June was completely disorganised!!!

Hello to all my sisters and brothers of the stitch.....I am embarrassed by the length of my absence - missed June altogether.  I seem to have been very busy....but for the life of me cannot tell you what I have done.  Have done some stitching and some knitting, but nothing finished....lots of going to work, and lots of house cleaning (well that is a down and out lie....there was the bare minimum of house cleaning.  Just enough to stop the health inspectors arriving!) 

BUT WAIT....the Crafty Princess and I did go to the Ball!!!!....well the Craft Show at Darling Harbour in Sydney.  Huge barn of a place filled with TEMPTATION!!  But as we had promised to the lovely boys from Stitch it All, I managed to show them the finished Wedding Sampler.....the Princess on the other hand was NEARLY finished....but not quite.
We also met the Quilting Queen - my friend Coral there....she escaped from work early and met us there for lunch.

Stupidly went to the Show saying to myself that I would not buy anything....had enough stuff to fuel my craft projects for the rest of my life....and if I ran out I could cadge some from the Princess, who has enough for 15 lifetimes!!  But of course I did buy stuff - a full metre of linen from the Lovely Boys, a quilt pattern, some silk thread for my dear little sampler (am now completely addicted to these) and worst of all some beads got me sucked in.  LIKE I NEED ANOTHER CRAFT LIKE A HUGE HOLE IN THE SIDE OF MY HEAD!!!  But what can you do, the lovely green and blue glass beads just spoke to me, like charming little pets that beg wordlessly to come home with you......YOU ALL KNOW WHAT I MEAN.


And also bought a very lovely Ink Circles pattern and a kit for Christmas Ornaments that I am going to share 50/50 with Mel from work....another one the Crafty Princess and I have infected with the cross stitch bug.

You notice that the Ornament kit is on special - I rationalised it very well with that....see lovely orange sticker!!


The Ink Circles pattern was done in lovely variegated golden thread - not sure what I will use but I think I will do it on a more traditional natural linen background.

 I only bought enough fabric to do the central medallion....see I can show restraint....sometime and only in small amounts...but it is restraint nonetheless!!

This is the lovely sampler....with bees and butterflies and flowers and lovely blue and pink silks....ooooooooooooooooooooohhh!

Autumn is Definitely Here - not just in Golden Wood

Have been working a lot recently - now that it is May that means going to work in the dark and coming home in the dark!!  Got up this morning and realised that the beautiful Tallowood trees in my front garden have gone yellow (seemingly overnight) I am quite sure they were green only the other day (not exactly sure when that "other day" was mind you.....!!!!!)  But look.....

 

There appears to be a certain theme in my life at the moment - it is AUTUMN in a big way - trees and cross stitch.  I have finished another page of Golden Wood (where it appears to be perpetual Autumn) after much fiddling about with other things, and also getting a disgusting cold.  So I am now back in the land of the living and getting on with Golden Wood.  I have also started a small HAED Lady in a Meadow - on 25 ct evenweave.  My god it is small.....had to go out and get some of those reading glasses from the $2 shop so that I could actually see the little holes.....see the recurring theme my body is in it Autumn also. Better get stitching and finish Golden Wood and all the other charts and projects before dementia sets in..... AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!

A FINISHED SAMPLER - MIRACLE ON MOTHERS DAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Today dawned a beautiful autumn Sunday - it was Mothers Day and Bee and Tim and I were off to the Mothers Day Classic in Parramatta Park.  We did the 8km walk and raised money for Breast Cancer Research.  I should not have been surprised, but there were over 5,000 walking around the Park....very impressive sight.  The organisers were issuing Tribute Cards for people to wear to remember their loved ones who had been affected by cancer.  It brought tears to the eyes to see how many there were.  There were also men (clearly fathers and sons) who were wearing pictures of their wives and mothers who had died (Oh so sad)  But at the same time there was someone from every ethnic background - Arabic women in headscarfs, and Islander women, and Greeks and Italians and Indians....thousands of them.  But best of all there were women walking wearing Chemo Beanies and a number of women with very short hair (clearly just growing back after chemo) and they all looked happy and well and surviving and determined to continue surviving.  Even my 19 year old daughter, who likes to think she is so worldly wise and cynical said how much she enjoyed the event and how much she had been affected by it all and said that we had to do it again next year.  She was the one who found a Tribute card already on the wall.  It had a picture of a lovely looking smiling lady who had died only 2 weeks before the event.  Her family had put up the picture and surrounded it with white chrysanthemums - oh dear, it was good I was wearing sunglasses - no one could see the tears.

Then the whole family went for lunch....and then rather tired, I must admit, went home and thought I was justified sitting for the rest of the afternoon stitching......AND I FINISHED THE SAMPLER!!!!!!!!

Well there were moments - usually when I had just discovered that something did not meet up with something else, or when I realised I had stitched something in the wrong place and had to unpick - it was at those moments when I wondered if it would ever get finished.  But here is the proof.................

 

And everything (eventually) met up with everything else - just where it should be.

And here are a few pictures from the Mothers Day Classic....next year I am going to walk wearing a pink tutu and fairy wings!!!

The great stream of over 5000 people

Love the man walking with his pink fluffy halo!!!!

Lovely Bee and Darling Tim

Look how tall he is....and only 13!!!  He is actually holding me up - too embarrassing to fall down on the finish line!

Hope you all had a lovely Mothers Day and you or no one you know or love are touched by any form of cancer.

 

So Close to Finishing I Can SMELL IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

When the Crafty Princess (God Bless Her) got me back into cross stitching and I started Golden Wood could not realistically imagine finishing anything (least of all Golden Wood) - Golden Wood has been on hold as I wanted to finish the Wedding Sampler and BLOW ME DOWN - I can actually see the end.  All the detailed stuff in the middle is finished and the border is pretty nearly there.....a big bit of fudging had to be done as I had to dodgey up the border when I made my original mistake....have had to add some stitches.....and as my head is not one that easily gets itself around mathematical numerical things there was also a bit of unpicking.....but I am hoping that all the border lines and all the flowery vines will meet up at the bottom right hand corner.....stay tuned should meet up sometime today....if I can drag myself away from the computer....then all I have to do is finish all the flowers along the vine, and they are quite quick.

I had a bad day a couple of weeks ago, where I had a horrible thought that because I had stitched the date on the sampler something fatal would happen to my husband and the sampler would be a tragic and ironic waste of time.  Roll on 12 October - anything can happen after that.....OH AM I A BAD WIFE OR WHAT.....having said that now, a plane will drop on me when I am out walking or something.....should this happen Crafty Princess I would like you to update this blog with a final post - thanks lovie

Look at that vine creeping around the bottom - cannot decide if the big birds are peacocks or turkeys??



HAPPY MAY DAY EVERYONE

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!!!