The Cat that Walks Alone

I completed this cross stitch back in 2014 as well and it was the last one I done before I started the big Scarlet Wizard cross stitch that I finished just before Christmas.  I love the big cats and this one is very striking against the black fabric.

Snow Angels

I've been making more time lapse videos of my cross stitch.  This one is only a little one called Snow Angels by a company called Sunset and I done this one in 2014.

Good Old Fashioned Cape - Design D194

Staying with my own handspun yarn, this time I have opted for some lovely Falkand/Soy Silk that I spun back in 2012 and put that with a fairly simple little cape that just has lace along the bottom edge.  If you would like to know more about the yarn here is a post I wrote at the time of spinning.

I'm grateful to be knitting this right now as its really cold and with this lot sat on my lap as I work its keeping me warm.  Its got a good weight to it too.  Still needs to be washed, shaped and dried.

I decided that a vintage style cape needs vintage style buttons and these were only one of a couple of types that I have that actually 'worked' with the design and the colours of the yarn.

Yes, I think another one of these would be great in the shop, in a different colour of course!

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.