This post is a few days late – it’s been sitting in my drafts for a while but I haven’t gotten around to typing it up.
Over the Labour Day weekend I had the opportunity to join 8 other ladies on a craft retreat up in Hepburn Springs. They’ve been up beforehand however it was my first time and I thoroughly enjoyed it, and managed to get a decent chunk of work done on my WIPs (which yes, are still increasing, oops).
I’m not sure where I last left this off, but my grey blob had a page finish! I’m getting back into this again and I think the thousands of stitches in DMC5200 were worth it as now when I look at it I can actually see that it’s meant to be clouds in the sky, rather than a ton of greys all meshed together. The next lot of pages are going to be better, I think, as I start making a move towards the actual girl in the piece and get more strands of hair. And then I’ll have another page which is just full of DMC3799 for the girl’s corset – looking forward to that…
I also pulled out the Once Upon A Time Sampler from last year as I’ve really got to make more progress on this. I’m trying to work towards a mid-year deadline, whether or not I’ll reach that is a different story, but I’m trying to assign myself reasonable deadlines that I can not only achieve but will also push me to work on them.
As a result, I started, and finished, the May block whilst on the retreat! So I was only 8 months behind… it’s a start!
I then managed to knock out the June block a few days later, which means the actual blocks are half done! I haven’t done any more on this one since, but I’m hoping to stay on track and work this into my rotation soon. The border is fiddly so I’m tossing up between doing it all first, but then I also want to jump straight into the next block – however I’m still mindful of my Christmas Celebration Sampler I started in December and have finished the blocks, done about 1/5 of the border and promptly put it aside and haven’t picked it back up.
Here’s where it’s at presently! I’ve done bits and pieces of the border already – I suppose I could always try and do the border as I go…
I also pulled out the 3rd block in Rosalie Quinlan’s “Simply Blessed” – Jess from A Patchwork Quilt sent me the 9th block, which was the final one last month, which made me realise (quelle surprise), how behind I was on this one too. I’m still in love with the colour variegation in the Cosmo Seasons threads here – I think I’m going to try and do all of the stitching and then put them together all at once.
And lastly, not part of the craft retreat, but I’ve been tasked with doing another latch hook, this time for my husband who is a massive Brisbane Lions supporter, and thusly has informed me we will be putting up lots of Lions things around the house! I made a bit of a start on this last week but haven’t done any more since – the thing is seriously massive and covers the entire coffee table. I had no end of grief trying to sort out the colours (vanilla, light gold, medium gold, dark gold, honey, beige, cream, rust – took me about 10 minutes just trying to work out which colour was which!!!) but I think it’ll make the effect well worth it if/when I finally finish this. It’s quite the majestic lion!
I’ve also been trying to work on a few other things – Red Riding Hood is back in the rotation, and I’ve been doing some quilt work and some embroidery in the mean time, but that’s a story for another post.