A Final Flourish for 2011

I'm finishing 2011 with a finish! They've been a bit thin on the ground this year so maybe stitching 2011 on Sunflower Bellpull back in November was a touch on the optimistic side. However I managed to get the last stitches in yesterday so no restitching was required.

Sunflower Bellpull by The Drawn Thread copyright 2000

Started May 2010 - finished December 2011
Stitched using the recommend fabric and threads

I hope you all had a great Christmas, Father Christmas was good to me again this year bringing me several things off my wish lists. I was in a Secret Santa exchange with some friends and my Santa sent me Plum Street Samplers - Fruit of the Spirit & a piece of hand dyed fabric. I also got Blackbird Designs A Stitcher's Journey.

On the books front I got River Cottage Veg Everyday from which I've already earmarked a long list of recipes to try. I also got a couple of sewing books, Home Sewn by French General and Sewing for Boys by Shelly Figueroa and Karen LePage. Unfortunately Father Christmas forgot to leave me some time for crafting!

I hope that you all have a lovely New Year

I hope that everyone who visits here has a very happy Christmas

Persephone Secret Santa

I think I've mentioned before how much I like Persephone Books so this year I joined in with the Persephone Secret Santa organised by Claire and Verity.

My Secret Santa was Joan at Flowers and Stripes, I got a lovely parcel containing High Wages by Dorothy Whipple and a special reprint of the Time & Tide Alphabet by Eleanor Farjeon that was done for Persphone's fifth birthday. I am very much looking forward to reading them both. Thank you Joan.

Catching Up

Apologies for the length of this post, it's a catch up of everything I've been working on since October.

First up is Anniversary Roses by Forget Me Nots in Stitches, I took this to the retreat to stitch when I wasn't working on Tend thy Sheep. I was thinking that I could get a fair chunk stitched but then I realised that the band I started was one of those fiendishly complicated ones that Lauren does so well (there was unfortunately also a fair bit of frogging)

Anniversary Roses by Forget Me Nots in Stitches copyright 2009
using the silks and fabrics provided

One wip that I have been working on here and there is Just Nan's 20 Flowers, this is my go to project for when I'm too tired to work on one of my larger projects and am now at the half way point on this one.

20 Flowers by Just Nan copyright 2004
stitched with the kit materials

The project that I'm shooting for finishing this year is The Drawn Thread's Sunflower Bellpull. I'm now down to the last part of the stitching but I've put it down for the present as I need to stitch the children's ornaments.

Sunflower bellpull by The Drawn Thread copyright 2000
stitched using the recommended threads and fabric

And now a finish! I completed the socks I was knitting for Rosie this week.

Basic top down children's socks knit in UK Alpaca Sock yarn in Moss

I completed the knitting on the Ishbel just before I went to the retreat but haven't yet managed to block it so no photo's yet. Maybe next week! My new project on the needles is a Pembroke Vest for Christopher, this is the back I'm about to start shaping the shoulders.

Pembroke vest by Kirsten Kapur
knit in King Cole Merino blend DK

And of course now Rosie is in school I had to make her a costume for her nativity play. Rosie was a snowflake which stumped me for a while. However we eventually came up with something that worked. I made her a small tutu based on the instructions on Simple Kids and then Rosie & I decorated a white t-shirt with glittery fabric paint.

Thank you all very much if you've stuck with me till now, I'm cautiously optimistic that I can go back to more regular updates from here in.

Tend Thy Sheep

Sorry to have been absent for so long, we've all been struck by numerous different bugs since I last posted. Small children are just such virulent germ factories, poor Rosie is on her third ear infection in six weeks.

But now onto much pleasanter things, when I last posted I was about to go away to The Sampler Guild retreat in the Cotswold's.

We stayed at the Wroxton House Hotel just outside Banbury & it was wonderful. Comfortable rooms, lovely food & nothing seemed to be too much trouble for the staff. Most of the time was spent in the stitching room & I enjoyed the luxury of being able to focus on my stitching for a weekend.

The TSG hard at work

My goal for the weekend was to do the finishing on Merry Cox's Tend Thy Sheep, the most recent class that she offered through the Shinning Needle Society. So here is my finished box:

A close up of the Smalls, Tend Thy Sheep copyright From Merry's Heart 1998

The one time we left the hotel was to pay a visit to Sulgrave Manor. I'm sure that I don't need to tell many of my American visitors that Sulgrave was the ancestral home of George Washington's family.

Picture used by kind permission of Sulgrave Manor

Our guide gave us a very comprehensive tour of the building highlighting their textile collection. As the light levels in the building were not good I wasn't able to get many decent pictures. The ones that I did where of some replica Elizabethan bed curtains which were made from slips stitched over ten years by a large number of stitchers both here and in the US.

Picture used by kind permission of Sulgrave Manor

It's a bit blurry but I thought that you all would like this photo of an original hornbook from their collection.

Picture used by kind permission of Sulgrave Manor