Friday 30 December 2011

New Years eve in Australia

Hi everyone,
I am writing this as our weather soars into the 39-41C degrees forecast for the next couple of days. Baxter the cat and I will be hibernating and sitting as close to the air-conditioning as possible and doing a lot of heavy sighing until this nightmare goes away. I do feel for the birds and insects that visit my garden. It must be very bad for the bees especially, I took this photo of my old birdbath this morning.
It has been like LA airport with the honey bees taking a drink and then flying off making room for more to take their place. The birds have had to fight their way through this morning so I have added another 2 bowls of water for them to drink and bathe in. You can see we have already lost the lawn (turf) from the garden its is just a weed encrusted dust bowl. Arrgh.... summer in the southern hemisphere.


Some good news. I have finished Emerald ahead of time. The colours are beautiful and it was fun to stitch. Will do more of Kathy's designs in the future. Here is the finished piece.
The photo is on a bit of an angle because it was taken indoors but it allowed me to show more of the rich colours. Next it is back to finishing Kurdy Biggs, Looking Glass when my brain has cooled enough to work properly again. LG is a thinking piece so not one you work on with brain meltdown but with a clear head and a good night's sleep. I did do a large piece of un-stitching recently. I found an old Told in a Garden cross stitch chart I had partly stitched and decided I would never finish it, so I started to unpick it to reuse the linen. Thought it wouldn't take long. Yeah, famous last words, 3 days later I still haven't completed the unpicking. 


To everyone of my friends and followers have a wonderful New Years eve and all the very best for 2012. Happy stitching.
Bye for now, Carol

Friday 23 December 2011

Christmas Eve in Australia

Hi everyone,
Firstly I need to apologize for chopping off Santa' head in the last photo. So here is a full photo of his loveliness.


Isn't he cute. Well worth waiting to see.
Thursday night was a girls get-together night we have each year at a members home while the Guild is shut for the holiday break. Anne very graciously opens her home to all the girls to stitch, eat and chat till the small hours. The house always reminds me of the Santa grotto in one of the big department stores with elves,reindeer,snowmen, santas and assorted animals that sing, play musical instruments, light up and just plain sparkle. Here are some photos of the night and the beautiful tree with all the handmade ornaments collected over the years.
Anne's Christmas Tree 2011

The girls relaxing
Some stitching and intense concentration

Emerald is nearly finished only 2 small squares to finish, so it will be 2012 before a photo appears. I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a very happy New Year. Welcome to all my new followers and to all of you that have kept coming back to read my ramblings. You never know, this year I might even work out how the leave comments and such using Blogger on your blogs. In the meantime I will watch and read with delight all your interesting comments and stitching triumphs.

Bye for now, Carol

Monday 19 December 2011

Flying needles required

Hi everyone,
My goodness it is nearly the 25th where did the rest of the month go. Last Thursday night was our Guild Thursday night Christmas party and ornament exchange. It was decided this year that we would divide into two groups, 1 group to bring savoury foods and the other to bring sweet foods to share. This worked out very well and there was a mixture of lovely yummy goodies to tempt even the most fussy of eaters.
After we ate it was time to draw numbers for the English exchange Christmas ornaments. As always each parcel was a lovely surprise with lots of wow's and ooo's being said. Here is a photo of "The Common Thread's" exchanges.


The Common Thread, 2011 Christmas exchange gifts
There are 3 gifts still to be opened due to some members having family commitments on the night. I will have my camera with me next Thursday night and will try to catch up with the missing ones then. The girls are sooooo clever and the ornaments are all treasured. What is really lovely is that each year there is a new ornament for your christmas tree to remind you how lovely it is to be a stitcher and have others out there just as passionate about stitching and sharing as you are.


Here are my gifts, the noel is Australian from Joan and the fob is from Dee is England, (do you recognise the pattern?)




I was overjoyed with both of my gifts and they hang from my little tree for everyone to enjoy.


On the stitching front I must admit it has been a bit slow. Lots of christmas gift stitching but not much else at the moment. Here is a little gift I just finished stitched from a pattern I have wanted to stitch for some time.


It is stitched on 36 count Permin "Lambswool" with 1 strand of Canna Lily Cottage Garden overdye cotton. Like many others I have become a collector of Quaker patterns so this will probably be the first of many to be added to the to-do list.


Happy stitching, bye for now, Carol

Sunday 11 December 2011

Saturday stitching with Lemon tartlets

Hi everyone,
Saturday was a great stitching day. I sat outside with friends, enjoying the good weather and the birds visiting the garden. There is something about stitching in the daylight outdoors that makes it a little magical. Good company, lemon tartlets and home made biscuits probably added to the magic quite a lot. If you are in a stitching slump may I suggest a day outdoors may just be the tonic needed. Though many of you in the Northern Hemisphere are in the middle of very icy weather I don't suggest you try it just yet. I will stitch a few stitches for you.


Here is a little more of Emerald, sorry I had the last photo round the wrong way, lets just call it a Seniors moment and move on.

Down to the last 2 rows now. The beautiful shades of green really do not show up in the photo as luscious as they actually are. There are some bigger squares so this should fill in the remainder quite quickly.


Saturday I also worked on some more linen pieces using 35/36 count linens.
Here's a photo of the workings so far.


Copyright, Carol J Young Designs
These were stitched with a variety of threads from my thread collection, all overdyes. Not sure how they will be finished yet. I just need to work out more details before I decide.


Happy stitching, bye for now, Carol

Wednesday 7 December 2011

Happy dance, found a Michael Boren chart

Hi everyone,
Ever since not being able to attend and stitch Michael Boren's class at the 2011 ANG Seminar it has been a bit of an obsession for me to acquire at least one of his charts to stitch. Well the good news is I recently found some. This is the one I decided on its called "Scheheradaze" the design was issued in 2003 under his design name of Shenandoah Stitchery Designs. It has 8 colourways listed and is a small piece on 7" x 10" stretcher bars. I have chosen the original colourway on black 18 count canvas because the colours are so very rich.


This will be a good project to complete between some of the really large pieces waiting in the stash.


Yesterday I spent a day with friends stitching and chatting, but the weather was sooooo hot  32deg C it was more chatting than stitching so not a lot more completed on Emerald. The pincushion is finished so that is one more to cross off the list of to-do's.


Thought you may like to see 2 Colour of the Month threads that arrived lately.


Red....




And Blue




These are thanks to Theresa at Homestead Needlearts, Thereas always makes great choices when matching the colours.


Happy stitching, Bye for now, Carol

Sunday 4 December 2011

Heave ho Internet Explorer

Hi everyone,
Just when I thought everything was okay another gremlin appeared. It seems IE9  has a few little problems which they are working on. So to enable me to blog it got the old heave ho and Google Chrome has taken its place. Which means friends a whole new learning experience for the techno challenged. Oh well they tell me you have to keep the brain cells active as you get older. 


I have finished a little more of Emerald, the star with the green border is my favourite so far. The metallic highlight is Kreinik 12 #085 a really pretty thread which I am sure will be used for another project really soon.


Here is Emerald




Each Christmas at the Embroiderers Guild we have an end of year party and we exchange handmade gifts. This is my contribution which will be finished as a pincushion. The thread is Anchor multicolour cotton Number 1206 and the linen is 35count Natural by Permin. As usual I have left this till last minute. The party is on the 15 December, 2 weeks away and I am sure you would never do such a thing right? Lol...................


This is it so far.




Isnt it a pretty pattern, its from France and I love red just as much as green in equal amounts. Well I am off now to finish this now I have the backing I needed. Happy stitching, its great to be back.


Bye for now, Carol