Tag: cross stitch

WIP Wednesday

I swear, things would be finished a lot easier if I didn’t have CDD – Crafting Deficit Disorder!

But, I’ve been working steadily still –

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Started a new Gail Pan stitchery which is another Christmas present.  I traced this out months ago but finally pulled it out as I realised it’s less than 2 months til Christmas and I really need to get a move on!

I appear to have run out of DMC 115 though – I swear I have one floating around but my craft room is an absolute mess at the moment so I think I may have to duck down to Spotlight to pick one up.

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I’ve been making some decent progress on my dachshund cross stitch – the shape is starting to form! The ear is probably just over half done but I’m loving the colours in here and how complex they are.

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I am in LOVE with this range – it’s Color Theory by Moda. I went from these….

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…to 160 of these! I just need to pick them out in groups of 7, sew them into rows, then sew those rows into a quilt. So far the sewing machine has been working like a charm, so here’s hoping that it works out well! Fingers crossed…

I also have to make a start on another Moda BOM – a lot of the ladies in the FB group have finished Month/Row 1 already and given that Row 2 starts in 3 days, I need to kick my ass into gear!

March WIPocalypse check-in

It’s that time of the month already! The March check in post for the 2014 WIPocalypse. This month’s topic is favourite places to stitch. Technically, we are meant to show it, but my craft room is a mess at the moment as I’ve only recently turned the room into a craft room, so I still need to sort it out.

I’ve taken over the front room, and have a desk set up there with my laptop as well so that I can watch things on my computer while I’m stitching. Multitasking is one of my strong points, apparently. I keep all my projects in individual folders so that I can grab them as I need them, and the current WIPs that I have in my rotation are kept there. It means that when I decide I want to change projects, they’re handy and everything is all together (fabric, patterns, threads) as I need them so I don’t have to go hunting.

March has been promising for my WIPs! Obviously, I knocked one off the list – the large latch hook that I posted about last week. Technically it should still be on there as I do need to finish binding it, but I’m waiting on some binding to be posted out to me as this one will be hung up.

I managed to finish the February square of the Once Upon A Time sampler:

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How aodrable is the happy little frog!? Sadly I haven’t made any further progress on either March, the border, OR January, but I’m hoping I can knock off most of March by the end of the month. I’m still tossing up whether to work on the border exclusively, or block by block when I have the time.

I pulled out “50 Shades of Grey” and while I’ve only done a little bit of work on it, I’ve been setting myself goals of 10×10 squares (eg. I’ll finish 3 squares tonight) and I’m hoping that will make it more manageable! I really do need to finish this page, as it’s the ‘worst’ in terms of absolutely nothing going on in the pattern, once I get across to the next pages I think this will keep my attention and stitching speed up as I’ll be able to see more of the actual design.

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So. Many. Similar. Shades.

My snowmen is going well, however! I’ve been taking advantage of being very quiet at work to stitch in the back office when all the work is done and I’m waiting for my late arrivals.

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I love these fat little snowmen. It’s currently on hold though as I need to work on another project, plus I’ve just about run out of the DMC thread and I need to grab another skein (and hope the dye lots match).

March’s Cottage Garden Threads club was delivered this week, as well. I just love these colours –

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The design is lovely, too. The design from last month was very intricate, but it didn’t call out at me to stitch it. This one is a completely different story! It’s definitely going in my ‘to stitch’ pile that keeps growing. I also need to sketch out the progressive sampler (and also get some fabric big enough) at some point and make a start on that too.

My other project is going well, the stitchery is almost complete however I can’t put a photo up just yet as it’s a gift for someone at the start of April.

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I did, however, get the mini charm pack in the mail (it was a good week for craft goodies) that I’ll be using for the outer border. Such bright colours! I just need to finish up the stitchery, and then pick out the squares I want, and sew it all together. The design calls for it to be framed, but I’m tossing up turning it into a wall hanging or wrapping it around canvas, so I may take a trip down to Spotlight on my days off and sort.

How is everyone else’s WIPs going? Hopefully it has been a productive month!

It’s finished!

The giant epic latch hook? It’s finally finished!

I am so proud of myself for pushing through and finishing this one – shows how dedicated I can be if I really put my mind to it! I’ve actually found that I’m making a lot more progress towards quite a few different projects, so something I must be doing is working.

I started this one about 18 months ago – and then promptly put it away. I pulled it out again about 6 months ago (if you’ll remember, I made a ‘bet’ with my husband to finish this before August), and finished it a couple of days ago. It still needs binding, and I still need to work out the best way to hang it, but the actual hooking is done.

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Some stats for you: this is approx 75cm high by 125cm high. There’s 16500 pieces of wool in there. And I don’t want to think about how many hours, or how many episodes of trashy TV shows I watched whilst doing it.

In typical fashion, I immediately jumped into a new project.

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I don’t want to post too much, because it’s going to be a gift, but I have about 3 weeks to do this! I’m well on track – 2/3 of the stitching is already done, and I’m just waiting on a mini charm pack of fabric to arrive in the mail so I’ll be able to finish this one. The design is absolutely adorable, by Janelle Wind, so I can’t to share it once it’s finished and gifted.

I also pulled out my mum’s light box (which I apparently borrowed a few months ago, and we both forgot I had), so I could start tracing the above one, and a few others while I still had it.

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Another Christmas present – I probably won’t start stitching this one for a while, but it’s (seemingly) a small and quick one, plus this way it’ll be ready when I want to start.

I also pulled out my other patterns I have waiting for the fabric to be cut up and designs traced onto, because I’m planning on tracing out all of these ones on my days off, so they’re easily ready for me to pull out.

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I have a lot of patterns. Thankfully, a couple of them are iron on transfers.

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Look what else arrived in the mail! Block two of the Best Friends Forever block of the month. Oh dear – two months in and I haven’t even started either instalment. I probably won’t for another month, at least, so they’re piling up (and calling out to me), but I’m loving receiving these and looking at the patterns, and the gorgeous Candy Bloom fabric.

I haven’t forgotten about my cross stitch, either… (although “50 shades of grey is on a temporary hiatus – I need to work that back into my WIP rotations).

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The February block is nearly finished in the “Once Upon A Time” sampler! Which is a good thing, as we’re 1/3 of the way into March and I’d love to get a start on that. Still adore the design, although now I’m down to all the little fiddly bits that require 3-4 stitches in each colour. This is currently my immediate goal, to finish this block, and then move back to another stitchery project.

I have far too many projects on the go, but I’ve been making decent amounts of progress on all of them. Here’s hoping that keeps up, I’d love a couple more actual finishes this month!

WIP Wednesday

It’s March! Already! How did that happen?

This does mean however that I’ll be getting my March edition of the Cottage Garden Threads club and the Rosalie Quinlan Best Friends Forever block of the month in the mail – and I’ve promised myself I won’t start the latter until I finish the latch hook and at least one other project.

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That said, I’m on track to finish my latch hook probably in the next week or so – I’m going through the top third of it now and it’s just under half done. I love the design although admittedly I’ve been getting a bit sick of it from such intensive work. I think this is part of the reason I like having a number of projects on the go, so I don’t get burnt out from them.

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I’ve also made progress on my Merry Snowmen and have finished the first one! I adore this project and how cute it is, and it’s stitching up so quickly! I’ve ordered myself another one from this designer but a different pattern as I just love it so much and they’re going to make great Christmas presents. Yes, I’m thinking 9 months ahead!

March also means the new block in the Once Upon A Time sampler has been released. Oh dear – I haven’t done any more work on it! The new pattern is the Three Little Pigs and it is absolutely adorable, I’m dying to get into it but need to finish February (…and January) first.

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I pulled it out again last night and have started the frog – you can see there how I had to rip a few stitches out because I had a counting ‘moment’. Irony is having to ‘frog’ the frog, I guess. The border for this one is so intricate and while I’d love to be able to get ahead and finish that all up I have a feeling for the first few months I’m going to have to do the border as I go.

I’ve got another parcel coming in the mail (I just can’t help myself!) as I’ve decided on the spur of the moment to make a present for my friend’s son’s birthday. Next month. I like to challenge myself, I guess. On the upside, for the next month or so I’ll be working at the new property our hotel chain is opening which is extremely quiet compared to my current hotel (approximately 20% of the size) so I suspect I may actually get some down time there!

Lastly, I remembered that I have an Instagram account and have started posting some craft pictures over there, too – it’s great seeing other people posting the same projects that I’m doing and it’s really keeping me motivated and inspired. Feel free to go and follow me – AlexHulett

Wipocalypse: February check in

I’ve been busily crafting and have actually managed to make progress on three of my WIPs! Okay, technically two existing ones, and one which I’ve just started – but now it’s a WIP so it doesn’t really matter, does it?

It’s also time for the February wipocalypse check in (a few days late, because I’m shocking at remembering dates). This month’s topic is “How many projects do you generally feel comfortable having in progress at a time?  Tell us about your one-at-a-time or rotation habits!”

If you know me, at all, you’ll know I’m hopeless with WIPs. I’ve currently got at least 9 on the go, although admittedly I’m only working on about 4 or 5 of them currently. I think this is my max – although having 3-4 is probably better.

Previously I’d struggled with keeping up with all of my WIPs as I tend to get sidetracked by the new shiny projects, but I’ve just come across a new way of keeping up with them – setting myself mini goals. I’m going to be aiming to get to a certain point on each of these projects before switching off to the next one. That way I’ll not only ensure semi-regular progress, but I’ll also be more motivated to finish them to move onto the next thing! I’ll be giving it a try for a month or so to see what kind of progress I make – depending on how I go, I may change up my rotation habits, or see if I can’t introduce a 4th WIP into the mix.

My progress, this month, on things has been decent – I’ve finally pulled out ‘Watching It Fly’, and I’m still trucking through the latch hook.

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This is the start I’ve made on my Once Upon A Time sampler. It’s my first time stitching on linen and took me a bit to get used to counting – I had to redo a couple of sections repeatedly because I kept messing up the whole ‘over two’ stitches bit. I think now I’ve got a bit more of the border out, that I shouldn’t have as much trouble.

I’m definitely not going to be caught up by the time March is released, but it’s surprisingly quick to stitch up now I’m getting the hang of linen, so maybe by the end of March I’ll be all caught up?

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The epic latch hook is making some more progress, too – I think I’ve actually done one more column but forgot to take a picture of it. I’ve been powering through and found that watching TV shows whilst doing it is really helping, because it makes me race against the clock to try and finish 3 squares (300 pieces of wool!) by the end of the 42 minute show. So far, I seem to be doing mostly okay with this target, so I think I’ve found something that works for this. It’s still just over half done, but I’m pulling this one out next from the rotation to make some more solid work on it.

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Just look at all this confetti in my ’50 million shades of grey’ (actual title: Watching It Fly’) cross stitch! I finished this section last night, and it did my head in having to stitch 4 or 5 stitches of the one colour. Knowing the Heaven and Earth Designs I am aware that it could be a lot worse, but it’s still frustrating. I do love how it turns out, though.

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So much grey and white! But I managed to finish the section I was aiming for, after pushing myself when the endless grey was driving me crazy. Don’t get me wrong, I love this piece, but it can sometimes make me loopy when stitching it. I think once I get past this page it won’t be so bad, as the next ones have more in it to break up the monotony at least.

Here’s hoping by next month’s check in I’ve made some more progress to show you all! I’ve also received another block in the month in the mail yesterday which I’ll blog about later – gorgeous, but I am refusing to let myself start until I’ve knocked at least two WIPs off my list. More incentive, at least!

How are everyone else’s WIPs going? Are you as insane as me?

Less work, more crafting

Phew! Finally at the end of my ‘work week’ – 8 days in a row. I will be looking forward to not having my alarm on at 5am tomorrow, let me tell you …

I did however get a nice surprise at work from my delightful husband – he got oriental lilies (my favourite) delivered to work for me, which are absolutely gorgeous.

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Also pictured – the single long stem rose that one of our residents gave to me, and the bunch of roses that I grabbed from one of our other hotels. They had a regular guest check in who brought in probably a dozen bunches of flowers of the staff, and when I was over there they offered me one. I’m hoping I have enough large vases!

I’ve also had an exciting week with the mail – my Cottage Garden Threads came in yesterday from A Patchwork Quilt and has such a great variety of colours. I’m really looking forward to getting these monthly. It’s got a progressive stitchery which has designs to show case each thread colour – I probably won’t get started on that for a while, but it should look fantastic when it’s complete. Sharon over at Lilabelle Lane is much faster than me and has already sewn her four threads from this month!

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I also got the rest of my supplies for the Once Upon A Time sampler! I’m very impressed with how fast the postage was (especially considering I’m still waiting on something I ordered in October to be delivered – and the resent item – I think I may have to give up on that one!)

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The threads were from The Workroom in Canada – a couple of you asked how come I bought them overseas. It turned out that they had the thread packs all made up, and these turned out to be cheaper, including shipping, than buying them here, because they offered a small bulk discount. I also purchased the thread before I bought the pattern as I was spreading this out over pay cycles, so it meant I didn’t have to wait to find out what threads I needed.

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The fabric is hand dyed linen from Picture This Plus, and is the fabric that the original was stitched on. It’s my first time stitching on linen, so I suspect this will be a bit of a challenge to begin with, but what is crafting without trying new things?? I’m hoping to make a start on the border of this over the weekend, and hopefully get myself up to date in a couple of months so that I’m stitching as each month is released.

And of course, the latch hook of epic proportions is continuing. Not much more progress from the previous picture, but at least I’ve got colours other than green in this section.

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I’m rather impressed with my efforts though – I may just finish this before my August deadline!

Challenge accepted…

I’m horrible at starting projects, then abandoning them in favour of a new one. My husband knows this all too well, and knows that one sure way of making sure that I finish it is to tell me that I’ll never finish it – so I do, just to prove him wrong.

18 months ago I started a massive latch hook. I did a small section – then promptly got caught up doing something else. After finishing my other two latch hooks, I’ve been making some solid progress on this latch hook. Glenn naturally thinks that I’ll get distracted very soon, and so we have set a challenge.

I’ve been given 6 months to finish this – so, the beginning of August. This seems like a decent amount of time, but I get distracted, have a number of other projects going on – and of course, there’s the small matter that this latch hook is as big as me.

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Yeah. The finished size is 30″ by 50″.

I’ve been making decent progress, though, and have been texting daily updates to a friend who has promised to shame me if I don’t do enough!

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I love the design of this, and it’ll be worth it in the end. When I finally get there!

I’ve also found a new cross stitch project – it’s a “Once Upon A Time” sampler that is released monthly. I’m coming into it a bit late – February just got released, but it’s was so adorable that I couldn’t pass it up!

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I’ve ordered my fabric and the threads – they’re coming from the US and Canada respectively, so I suspect it’ll be another month or so before I can really get started. Gives me more time to work on other projects, at least!

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Each month is a secret until it’s released, so I’m looking forward to seeing what other fairy tales are featured.

If anyone else is interested (all their designs are adorable – I’m eyeing up a couple others as well) they can be found at the Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery.

Watching It Fly – 6 months progress

I wrote about this briefly in my goals post a few days ago, but I’ve had a few people ask about my epic cross stitch, so I’m putting a post up in full explaining it.

A while back, someone got me onto Heaven and Earth Designs. They created a monster – aside from this project, I’ve got a bunch more charts purchased and printed out, for when the time fairy comes to visit.

I fell in love with “Watching It Fly”, although for the sake of my sanity I chose to stitch the “mini” version, which is the same chart, just condensed. Because they’re still so large, it means that very little detail is lost.

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I printed out the entire chart and laid it out – you can barely see the picture here, but this demonstrates how large the project is! I’m starting from the bottom left up, and have managed to do the bottom page, as well as the full page above that, and am now midway through the next page. This will take a while.

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I ordered all of my threads ages ago in preparation from 123stitch.com – as much as I like purchasing them here as it’s faster, it’s hard to justify when doing such large projects as it’s almost half the cost to buy the DMC threads from the US. As you can see, there’s a lot of colours in similar shades. I may go crazy.

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About 6 months ago, I began the first stitches. All of the fabric you can see here is the size of the eventual finished project – the fabric is a bit longer, but I haven’t cut the right side off for fear of cutting the wrong size!

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Here’s a look at the finished design, and what it’ll hopefully look like. I should point out, this is a colour print out! The final result will have 74,100 stitches. Yeah.

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I haven’t done much work on this for about a month, but this is where I’m currently up to. Despite the pain of so many different shades of grey, it’s coming up quite well and you can start to see the clouds in the sky properly forming (along with the tiniest bit of hair!) Page 1, which I’m currently stitching, has a lot of similar stitching in it, with a god awful amount of metallic thread. I hate that stuff. Luckily, the majority seems to be on the left half, so by the time I get halfway through, I will have finished the bulk of metallic threads.  I think.

I’ve been focusing on my stitchery lately, rather than my cross stitch, but I’m hoping to go back to this, or at least put it into my rotation and work on it at least once a week. After all, one of my goals is to finish 3 pages of this, so I can’t get too lazy!

2014 – The year of finished projects?

I’m not normally one to set New Year’s Resolutions, but this year I want to try and set myself some goals.  Most of them are craft related, however I’m throwing a couple of personal ones in here for good measure. And I’m posting them here so I’m not only accountable to myself (and the internet!), but also so that I can look back in 6 and 12 months and see how I’ve gone.

My crafting goals:

Finish at least 5 projects – at least 3 which I’ve started this year.

This seems relatively easy, but if you know me, you’ll know that I’m a fan of having a lot of projects on the go – and failing to actually finish them. I can’t recall how many projects I’ve got on the go at the moment – which is terrible. I’m hoping to give some craft presents for Christmas this year – I’ve ordered them, so now I just have a little under 12 months to finish them. It’s achievable, whether I get distracted mid-project is another story.

I have, however, made a start on “Enjoy Today” that I posted about a couple of days ago – not much, but you’ve got to start somewhere, right?

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Here’s hoping that the next post, there’ll be a lot more colour to show you all!

Finish all the cutting for my “Vignette In Stitches” quilt, and finish 2 of the 16 blocks

I have made very minimal progress on this one, but that’s because I’m a) new to quilting, and b) have been so busy with work and the lead up to Christmas that I wasn’t able to properly sit down and concentrate on cutting the fabric. I’ve seen how long it’s taken some bloggers to do their quilts, so I want to keep trying to come back to this semi-regularly.

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The fat quarters, pre-cutting. Isn’t the range gorgeous?

Finish at least 3 full pages of my “Watching It Fly” cross stitch.

Lovingly referred to as “50 million shades of grey”, I’ll be putting up a post in the future about this. The cliffnotes version – it’s a huge cross stitch with 75000 stitches and I’ve completed just over 12000, which is about 2 pages. I am aware that I am totally insane picking such a huge project with such a limited colour palette – and you still can barely see the progress.

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The grey blob is the cloudy sky, and you can *just* make out the first strands of hair. I have another 4 pages to go before you can even see the hair enough to work out what it is.

Finish my three latch hooks that have been ongoing for a number of months/years

Two of these are Christmas ones that I planned on finishing last year – one which just needs binding. The third is a latch hook that will actually be cut out and shaped into a lion, to give to my nephew. I’ve completed all the latch hooking and just now need to ‘assemble’ the lion – last time I tried I got halfway through the head, and got frustrated at how fiddly it was and put it in the “too hard” basket. For six months.

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You can see what is going to be the lion’s head in the picture. I’m hoping it turns out well; I have other kits similar with a bear and a frog which I need to make for other people, too.

Finish a wedding sampler,before the couple’s first wedding anniversary.

This was meant to be a wedding present, and I was confident as the piece was small that I would be able to frame this myself. Turns out, I’m rubbish at this. Another trip to the framer’s is clearly going to be in order.

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While quite a simple design, the final piece just pops when the back stitch is added. Once I’ve framed it, I’ll post up another picture.

I’m hoping that I’ll be able to complete some other projects, both from in my stash, and as I continue to find new things from designers. However, I’m trying to aim low at this stage and actually have some completions!

In terms of my other goals:

Blog at least once a week

Not only because this way I won’t be flooding my twitter feed from people who don’t care about the constant updates, but also so that I can have a record, and by going back and seeing the actual progress I’ve made. I’ve found that having multiple work in progress pictures helps, especially when it feels like I really haven’t done much more after stitching for hours!

Re-teach myself French

I did about 6 years of French in school, and promptly forgot the large majority since I stopped lessons. It’s always handy at least having basic skills in a language, particularly working in a hotel where we have a lot of foreign guests. I’ve come across a website/app called DuoLingo which is honestly the best I’ve seen so far. Amazingly, after only a couple of weeks, I can remember quite a bit. If I get a guest coming down asking about clothing, animals, or types of food, I’m set. The rest, not so much at this stage!

Read 20 books

I’m an avid, and quick reader, so this challenge shouldn’t be too hard – except that I discard books in favour of stitching and watching TV shows. My pile of books is overflowing and I really need to tackle this. I’ve got to track down a website or app to keep a record of what I’ve read – I believe I have a GoodReads account, but don’t really use it – any opinions on how this is, or any other other options?

Well – there are my list of goals. Hopefully achievable, but enough to make me actively work towards them. Let’s see how I did in another 12 months..

The completed baby sampler

Last year (back when I wrote a grand total of one blog post), I mentioned that I was becoming an aunt, and was going to be making a baby sampler as a record of his birth.

Well, I’ve since finished that one months ago and given it to the parents, but I’ve never written about it.

It took me around three months to do the whole thing – luckily it had quite a bit of block colour, as this was essentially the first cross stitch in ten years I’d tackled! I was working to a deadline, though, so that kept me motivated. Much stitching was done on the train, and I got a number of people asking me about it. Eventually I finished it, except for the centre, and just had to wait for baby Dylan to be born to get the birth details.

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The pattern didn’t really look as nice with the weight in metric, so after consulting a number of sites (god forbid I get the weight wrong, this thing was getting framed!), I converted it to imperial, and added in the final details.

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The final product, after washing. I just love how bright this is. Now, I just had to get it framed.

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I absolutely adore how this has been framed. I cannot recommend The Framer’s Gallery in Seaford enough – not only did they help pick out the border and the frame, but haven’t they done a fantastic job?? It’s a bit of a drive for me, but it’s well worth it.

We gave the sampler at Dylan’s Christening, and I could finally put a picture up on Facebook to share – before then, I wanted to keep it quiet. It’s nice having a surprise, but it’s painful when you want to show everyone your progress!

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Dylan, a couple of months ago. He’s pretty damn adorable, hey?