Cross-stitch roundup

When I got home from Carcassonne my crojo was screaming at me to crochet: I've bought Lucy of Attic24's Fireside blanket pack, and I was desperate to get it out and get started. BUT before I went away I had started a Hallowe'en stitch-along and I was determined to get it finished and not leave it languishing in the ever -growing UFO pile. As you'll see from this blog post I have form when it comes to not-completing cross-stitches. I definitely suffer from startitis - starting shiny new projects before the previous one is complete. So this past week I've been a very good stitcher and carried on with the stitch-along - I had gotten behind on the holiday week so I had lots to catch up on. Its the "Cabinet of Curiosities" stitchalong by Alyssa Westhoek of Stitchonomy - she has a pattern club of which I am a member, and for $8 a month you get access to all her patterns, and then several times a year she runs a free stitchalong, one of which is the Cabinet of Curiosities. Alyssa releases a little image pattern every day over a month or so and then you end up with something like this ...

Don't you love it ?! Aren't the little picture so cute ?! Which is your favourite ? Mine has to be either the brain in a jar - such fun!  or the phoenix feathers. Some of them are a little hard to tell what they are - frogs legs and mandrake I'm looking at you here, but I think most of them are fairly obvious. This cross-stitch is going to be framed and given to my all-things-Hallowe'en-loving son for his birthday.

Finishing this gave me such a sense of achievement I decided to root through the UFO pile and finish some more. So next is this wedding cross-stitch which I did for my cousin's wedding 5 YEARS AGO! I'm a terrible person. I never gave it to them (obvs seeing as it was incomplete). All I had to finish was the bits and piece hanging off the back of the car so the end was really nearly in sight. However when I got it out of the cupboard I found to my horror it's got a massive stain on it !!!! Noooo!!!I have no idea what it is (tea maybe?) or how it got there but I'm fairly sure after 5 years it won't be coming out any time soon, so I've decided to stitch over it with some green to make it look like grass below the car. So this one isn't quite done yet (though I did finish the bits and pieces at the bottom).

Next we have another wedding one. This time for friends of ours who got married 3 years ago. Can you see a pattern emerging here ? Honestly, I put so much work into these then sort of fall at the last hurdle. No idea why, but its really annoying. Anyway, I discovered that this one is actually complete so all it needs is framing and then it can be gifted to the lucky (?) couple.

Now we have a slightly smaller one, and again I found this one to be complete. Its a picture of Dornoch Cathedral, a cathedral in the highlands of Scotland and actually where Madonna and Elon Musk got married (but not to each other!). It's for my Mum for her birthday - Dornoch is the place where we spent our childhood holidays. We used to go every year with some other families from England, Scotland and Northern Ireland - we only all knew each other from going to the same hotel in Dornoch every year. Every summer  spent 2 weeks there, from when I was 5 until I was about 30 and I stopped going. My parents kept going though for another 20 odd years, until my Dad passed away. It was great fun, in the group there were about 20 children and we had a blissful time playing golf and tennis, going to the beach, swimming, playing in the hotel gardens, it was wonderfully freeing, and I feel very blessed to have grown up with such memories. So Dornoch is very dear to our hearts. The cross-stitch, small as it is, is very definitely recognisable as Dornoch Cathedral, so I know my Mum will love it. Again it just needs framing. (All this framing is going to cost  small fortune!)

This next one is actually just for myself, and I spent a few happy hours finishing it off this week. It's just a Christmas sampler which I started a few years ago. When I dug it out I realised there wasn't really a huge amount left to do - just from the sort of house shape downwards wasn't done, but the top 2/3 was all complete. I'm not sure what I'll do with this one, maybe get it framed and hang it up just at Christmas when we decorate the house.

And finally we have my ongoing project (excuse the creases!), which I may have blogged about before. This one is a real labour of love (and secretly I hate it a tiny bit ...). It's a Millenium cross-stitch which my Mum bought me for Christmas in the year of, yes, you guessed it, the millenium, back in 1999 (gosh that feels weird to write a year beginning with 19!). So I've been working on it, on and off, for 22 years! To be fair it has been packed in a box during two house moves and I've had 3 babies since then so life has had other priorities, but I dig it out every so often to work on it. I do feel now that the end is in sight. As you can see there are 16 little images and I've only got 3 left to do. So near yet so far!

Once this is finished its definitely getting framed and I might give it to my Mum for Christmas if I can finish it by then! We shall see!

So that's a roundup of my current cross-stitch progress. I still have a few incomplete ones but I shall leave those for another day.

Til next time, have some crafty fun,

Jillxxx

Carcassonne Crochet Retreat

During the first week of October I was lucky enough to go away on holidays to France on my own for a week. I say on my own but actually I was with my bestest oldest friend (we have known each other for 49 years!!!) and a group of 12 others on a lovely relaxing crochet retreat. The retreat, which was organised by Stitchtopia and run by the wonderful Lucy of Attic24 fame, took place in the beautiful city of Carcassonne in southern France.

We set off very early (I got up at 2:30am - yikes!) on a Monday morning and got off to a great start with bucks fizz for breakfast at the airport...

We met everybody at the departure gate and before long we were touching down in Toulouse to beautiful sunny weather. An hour or so on the coach and we were afforded our first view of beautiful Carcassonne...

... and yes it really does look like that - just WoW - a beautiful, historic, medieval, walled city perched on a hill surrounded by rolling green fields. (Well on a few sides anyway, there is also a newer area of town but we'll come to that later.) 

Entering the city is by way of a huge gate which would have had a portcullis and drawbridge, as there is a dry moat ...

Once inside the city, which is made up of lots of little winding roads and alleyways made of cobblestones, its very peaceful and quiet as there is no traffic (hence no traffic noise), and of course everywhere is safe for pedestrians. Everywhere you look there are little restaurants and boutique shops, its just so quaint and pretty.

Our hotel was actually inside the walled city so it was very handy for all the restaurants, and lovely and peaceful at night. We stayed for 6 days - 4 days of crochet (yippee!!!) and 2 days sight-seeing (with a little crochet added in of course!). During our crochet days we had workshops run by the lovely Lucy, who taught us about colour theory, and then gave us a wonderful pattern to follow for a cushion cover. We were challenged to be bold and brave with our colour choices, and to step outside of our comfort zones. And how lucky were we - we were each given a pack of Scheepjes minis to work with (photo nicked from Lucy as I was to excited and forgot to take one !) ...

Ooooh my! Amazing! Such gorgeous colours and such cute little balls, just such fun for messing about with and playing with colour. The front side of the cushion was a little experimental with some blending first of all ...

 

... and this soon grew into nearly a competed front cover ....

... it was wonderful to see how everybody else's cushion covers were so different despite working from the same palette...

... we added some little flowers to the middle of the front, here is mine completed ...

... to be honest I'm not wildly happy with it, too much orange maybe ? But here is the reverse and Oh My GoSh I LoVe It ...

I feel with the front I let myself overthink it whereas with the reverse I just went with the flow a bit and as a result it feels much more balanced. Or maybe its just that I love brights so much! Nevertheless the workshops were such fun, lots of lively chatter and laughter, and soooo good to spend time with like-minded people, and during down time we could relax in the sweet little hotel garden ...

We had a couple of days of sightseeing, and the old town of Carcassonne is so beautiful - I took a gazillion photos. One lunchtime we went for a tour of the chateau and ramparts - the walled part of the city consists of over 50 towers, and its possible to walk around the ramparts a fair way. 

We made it into the new area of town as well, and had a lovely afternoon shopping ...

... and we went on a little boat tour too ...

On our second sightseeing day we went to Lavantel to the Musee de Textiles .... 

... and we saw some fascinating spinning and weaving demonstrations ...

Over the week we had lots of lovely food and of course vino!

But all too soon it was time to go home again. Going back to the reality of laundry and cooking was a bit of a shock to the system, I can tell you! 

I've been a terrible blogger this year, but am hoping to get things started again with this post - so watch this space and next time I will have some crafty happenings for you.

Til next time, hope you have some crafty fun,

Jillxxx

Hello dear friends and readers :)
Welcome to this week's Finish for the Weekend :) Please see below for instructions on how to join in.
I'm sorry there was no post last Friday, I had nothing finished and nothing much to blog about either!

There have been a lot of storm systems about this week. What sort of name is "Brian" for a storm ?! (no offence to all the Brians out there) And who names these things anyway ? Over the water, in my homeland of Northern Ireland, it's been particularly stormy: lots of places closed down - schools, banks, parks - however I think they survived relatively unscathed. My Mum had a few of her garden pots blow over and smash, but thankfully no structural problems with her house.

Here in England just now it's a beautiful autumn day, and as I type the wind is still gusting ferociously through our garden, a great day to hang the washing out. I love this photo of near horizontal t-shirts.

So how's your week been ? Mine's been pretty good, nothing majorly exciting or anything, just a lovely balanced week of friends, coffee, chores and of course crochet.

For this week's finish I have a cute granny square bag made in a rather riotous Sirdar Click yarn.



I started this last year when we were driving up to Scotland to catch the ferry over to Northern Ireland at Easter. I had just had the dreadful news the night before that my Dad had died really quite suddenly, and then we had this 14 hour journey of hell to get through. I cried the whole way in the car, and then, as the traffic was so bad, we then missed the ferry. By the time we actually got on the ferry I was ready for sleep really, but in the absence of anywhere to lie down I did some crochet to keep me busy. All I could think to do was a granny square. I'd no idea what to use it for but I had to do something.

Whilst in NIreland I decided it was going to become a bag, so I crocheted another granny square the same size, and then also crocheted a strap. The strap was just around 7 stitches wide, and enough rows of dc to make it the right length for a cross-body bag.
These 3 bag-parts have been lying in my work basket for about 18 months now! It was time to finish it off properly.



I sewed the granny squares together on 3 sides, just normal sewing. I had thought about dc'ing them together but as this wool is quite chunky I thought a dc join would be too bulky. I then sewed on a gorgeous tomato-soup-red big button and crocheted a length of chains to make a button loop.

The final step was to line the bag. I'm not a massive orange fan so it was a good opportunity to use up this spotty orange fabric that had been in my stash for some time.

I used the sewing machine to sew the lining fabric sides together, and to hem the top, and then I hand-sewed the fabric inner to the crocheted outer. And ... ta-dah! A lovely sunny and bright granny square bag ....

It's another one of those projects where I just think to myself - why did I leave this so long ?? - because it only really took another hour or so of work to complete. Anyway, its done now, and I think I'm going to add it to my stockpile for craft fairs.

There may not be a FFTW post next week as I am going over to NIreland - just Little Tomboy and me - as its half-term holidays for us. We are leaving the teenagers here with Daddy, and a coupe of friends are joining us for a few days. I'm very much looking forward to going "home" and spending a few days just relaxing.


Happy half-term everyone!
Til next time,
Jillxxxxx


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Welcome to Finish for the Weekend, a weekly chance to link up and share with the blogging community some of the projects you have completed this week. The only rule is that your post must be about an item you have finished this week, hopefully to help reduce some of those piles of UFO's!

Here's how to join in:

1. Write a blog post about your finished project.

2. Link back to Finish for the Weekend by adding this text as a link on your post:

http://emeraldcottage.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Finish%20for%20the%20Weekend

3. Publish your post

4. Link back from here to your post by clicking "Add Link" and adding your post's URL

5. Spread the bloggy love by visiting and commenting on the other Finish for the Weekend posts.

The Finish for the Weekend post will open for new links on a Friday at 12noon London time, and it will stay open until Monday at 12noon to allow for overseas bloggers to join in. These times may vary but I will do my best to keep it roughly the same. Looking forward to seeing all your posts !