Cinderella!!!!!!!

Took the family to see Cinderella at Birmingham Hippodrome Theatre this evening.  This year it stars Matt Slack (as usual) playing Buttons, Beverley Knight as The Fairy Godmother in her first ever Panto, Danny Mac as Prince Charming, Suzanne Shaw as Cinderella, Ceri Dupree and David Dale as The Ugly Sisters, Gary Watson as Dandini and Robin Colvill and James Brandon from The Grumbleweeds, which is now no longer a 5 member group as I remember them in 70's and 80's and only consists of original member Robin and new boy James who joined in 2013.

It was great night with Matt acting the fool as always, a fair bit of ad-libbing and giggling by cast members and audience interaction.  Looking forward to next year's Panto now.

A stroll in the Park

Now that I know how to create time lapse videos from photographs I thought I would make a few more from the series of progress photos that I took on a couple more cross stitch projects.  I don't sell my cross-stitch, they are either kept by myself or sometimes I gift them but they are usually small ones if I gift them.

This is another Dimensions Gold Cross Stitch kit that I completed back in 2014.  I bought this kit years ago and when my mother saw it she wanted it and when I said no she had a bit of a "toddler tantrum" and huffed, puffed and pouted and went on and on and on about it until I relented.

She didn't actually start stitching this for a few years and she didn't get very far with it, probably less than 60 stitches.  She passed away suddenly of heart failure in 2007 at the age of 65 and as I am the only one in the family that cross-stitches this came back to me, along with all her patterns, fabric and threads.  My late mother was left handed,I am right, and stitched in the opposite direction to me so I undone the little bit she had done and re-started this so that all the stitches lay in the same direction, the direction that comes naturally to me.

I have put a photo of the finished item first and then the work-in-progress video.

Elford Jacob Fleece No.9 Part II

Around mid-September I started work on combing the black/white mixed fibres from the Jacob fleece that I'd been working on for most of the year and I ended up with a bag full of hand-combed nests in various shades of browny-grey totalling 382g.

I could have spent more time and wasted more fibres by blending the darkest with the lightest and trying to achieve a bag of hand-combed nests that was pretty much an even shade throughout but I decided to make another gradient yarn, or two.

I sorted the hand-combed nests as best I could from lightest to darkest and took every-other-one and threaded them onto a wrapping paper cardboard tube centre and then done the same for the remaining nests, spinning every other one from each set for the first ply and the remaining for the second ply and then plying them together, so technically each single ply is made from every fourth nest out of the original line up.  I'm having déjà-vu here, I've done this before!

I made two different thickness of yarns, a sport weight (left) that is 112g/397m and a double knit weight (right) that is 116g/330m and both are lovely and squishy.

Scarlet Wizard

Since finishing the shawl with the dragonflies on it I have not made anything for the shop as I've had a big cross stitch on a tapestry frame waiting to be finished for ages, and with nowhere to store it when the Christmas tree went up, I decided to concentrate on that and get it out of the way.  It took longer than I hoped and with the snow that we've had the schools have been closed and I've had the kids at home.  Whilst I can stitch when the kids are home it is a lot slower because of the constant distractions.

This was a Dimensions Gold Collection Kit called Scarlet Wizard and I've figured out how to make a video from photos so have put the work-in-progress photos in order so you can see it progress from start to finish, apologies for the constant change in the colour from photo to photo, this was due to differences in light and whether I took the photo with my phone or my camera.

Here is the finished cross stitch and below that is the video.

Let there be Dragonflies - Design LF199

Its been a few weeks since I made a shawl with some black Jacob wool and this time I am using the white wool from the same fleece.  This shawl is pretty but I have a new favourite hate, bead shunting.  The way the beads are placed in this design calls for the beads to be threaded onto the yarn before you start knitting as opposed to being placed individually over the stitch as you work, which means that the beads have to keep being pushed along the yarn as you work until you are ready to use them.

I threaded 1,205 size 6 Toho beads in shade 179: Trans-Rainbow Emerald Green onto the yarn, that was a tiring job to start with but bead shunting, that takes it to a whole new level.  Who would have thought that that would make your shoulders ache like you wouldn't believe!

The yarn is another single ply yarn of light fingering weight and you can read about the yarn and the fleece it came from here.

The little dragonflies are only depicted in beads along the outer edges of the shawl and the bottom of the shawl has a "double-point" rather than a single point.  In the beginning I actually spent more time shunting beads along than I did knitting.  It got a little quicker as I progressed up the shawl and beads were used up.  I'm very happy with my colour choice for the beads as they are not a solid colour but have that iridescent rainbow effect just like a dragonfly.

The whole thing took me about 3 weeks to make and the beaded cast off was a bit confusing to begin with in terms of where exactly the bead should be placed on the stitch but I figured it out and it was a whopping 4 1/2 hours before I reached the end.

I'm really happy with the way this one turned out, despite me getting fed up with the bead shunting.  There is no other way to do this design without shunting beads but I wouldn't mind making another of these sometime in the future.

Cross stitching birthday cards

If you follow my Facebook page you probably already know that I like to cross stitch in my spare time, not that I get much spare time, but still.  I have an aunt and two uncles who are soon to turn 70 years old and I wanted to do something different and more meaningful than just buying a birthday card from the shop.

I designed my own cards, using information about their interests, and the Jane Greenoff Cross Stitch design software that I've had for years.  I had the idea of adding their name across the design using sparkly thread but I couldn't get the software to do this font and add it over the top so I had to print out the design I'd made and then print out the name in the font and size I wanted and do the old tracing paper trick to physically put it on the design where I wanted it.

I think they've come out great and the Twilley's Goldfingering name over the top really sets it off.
Alan has always been mad on The Beatles, Christine loves gardening and Michael loves his car and Formula 1.

Alpaca and Silk Lace Shawlette - Design A197

Straight on with the next little shawlette, this time with one of my very first handspun yarns.  This is some Alpaca/Silk that I spun up back in 2012, although I have re-plied the yarn since, and you can read about the Alpaca and the yarn here.

This is 97% Alpaca, 3% Mulberry Silk and is aran weight.

This is heavy compared to the other two mohair shawls but its really soft and silky.

Its washed up and blocked really well.