New place for blog?

I'm thinking of moving this blog over to WordPress.

I have copied all posts over and started to make a template.

The new blog is here http://mollycaff.wordpress.com/

I'd love any comments on ease of use, the look of it etc, etc to help me make my mind up.

Thanks!

Happy Dance!!

I finally finished Mystery 8!!! It's been a long time in coming, as I actually started this on 1st January 2005 and finished on 1st February 2008. I am so pleased that it's finished at last, and it is so pretty in real life, the photographs just doesn't do justice to the fabulous colours and the wonderful sparkliness of the beads and crystals.

Keep beading, keep keep beading!

Apologies to Leona Lewis for slightly altering the lyrics to her latest song, but I am still plugging away on the beading on Mystery 8. Things I have discovered while beading:

1. Beading needles are very very sharp!
2. If you drop a beading needle it's almost impossible to find it again.
3. I LOVE Tacky Bob.
4. Beads can actually disappear into thin air when they land on carpet.
5. Swarovski crystal bicones are easier to find than beads, but still take two people a torch and a certain amount of furniture removal
6. Never leave beading until the end on a Chatelaine design.

I had hoped to have Mystery 8 completely finished by the end of this month, but at the moment I still have three sets of gates and two sets of waves to bead so unless there is a freak snow storm overnight which stops me from driving to work tomorrow I can't see it happening.

Jayne from Jayne's Attic told me that the fabric I ordered for Tuscany Town Mandala is on the way to me so hopefully that will arrive tomorrow, I can't wait to see it as I've only seen this colour (Fallen Leaves from Polstitches) on a small cut. I'll let you know how it looks.

So close to a Happy Dance

Yesterday I felt like I was coming down with a cold, and I really can't afford to be getting ill at the moment, it's just too busy in work as Boss has just come back from a two week holiday in the Carribean and is well rested and raring to get to work.

So I decided that I would stay inside, keep warm, watch some DVDs and get loads of stitching done. It seemed to do the trick because this morning I feel a whole lot better.

I got loads done on Mystery 8 and I'm very nearly done with the stitching, I have two more trees left to stitch on the outside edge and then I can move on to finishing the beading. As for the DVDs, my favourite stitching DVDs are the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. I've watched them so many times I can almost recite the script LOL, so I know just the right times to look up and watch, usually when Viggo Mortensen is on screen LOL.

This morning I have some housework to do, mostly washing/ironing but should get a few hours to myself later on this afternoon.

Another one to the framers.

This morning I took another piece in for framing. I had to choose between Polar Lights and Graceful Charm.



This is Polar Lights.



This is possibly the worst picture EVER of Graceful Charm.

In the end my decision was made for me when I was giving the pieces one final press before deciding and one of the charms came off Polar Lights. Phill wanted to leave straight as he had an appointment at 9am so I had to take Graceful Charm. Hopefully I will be able to get Polar Lights done next month.

I am making a real effort to get all of my larger pieces framed this year. The smaller ones I'm going to have a go at framing myself, all I need to do is look around the 'net for a good lacing tutorial and I'll have a go.

So far I have hanging on my walls:-

Shimmering Mermaid - Miriablia
May's Emerald Fairy - Mirabilia
Titania, Queen of the Fairies - Mirabilia
An Open Heart - Drawn Thread
Egyptian Sampler - Theresa Wentzler

and hopefully to be added to that very soon will be Mystery 8, which is what I'm going to work on for the rest of the weekend.

Stash!

This week my kit finally arrived from European Cross Stitch for Mystery XI. I was lucky that mine was one of the few kits they were able to send out before they ran out of certain supplies.

I had already stitched part 1 of the mystery but now the kit has arrived I've been able to attach the beads.



I also joined the group for Tuscany Town Mandala, I'm just waiting for approval from Martina, and have ordered the kit from ECS. I have spent about a week trying to decide on fabric and have shortlisted it down to three. I have ordered one and may order the other two at the weekend as it's quite difficult to judge the colours from a picture on a monitor.

I seem to have developed quite an addiction to Chatelaine designs since I rediscovered my stitching bug but they really are quite beautiful in real life, especially once you start beading, I just wish I was a good enough photographer to take a decent photo.

Mystery 8 Update

This week has been a good week for stitching. I've still made time to stitch every time since 1st January, which is a bit of a record for me.

I've been working solidly on Mystery 8, I'm very very close to finishing this design and the closer I get the more excited I get. I have finished one Chatelaine in the past, Polar Lights, but that was quite a simple, easy stitch compared to Mystery 8.



As you can see, a few more trees and I'm done with the stitching. I have already started the beading, and have started to really enjoy it. Beading was never my favourite part of any design but with the help of Tacky Bob I'm now loving it!



Here's a close up of some of the beading.

Expect a huge happy dance on this one very soon!

TGI Friday

It's been a very long week, and the awful weather has made it feel even longer. It's dark when I leave for work and it's dark when I come home, I look forward to the weekends and daylight so much LOL.

Had an early finish from work today, so I was sitting at my computer at home by 4.45pm, it was a lot quieter on the roads so my journey home took half as long as usual, all the more time for stitching tonight!

I'm still working hard on Mystery 8. I haven't got another photo at the moment as I've already posted a pic of the parts that are left to stitch but it's coming along really well and I should be done with the stitching this weekend with a bit of luck. Then I can start the beading, which is something I am not looking forward to. The problem is I am the clumsiest person I know and end up dropping more beads on to the carpet than I get on the fabric. Now I've discovered Tacky Bob's I must admit that beading has become easier but it's not my favourite part of any design, but the end result more than makes up for it.

As a reward for finishing a Chatelaine Garden I have ordered the kit and chart for Tuscany Town Mandala which is absolutely stunning. I've ordered a piece of Polstitches fabric called Falllen Leaves from Jayne's Attic to see it in the flesh, but I've tried loads of different colours of fabric on the Chatelaine Fabric Viewer and I keep getting drawn back to this one so fingers crossed it will look as good in real life as it does on screen.

Now I'm off to get some more of Mystery 8 done!

Mystery 8 Update

Since I have finished part 1 of Mystery XI, quicker than I anticipated, I decided that for the rest of this month I would focus on one project - I chose Mystery 8 as it is not that far off from finishing.

I spent the weekend stitching on the outer parts, the gates, lamp posts and trees.



Here is a close up of one side of the gate



Yesterday I decided to stitch the centre of the design. It might not look much but it took me ALL day to stitch this small part of the design.



I now have one more gate, and two full sides of trees/lamposts to stitch, a few specialist stitches to add, and then I can start beading. Hopefully that will be by the weekend, but if not definitely the weekend after that. The beading is going to take absolutely ages! On Mystery XI I'm going to be adding the beads each month as the parts are issued as I really don't want to be faced with beading the whole thing at the end.

Also this weekend I managed to stitch a small freebie design as part of a Valentine Exchange. I can't post a picture of it yet because it is a secret exchange. All I have to do is finish it into something before I can send it to my exchange partner - that should be interesting as I am useless as finishing LOL.

Update on UFO Tuesday

What a great idea UFO Tuesday is! I really enjoyed stitching on Spring Queen this week and in fact it was hard to put her back in to her mesh bag until next Tuesday. I didn't get as much done as I had hoped because I'd gotten my Tuesday's mixed up so Phill didn't actually go out this week, but it out next week.

Phill wanted to catch up on some TV that we had recorded on Sky+, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. We started watching this series ages ago and put it on to series link on Sky+ but fell way behind for one reason or another so now we have a few months worth of episodes to watch. It's made by the same people who made my all time favourite, The West Wing, and I think it's a good series, but apparently in the US it hasn't been kept on for a second series which is a shame.

It's quite fast paced though and I found it hard to stitch and watch as it as it requires a little more concentration. We watched a couple of episodes and then Phill decided to play Call of Duty 3 on XBox live, so I went back to stitching.

This is the latest pic of Spring Queen.

UFO Tuesday

Tonight I am joining in with UFO Tuesday on the Stitch and Stash forum at Jayne's Attic

Every Tuesday I am going to work on a long forgotten UFO. I think I'll probably stick to the one project and work on that until it is done.

I have decided to work on Spring Queen from Mirabilia. At first I couldn't remember how long ago I last stitched on this one. I took a photo of it yesterday and uploaded it into Webshots. I then realised that in my Webshots album was the last photo I had taken of this piece, when I had stitched 30 hours worth of time. That photo was uploaded in October 2003!

Time just flies by so quickly, I just can't believe that it's been over four years - if I would have taken a guess on when I last worked on it I would have said about two years ago LOL.



I'm so glad that UFO night is on a Tuesday, as every other Tuesday Phill goes to a local open mic night where he plays steel guitar and bass guitar so I know that from about 7pm tonight I will have complete peace and quiet LOL.

Sunday Update

I finished part 1 of Mystery XI today! I haven't beaded it yet, I still have to wait for my kit to arrive to do that but I'm very pleased with it so far. I'm also very pleased that I managed to get it stitched so quickly. As with most of the Chatelaine Designs I have stitched they are quite time consuming and always take longer than you think they will but this one stitched up very well.



I didn't realise just how much I had missed stitching, I am enjoying it so much at the moment, and long may it last LOL!

Next I'm either going to stitch some more on my Monthly Challenge piece or maybe get an old WIP out and put some more stitches in. At the moment Spring Queen seems to be calling to me so I think that one will win!

5th January

I've made good progress in the first week of 2008. I've managed to get some stitching done every day so far, if I can keep that up I should be able to achieve at least some of my goals. In the past my stitching usually gets interrupted by my job, not the fact that I have to go there every day lol, more the fact that I work in such a busy, pressurised job that after a hard day I can be too tired to stitch and I've learned from experirence that stitching when too tired ends up in frogging the following day.

This year however I am determined that this is going happen and that I will stitch every day, even if only for a half hour or an hour.

So far this week I have made a good start on part 1 of Mystery XI and should have a picture of the completed part tomorrow or maybe Monday. I have also stitched on Celtic Autumn during my lunch hour at work, although I haven't managed to do much on that to be honest. I've started a small design as part of the Monthly Challange on the Stitch and Stash forum. It's a freebie design from By My Needle. The link to the design is http://www.withmyneedle.com/PynPillow.pdf

We all choose our own fabric, threads and make the design up as we want, the big reveal will be on 26th January. I have started stitching it over one, which I haven't done for a while, so it's quite hard going for me at the moment, but it is getting easier. I am looking forward to seeing the different versions of this design.

With my renewed interest in stitching came a need to have a throrough tidy up of my stitching stash.

It was a job which took a couple of days all in all, but one that I really enjoyed as I found some things that I had been looking for and also some things I had completely forgotten about.

The best part was sorting through the hand dyed threads and fabrics I have, thinking where I could use them and wishing I had the time to stitch half of the things I would like to LOL.

This link will take you to a slideshow of the photos I have taken, let's see how long I can keep it this neat!

http://good-times.webshots.com/slideshow/561959421MYTNLg

Happy New Year

Happy New Year! It's hard to believe how fast New Years Day comes around isn't it? Tomorrow it's back to work for Phill and I but at least we only have three days until the weekend, and even better my boss is flying to Barbados on Friday for two whole weeks :-)

We had a very quiet New Years Eve as usual, we don't go out to pubs/clubs very often anyway, and especially not on New Years Eve where you have to pay so much to get in to places. I enjoyed a chat with some of the Stitching and Stash ladies and then we watched The Bourne Ultimatum which we both really enjoyed.Today we have MIL coming for lunch, and then we plan to have a lazy day.

Part 1 of Mystery XI has been released and I do actually have some of the threads used so will be able to make a start on that today which is quite a relief. I have ordered the rest of the threads I will need for Part 1 from Sew and So and they should be here by the weekend so I know I will at least be able to get Part 1 finished so I'm feeling a lot better about this design already.

Here's a pic of Celtic Autumn as promised. It's stitched using jazlyn fabric called Manhatten Myst from Dyeing4U (sadly no longer in business). The fabric is slightly more purple than the picture shows and really does show up the design well. I have finished the border, apart from the beads, and will start working on the lady once I have stitched Part 1 of Mystery XI. So far I have spent about 25 hours on this one, it really has stitched up quickly, but I can see that the beading will take almost as long as the stitching because there are absolutely loads of them LOL.

I also took some photos of my stitching stash, which I will upload later and blog about tomorrow.