Playing Catch-up

Well H-e-l-l-o!  Gosh it's been a while hasn't it?  I hope you all had a lovely summer!

Mine was good, all things considered.  As I mentioned we moved house in the first week of July.  I had forgotten how much work and time that all takes up.  I also realized just how much stuff we had tucked away in all those nooks and crannies of our last house.  It sure is something to see everything you own, out in the open, all at once!  All our previous moves generally went off without a hitch;  this time there were a few glitches, including the fairly major contract snafu nobody noticed until our things were being packed up.  For a few weeks we ended up owning two houses, which was really rather stressful at the time.   With the help of some good friends and former neighbours  we were able to leave the old house in safe hands until the new possession day.  Thankfully that is all over now and we are able to enjoy our new home and explore our new surroundings.

 (One of the many works in progress I have going on!)

Craft wise I have been starting a lot of things, which has been fun, but I need to focus on finishing some more things.  I had a bunch of works in progress and finishes I wanted to show you, but it was taking me so long to get everything organized for a blog post I decided to just sit down and put in what I could think of right now.   I can see now that I have forgotten to photograph some things, but that will just have to wait for another time.

I'll start with the cross stitching:  I have some finishes to show you!  Vintage Christmas by Country Cottage Needleworks is all done and I will be able to frame it up for this Christmas.

I love this design, but truthfully I'm feeling a little "meh" about the finish.  I think it might be the fabric colour that is putting me off.  I said I would frame it up, but I guess I'm not so sure yet.  I think I just need a little distance from it and maybe when I take it out in December I will love it all over again.

I wanted to dedicate July to Christmas stitching, so in addition to Vintage Christmas I stitched a few ornaments as well.  I only did two:  the seagull and snowmen trio, but with the house move in there and also the bigger design I am happy with what I accomplished.  Both of these designs are also by Country Cottage Needleworks.
 The mistletoe ornament is a recent finish, and it's a Lesley Teare design from Cross Stitch Collection, November 2015.

My Stitcher's Alphabet has not seen the light of day since we moved, but I did complete two more letters after my last post here and before we pulled up stakes.  'O' for Overdyed thread and 'N' for Needle:

This was my favourite row to work on so far.  I loved the colours and all the motifs.  After this there are only two and a half more rows to go, so I really should just knuckle down and get it finished.

This next design is from the September 2012 edition of Cross Stitch and Needlework, by Ursula Michael.  I took a photo of the finished stitch using a fall napkin as a back drop.   I liked the effect so much I  stitched the two together and turned it into a pillow cover!  Now I'm down to three napkins but I'll think of something to do with those.

On My Hooks...

 It was such a hot summer I didn't do too much crocheting.  Thankfully I was able to track down one more skein of the yarn I needed to finish my corner to corner blanket:

 I was hoping to gift this to my niece for her new baby this month:  wouldn't you know she had a sweet boy instead?  Off to the cupboard it goes, waiting for the next little girl to arrive in the family someday.

I made some new dishcloths for the new house:

 I am trying to reduce the yarn stash a little bit and these are always great stash busters.  I am finding though, that with the ever-shrinking skein sizes, pretty soon one skein will not be enough for a dishcloth.  I suppose if I learned to knit them instead I could stretch the skein out a bit more.  If you are a dish cloth knitter, do you find you have a decent amount of yarn left over?  These are all made with Bernat Handicrafter cotton, and in most cases I only have a few inches of yarn left over.  I have already had to reduce the foundation row count, and the border size.

I made a companion apple pot holder to the red one I made in 2014:

 This is a free pattern, available here.  The pattern makes one apple:  I crochet a second one in the skin colour so I can stitch them together and have a double thickness.

One nice discovery here was a lovely yarn shop where I have added significantly to their coffers!  On one trip I found this hand painted yarn by Briggs and Little called "Eggplant".  If you follow me on Instagram you will have seen the other colour way I couldn't leave behind called "Flamingo".  I am making the One Button Wrap out of the eggplant and am getting close to finishing.

 I have since pulled out the four inches on the right side:  you can see how the colour changes in that skein are much darker than the rest.  I didn't think it would be so noticable but once I took the photograph I could really see it.  I have another skein that should work better, and I can use the darker one in the border.

OK, that's all for today!  Thank you for sticking around and visiting me here in my little crafty space.  I see I am pretty far behind in my blog reading too, so I hope to visit you soon if you have a blog.  If you're on Instagram let me know!  I don't post a lot there but I love my daily dose of crafty goodness and pretty pictures.  My moniker there is Jenn's Crafty World as well.

Take care my friends, and,

 Happy Days!

Jenn

June Happenings

Hello!  Did you have a lovely June?  I think I did:  it felt busy and yet at times it felt like it was dragging along.  I think the waiting around we have been doing before our house move accounted for the dragging bit.  It's a bit difficult for a big homebody like me to be unable to feather her nest.  I'm in my current home, but now all my thoughts are already in the next one.  Soon the transition will happen and Home will consume me for a while with all its unpacking and putting away and feathering and nesting.  I have tried to use this quiet time for crafty pursuits, because I know for the next couple of weeks I won't get much opportunity.  I had so many plans for this time, but when faced with all the choices I didn't know what to do.  I decided to just pick up my cross stitching as that seemed the easiest.  Suffice it to say my Stitcher's Alphabet is growing:  I worked on three letters this month.  'P' for Pins;' Q' for Quilt and 'R' for Redwork.  I probably could have completed another one but the background for 'R' was so boring I kept putting it down.

Here we are to date:

I also made some progress on 'Vintage Christmas' by Country Cottage Needleworks.  

I have to frog the birds because they are supposed to be white.  That makes much more sense than pink, and at first I thought they were supposed to be pastel coloured cardinals!  I think I just did too much cross stitch that day and couldn't read the pattern correctly.  I decided I would like to work on Christmas designs only in July when I have the time, so hopefully I can get this completed and get to work on another larger seasonal design.

This next little design was a freebie with Cross Stitch Crazy magazine and I loved the colours of course!  I switched out the aida for evenweave and I thought it would be a perfect stitch for my new home.  I believe the designer is Emma Congden on this one.

Another cute magazine freebie came with The World of Cross Stitching magazine this month too.  There was a little booklet of cross stitch alphabets with two free skeins of Madeira floss in pink and blue.  As soon as I saw this Union Jack alphabet I knew just what I wanted to make:

I keep my loose tea tins in this basket and thought a little label would be so cute.

I made a few little accessories for my stitching as well.  I have seen a lot of needle minders on various You Tube stitching videos and was intrigued.  I have a beautiful one from Kelmscott, but it never occurred to me I could make my own!  This is proving to be quite addicting I tell you....

Some pretty autumnal coloured beads at the dollar store inspired me to make a scissor keep for Fall:

I saw these charms at the craft store and I think I actually squealed with delight.  (According to My Favourite Girl I did and that's why she ran the other way)  How cute are these?!  

You had better believe I scouted out a coupon tout de suite in order to buy these.  I attached the little charms with jump rings to one of those necklace extenders, then hooked it on to a larger lobster clasp.  Now it's a cutie-pie zipper pull for one of my project bags.

My crochet hook saw some action in June as well.  I first saw this corner to corner baby blanket on Becky's blog.  I am always finding projects there I want to make, and since I had half of the required yarn already in my stash I could get started right away.  This is called the 'Spring into Summer' blanket and it is a free pattern you can find HERE.  

This was nice to work on in the hotel room and car while on our house hunting trip.  The first half seems to take a while, but I noticed the second half just zipped by.  My issue is now this:  if you look in the top left corner you will see I ran out of yarn just as I was about to finish the main section.  The pattern says it takes three balls of this yarn to make the blanket with a border.  My crocheting must have been pretty relaxed because what you see here took three balls.  I went to two stores to get another ball and both are out of stock.  Talk about frustrating!  Now I have to wait until we move to our new town and hope I can track one more ball down there.  It would have been nice to have it all completed before I move, but I suppose there are worse things to do than having to source craft shops in a new city aren't there?

Now, I'm sure you will have a hard time believing this (!!), but sometimes I need a creative project I can really sink my teeth into.  Well, this time it was a sander, but you know what I mean!

Our current kitchen table will be too big to fit into our new kitchen, so I ended up buying a smaller one from a friend.  I spent an enjoyable day getting dusty and making lots of noise by sanding down and refinishing the table top.  I left the bottom alone because I like the painted part.  If there was such a thing as a craft nerd, I think I would definitely make the cut.... Moving in three weeks?  How about re-doing a table? 

 Yes please!!!

Well my friends, I am finally at the end.  I have said a lot of goodbyes this past month, and in the next week there will be many more.  This is likely the last update I will post before moving, so next time you hear from me I will have a new base for my Crafty World.  Thank you so much for visiting, and I look forward to seeing what you are up to in the next few weeks.  Have a wonderful summer!!

xo Jenn

January Finishes

Hello again!  Happy End of January!

I wanted to check in before the month ended and show the rest of my January makes.  I'm so happy I made it in time!

This has been a good month for stitching:  light levels in the morning have been just right to indulge in some after- breakfast cross stitching.  I have to confess to quite a few pyjama clad mornings while I plied needle and thread.  But heck, it's January right?

One of my first finishes was this little design on the left by Lizzie Kate.

I realized I had no smalls for the month of January so this was a good way to start.  The 'Peace' design is from The Drawn Thread, and I actually stitched it before Christmas and forgot to show it.  It didn't really lend itself to being an ornament, so I finished it as a small to add to my new January collection.

Because it takes three to make a collection I stitched these little mittens to go along with the others.  They came out super small because the fabric is 40 count.  While I like how designs look on 40 count when finished, I have to confess I don't love stitching on it.  Too hard on the eyes!
I wanted to break out of my pillow finish 'comfort zone' so tried a little tag design instead.  I'm kind of on the fence about it, but I like it enough I will try again.  The design is an old one from Helga Mandl.

I also completed an ornament for the month.  Well, I'm probably cheating a bit because I didn't actually stitch it this month.  I stitched this Country Cottage Needleworks design at least five years ago and never got around to finishing it off.  I'm not sure whether I'm happier about having my first ornament for the year done, or the fact I finished off some stitching that has been sitting around since 2008!

Speaking of long term finishes, I brought 'Stitcher's Alphabet' back to the table and completed the 'H' block.  I realize that wanting to finish two letters per month is too ambitious if I want to work on other stitching as well.

All that finishing was contagious, so I completed another work in progress from last year.  I think I started this last Spring:

I broke away from the pillow finish again!  'Chut je brode' (Quiet I'm stitching) is mounted on cardboard and made into a wall hanging.  I tried a ruched ribbon trim for the first time to cover the seams: I think I'm on the fence about that as well...  Anyway, another one out of the 'In' box is always good!

Now, the last thing I promise!  I crocheted myself another Nordic Shawl, this time in wool.
 ( Last year I made this up in cotton, and if you want to see it go HERE.)

This pattern is by Annette of My Rose Valley, and I bought the pattern from her etsy shop.  It is a pure delight to stitch, and even a beginner could do it.  I just love it, and it's not often I will stitch something more than once.  I may even do it a third time...

I used a Norwegian wool called Smart that I found at my local yarn shop.  Because I didn't put myself at the mercy of the clearance bin I was able to hook up the shawl as written:  no having to skimp on border colours or edges.

It's like a nice, big hug when you wrap it around.

 And that, my friends, is what I will leave you with:  a nice warm hug to end January with and as thanks for visiting.

Happy Days!!
Jenn

Winter Pursuits

Whew!  Only four more days until we see the end of February!  Are you as excited as I am?
When I visit my favourite English blogs I have been feeling a teensy bit envious to see their snowdrops, and crocus shoots, and tiny tree buds.  I know Spring will come here, eventually, and in the meantime I certainly have enough little things on the go to keep me busy.

I finished the 'C' block of my Stitcher's Alphabet:

I changed the colours just a bit:  I prefer the softer corals to the oranges the chart calls for.  Now I move down onto the next row of  D - H.  That should take me until mid or end of May if I can keep on track.

Before Christmas I purchased some Scrub It yarn from Mary Maxim.  It is a cotton yarn with a bit of fringe on it, meant to use for kitchen scrubbies.  I have been hooking away, trying out all sorts of scrubbies.  I made some roses:

I still need to add some leaves and a hanging loop to these.  I think I might try the larger ones in the shower instead of on my dishes.

I made a puff and several double sided and single sided circle scrubbers:

I think I like the single thickness circles best:  they are quicker to make and I think they will dry out faster than the double thickness ones.  I still have a lot of yarn left, so there should be many more scrubbies in my future!

I got a mad urge to make cotton dishcloths as well.  I'm not sure if it was just the desire to make up something quickly, or colourful, or my impending kitchen re-paint.  Thankfully Michaels had a sale on Bernat Handicrafter Cotton, so I was able to get my 'fix' in a few evenings.

That's it for today.  Stay warm if your climate is anything like mine at the moment, and thank you so much for visiting.  Your comments make my day!

xoJenn