I bought beautiful shoes!

Well, it's true I did! I haven't got them yet, I ordered them online yesterday. Apparently they've already been dispatched, but it seems unlikely that I'll get them before next Wednesday, the next working day. I'll post a picture when I get them because they really are beautiful. I didn't used to (awful grammar) have the 'traditional' shoe obsession, but it's developed in the last couple of years, then I discovered Irregular Choice and it's become a full blown obsession, although this is the first pair that I've bought cos they're quite expensive, but there was a lovely sale at Schuh, so it's all good.

Anyway, I'll stop obsessing about the beautiful shoes, and go back to stitching, which is what this is meant to (mostly) be about. Here's the latest update on In Love, I was hoping to get this page finished this week, but as you can see, it hasn't quite happened, it's definitely a lot more identifiable as people now, I think that that's the first that I've been able to say that. Haven't got as much as I hoped done as it's been a busy week (and who hasn't this week?). I was ushering the panto at teh local theatre one night, and out with the folks from work another, plus packing cos we go away to spend some time with family over Christmas, but it's made a jump forward, and I'm hoping to get quite a bit of stitching done over the Christmas break, seeing as I've got some time off when Ben's in work.

And finally, I hope everyone has a lovely Christmas, and if I don't get back on here before, also a lovely New Year, good luck with all those New Year challenges everyone. My first one's looking quite good already seeing as it was finish In Love. Good luck everyone.

Costume Chronicles and New Year

Another mid week post, what's going on?

Have you heard of Costume Chronicles? It's an online magazine released four times a year (I think) that's about costume dramas, with a theme each magazine, the current one (and the next one) being Austen. It's completely free and written and produced by people who do it for fun. I recommend it, cos it's really interesting. If I'm honest, this edition I'm recommending it even more than usual cos they've taken an article of mine for the current edition, which I'm very excited about. But I recommend it for anyone who finds anything costume dramay interesting.

And secondly, what are everyone's New Year targets? I haven't taken up the Crazy 2011 challenge (I think that's what it's called), because I value my sanity and that could only end badly. In fact I'm not joining in any of the obvious challenges for the year, I'm just setting myself some targets.

So, what targets should I set?

1. Finish In Love (easy, should be able to do that quite happily)

2. Finish Little Snap Dragon (again, should be pretty easy, should be able to manage that without any real stress)

3. Finish Winter's Majesty (possibly, but I don't know, it's taken me about a year to do a page and a half, leaving four and a half pages for the next year. I'll give it a shot, but who knows)

4. Start and finish another birth sampler, we've got friends who I suspect are going to get Pregnant this year, and to stop the rush finish of the horrible Tatty Ted earlier this year I'm thinking that this time I should just start one and work on it in a leisurely fashion - I've found a really nice Newton's Law one, so I think I'll go down that route, or possibly a County Companions one cos I've always loved those.

5. Start my first HAED - I'm not going to lie to myself and say that I'm going to finish it, because we all know that that's not going to happen. But I do want to make a start on my first one, first question, which one should it be? I currently have Titania, Lance and Gwen & Bubbles (Selena Fenech) Iris, Alice in Wonderland, Queen of the Night (Meredith Dillman) and Mask of Colours (Linda Ravenscroft). Decisions decisions. I think it's either going to be Lance and Gwen, Bubbles or Alice in Wonderland because they're my favourites of the ones I own, but then I could end up being weak and buying another one between now and then.

6. Oh yeah, and I've joined Daffycat's TUSAL, although there isn't much there yet.

I'm going to cheat slightly, (on the targets, no on the TUSAL) cos I've got some time off for Christmas & New Year (ie my last day is the 23rd and I go back on the 4th - the time off was enforced, we all have to take it, and weren't massively happy about it at the time, but now I'm facing nearly two weeks off and that's quite a nice feeling) so hopefully I'll get some stitching done before the New Year, especially as Ben's got three half days between Xmas and New Year.

What does everyone think, any thoughts on if I can do it all, or which HAED I should do?

What challenges are everyone else setting themselves for the New Year?

In Love & Snow!

It's Saturday morning, Ben's at work, it must be time for me to update here!

Another weeks progress on In Love is here, and it's actually starting to look like something, it's about time it does have to be said! It's another Vervaco and I am rather enjoying it because it's a really easy stitch but, because about 80% of it is scenery and background, it's spent a lot of time not looking like very much, but you can just see my people starting to emerge in the middle now.

In many ways I'm a bit odd when it comes to stitching like this, because there is part of me that likes to stitch round the edge first, then concentrate on the picture in the centre, especially if, like this, there's a lot of background and scenery around the central focus point. I think the thing is, I like to see that central picture growing, and lets be honest, most of us find the background a bit boring, so I find, if (using this one as an example) I'd stitched the people first I'd have completed the focal point then got really board stitching the back ground around it, it looks finished and you're just adding extra bits round the edge, (although you know that it'll look better when the background's done). My way, it's not finished and could never be judged as finished until I've finished that central point. I know it's all a bit odd, but there is method in my madness starting on the edge and working in. I think I'm going to do it when I start my HAED projects as well, do the 'border' pages first then work in.

I think with this project, if I really worked on it in the next few weeks I could get it finished by the end of the year, quite comfortably, but only at the loss of my other projects, and as I don't even have a date for the deadline for this yet (gonna be at least another two years - they haven't gone to Australia for the ashes/honeymoon this year, so it's going to be a two year wait now, I think) then there's no point hurrying for the sake of it.

And as to the other part of my title, snow! Those of you in the UK will have seen the news (and probably the snow as well) and if you've seen the news you'll know that everyone in Yorkshire is six feet under snow, except, apparently us. The entire North East has apparently been under snow for the last couple of days according to the news, but I was starting to believe that Harrogate wasn't in Yorkshire as I'd previously been lead to believe, because we didn't have any. But, I woke up this morning to a beautiful snowy view out of our living room window, so I'm quite childishly excited about it.

Hmmm, just seen Nigella cooking lemon polenta cake and it looks good, now there's tempting!

In Love has people

Here's another page finish, so I'm two pages into In Love and it's starting to actually look like something now, which is nice. I'm quite chuffed with it actually, its starting to look really nice already. Vervaco kits are lovely to stitch, becuase they're only about eight colours and are really simple to stitch, but look so effective when they're done.

This one's built up quite quickly this week, it seemed like it was going really slowly the last time I worked on it, but I've done about a quarter of this in a week and it's developed really nicely. And it's certainly a lot simpler and less likely to make me go cross eyed than Winter's Majesty was.

Time for an update

The continued stitching of In Love by Vervaco.

Yeah, it is still a whole lot of beige, but it's now a whole lot of beige with a little dark spot that is, let me assure you, a head, so as well as beige sky and beige sea, the picture now contains an itty bit of a person.

I do enjoy stitching this, and it's going to look wonderful once it's finished, but it's just not very photogenic during these early stages, although I have at least managed to take a reasonable picture of it for once.

This is going into hibernation for a couple of weeks now, as I've mentioned before, it's going to be a wedding gift for my dad and his fiance when they finally get round to setting a date and actually doing the wedding thing, and they're coming to stay next weekend, so I've got to make sure that this is securely hidden away while they're here, preferably in a much more effective way then when I tried to hide the one I was doing for Ben.

Haven't had much time to stitch this week, only a couple of hours, but I achieved all of the right hand side of the picture, so I've not done to badly.

This week is going to be a mixed week stitching wise, I lose my two evenings that I normally have (Monday we're going to the theatre, Wednesday I'm stuck in a meeting in Leeds until 8, so I'll be lucky if I'm home by 9 ) but I've got Thursday and Friday off work, so hopefully I'll be able to get some stitching then, more likely Thursday of the two. Friday's looking a little busier cos I've got my dad and his fiance arriving, also, in a moment of stupidity I told Ben that of course I'd be willing to be photographed for the new literature for the clinic, so Friday afternoon I have to put my money where my mouth is and actually go and be photographed. Ah well, look out for my face, in a chiropractors near you (but only if you live in Harrogate).

In Love Progress

Latest update of In Love by Vervaco, it still looks like a whole lot of beige if I'm honest, but there are now more shades of beige, although you still can't really tell what it is. I'll give you a clue, the top beige is clouds, the bottom beige is water and beige, and the blank gap at the bottom right of the shot will eventually be a head, yeah, like I said whole lot of beige. Haven't had as much time as I would have liked this week, probably put about four hours in. Wednesday is normally a stitching night for me (other half plays badminton, so I can put a dvd on and curl up with my stitching), but as I said earlier, we went to see Fairport Convention this week, so didn't get a chance to stitch that night. I might get a bit more done tonight, but we've got Ben's parents over for dinner so I have to start making dinner soon. Anyway, I've been working on this one for two weeks, so I think it's time to do something else for a while. I didn't even mean to work on it this week. I picked it up to finish a cotton off, then in turned in to "I'll just finish this colour", "Well, if I do the next colour it might actually start to look like something." "Well, I've nearly finished this page, I might as well go ahead with it." and so on, but it's definitely time for another project now.

Excuse the blurry picture by the way, If I turn the flash off it also turns off the anti-shake for some reason, and I can't work out how to make it stop doing that, and if I take the picture with the flash on it bleaches anything and you can't see that there's even anything on the material, it's all fun!

Anyway, next weeks project will be card for Ben for Valentines, I've already picked the design, I've just got to start stitching it. Don't think it'll take me long, so I should be all right to get it finished in time for next Sunday, if all else fails, I'm going away with work Thursday and Friday, so I can probably hide in my room and work on it in the evening.

An update on Winter's Majesty by Maia. I'm aware that it doens't look like it's grown much, but about 6 hours of work have gone into this since the last photo. I was off work sick one day this week :-( so I curled up in front of the TV with this, and this is what I achieved. I've since come to the conclusion that this page was either a really good idea to start on or a really bad idea. Having looked at the rest of the chart, this is by far the worst for confetti stitching, none of the other pages seem to be anywhere near as bad, and I think it's the confetti that means it's taking me so long to work on at the moment, once I've got bigger blocks of stitching I'm hoping it'll start to progress a bit faster. This knowledge has also made me think much more fondly of the project as a whole, now that I realised that it's not all going to be like this, and it isn't all going to be half stitches, which this section is. :-) Although I have to admit that I am looking forward to the time when it actually starts to resemble something, although I'm starting to suspect that that may be some time off.

Can you guess what it is yet? Infact, can you even tell that there's stitching on there? I'm aware that it's not easy, it's cream stitching in a cream background and my camera struggled. It was like that, without the flash, or with the flast which meant that it was basically a big square of white. My camera and I don't always get along brilliantly, especially after it decided that it didn't know how to focus last summer :-(

Anyway, another sepia from Vervaco, another present, they're just such wonderful kits for presents. In answer to the first question by the way, it's sky, lots and lots of sky, although I am aware that it really doesn't look like that at the moment, in fact unless you really squint, it doesn't look like there's even anything there at the moment. This one will, eventually, be a present for my dad and his fiance when they finally get round to getting married, although goodness knows how long off that's going to be.

I don't normally run more than one project at a time, it's just sort of ended up like that at the moment, and I'm currently undecided about whether I'm going to keep doing it when these are all completed or not. On the plus side it means that I can choose the chart that I'm in the mood to work on that night, but on the down side it takes a lot longer for each piece to grow because I'm splitting my (not very ample) time between three projects. The only reason I'm even doing it now is due to accident. I was working on Winter's Majesty for myself and started Tenderness for my partner, but that was meant to be (until he caught me) a suprise, so I needed something I could work on when he was in. Now I'm working on both whenever I wanted to. Then I decided that it was probably about time that I started working on my dad's wedding present, hence the three.