I'm so slow!

 

I am loving working on this, but progress has been a bit slow this week, as I've been concentrating on other things, but you can kinda see the stairs taking shape.

And this is what's distracting me. You've seen some of the progress pictures on the bodice, here's my first shot of the skirt to go with it. It was laughably large at this point (ie I could fit a friend into the waistband with me - we tested, and it was dragging on the floor, I'm short but I'm not that short) but I have now elasticated the waitsband so it's all rouched and I've started taking it up so it's now ankle length, but I'll be honest, I don't have the energy to try and take a decent shot tonight, and hopefully it means that I'll have something to show next week. All my time is going on this right now because I've suddenly realised that I've only got two weeks left to finish it, so my stitching has fallen by the wayside a bit, and it turns out that I really miss my stitching. But, the sooner this is done, the sooner I can get back to it, and I wil be really proud of myself if this turns out even vaguely recognisable. And as it's all hand sewn (I really must get a sewing machine) I'll also be really proud of myself if it holds together for the entire day.

And I've already got an idea what my next costume should be, and this time I might be able to convince Ben to join in. He was debating this time, but I think I've lost :-(

So I'm carrying on with Heroes and Heroines, I don't know if I'll make it to the end of the page before I move on to something else, but I decided to carry on while I was on a roll with it. Scarlet's skirt is showing at the bottom, and you can see the beginning of that on this page as well, but this page is mostly bookshelf and stairs. I haven't got as much as I've had to show the last couple of weeks but it's still progressing nicely.

Next up I'm continuing with the attempted bodice making. On the left is draft two, it horrible fabric while I work out the size, but it vaguely fits and I'm proud to have got it that far.

Below is the bit I was really scared of, starting in the proper fabric, obviously it still needs a bit of work, and I had to tuck it slightly at the arm hole, because it was gaping, but I'm starting to vaguely see what I'm actually aiming for.

IHSW

Last thing on Sunday evening and I suddenly remember that it's been IHSW (and that I've actually been involved for once) and that means that I need to post an update. I'm a little disappointed as I was hoping for a page finish, although I'm not too far off, only one page left, but not bad progress, even if I do say so myself, especially as I've been working today.

Hope everyone else who joined in had a good weekend.

I'm loving Heroes and Heroines

The title says a lot, I'm loving Heroes and Heroines, I've finished the first partial page (I record of five days) and am now enjoying the second page. I know it doesn't look like much yet, this is the bottom right corner so it's really just bookshelf. In the very top of the first page you can see the beginning of Scarlett's skirt, and if you squint at the second page you can see the continuing shape of the bottom of the skirt. Loving it!

And it's IHSW this weekend, which I haven't been able to join in with in ages because of my shifts, but I'm hoping to actually have some stitching to show for it this weekend.

Bits and Bobs

So, firstly I've manage to finish the second page of Family Values, and the page really came together at the end, especially the scythe, I really wasn't seeing that until right at the end.

Secondly, excuse the gratuitous boob shot, which, now that  type it probably isn't the thing to type on something that could be searched by google, but now the idea of someone searching that and ending up here is amusing me so it's going to stay in. Also excuse what is an incredibly unattractive photo of me. Anyway, I'm learning to sew. I'm trying to make a costume for LFCC but I've never made things in my life. I bought a pattern, got it out of the packet, stared at it for a while then put it back in the package and messaged a friend who is good at sewing, she is not teaching me to follow the pattern. This is a mock up of the top, it's the wrong fabric and too small, but it's tailored and I'm proud of that fact that, with her help, I actually managed to make something of sorts.

And finally... when I started this year I said that there wouldn't be any new starts but gave myself a couple of get out of jail free cards. These were mostly gifts for other people, but also included two designs that I knew had been sent to charters and so I was just waiting for them to be released. Typically they were both released in the same week and I'm now officially doomed. Here's my first of these starts. Heroes and Heroines, Supersized by Aimee Stewart and charted by HAED. It took me quite a lot of staring to work out what this is, it's pretty much nothing but bookshelf, there isn't really any picture in this page.