Tag: xmas ornies

Snowflakes and Christmas trees

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I love snowflakes – don’t know why but I love them as stitching designs, particularly blackwork designs and have spent most of this year stitching snowflake ornaments to give as my Xmas cards to close friends.

Last Xmas I bought some stick on snowflake motifs for my windows and managed to keep them on despite the kid’s protests that they should come down in 12th night! I maintain they are winter not Xmas decorations and can stay up till Spring. This year I added to the stock and now have lots of pretty snowflakes on the doors leading out into the garden. Very appropriate for this type of weather!

This week we have of course had real snow so I thought I would add to my snow pictures with these taken on Tuesday. This was a much nicer day than Monday as it had stopped snowing by then and the sun was out and everything was looking very Xmas card scenery . Even had a little robin stop by the bird table but didn’t get the camera out quick enough to capture that.

The doors out to the garden with snowflake motifs
The doors out to the garden with snowflake motifs
Beautiful winter scene
Beautiful winter scene
A close up of one of the snowflake motifs
A close up of one of the snowflake motifs

Despite the fact that I do have lots and lots of snowflake patterns already in my files that I haven’t stitched I could not resist two more sets that I have just bought from the wonderful Seba Designs site – scroll halfway down the page to see not one but two sets of snowflakes. Snowflake heaven and all for a very bargainsome £7!

In between other stitching I have been working on a series of designs I first saw last year – the wonderful Helga Mandl’s Xmas trees – each tree spells out a word if you look at it on its side – the pic below shows my first attempts at the Noel (on white sparkly Aida) and Joy (on red and gold fleck Aida). These are very easy to do and will make fab ornaments for next year’s round of Xmas gifts backed with some of the fabric from my stash.

Helga Mandl trees
Helga Mandl trees

Pics taken with new camera which is working out very well so far – seems to be much better at close up pics and has a nice wide viewing screen at the back – always useful.

Well tomorrow will be day 4 of wearing wellies to go out here at snow central – more is forecast at some point – it is slowly melting on major roads but we are still in a little white world of our own!

Am off to the Stitch and Creative Crafts show in Manchester on Sunday with Ellie – little girlie day out for a couple of textile junkies so am really looking forward to that.

Busy day

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Have had a very nice day today – have been trying to finish off the final bits of the build – 5 months on and it is still not done due to various things but we are getting there.

Today have been painting and varnishing and fitting a shelf and mirror in Jake’s shower room , that is nearly finished – just the little bedroom to go and that is currently a decorating store! I will get it all done but do get frustrated that it has taken so long but with the events of the summer (and subsequent no money!) it has taken longer than expected.

I have also been working on my Xmas ornaments – I have not had time to do them for fundraising this year so have just done them for friends and family. Have been stitching little bits of these all year, not got as many done as I had hoped due again to various interruptions like work, the loft conversion and life getting in the way but below is a pic of my first three finished ones.

Ornaments
Ornaments

 Apologies as the pic is a bit fuzzy – am working off old camera as newer one has gone back to the menders after getting wet in Nepal! These are mainly from Quaker samplers – little motifs that I have stitched on sparkly Aida – mostly at 28 count which does wonders for my eyes! I then back them with nice Xmas fabric and stitch round inserting a ribbon – stuff and hem.

I also have a couple of pics from our last medieval event of the year – the weekend before last we were at Bolsover Castle for a Michaelmas event – indoors at the castle rather than the usual camping and tournament show we do. It was very, very cold even indoors but we had quite a few people come to see us and  made decorations and cards with the children and did a small fight display and weapons, heraldry and armour talks. We also had a wonderful banquet and thanks to Bev for cooking the food – pies to die for!

The pics below show the ladies – Lady Bardolph, Lady De Lacy and my lovely daughter Lady Rose and then Rose and Arthur ( or in real life my son Jacob) in one of the castle rooms.

The ladies at Bolsover
The ladies at Bolsover
Rose and Arthur
Rose and Arthur

We have a busy week ahead getting ready for Xmas – we are having a party on Sat and thankfully I am having a new cooker delivered on Thurs – old one blew up again (third time this year!) so decided enough was enough so from Thurs I will have an oven again.

So I will be decorating the house Thurs and Fri – interrupted by the need to go in to work for a very important meeting about Ofsted – they are visiting us early next year which those of you in the know will realise spells minor panic.

Will take some pics at the party and post them later. Have a good week.

Other Xmas stuff

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Below are a few more pics from our Xmas here – we had a little pretend Xmas day before we went to Spain including eating of one of my limted edition Project Nepal fundraising Xmas puds. And the kids got to have a proper Xmas dinner which of course they don’t get when we are in Spain (poor deprived little dears!).

Baubles

Hall baubles

Xmas tree

Xmas table

Xmas pud

Me, the WWW and Xmas

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I learnt to use the internet about 10 years ago and at the time learnt how to write web pages using HTML – not that I have really needed to use this since. However it has come in very handy in putting together this blog as I at least have a working knowledge of how to structure the pages, move pictures etc. Just shows that you never know when some little bit of knowledge will come in handy! I have put together a little slide show of some of our pics from re-enactment on the medieval re-enactment page so I hope you like them – quite a few are taken this year at Jennie and Blackie’s medieval wedding (see Finishes 2007 page for more on that).

We have finished putting up all the Xmas decorations – I do have some pictures to post but the little creative geniuses that are my children have got the lead for the digital camera somewhere in one of their rooms as they have been making models out of Plasticine and filming little animations with our camera (anyone remember Morph?) so that will have to wait.

 I have been trying to finish one of the last of my cross stitch ornies that I am using some of the wonderful sparkly fabric for. Unfortunately I have chosen a very high count fabric (at least 28 if not more) so am having trouble seeing it and have had to do lots of unpicking! It does however have to be finished by Friday as it is a present for a friend and she is coming here on Sat which is the last time I will see her before we fly to Spain on Monday 17th (yippee). My Mum lives in Spain so we are there for Xmas – she keeps ringing and telling me how hot it is there and it is very wet and cold here so I can’t wait.

I also have to finish off the last of the other snowflakes that I have made as I am giving these instead of Xmas cards this year. The pic shows them almost done – I just have to stuff with wadding and sew up but I am out tomorrow having an Xmas meal with people from work so that will have to wait till Weds. I can see that despite starting in Sept I will still be finishing off my Xmas stuff at 2 am the morning before as usual! Hope that you are all a lot more organised!

Cross Stitch ornies

New stash

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The weekend before last I went to the wonderful Knitting and Stitching show in Harrogate. If you have never been to one you should – they are held about 4 times a year in various places in the UK and apart from the hundreds of wonderful stalls selling everything there are exhibitions of textile art and workshops on various different things. We had a girls’ day out with everyone from the re-enactment group and I spent far too much money as usual! A large part of that was on beading supplies for Ellen as she has just got a beading loom and there were some fab special offers at the beading stalls but a lot of it was stash for me for the next round of Xmas ornies.Here are some pics of what I bought.
Xmas fabric 1
I am planning to use all of this for the backing for Xmas ornies next year – particularly the blue fabric in the middle with snowflakes on. I thought it would look very good with the (multitude!) of snowflake designs that I have collected this year and not had time to stitch!
snowflake
The snowflakes are very slightly sparkly as you can see from the above pic so I will stitch on the wonderful sparkly Aida and evenweave that I also bought at the show. I discovered this last year for my Xmas stitching – as well as the Aida with gold, silver ,blue etc fleck woven into it I have also found this lovely sparkly stuff that is more subtle. It just looks like it has been sprinkled with glitter rather than having an obvious weave.
Xmas aida

I bought more traditional colours as well for ornies and baubles – mainly fat quarters as I don’t need much – most of the ornies are only a couple of inches square.A couple of these are patterns I had last year as well and I particularly like the red ones.
Xmas fabric2
I then promised myself that I would not buy any more sash (ever!) but the following week I also found some wonderful co-ordinating fabric in my LNS that matched a piece I bought from Hobbycraft a while ago and I just had to have it so I did. This is honestly the last bit of Xmas fabric I will buy this year – I will stop now I promise!
Xmas fabric 3

Xmas ornies

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So far I think I have made about 100 various ornies for my Project Nepal fundraising (see my web page for more details of that). Most of them have been the pine cones and baubles below rather than the stitched ones as I have had lots of positive feedback from these. A big thank you to all who have supported me in my efforts.

Xmas BaublesXmas pine cones

The original idea comes from a very talented woman called Sue Schofield who I came across last year at one of the stitching shows that I attended. If you want to find out how to do them she has published a book called Decorations to Dazzle and also sells kits from her web site.

I am carrying on with my stitched ones though as much as I love making the others I am suffering stitching withdrawal so am starting a new batch now for next year’s Xmas fundraiser. Below are some I made a while ago – the two identical red ones come from a lovely set of free patterns from Tree Trunk Designs which I found during one of my many wanderings on the web.
Xmas cross stitch ornies

The blackwork leaf is a small part of a larger pattern from one of my stitch magazines – I tend to use little bits out of lots of patterns for ornies and have just ordered some more Quaker patterns online which have wonderful motifs for next year’s ornies. Other patterns I have found from the great Gift of Stitching online magazine which is great value compared to buying paper mags – not that it stops me as I like to have something to read in the bath or on the bus! Have just downloaded the latest copy and it is full of ornies – have not had  proper look yet but will print some pages off later when everyone is in bed – how exciting!

I did stop buying mags for a while as I felt guilty about not stitching things from them and thought that I had enough patterns but then I thought Jacob subscribes to Nintendo and doesn’t do anything with that so have been buying them again now and have treated myself to some new subscriptions as well on the grounds that it is cheaper that way. I don’t tend to buy kits unless it is something really special so most of my stitching comes from my mags.

My daughter Ellen has applied to go to Kosovo in the summer with her college to run a summer school project for war orphans and if she gets accepted will need to do some fundraising for that. If not I am sure I can find some good cause to donate my proceeds to and the school in Nepal needs continuing help to fund supplies and salaries.

Must go now to finish off the latest order .