Mothers Day Classic For Breast Cancer - Parramatta 2011

Bee and Tim and I are going in the Mothers Day Classic 8km Walk in Parramatta Park on Mothers Day.  We would love you to sponsor us.  Thankfully no women in my family have ever been touched by breast cancer....we all die of heart attacks or strokes.....but friends of mine have been.  There never seem enough money for research - into anything not just breast cancer....so please just click on the link below and donate even a little something!!!!  Anyone who has breasts or likes breasts (that cover almost everyone in the world) should donate....and lets be honest they are much more photogenic that prostates and livers.

https://s.eventarc.com/sponsor/view/51366/eleanor-doherty

Crafty day with the Crafty Princess

 
Needed a craft day....so invited the Crafty Princess for the day.  Had intended so do some quilting with her but the pattern she bought did not fit with the fabric she brought with her.....so.......we had a fall back position of course....which was cross stitch.  I did virtually finish two quilt tops that have been sitting about for a while....they have progressed to the binding machined on.....but not sewn down by hand.......may finish them in front of the TV this evening....provided I do not drink too much Cab Sav.....time will tell.

As you can see MIRACLES DO HAPPEN.....so overcome by finishing two quilts basically at once....I have not been able to rotate the pictures so that the lights do not appear to be on my walls and the Crafty Princess is not hanging sideways in midair....but thankfully they are small fairly square quilts so you get the general idea.  The top one was supposed to have a pointy edge, but could not face the prospect of binding a serrated edge so squared off the red and white spotty blocks.  Not very happy with the straight machine quilting I did on the rosy one but just wanted to finish it.....so TA DA !!!!!!!!!!!

Only two large quilts and one medium quilt to quilt.....and then two half finished kits to finish and then three kits purchased but not started......and then there is the cross stitch....but we will not speak of this, except in hushed tones, in dark of night........

Happy stitching and happy easter egging

Slow Stroll through the Woods of Gold

Have to say that stitching keeps me sane.....home life does weigh heavy upon me on occasions....(only occasions).....too many things to do and to think and to organise, and not enough time to do them.....but when it gets too much I escape upstairs to the very small sewing room that I made out of the walk-in wardrobe....turn on the ipod and have an audiobook read to me and sew.....and it is good for recharging.

Have not done as much as I intended last month...but then never do....but the sampler is looking good, and I will really have to get it finished this year because I have stitched in the date (2011) - not to mention our anniversary date.  I am reasonably confident it will be done before 12 Oct.

And the stroll through the Woods has slowed....mainly because I left my thread box at work for 6 days....I was a bit concerned at one point that one of the loons at work would throw it out in disgust at someone who does craft rather than the mindless computer games they play endlessly for 12 hours....but it was safe in my pigeon hole and I could stop worrying about replacing about $100 worth of thread.....nearly up to starting the sixth page....wahooooooooo!!!only a gazillion to go.

 

Hope everyone has a great April and you all enjoy Easter in your own ways...rabbits, eggs, peace and quiet, public holidays.....whatever.....and that you all get a chance to do a lot of quiet stitching, and maybe some of us will finish something.   I have a quilt that just needs the binding handsewn...so there is a chance that that will get done...all those chocolate eggs will energise me!!!

Greatest Eye into Other Worlds

Hello to my new followers.....thank you for visiting.  I am sitting at the computer - the greatest eye into other worlds yet invented and also the greatest time waster of the modern age....but at the moment I am using it as an excuse to avoid other more mundane stuff.....like cleaning the blades of all the ceiling fans in the house, which now I calculate is nine in total.  They do not actually have dags hanging off them but you can see where they will form like those limestone thingys in caves.  During the summer it is easy to avoid this job - just keep the fans spinning and you cannot see the gunge on them.....makes you worry that you actually breathe the same air though....but now summer is gone and the leaves are starting to turn and the breeze is getting cool and the quilts are appearing on the beds at night.  I should be finishing at least 2 quilt tops I have downstairs....but instead I am sitting here mooching through other people's blogs.   But others do so much.....they are inspiring and I want to do it all....all those Heaven & Earth Designs and all those Christmas ornaments and all those beautiful samplers ....but have to go to work and clean shower screens and weed the garden.  You can put these things off....but there comes a tipping point when the shower screen that was installed clean and clear become so opaque....and the weeds outnumber the plants.....not housewife of the year material am I, but there does come a point when even I have to make an effort, put aside all the things I want to do (stitching of various sorts.....sleeping....reading....) and become a slave of duty.  I believed for some time when the kids were little, that if I created a clean and tidy house this would set a standard for their lives and when they were old enough to clean and tidy they would help out without being chivvied too much.....HOW WRONG WAS I......maybe people are born clean and tidy or slovenly.....I have one clean and tidy child and 2 slovenly - to the extent they need to be driven with a  cattle prod......and it is not a Y chromosome thing either....Bee and Pat are the slovenly ones....Pat would not shower for weeks given half a chance.....he is 16 - and I would like to point out that he is NOT given half a chance.......

So all I can do is keep cleaning and tidying and hope they move out soon and discover the realities of life without Mother......

Here is the slovelny one and the tidy one....this is some years ago and they are both over 6ft now

But I figure that if I clean the downstairs fans I will have accumulated enough brownie points to sit for the rest of the afternoon stitching my wedding anniversary sampler....but I might just look at a few more blogs....just in case I miss something vital........

Photographic evidence of my Complete Insanity

Well here are the pictures stitchers....what I bought at the Craft Expo....not bad for a woman who only went to buy a magnetic magnifying thingy for my pattern board - this I hasten to point out I did actually buy.....along with all this lot.......................

Well now you can see what I mean.....I never do anything small or uncomplicated....or likely to be finished in a lifetime......the sampler at the bottom by Jeannette Douglas is not just cross stitch it is all sorts of stitches I have never seen before and thankfully it comes with a very good booklet of directions for each little section....but when compared to the other things I bought the sampler will be blissfully easy and quick.....told you.....sheer MADNESS....my 19 year old daughter used to stitch when she was little, hope the bug bites her again when she is a little older or when I am dead because I would like to think that all these kits and charts will be finished by someone in my family....maybe I could leave them to you Crafty Princess!!!???

We are going to finish something - we have promised

Well the Crafty Princess and I went to the Craft Expo at Rosehill the other day - with Jen B and the Crafty Princess' Mum (does that make her the Crafty Queen??) - anyway, it was very much quilt oriented which was not good in a way, as we were looking for cross stitch stuff - there were really only 3 stalls exclusively cross stitching and then one fabric stall.  This stall sold precut Aida and Evenweave and Linen in a whole range of colours, and is run by two knowledgeable and charming men who are business partners and partners in life as well - William and Peter.  They have both done cross stitch themselves and William's brain was lightening fast at working out inches to centimetres and back again and could calculate whether a pattern which was quoted in 25 count could fit on this piece which was was 22 count....a genius.  They were so charming and helpful and they sell online sewitall.com.au  - would recommend them to anyone.......ANYWAY the upshot of it all was, that they were rather aghast at the fact that I was restarting my cross stitching with a Heaven & Earth Design....and then when they found out that the Princess had about 15 projects on the go and 50 or so waiting in the wings they were.....WELL!!!!!!!   Anyway somehow we found ourselves (mainly instigated by me in a effort to appease them I suspect) promising to come and see them at the Darling Harbour Show with something finished.....so I actually have to finish something.

Oh BOTHER - I may have to reverse stitch

Could not work out why the flowers I had stitched in the border of the Anniversary Sampler were further from the inner border than it showed on the pattern.......then the horrible realisation dawned................*&&%$%&^%%$%)$#%  The first leaf was wrong...and that was the one that a lined all the others up from.  I know I said how I liked samplers because they chimed with the OCD side of my personality.....but I did not take into account my inability to count or to concentrate all the time and get the bloody thing right.  One stitch out and DISASTER can ensue.

So, I have 3 options -  * unpicked the whole right hand border (hardly an option)
                                 * rejig the offending leaf and unpick and resew the right hand side
                                    of the inner border
                                 * leave it just as it is...and hope it is not too obvious


Cannot face the first option, averse as I am to unpicking anything.

Option 3 I know will not be good as I will see it forever and it will drive me crazy, plus I would have to dodgy up the other side of the inner border and do the corresponding leaf with an extra long stem.......no, no can't face that option - samplers are by definition very neat and balanced and, I have to admit, just a tiny bit anal (in the nicest possible way you understand).  Anyway here are some pictures....you will see how much I have done and hopefully understand how I cannot go with unpicking......

See double leaf thingy right at the top corner of the 
inner border....
longer stem than the others - and of course lined it up
2 crosses in from 
the inner border....if I unpick it and resew and move the inner
border over a 
stitch or two balance and harmony will be restored - with the

least amount 

of unpicking (always to be desired)

Could just spit....2 stitches out....that is all it takes - Golden Wood with it
flexibility seems almost restful by comparison