Oh la la

A lame title indeed but when I look at these two little creations of mine with their simplicity, their mostly neat and tiny stitches, all nice and neat I can't help but go "oh la la, you did good girly".

Oooohhh, something new...sort of.

Spring is well and truly here and the sun has been out in force today. What better activity than embroidery in the sunshine. I started my first piece of redowrk last night, a simple little flower. I altered my 'technique' if you could call it that, and it worked. I used white cotton and very, very small stitches, and tried Anchor instead of DMC. Overall it all came together beautifully.



I finished it out in the sunshine today and turned it into this:


I'll glue it into the ramekin as soon as I can find the faffing glue. It was a lot easier than I expected to make. A thrifted ramekin, a scrap of cotton, some stuffing and a gathering stitch to put it all together and voila, I have a new pincushion and finally have something to show off my embroidery on.

I copied the idea from here in case you thought I was being devilishly original. Alas, no.

Fabulousness

Last Monday was so bad that Tuesday was bad and Wednesday too. Pretty much the week over before it picked up. But today was such a good Monday that there is no way this week will be anything but fabulous my dahlings, fabulous!!

Fabulous fabrics, including this Paris Hilton concoction:



Fabulous things made by me:
The cat ball even came out in a ball shape! My whipstitch is pretty shit-stitch (groan) but it holds things together well enough. Just got to make about 4 more mice skittles.


Fabulous mail:
Vintage transfers from Jane, thank you so much!! Plenty of stitching to pass my time!


And more mail fabulousness: The Spring and Winter Stitchettes to complete my set. I owe my brother big bucks for them (his credit card) but pfffft he can wait. I'm far too busy right now!


And to round out the fabulousness I sold an auction on Trade Me so theres money in the bank this week. And what a week it's going to be!

Randomness

Randomness is the perfect word to describe my mood of late. Suitably vague. I have messed up two Wee Wonderfuls Stitchette embroideries so to take a break from those I ironed a heart onto some felt and just took it from there. No clue what it will become.



I want to come up with a good phrase to stitch in the middle. Or maybe a drawing?


I tried sewing a hot pink felt teddy bear but my machine tension crapped out for the second time in less than a month. It doesn't like felt I guess. Which is a shame because a hot pink teddy? Who wouldn't want one???

I have figured out the problem now though, something odd about the way the bobbin works. So maybe we'll have a hot pink teddy soon. But before that I think it's time the old catnip toys around here went to the 'farm' where old pets usually go and we had a few new ones around. Ginga still loves this but it turns my stomach to see him licking it:


He's fine today but some marauding neighbourhood tom got a chunk of his back end. I found a chunk of black fur under his claw so I hope he gave as good as he got. He definitely needs some new catnip to relax with. It's the weekend after all.

Grrrrrrr

Please excuse the typos etc. It's been a longer than long day. Ginga, the cuter but more annoying cat (extremely deaf when he wants to be) woke us at 4am and 5.30am. Why? Was he busting to go out? No. House on fire and he's heroically warning us? No. Just wanted to wipe cat snot on us and claw our faces until we patted him. Cats apparently produce a lot of snot at night too. Just so you know too now.

And this evening Dave comes inside to say that Ginga has been in a huge cat fight with a feline intruder, and is bleeding and covered in mud. We spent nearly an hour doctoring his wound, removing the other cats fur from his claws and coaxing him to drink warm milk. Now I could do with a stiff and preferably flammable drink.

My Pay It Forward things are all finished, just got to find the money to send them out. It costs a small fortune to mail anything. To change the pace around here I am embroidering something on felt. I'm making it up as I go along so who knows what it will be when I finish with it. I also have more felt for teddy bears including one piece so bright I bet you can see it in the dark.


I bought this at the thrift store today. It's got age marks on the edges and I can just imagine this being a prized possession in WWII.

Signs of summer

How can you tell summer is coming? When the cats play 'that warm grassy patch is mine!' of course!!


Might be time to buy me a pair of these beauties!!


One thing it was time for today was crafting!! I am doing a Wee Wonderfuls Stitchette (toe tapping Tilly) and on days like this I want to be able to sit outside with my scissors, flosses etc on hand while I get some colour on my pasty white self. I remembered saving this picture off Flickr a while ago so decided to try my own.


Smaller than the one above but I am thrilled with it. It's just the right size for my embroidery stuff and I can even just put it on the couch arm with my embroidery or sewing bits in it without it getting in the way. I'm ready for summer now! Oh, and best of all it only took 1/4 of a fat quarter for each side plus a piece of flannel to pad it inside.

Crafting karma

All my good deeds, giving catnip toys away and doing the PayIt Forward thing etc must be giving me major karma points. I mean how else do you account for the Japanese embroidery book I found at the thrift store today? $4 is about twice what they'd normally price a book like this at, they obviously realised its beauty. But considering I have one of these books that I bought from Superbuzzy for a heck of a lot more....$4 is like pennies for this.

Snail mail sweetness

I wasn't expecting this for a couple of days and had pretty much forgotten I ordered it. Just when I was trying to decide what to embroider I decided to check the mail. Problem solved!

Theodore

His name is Theodore and every lopsided embroidery stitch (note to self: next time DO NOT sew it together before you embroider it when you're a hopeless beginner!!) is stitched with love. His flannel body is made for cuddles from little arms and soon he's off to a new home where I hope he'll be loved. And of course he can't go anywhere undressed so he's wearing a dashing felt waistcoat.

Progress

Well for a break where I meant to sew and create like crazy I don't know if it's turning into the frenzy I hoped. We finally have clean laundry and I have watched Little Women and the BBC version of Pride And Prejudice (oh Mr Darcy....*growl* Colin Firth) but not much beyond that. My sewing machine has been moved to on top of my desk to tease me for not using it as much as you should be using a $500+ machine- daily!! That does at least mean the desk is tidy enough that the papers no longer threaten to eat my keyboard . I have also spent today doing an embroidery while swooning over Mr Darcy's saucy smile and those curls. Although thanks to him the stitches aren't great...yeah blame it on Colin Firth, thats right.

I still have to bake some cookies and sew something, anything, before my break can be considered over. On Saturday I am going to Craft 2.0 and taking the catnip toys to the shelter...finally. They stink!! I hate the smell of catnip but I hope I get to give a few out to the kitties to play with. Also on Saturday I get to pull the names out of a hat for the first swap on my flickr ribbon and button swap group. If you belong to flickr and would like to swap with us please join!!

Spiderpig, spiderpig...

After 8.5 months of being a couple Dave and I went on our second date tonight, our first time going to a movie together. We saw The Simpsons Movie which...well after 18 yrs of them I enjoyed it but didn't laugh that hard. 3 out of 5 from me. However if I get the Spiderpig song out of my head anytime in the next week I'll be surprised!

It wasn't until this evening though so this afternoon I sat down and did my first complete embroidery. I got real linen in a fat quarter swap recently so I cut off a piece, ironed on a Sublime Stitching transfer from my brilliant book and spent several lovely hours sitting on the floor in front of the heater creating this:

Nearly better

The cleaning bug has mostly passed other than a few light urges to wipe stuff which I manage to resist. It got bad at one point yesterday when I found myself ironing a couch cover. You know how big those things are? Luckily the fever broke and I'm in an exceptionally crafty mood now.

My little ironing helper:


I spend so long trying to find my desk to craft on that the crafting part often doesn't happen but I found myself with free time and enough desk space to do something. And since the ironing board was already out....I tried the first page of my Sublime Stitching book that I got months ago.

My first attempt!!!


May I draw your attention to the beauty that is my first try at stem stitch and the first successful french knot.



I'm a little bit giddy that I actually did these so well!

And it's not even my birthday

I got a present in the mail today and I'm so happy! The wonderful Eva sent it to me. The embroidery is exquisite and I am so lucky!

Thank you so much Eva!


Her embroidery is such an inspiration that one of these days I just might pull out my mothers hoops and threads and actually start to learn myself. But then I said that about knitting and crochet....I really do need to learn at least ONE of them.