And this is the now.
A fair bit of progress but to be honest with no machine this last week or so I thought that I might have gotten a bit further but I haven't really had the energy for much. Still I'm not really complaining I'm happy with what I did. I'm off for a week in the Lakes in June so I should probably keep going on this, but I'm eager to start on the next of Mum's UFOs too so we'll see.
And there was time to raise a pint to being British
messing around in front of the Houses of Parliament
And a trip to Tate Britain.
Wandering back to the tube took us closer to the Houses and Big Ben with the London Eye in the background.
There were a whole lot of protesters who'd set up camp opposite the houses, in aid of President Obama's visit I guess.
Our day finished with a wonderful gig at The Bush Hall. A really small, beautiful and atmospheric place, full of big mirrors and chandeliers which I totally failed to capture through the camera.
We were there to spend An Intimate Evening with Melissa Auf der Maur. An awesome end to an awesome day.
I've managed to get 8 done and the ninth is half way there - that was what I was working on when the machine gave up the ghost. It seems very unlikely that I'll have Jemimah back before the end of May so I'm going to fall just short of my target. But I'm not too worried as soon as she's back I'll get back on track.
And inside that lovely kitty fabric was this beautiful book cover.
Actually the book is perfect. I have been having lots of ideas pop in to my head for projects that I'd like to tackle and with limited time at the moment some of the ideas pop straight back out to be forgotten. I've been meaning to get something to write them all down in, so this is just the thing.
I've hooked up the two blocks that I wanted to make my throw from and they've come out at different sizes. So it's back to the drawing board. These are the options I've come up with so far
Power cut out in the middle of stitching. I've tried all the basics, changing the fuse etc but she just won't come back to life so off to the repairer she goes, she'll be out of action for at least a week :(
Thanks Beth, you have great timing!! :)
A quick and not particularly good snap of the second crochet block that I finished up yesterday. So now that I'm happy I can follow the directions for both the blocks I will be able to get cracking with the yarn I bought the other day. This will be a long term project. The blocks do take a bit of time, though hopefully I will get faster as I get more practise on them, I'm hoping to start out at the rate of two blocks a week, but I still have a tonne of other things to work on too so we'll see.
I have in mind to make a throw, something that will just sling over the back of the sofa, to be dragged down and snuggled in to whenever the need arises. So I've been having a flick through this book. Even though I've only just learned to crochet I already had a few books in my collection just things that I've picked up and dreamed that I might be able to work from someday! The blocks in the book are graded for beginners, intermediate and experienced. I didn't want to make things too complicated so figured I'd pick two blocks and make a simple design from them, but of course the ones I like fall into the second and third category, so I figured that I should make a couple of test blocks to see if I could follow the pattern before attempting them for real.
This first block is called Waterlily. I didn't quite get the flower right but I know where I went wrong and am happy that I'll be able to fix it when I start on the throw.
The pattern isn't really showing too well in the photo yet but I'm hoping it will start to look better as I add the square outer borders. Wish me luck.
Pip has been helping me blog this week, here he is on the shelf above the computer, looking as alert and active as always! He reminded me that it's been a while since he had a post of his own, so of course I had to rectify that immediately. Thanks for keeping me on my toes Pippy!! :)
This is how she looked, image stamped on to some of my hand dyed fabric. Pretty enough but she just didn't really do it for me anymore. I decided she wanted to be sat in her very own seaweed grotto. So some silk scraps, beads and sequins later she now looks like this.
I like the card so much more now that it has some texture, it was all a bit too plain before.
Anyway this one got shoved under the machine and a bit of free stitching later it now looks like this.
I'm so much happier to be sending out this reworked version, one hundred times better than the original!
Curious piggies
Friendly goats (these were adorable they were trying to eat everything including shoelaces and our backpacks!)
Chickens galore including this fancy fellow
And this portly fellow. Honestly these chickens were huge I've never seen the like....
To give you an idea here he is stood up next to a duck. Giant, he was :)
A trip to the farm is not all about the animals though plenty of beautiful ramshackle buildings to see too, if you like that sort of thing, which I do :)
The main attraction though were the beautiful herds of Bison. What magnificent animals, and they had babies too.
I mean how cute is this little sleepy fellow. Hard to imagine that one day he'll grow up to look like this.
It struck me as quite funny to see this huge and powerful beasts among the buttercups!
After the trip to the farm we went for a wonderful 6 mile ramble through the countryside. Due to a bit of bad planning on my part though I only have this one shot of the countryside to share as my camera battery went flat.
Never mind lesson learned for next time!
Is it Saturday again already? Where did that week go? The only pink happenings in my neck of the woods this week has been the making of the chequerboard blocks. I'm happy that I've gotten them done though, it means that I have the rest of the month to let pink take me wherever it wants to go.
Over the top I stitched some sheers using metallic thread. I made a loose wavy grid pattern
Next it was time to have fun with the heat gun.
The body has been made..... and I'm loving the stump doll pattern from Ray Slater's book
She is one tall lady. Now I'm stumped though I've run out of stuffing for her arms, so things have stalled a bit, and I'm not sure if I'm going to get time to get more before this month's challenge ends of Sunday. She will get finished, I've decided she is called Ruth by the way, but it may not be in time for the deadline.
It's been a long time in the finishing hasn't it? Of course I haven't worked on it nonstop and in those years I've had a good few months of downtime where I didn't touch any stitching or creative stuff at all. But it's done.
I don't think I could even hazard a guess as to how many stitching hours have gone in to this one. Way too many to count or even think about. The finished size is 11.5 x 16 inches. The back stitching is quite subtle - some for the whiskers and also round the branches and grasses in the background so that took me a couple of sessions to get finished.
All that needs to be done now is to get these cats washed and damp stretched and they will be ready for a frame.
.....but I mean really what part of this room did I think was tidy? .......
....this little lot is stretching the definition of tidy even for me!!! But I think I had a bit of a revelation, my weekend wasn't spent being lazy but being in denial.
Yesterday I had occasion to be hanging round in the park for a while, waiting for some minor repairs to be done on my car. I was just hanging out enjoying the fresh spring breeze
watching the clouds roll by and also doing a bit of reading
And I realised this is exactly what I needed, some fresh air to blow the cobwebs out and wake me up a bit.