Fish are jumpin' .........

I found myself in the garden today warbling 'Summertime' in a voice not unlike the famed Kiri te Kanawa. Well OK, not that much like her, but the sun was shining, my step was light, the neighbours were out and the fish were jumping! No high-growing cotton - this the the north of England, after all.

I decided about 5 years ago that although I loved the idea of myself as a gardener, you know - worn old straw hat, tanned healthy features, sensible shoes, in fact I hated gardening, so I invested a small sum of money and had my little corner of England landscaped into an accessible, peaceful, stress free zone.

Here it is.....

See - the fish were actually jumpin'!

I have quite a bit of  'show and tell'  for you. Mostly stitch related, a bit of dog, some stained glass and some amazing maths. I know!!! What can that be?

                               

                  (Not sure what Blogger is doing this morning. This post might be problematic!)

Anyway, I am very enamoured of Stacy Nash designs at the moment and this is her Butternut Tavern.

I used the recommended GAST but linen from stock which was a little paler so needed to change Lexington Green which didn't show at all to Endive - which did.

My lovely friend Carmen Sutton made me a gift of My Name is Lidya, Stacy's latest book and if you haven't seen it, it is delicious and I am sorely tempted to begin something from it. I have always fancied  a drum pincushion....... 

Carmen also sent two of her unused projects by Lauren Sauer in the hope that my friend Anne and I might actually make them. Let me tell you Carmen, Secret Garden is on its way.

Then we have 

                             

                         

                                        H is for Honey by Prairie Schooler.  

My sister Karen's friend lives in a cottage called Beehive and Karen asked me to make a door hanger for her so I chose this and adapted it for the purpose. I stitched it over one using DMC on a darkish 30 (I think) linen. It is quite small as you can see, only 7 cms ( just under 3 inches wide).

Had you forgotten about the amazing maths?

Well, here we go. 

The little bee on the back measures 1 1/2 cms x 2 cms. 

 Stitch count 17 x 22. Therefore there are 374 cross stitches in it. 

Each cross stitch requires 4 passes with the needle, making 1,496 stabs. 

What do you think the recipient will say?

" Aw look. There's a bee on the back"

Oh, little do they know!

I have just discovered why Blogger is so different today. I normally use Blogpress, not Blogger. 

Is that the men in white coats I hear marching purposefully up the path?

So, to press quickly on.

                     

This is a very crumpled 'Diligence' by Scarlet letter. The border is finished as is all the lettering and I have just started the house. Then an urn with flowers and initials et finis!

Mmm better not celebrate just yet.

You haven't seen much of my dogs lately, but here here they are now.

                                 I am calling this 'A Settee Full of Setters.'

Shush, quiet, or we will get nothing done!

Almost there now.    A relief to a lot of you, I know. 

After it took so very long to make the stained glass panel for my shower room, I decided to make some smaller items, like this dragonfly.

                                             

                               

I gave this one to Anne for her birthday. I used to give her stitched things, but her stitching is so much better than mine now. Hey ho!

I am making butterflies to hang from the trees in my garden. They are simple and quick to make and I have about 5 foiled and ready to solder. Stained glass can be leaded or foiled. For smaller items, foiling is easier and is just as weatherproof as leading. You just wrap thin copper tape around each piece of glass and solder them together.

One last picture. In the garden of the house next door to me is a cherry tree. It is far too near to my house. The roots are probably snaking through the foundations as we speak, but for a few short days, my son opens his bedroom curtains to this.

The blossoms are there, in fingertip reach. Absolutely glorious. We'll worry about the foundations another time.

After all, tomorrow is another day.

I hope yours is beautiful.

Love

Irene xxx

        

      

Stained glass finish

OK.

I know this is a stitching blog, but if you had worked on something for as long as this has taken me, you would want to have a teeny tiny 'Ta Da' moment and maybe even a discreet unhurried two-step around the kitchen too.

This is my stained glass panel. I based it on a patchwork quilt pattern.
Maybe 'Flying Geese', may not be!


I am sure passing quilters would know, I knew once, but this (insert swear word) thing has taken so long that I am not sure I have a working brain cell left now.


A closer look.

I did actually crop this to eliminate that white bit at the top which is a piece of frosted glass with light shining through it, but my iPad refused to accept any alterations.

So.....what did I learn from this very long encounter with glass, copper foil, lead and solder?

Cut carefully!!!

That's it really.

Cut carefully.

Then all the little shapes will fit together and you will not have to un-peel all the copper foil you laboriously stuck around each little triangle and you will not have spend hours on a grinder cutting millimetres of glass away.

I did discover that although a millimetre, in itself, is not very big, when you have an extra millimetre on two sides of 160 pieces of glass - that adds up to quite a bit.

Well - enough to make the panel too big to fit the hole for which it was designated.

It fits now.

Because of the afore-mentioned hours spent on the grinder, chewing up my nails, removing small but painful lumps of skin, being splattered by glass-dust laden spray.

Oh yes it fits now.

It is in the shower room.

Where it can be seen at it's very best by male visitors to the loo.

So worth it then.

Bitter and twisted - moi?

Irene xxx

Male visitors - just ignore the panel and concentrate on your aim - that's all I'm saying.

Talking to myself......

Do you do it too?

Talk to yourself?

Not in general life, although there is time for that too, but when stitching?

I say to myself things like ' to the end and one more' and 'up in one steps' and 'three the same'

No doubt any non-stitcher listening to these muttered ramblings would be quietly backing out of the room whilst phoning for those white-coated men, but I bet stitchers know what I mean.

I look at the chart and think I know what I'm doing, but during that split second as I transfer my gaze back to the linen, unless I have actually said the words out loud, so that I can hear them, I have forgotten what I am supposed to do.

I know!

It's bad, really bad.

Anyway, I did manage to concentrate long enough to actually finish something.



I would like to thank Ms Stacy Nash for this pretty thing. It is her 'Tribute to Summer' sampler and I just love it. I loved to stitch it and I love it now. That's a lot of love!

The sun, a rare object in our Northern skies, is shining today but the wooden window things are casting shadows. Some people are never happy!



I have this thing about leaving a light on in any houses I sew, so I have here too.


Stacy's instructions recommend using two threads for the white flowers - but hey - she's just the designer, I know better than her so I'll just use one!!

Mmm.

I did actually like the damask look of one thread, but then thought 'Well, OK, I'll try it her way' and stitched the next one using two threads.

Mmm again. Quite like the crunchy look of two threads too.

So rather than frog out one flower, I decided to mix the flowers, using one and two threads randomly.

And I love it.

Did I say that before?

Now a quick update on my Scarlet Letter Challenge sampler Diligence.



These colours are so vibrant and the words are so hard!!



Well the words themselves are not hard, as such, no - its the spacings in-between the letters that are hard.

It takes me ages and an awful awful lot of the above mentioned out-loud mutterings to decide where to start the next letter. I finished the word 'Diligence' - I know - the very first word - and immediately had to adjust the position of my second word to make it fit!

This is not good.

There are many words still to go. This is going to be sore-throat-makingly tedious.

But hey, it's not a race. Is it??

Just to finish, a quick photo of Bronte, caught whilst almost sleeping in the sun this morning.

She will cheer your day. She cheers every day for me.




Thank you so much for your comments and welcome again new followers.

It's lovely to have you here.

Love
Irene xxx

Scarlet Letter sampler Diligence.

Thought I would start with a little splash of colour.


The daffodils are out in the shops and are so inexpensive and pretty that they can be a little glow of Spring in every corner.

I am really enjoying working on the sampler I chose for the Scarlet Letter challenge. I was a little too late to join the original one hundred, but am part of the second group on Blog 2.

After much deliberation I chose Diligence and this is my progress so far.


The colours are bright and beautiful and the AVAS thread so lovely to work with.



A close up of the corner. The thread for the daisy petals was a little too yellow I thought, so I substituted AVAS creme which is a little lighter without being bright white.

I have used rice stitch, double running ( or in my world - back stitch ) and the dreaded queen stitch. I was going to ask my friend Anne to do all those for me, but seeing as she is stitching the same sampler on our Thursday night SAL it did seem a little unfair. I am just doing them and trying not to worry about it. They are the pink blobs in the middle of the green diagonal border, so - who knows if they are good or bad?

I also recently finished stitching Parson Brown, although he is not 'finished' in the true sense of the word.


He was a lovely stitch, started when the snow was falling outside.

But now we have daffodils.

Hey ho.

Lots of love and thank you for reading.

Irene xxx

A-tisket-a-tasket

I've filled my little basket!




A new year affects people in different ways. Just read a few blogs and you'll see.

Some look back, often in wonder, at what they have achieved. How many promises made and kept. How many projects finished.

Some look forward in anticipation, lists of new projects, penned with determined strokes, stretching far out into the future.

I do none of this.

I can't remember what I stitched in 2012. If I had kept up with my blogging I would have some idea, but I did not, so I do not.

I have one project on order for 2013, but aside from that I shall blow with the wind! I will see where my whims and fancies take me. I will dilly and dally along the way. I will care not a jot!

The changing of 12 to13 did have an unexpected affect on me though. I felt an overwhelming need to finish things. So I did and will show you some now.



These are four of the pears designed and freely offered by Marly from Samplers and Santas. I had five, but gave one away as a Christmas gift. It had to be forcibly removed from my clutching fingers. But I will stitch it again and try to keep up to date with her monthly designs. ( not a promise, more a pleasure)



This is a set of Prairie Schooler patriotic strawberries. I used a slightly faded variegated red and blue and really liked the effect. The red is WDW Brick, but I can't remember the blue! I finished these with little stalks of rolled felt rather than hangers.


It's too late in the year to go on about Christmas ornaments, but I thought I would show a few - just for the record!


This is quite tiny, stitched over one. I showed it to my son who thought it was a postage stamp!


This one is really pretty. Quaker Birds by LHN, again stitched over one and finished with little iridescent droplets. I gave this to a favourite aunt - she would have needed to be a favourite! I am sooooo mean!

Now a project that is started and will be ongoing this year. I am just loving doing it and would have been further on if I had not been distracted by the need to produce Christmas ornaments. It is Tall Year Square by Betsy Morgan.


It is a tall box with seasonal sides and the cube, which was our class pre-stitching, sits inside the box. Here you can see the Autumn side finished and the Winter side begun with the matching sides of the cube showing.

This is a luscious project to work on.

The linen is so beautiful and the threads are - well - luscious! They are Gloriana and if I could, I would have them all for my stash. The colours are so beautifully dyed and the thread never, NEVER, catches or knots. The sheen on the finished stitching, especially the long stitches is just amazing.

My one definite new start this year is a Scarlet Letter sampler. My friend Anne and I are taking part in the challenge and after much discussion we have chosen 'Diligence' to stitch in the silks. It is ordered and we are desperate to start. It will be our Thursday evening stitch-along. We will encourage each other, but hopefully we will stitch diligently to the end.

See what I did there???

I don't seem to blog often, but when I do, I try to give value for money, so thank you if you got this far.

I see I have crept over the 100 followers mark, so welcome my friends, I hope you find something to interest you here.

I will give news of the two dogs, Bronte and Meghan, next time, suffice to say Bronte just careered from one misdeed to another yesterday and was in trouble all day. One of the very bad things she did concerns one of Marly's lovely sampler boxes!

Mmmmm.

Lots of love
Irene xxx

First box finish....and a Daisy

Hello again,

My promise to blog more often was hardly worth the screen it was written on!

However, I have been busy.

I look at many blogs (ah ha - that's where my time goes!) and have always wanted to try a box finish. But there were difficulties.

For example, where do I get a box from?
What do I use to paint it with.
How will I attach my design, assuming that it will fit the space?

(Can I just say that I know that since I retired from teaching, my grammar has deteriorated. The first sentence in my list should say ' from where do I get a box' and the second 'with what should I paint it'. I know this and still I write like what I have wrote!)

Anyway, I found a box (at a Garden Centre, would you believe!) my blogging friend Carmen suggested acrylic paint, my stitching friend Anne worked out dimensions and stitch counts and I stitched it and stuck it in!!




This is the outside, the box is painted dark brown. I didn't attempt to distress this one, but I think I will next time.



This is the inside, with a wool felt needle page, a green check background and a little pocket for holding scissors. I was going to line the sides of the base with fabric, but choose instead to just paint it green. I am quite pleased with it - for a first try.

Also....another first try.

I am, she said modestly, now a jeweller.

I know!!!

My friend found a really good offer on one of those discount coupon sites for a day making jewellery, so we bought tickets and sorted out our beads.

But...it was so much more than bead threading. In fact there was no bead threading. We worked with copper and silver and hammers and punches and saws and stuff. And the best thing was, after only four hours, we actually had something decent to show.

We began with copper and I designed (for truly I am also designer of fine jewellery) this little tree pendant. It is a bit rough and ready I know, but it was only a practice piece.


Then we were allowed the real stuff........ ooooh silver!!!

This is my attempt. My favourite flower, a daisy.


I couldn't find a plain chain, so popped it onto this amethyst bead one and I love it.

This is a craft I could get into. (into which I could get!)

.........If it wasn't for the stitching, and the stained glass, and the spending of hours reading about other people's lives.

Hey Ho.

I think I should have retired when I was 21, then I could have tried all these things.

I am attending a class by Betsy Morgan at the beginning of November. She will be in the beautiful Cotswolds visiting our Sampler Guild and I am really looking forward to it. I will be stitching the Casket Etui and the Tall Square Year Box ( those are all the right words but not necessarily in the right order!). I am just about finished the pre-stitching.

About time you say? I know already!

My lovely setter Meg has has so much trouble recently. She is in hospital as we speak. She quickly developed diabetic cataracts which made her blind but luckily our pet insurance covered her to have them removed, which happened last Tuesday. Then she got an infection behind her eyes which gave her a lot of pain and could have blinded her permanently. We rushed her back to see the specialist veterinary eye surgeon and he was able to operate again and save her sight. She needs another 24 hours observation and then we can bring her home. She is such an amazing, patient, lovely dog. I really believe she knows that whatever we do we are trying our best for her. Can't wait to bring her home.

Thank you for your lovely comments on my last post. I really appreciate you calling by. Be assured that I read all your blogs too, even if I don't always comment.

Lots of love Irene xxx

I am sitting at my little desk in the bow window as I write and have just noticed that Bronte has eaten the tassel holding back the curtain. B.......y dog!!

Quaker ball- finally bouncing.

Here she is - my Quaker ball finished.



In fact the whole finish was very easy, much easier than I had anticipated, but it took quite a long time.

This artistic (!) photo makes the ball look as though it is floating in a sort of ephemeral way, but it's not, it's sitting on top of the glass funnel of a candle stick-thing.

I roughly counted how many sides I had to stitch together, and it's about 54.

54!!!

That's about 13 small ornament finishes.

And you thought I was just sitting here!

I showed it my son who thought it was a lovely ball - for the dogs to play with.

I wonder where he is now, that boy of mine.

I have to tell you a perfectly true story.

I was sitting quietly stitching together the two halves of the ball and as I was nearing the end, with only a few sides left open for stuffing, I began to realise that it would actual take quite a bit of filling to get that firm finish I was wanting.




I worried that I might not have enough filling to finish the job and thought I had better check.

I walked through the house to the room where I store my sewing stuff.

And saw this.

Honestly - this is what I found -




While I had been in my far-away-happy-stitching place, Bronte had chewed up a cushion.

So.......problem solved then.

I finish today with this little photo; taken in bright sunshine, but so pretty I thought I would share it.

I found, in an antiques fair, this old test tube stand, and I use it to display small flowers and greenery throughout the year. I think these little flowers are some kind of anemone. They grow almost wild in my garden, but I never planted a single seed.
Nature is wonderful isn't it?



We are having a lovely September here in England, hope you are too.

Thank you for your most welcome comments.

Love Irene xxx

PS. Lucy, I tried to email you but it just kept returning. Can only think 28 or 30 count linen for the Spring Rabbits. xxx



Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Quaker Ball

I know!

Here I am again.

A feast or a famine - that's me.

Anyway, whilst I have been away from you, I have been stitching, so I have a bit to show.

I thought I would start here with Amaryllis Artworks Quaker Ball.

There was a lot of debate about how big the finished article might be, with arguments about whether the given measurement was the circumference or the diameter. It clearly states Circumference, but this did not satisfy everyone!

I chose to stitch the middle size, fearing that the smaller one might be a bit tricky to manipulate for finishing.

And I liked the colours!

It was charted for 32 count linen, but I had a nice piece of 34 (or 35?) so I used that. I began by using two strands of the recommended WDW but didn't much like the effect so stitched over two with one strand.

Also, it had a border of chain stitch and I began this stitching with a confident toss of the head - after all I could chain stitch when I was five years old.

Mmm - I pulled it out because it was so wobbly it was untrue, even following the running stitch guide and resorted to my usual back stitch.

I am halfway through joining now. The finishing is easy, just a bit tedious. The instructions and diagrams ate excellent.

The ball overall will be bigger than expected ( see above ) but the joining squares are less than an inch when the edges are turned in.

Pictures??

Let's see.


These are the pieces of the second half of the ball, just starting to join them.




And this is the first half completely joined, still with some tacking stitches showing.

Interesting eh?

Love Irene xxx

PS. I am still experimenting with BlogPress and have changed the picture size. The results can't be seen until the post is published. If they are far too big, or just silly, I apologise in advance.


Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

A test posting using Blogpress

After having so much trouble combining text and pictures using Blogger, I am trying out Blogpress.

I use my iPad for just about everything now; it is so much quicker than my laptop or netbook.

Let me see if I can add a picture - any picture will do!




Well.......that seems to have worked.

This, by the way, is a photo I took in a very wet Ireland a couple of years ago.
Ireland is green and beautiful.....and very wet!!!

Now I need to publish and see what happens.

If you are reading this, sorry it's so boring, but if it works, I will definitely blog more often and it will hopefully be about stitching too!

(I found a video online which demonstrated how to use Blogpress. Sophie, whose video it was, sounded about eight years old - Heyho!)

Love Irene xxx

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Chaos. Oh - and a bit of stitching.

In the olden days, those golden days I now refer to as the BB Days, my life was easy.

I would flutter a duster around, walk my obedient and obliging setter, Meghan, in the morning, then after partaking of a little light lunch, she would sleep and I would stitch with her by my side in companionable silence.

In those balmy, hazy, long-forgotten BB Days.

But now I have Bronte.

Here she is at 6 months.

In a rare moment, when she is actually still.

Glorious.

And here we are after she has brought in a plant pot full of soil and scattered it over a white(!!!) rug.

 

Note the now-perfected innocent 'Wasn't me' look.
 

I was going to show the toy this stuffing once belonged in, but really - it was just too awful.

Note the small log retrieved from the garden. 

 

The white cafe-style lace curtain from the kitchen door.

This looks bad, but if you could see the brass rod it hung from............

 Mmmmm.


And now the really serious stuff.

A barely recognisable chart, not even stitched.

Oh - and the little red scrap??

Wall paper.

So, in the midst of all this chaos, I did manage a little stitching.

I needed something which was repetitive, easy and achievable and these
Prairie Schooler Christmas Strawberries were the perfect choice.

I could pick one up, stitch a little and then put it by without too much trouble.

I found a finishing site which gave excellent instructions and I will add it later.

The valves on this computer took an age to warm up this morning and I daren't leave this page even for a moment to check the website address.

 

I made a little collage of the individual strawberries
because......
the side you can see in each one is the seam.

I know!

I'm getting the hang of this sewing thing.

There is some old saying I think, which suggests that when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade?

Well....

 I cut out some of the lace motifs from the ruined curtain and may well use them

as backing on some small ornaments.

 

I am not going to be beaten by a six month old dog!!!!

Thank you for calling back after my long absence.

I have to sat that Bronte is not the only reason for me being missing for so long.

My mum was in hospital for 3 weeks and is making only a very slow recovery and Meghan, my sweet and lovely dog, has been diagnosed with diabetes and although she is doing well, she has a couple of major operations to face yet.

Lots of love  Irene xxx

PS. I have been away for such a long time that Bronte is now nine months old. I have had such problems with Blogger that I tried to publish this post three months ago but could never, after hours and days of trying, achieve text and pictures together.

So I gave up.

To spite Blogger!!

Ha ha. That showed you, didn't it Blogger?