Attic24

April Feels

April is treating us kindly for the most part and it really does feel like Spring has finally sprung here. We took a walk at Bolton abbey on Sunday morning, just a shortish stroll through Strid Woods to breathe in some cool fresh air and stretch our legs a little. Little B was in fine form, a non stop chattering, noisy little mouthpiece on two legs. He could talk the hind legs off a donkey, as my Mum used to say. It's still a bit bare and wintry in the woods, yet I don't mind it too much as it feels right and proper for the time of year. There is bluebell greenery to be found look, but unlike my friends in the south we are still some weeks away from blue floral bounty.

I can't wait for the flowers! Come on little buds, shoot upwards!

In the late afternoon on Sunday I found a quiet window of opportunity to amuse myself with some gentle creativity. The Little Peeps were all busy with friends and J was wearing his blue and white stripy pinny and cooking up a delicious smelling curry for dinner. I decided to sit and stitch for a short while - I started this cross stitch hoop last summer but it's been tucked away in my project bag waiting patiently for me to return to it. Autumn/Winter generally means allllllll the crochet for me with my annual CAL blanket in progress, so I don't often feel the need to look elsewhere for a creative fix. 

Cross stitch is such a beautifully slow and meditative hobby, and I honestly adore it. If I wasn't so completely obsessed with my crochet hook then I could easily imagine myself designing with these little crosses. The above design is by Tiny Modernist on Etsy, in case you feel the urge to stitch up some Love letters surrounded by flowers.

Monday afternoon, J and I took a very quick jaunt into our local woods in the hour before the school run. It was one of those days consumed by mundane jobs and admin, and by 2.30 I'd just had enough of sitting at my laptop. It was such a tonic to get out into the fresh air and soak in some sunny woodland feel-good....

.....and oh the wild garlic is looking scrumptious. I gathered some young leaves and made wild garlic pesto last year (using this recipe) but this year I am fancying some green, garlicky soup. I came across this recipe today and it is calling loudly to my leaf-gathering soul, so I shall see if I can make it happen.

I've had a jug of narcissus on my table for weeks on end now, they've become an essential weekly grocery item that I pop into my basket along with bananas without even thinking too hard about it. They are always right there near the fruit, long stems held together with elastic bands and laid out neatly in cardboard boxes. I simply cannot resist their happy little faces, and the scent too of course. I bought these ones yesterday, and the lady who served me in the supermarket literally scrunched up her nose with disgust as she passed them through the checkout scanner, telling me that she couldn't stand the smell of them. Not me, I LOVE the smell!

Today has been bright and sunny, and when I came back home after the school run this morning I found the kitty lounging around on the sofa basking in the sun. She looked so completely content, and I thought : yes indeedy, I know exactly how you are feeling. Isn't it just the loveliest thing to sit a while in a warm patch of streaming sunshine and soak in it's gentle warmth?

Yes, it's enough to make you want to roll around and delight in the pure deliciousness of it all!

Despite the Spring sunshine, it's been cold these past few days. I was chatting to the Ice Cream Tug Boat Man on the canal yesterday as he opened his boat up for the first time this season - he admitted that he had misjudged the weather and was absolutely frozen. He did look a tad chilled around the extremities I have to say.

I'm still plodding around wearing my hand knit socks and boots, and I am very, very happy with that arrangement for the time being. I folded up these freshly washed socks earlier today ready to take them upstairs - well the top pair will go upstairs to join my Sock Pile, the bottom pair will be wrapped up very soon and gifted (finally, finally) to my super-patient father-in-law. I certainly hope his toes adore wriggling inside those cosy, woolly stitches.

I bought a new duvet cover and pillowcases yesterday, a spontaneous element of the regular supermarket** shop. I absolutely could not walk past and leave this behind - a king size 100% cotton duvet with a very beautiful Liberty-esk design - reduced in price to a mere £10! TEN!! I came home, washed it, hung it outside to dry and had the utter pleasure of that clean-sheet-smell when I went to bed last night. I woke up this morning thinking that I was in someone else's bed, being that for the past ten years we've always had a plain white duvet cover. The pattern is taking some getting used to, I keep getting a mild shock every time I walk into the bedroom and see my bed looking so overly flowery.

Little B is truly horrified by the sudden change, he just can't understand why on earth I would want to have flowers all over my bed. He also commented on the fact that my beloved Sunny Log Cabin blanket looks out of place now ("the colours are all wrong Mummy"). I took his advice on board and swapped blankets this afternoon.....................

............oh, that's looking a bit yummy isn't it just? A newly FOTH blanket (that's Fresh Off The Hook in case you wondered), there is honestly nothing more satisfying than darning in the very last end on a blanket project that has spanned many weeks.

YAY!!! My Dune blanket is finished! I absolutely love love love it, and can't wait to show you more.

As I was crocheting the border this morning I was also photographing my progress in preparation for making the tutorial. It's a slow, slow process but I don't mind it too much and good coffee definitely helps.

I'm really happy to tell you that I'll be ready to share my Dune blanket with you next week, on Tuesday 16th April. Yarn packs will go on sale in my shop at Wool Warehouse and will include a full colour printed pattern. I'll also be sharing it all for FREEEEeeeEeEee here on my blog, my usual full photo tutorial to teach you the Seashell stitch so that you can crochet up your very own breezy seaside stripes.

I hope April is treating you well my friends, and that you are feeling happy and content.

A big hug from me to you ((XX))

ps ** duvet cover is from Morrisons, it was heavily reduced in price, a real bargain x

 

 

 

Summers End

We passed the Autumn Equinox on Sunday, and that's our Summer over for another year. Often in the past, this time of year would absolutely flatten me with an overwhelming sense of melancholy mixed in with something akin to mild panic. I honestly used to dread the end of September which is a bit sad really because it's just a collection of emotions based on nothing tangible. I would mourn the end of Summer with a deep down feeling of real loss. But this year? Well...............I feel great about Autumn slowly arriving, really and truly! I think this is mostly down to the fact that we enjoyed such an amazing summer this year, oh it's been utterly glorious and I have so many warm, sunny memories to tide me over this period of seasonal transition.

It feels like Autumn has crept in early, just as Summer did back at the start of May. I ususally think of September as a "late Summer month", but this year, it has felt very autumnal right from the start.

This is the stretch of the river between Burnsall and Linton, which is a part of the Yorkshire Dales that feels very familiar and comforting to us as we walk here often. On this Sunday morning in early September it was warm and muggy as we ambled along, me, J and Little B. I remember feeling like we needed to make the very most of the last remaining days of holiday before the new school year began, and a slow walk along the riverside felt like just the right kind of thing.

Our destination was the Old School Tearoom in Hebden which I can highly recommend if you are ever in the area visiting. It's an absolute gem of a place in a charming Dales village - we like to go mid morning for coffee and brunch, and if the weather is mild there's a lovely garden you can sit in whilst you enjoy some very good food and drink. 

Being that this was an end of holiday treat, Little B took full advantage and ordered up a waffle, complete with toffee sauce, ice cream and banana. He declared it "soooooooooooooo good.....but not better than the waffle in Bruges", which I think is fair enough. I don't think any waffle will ever be as good as the one in Bruges. 

The following day, Little B and I went off just the two of us for a day in the City. During the summer he had kept asking, and I had kept promising, and quite frankly with only two days of holiday left I was running out of time to make good on my promise. When he tumbled out of bed that morning, I calmly told him we would be getting the train and heading for a day out in the City and he nearly jumped through the ceiling with excitement. It made me think that maybe I need to work harder at fulfilling promises, because he was so shocked that we were actually going to do it!

It was fun being just the two of us, he is terrific company, a real chatter box and still at an age where train journeys and trips out in general hold much excitement. We spent a bit of time shopping (very last minute school uniform, and some Lego as an end of holiday treat), and then it was time for the most exciting part of the whole trip.......a visit to The Alchemist......

.....and yes you would be right in thinking that this is a rather posh cocktail bar and not especially the kind of place for an eight year old to wish for with so much enthusiasm. We were lucky to get a table outside on the terrace (it's high up, with stunning city views), and proceeded to order up some mocktails. Oh boy, the excitement!!! Little B is quite a science geek, so the fact that the cocktail menu is set out like the periodic table really floated his little boat, as did the rather chemical looking drink that arrived for him. Such fun. He absolutely loved it, so much so that he chose to write about it in his "what I did in the holidays" report at school. I hope the teacher doesn't think badly of me for making a cocktail bar the highlight of his holiday.

I spent a bit of time towards the end of the Summer enjoying some non-crochet creative time, which was hugely enjoyable. Crochet will always be my passion and my first love, but every so often it gives me a lot of pleasure to follow other people's patterns and designs and do something just for fun. I knitted a pair of socks (more on those in another post), and I worked some more on my latest cross stitch.

I am totally loving this design (by Tiny Modernist on Etsy), and find that the extreme concentration needed to prevent a stitchy balls-up really frees up my mind and relaxes me. I've had to put it away again for a while as I've been concentrating on doing Yarndale work, but I'm really looking forward to life post-Yarndale when I'll have time to sit quietly and stitch again.

The Little People have been back at school for three weeks now, and all seems to be calm and settled in their respective childhood worlds. I was thinking about that fact this afternoon, and was suddenly overwhelmed with a wave of gratitude for the fact that right now, all three of my offspring are content, happy, doing well for themselves and thriving. I am so so glad. I walk along the canal every morning with Little B, and feel so happy that this is our routine, our life. We are blessed, and I never for one moment take it for granted. 

I treated myself to a new light weight summer cardy before all the winter woollies arrived. I bought it mainly because I loved the colour - it's kind of a cross between mustard and lime green and I've been wearing it with anything and everything, not caring if it matches or not. I thought the colour looked especially good alongside these leaves that I picked up from the bottom of the street. The big sycamore trees are always the first to start changing colour, reminding me that Summer is slowly slipping away.

I'm still so madly in love with my Cottonsoft blanket, and have become very possessive of it. I enjoy having it with me at night - even if it's too warm to have it on top of me, I like sleeping with it folded up at my feet. Don't ask me why, but it gives me such a lot of comfort and I love having those beautiful, soft summer ripples close by. 

My hill view is looking so lovely right now (well not right this very minute as it's pitch black out there now). The countryside is lush after a lot of rain these past few weeks, and there is something about the particular mellowness of the September sun that makes the light and shadows look very beautiful as they pass across the hillside.

We've been walking locally a bit just lately, Little B and I striding out after dinner to make the most of this time of year when the daylight hours allow an evening walk. We have a circuit we like to do which takes us up steep, steep streets of (posh) houses to the very edge of our town, then a wide farm track around the foot of the above hill, through a gate and into the top of the woods. We have to time it right, because walking in the woods as it starts to get dark is a bit tricky to be honest!

But it's lovely to emerge at the outer edge of the woodland and take in the early evening view over the town. I appreciate being able to do this at the end of my often hectic days, a chance to gently unwind as the day comes to a close. 

I hope that whatever transition you are making as we shift from one season to the next, that you find pleasure in your days.

Enjoy every moment!

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Making the Seasons :: June

As you have no doubt gathered by now I absolutely love having fresh flowers in the house and always try to have a jug of something pretty and floral on my dining table. Mostly the flowers I have indoors are cheap and cheerful seasonal market flowers, but at this time of year I prefer to have small home-grown posies in a jug, or even just a few tiny stems in an old glass ink bottle. Being able to go into my back yard and snip blooms to bring to the table is one of my all time favourite pleasures, gosh it makes me almost delirious with happiness to be able to do this simple thing.

This past week I've been enjoying a beautiful bunch of flowers bought very cheaply from the supermarket, although these aren't your typical supermarket offerings. I was thrilled (like almost peeing my pants excited) when I spotted a bucket of flower bunches labelled "Summer Growers Choice", or something like that (I knew I should have written it down, I just can't remember if these were the exact words, but you get the drift I hope?!). Each bunch was slightly different and contained a mixture of single stems, a real English cottage-style mixture which made me giddy with delight. I mean, just LOOOK at that delicious stem of pink snapdragons, isn't it ravishing?!!! 

But it was the daisy-like stems of Feverfew which really captured my heart. My Mum used to grow these all over the place, in the garden and at her allotment plot and I loved that she would have them in her cottage, spilling out of jugs and vases. Some people think that Feverfew is a weed as it freely self seeds and grows in the most unlikely of places. But it's actually a herb and has medicinal properties, although neither of those things matter much to me to be honest. Weed or herb, I don't particularly mind, I just love the old fashioned simplicity of this flower and the fact that it reminds me of Dorset and childhood.

Last week I'd been pondering on what I might like to make for the June edition of Making the Seasons, and knew it had to be something floral. Summer months are just overwhelmingly flowery in my mind, they really are. Inspired by the flowers on my table, I thought I might like to try stitching some daisies. Not just any old stitching, but that irresistible placement of weeny little crosses that has me so in it's grips at the moment.

I wanted my cross stitch to be small and simple - 2 shades of green, plus white and yellow.

A little square of pale grey 14 count aida and a dinky little 3 inch embroidery hoop.

Creating a design for such a small hoop is harder than it seems, and it feels like every single cross has to be very carefully considered and placed. However, I happen to LOVE this kind of design challenge and it didn't take me all that long to create a daisy design on my laptop that pleased me.

So do you see my lovely printed cross stitch chart??? I made that chart All By Myself!!!!!!!! Yes, I did indeed!!!! Well, with  a little bit of help from my other half. 

You see, my very, very, very talented and clever husbundo can write computer programs to do pretty much anything that tickles your fancy. So a few months ago when I casually told him that I might like to have a go at designing some cross stitch patterns, he offered to whip me up an app for my laptop. See how casual I made that sound?! In truth it took us a couple weeks to work on it together, and through trial and error with me figuring out what I needed as we went along we came up with a really fantastic and very workable cross stitch design app for me to play with.

I can select my thread colours to create a colour palette on my screen, then I'm able to click away on the little grid to fill each square with colour. It's soooooooo good!! 

Once I had my chart printed out I couldn't wait to get started on the stitching. As you can see, this is cross stitch on a very small scale so it didn't take long at all to stitch the stem and leaves.....

....and then start work on the flowers. As I stitched, I realised that I wanted to change one of the flowers (the little one on the right in the above photo, as it has no yellow centre showing and looked a bit forlorn). So I took my very sharp little scissors and hacked out the flower stitches completely (far harder to remove crosses than it is to frog crochet let me tell you), then went back to my computer, altered the chart and re-stitched...

.....ahhhhh, that's better!! So so so sweet!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I can't tell you how proud I am of this dinky little design, it just pleases me so so much!

J's app also allows me to save these nifty stitch charts to my computer, so that I can then share them here on my blog if I want to.

I don't know if anyone is remotely interested in stitching themselves a tiny little daisy cross stitch, but if the idea grabs you then please feel free to use my chart :) If you want to print it out, you'll need to right click on the image, select copy image, then paste it into a word document to print.

You need 2 shades of green, plus white and a rich mustardy yellow. I used 3 strands of DMC embroidery thread when I made my cross stitches. And 14 count aida fabric, but I think I already said that.

The actual design (stitched on Aida 14) measures 5cm / 2 inches square. Find the centre of your fabric and start stitching from the centre of the design (which is marked on the chart). I think that's about it - cross stitch is pretty straight forward really.

This whole thing has been beyond exciting for me, and has opened up a delicious new part of my very greedy Creative Mind which is always on the look out for new things. Oh, the possibilities!!

Endless, exciting, thrilling possibilities for creating pretty seasonal designs to stitch with joy.

I can hardly contain myself.

The small scale of this 3 inch hoop is just delightful, and I really want to make more. More and more and more. For Summer, for Autumn, for every season throughout the year and everything nature inspired that makes me happy. I am thinking of little cross stitch strawberries now, or maybe some wispy summer grasses.........oh my heart!

I've popped my hoop on my mantel along with the feverfew daisies which found their way into my old glass ink bottle. I might eventually create a little bit of a display on the wall somewhere, if the stitched hoops start to grow and multiply and happen to become a collection.

So that's June for you, all joyful and stitchy and making my summer loving heart sing. I'm already wondering what July might be about, I never quite know what little seasonal thing will take a hold of my heart and bring forth a surge of creative inspiration. 

I hope you enjoy sharing in my seasonal inspirations and creative makes - you can find all previous months tagged in the {Making the Seasons} category. I love sharing my monthly making adventure with my bloggy friend Gillian - I've not seen her June project yet but I do know what it is and I am squeeeeeing with excitement waiting for her big reveal. We chat back and forth about our ideas and thoughts for each month, and it amazes me how different our individual styles are, but how similar our projects often turn out to be. This month we are especially in tune with each other......do go and see over on her blog Tales from a Happy House.

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Cross Stitch Happiness

Hello my lovelies, and welcome to another installment of Cross Stitchin' happiness from the Attic. I love writing about my creative endeavors here on my blog as it's really lovely to be able to keep a record of my projects for future reference - a bit of a visual diary I guess. 

Cross stitching is still a relatively new hobby for me as I only picked it up in February of this year. You may remember the above Libra zodiac hoop which was my first project and got me totally hooked on the business of making weeny neat crosses into holey fabric. I had no idea that cross stitching would make me so happy, but there is something majorly appealing and addictive about methodically adding colourful little regimented stitches to a plain fabric and seeing a picture slowly emerge. It's like the stitchy equivalent of doing a jigsaw puzzle, I love it so much!

Hot on the heels of the Libra scales, I immediately began a second hoop, this time stitching the Pisces fish which is J's star sign. 

I went more slowly with this one throughout March and early April, picking it up in between my crochet projects and other general creative faffery. 

I absolutely love these designs, the colours are stunning and there is just the right amount of detail to keep it interesting without it being a fiddle to count and stitch.

Working on black Aida fabric was a challenge, but I think the finished results are totally worth the extra bit of eye strain and needle frustration.  

Don't the fishes look good? I love the playfulness of the design very much.

These zodiac pieces were designed to fit neatly into a 6" hoop and I chose to use a 6 inch flexi-hoop (instead of a wooden embroidery hoop) which makes stitching and displaying the finished piece a doddle. The whole thing is so neat, and I really enjoy the finished look of a hoop. It's kind of humble and honest, which I rather like. 

You can find all twelve of Jody's zodiac cross stitch designs on Etsy (she designs under the name Satsuma Street) - they are instant digital downloads and I can highly recommend them for newbie cross stitchers.

Libra and Pisces are now both hanging above my bed and I do enjoy seeing them there every day. I think every room in the house should have a little bit of homemade goodness in it, don't you?

During the early weeks of my addiction I spent many obsessive hours trawling through Etsy and Pinterest in search of modern cross stitch designs. I found that I was especially drawn to designs that had a combination of words and flowers (and yes, I have indeed discovered the plethora of *naughty* cross stitch designs out there, oh I have had many big belly laughs over those!)

So for my third cross stitch project I chose the above design. It was the pretty flowers that especially caught my eye, but the sentiment hit home too as I confess that my mornings do always (without exception) contain at least two good coffees. Always. 

I briefly contemplated attempting to use the threads I already had to stitch my coffee design, but truthfully that was never going to happen. Ordering the exact right colours to stitch with is a big part of the pleasure for me, and I am enjoying building up a collection of threads almost as much as I'm enjoying the actual stitching. I took some photos of my threads to share with you - more on that in a bit.  

I made one change to the colour selection and that was the colour of the mug. In the original design (Zindagi Designs on Etsy) the mug was stitched in black which was a big no-no for me.

Instead I chose a beautiful French Navy (DMC colour 336). Its ridiculously hard to choose thread colours on the computer screen (there are around 500 DMC thread colours, with 66 blues to choose from!!). I needed the shade to be quite dark in order for the cream coloured words to show up well, and after much deliberating I think I chose well.

Stitching the blue mug was my least favourite part of this design, especially as I mis-counted when stitching the handle and had to carry out a fair bit of emergency stitch removal. I was so excited to finish with the navy and get started on the flowers.

I made a tonne of mistakes stitching those blooms as I got completely in a muddle with all the different shades of red and pink. But shhhhh, lets not talk about that. Lets just focus on the fact that overall, they look very, very pretty indeed.......

............ta-dah!!!!

The above photo shows the finished design, but to my mind the flowers looked a little bit flattened at the top of the hoop. I think the design was made to fit in a square mount rather than in a circular hoop (which would explain the flattened out florals), so after a lot of procrastination I decided to tweak it a little.

I printed out some graph paper and had a little doodle with some pens, copying some of the flowers and leaves from the original design and having a play around. In the end though, I got impatient and decided to wing it and just go straight in with needle and thread.....

.....adding a few blue and pink flowers with some brown twiggy bits and a few leaves here and there.

I think I did OK?

Not too much, just enough extra detail to add some height at the top of the design.

Awwwww, so, so pretty!

After weeks of stitching, the oatmeal coloured fabric was looking a weeny bit grubby, so once I'd finished all the stitching I gently washed the whole thing in some warm soapy water. I used a towel to soak up as much of the water as I could, then ironed the fabric on the reverse side (placing the fabric face down on the towel to keep the stitches from being flattened) to remove all the crinkles. I left it to dry completely over night before stretching it out in the hoop and finishing off the edges.

 I'm absolutely thrilled with the finished hoop, both the stitching journey and the finished piece have made me very happy indeed.

Now then, I think I need to show you my threads, if you'd like to see them?

They please me on soooooo many levels!!!

Oh, the colours (imagine me swooning!) 

A collection of colourful yarn/threads is the perfect definition of creativity waiting to happen, and I absolutely LOVE the visual stimulation they provide. I get a real buzz out of looking at these three little drawers - yes, they are indeed drawers, aren't they neat? 

I got the storage idea from Lolli and Grace, convincing me that this was a better option than winding all my threads onto little plastic bobbins. I really dislike the kinks that appear in floss that's been wound onto bobbins (they encourage knots which drive me wild), so I went searching for some suitable drawers and fell in love with this simple clear acrylic type.

They are designed with stationary/cosmetics in mind and come in all sorts of sizes and configurations. If you are searching out something similar online, my advice would be to check the scale/measurements carefully - a skein of DMC thread measures around 155 mm so make sure any drawers or containers will be long enough/wide enough.

I bought these ones on Amazon, and am thrilled with how they work for the purpose of not only storing my threads, but allowing me to see them on display too....

....oooooo, so smooch-worthy and delicious in every way!

The other thing I bought and have found really useful are these thread organiser cards. At the start of a new stitch project, I like to cut a length of each colour and separate it into two strands ready for stitching. The designs I've worked so far change colours often, and this method makes it easy to grab a length of the right colour just when I need it. 

So that pretty much brings me up to date with my stitching journey, four months in and still overwhelmingly loving it all. I haven't decided where to hang my Coffee hoop yet, although I think I might take it down to the studio as I have a feeling it would look gorgeous hanging on my blue wall. And the coffee at Coopers Cafe is a bit of a special treat for the taste buds (for coffee lovers out there, Coopers serves Grumpy Mule coffee, oh it is divine!)

My next project is the above design by Tiny Modernist, already purchased and downloaded, and a delicious pale grey Aida fabric stretched in my 8" hoop ready. I'm just waiting on my threads to arrive in the post...I know, more threads to add to my drawers.

What's a girl to do when the creative urge is so strong?

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Filling My Days

I've been busy just lately but in the best possible way, and I am so very thankful for the way in which I get to fill my days with things that make me very happy. I was thinking this morning about the blog posts I want to write so that I can show you the progress I'm making on my banner, my cross stitch, my mandala hoops.....and I was thinking that nothing has been photographed properly, everything is still a work in progress and in a slight jumble and probably not altogether particularly blog-worthy right now. I should wait. I should finish some things, photograph them nicely and put together some proper blog posts for you. 

And yet......in my mind it all feels so deliciously exciting and happening right here and now, and I really don't have it in me to wait! Plus, I always feel a million times better once I've shared it with you, and that's the truth. YOU ----- are my therapy, did you know that?? And I am so grateful for your visits here to the Attic. So I thought...why wait?? I need to show you Right Now what's filling my days.....so please forgive the slightly jumbled nature of this post. It reflects the current state of my life rather well I think. 

I have little project piles all around my desk, piled up on the floor and on any available surface. Its' a mess around here, it really is. I have bags (many) of left over blanket-making yarn, bags of embroidery thread, bags of cotton yarn (for my mandalas), piles of printed patterns and piles of hand written notes about patterns, cross stitch fabrics and hoops of all sizes for stitching and mandala making. I have bits of yarn stuck to pieces of paper to remind me of ideas and colour palettes and things that sit patiently on the back burner. I have a pile which includes the endings of one design project (which I am SO excited to show you once I am given the nod!) and another pile which includes the beginnings of another design commission. It's fun and full-on, and I am enjoying the busy creativity.

If you skip back up to the top photo, you can see that I finished making and stitching up the squares for my banner. It's an 18 x 8 format so there are 144 squares altogether. I'm just trying to think about the right kind of border for it all, so I've folded it up and placed it back on the pile for now, waiting until I'm clear about what to do around that outer edge. 

I've taken a lot of photographs during the past week, everything out there is just so beautiful to me at the moment. My colour and light-loving soul is being fed an endless supply of visual and emotional feel-good which is quite intoxicating. The weather here has been outstanding, a beautiful and uplifting dollop of warm, sunny May perfection and I am positively reveling in it. I am taking almost daily walks in the woods to absorb the greenery whilst it's at it's vibrant best. 

The wild garlic is very nearly at its peak (these photos were taken 5 days ago), and I've been right there amongst it almost every day breathing it in, quite literally. The scent is incredible, it's almost like you can taste the very air you inhale. 

By the way, thank you so much to those of you who told me about the Japanese art of shinrin-yoku, or "forest bathing" - I found it fascinating to read about, and to know that my slight obsession with breathing in the woodland air is actually a Thing! That really made me feel good I have to say. Often I do feel a weeny bit bonkers in my head (especially as J is fond of telling me how I'm "not normal"), so it's good to have little snippets of knowledge which make me feel grounded and not quite so loopy la-la.

I continue to stitch when the mood takes me, quietly and blissfully. I can't begin to tell you how much I am loving my cross stitch journey which began on 17th February, it has taken me to a whole new level of personal creative achievement somehow, in the same way that my sock knitting has. 

I had a whole shiny neat blog post planned to talk to you about my cross stitch adventure (a follow up to this post), but for a weeny while I lost my second completed cross stitch so I couldn't photograph it. Yes, I really did lose it, it just disappeared in a puff of smoke one day, which drove me to the point of near madness. Anyhow, some weeks later I eventually found it (in the cellar, don't ask), but in the meantime I made terrific progress with my third cross stitch project which you can see above. So now I'm all out of kilter in terms of cross stitchy blogging, but I'll catch myself up at some point. I would really like to show you my embroidery thread storage solution too...oh, tis a thing of beauty! Honestly, it makes me so happy.

Talking of happy colours, I've been having a play with a new yarn this week, a spontaneous purchase and one which has delivered in spades (happy spades!). This is  a relatively new yarn on the block, made by the German company Rico Design. these balls are dinky and affordable - 25g of soft, matt cotton in a fine DK weight, and a gorgeous 60 colours to choose from. They were designed for making crochet toys (hence the play on the words "Rico" and "amigurumi"), but I've been trying them out for mandala making.

I can't remember if I've showed you my lastest mandala or not? I don't think I have. This is the "Positivity Mandala" which is my own pattern, designed to be attached to a 30cm wire hoop. I sat for many hours at the weekend photographing a tutorial for this mandala,  slightly hampered by the fact I couldn't seem to count and made/photographed 6 whole rounds before realising I only had 9 petals instead of the required 10. Anyhow, 83 photos (not including the 23 that had to be re-made) and many mugs of coffee later and I have all the visuals - I just need to carve out time to edit and upload them and write it all up. This week sometime, I'm hoping to make it happen.

These are the hoops that I've made so far this year - you can read about some of them in this post. More to come very soon.

More shinrin-yoku on Sunday, a morning walk with J and the Little People at Bolton Abbey. I took a tonne of photos capturing the essence of the greenery, but figure that you have probably seen enough of it by now.

So here's one of the sparkly river Wharfe instead. There were fluffy ducklings further along, and it was all very lovely indeed.

Yesterday was another stunner of a day, so J and I turned our backs on our planned chores (the de-cluttering can wait) and drove up into the hills instead. 

We walked a 6 mile circular route through the Yorkshire Dales around Burnsall and Linton and it was completely gorgeous out there. 

It was a hot, still day and the river was looking extremely tranquil and inviting....

....even Linton Falls was more slow and sedate than usual, although the water here never ever quiets.

Yesterday evening, we packed up our dinner and went back to Bolton Abbey to do al fresco food things, taking advantage of the long, hot sunny day which we never take for granted here in England. I wish I had stopped to photograph my plate to show you but in reality I was far too impatient and hungry to think about my camera. You will have to imagine the cutest little mini quiche from the farm shop, ripe cherry tomatoes on the vine and a big pile of homemade sundried tomato cous cous with garlic and rosemary roasted veggies. Oh, and oven roasted asparagus too - always room on my plate for asparagus. For pudding we had rhubarb crumble and ice cream, yes we really did! My fabulous mother-in-law made us the crumble which I had baked late afternoon. Wrapped in a tea towel and put straight in the car from the oven, it was still warm when we came to eat it. I shoved a small tub of vanilla ice cream in a cool bag with a couple of ice packs, and although it was slightly on the runny side, cripes it tasted a-maz-ing with the warm rhubarb crumble.

The Little People devoured everything from start to finish, and it was one of those really joyful family meals which makes you want to hold onto the memories and keep them close for a long time to come.

After dinner there was a huge amount of physical activity - well that's to say that the Little People ran themselves ragged while J and I slumped gently in our deckchairs and looked on. Competitive frisby playing, yes it's a real sibling thing.

When the sun had sunk below the hill we packed everything up and headed homeward.....

.....stopping to take in the bluebells on our way.

This bank on the way in/out of Bolton Abbey was looking very beautiful in the early evening light, and was certainly worth stopping the car for. 

I started making another mandala this afternoon as I was at Coopers Cafe and needed something easy to work on whilst I chatted to my friends. I'm using a free pattern by the Loopy Stitch which is simple but very effective - you can see the first one I made here. I have to say I'm really loving this Ricorumi yarn,  I'll give you more info about colours etc when I write up my tutorial pattern for you. 

Well, I think that's about all my ramblings for now, thank you as ever for continuing to spend time reading my words and viewing my pictures. I really do appreciate your company. Have a stunning week wherever you are in the world - don't forget to stop still once in a while and breathe it all in....

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Adventures in Cross Stitch

photo credit : SatsumaStreet

 

I wouldn't say that I'm a particularly impulsive person, and I'm not somebody who feels the need to have lots of different projects all going on at once. So for me to see something and be so smitten that I dive head first into a completely new creative adventure is unusual. But that's exactly what happened when I came across some cross stitch designs on Instagram (on Valentines Day no less), it really was love at first sight. I did question it for an extremely small number of minutes......will this stitching thing make me happy (very likely), can I justify spending money on new materials (absolutely, I'm worth it), have I really got the time to give over to a new hobby (probably not, but I'm way too excited to care).

 

As you can see from the above photo, the thing that caught my undivided attention last month was a cross stitch project created by Californian designer Jody Rice. Jody's company is called Satsuma Street and when I read that her tag line was "Cross Stitch for a Happy World", well I figured that I would probably be really happy taking a stroll down Satsuma Street.

 

You can follow Jody on Instagram (her name there is @craftnik), and you can read more about how she came to be a cross stitchin' lady on her website (https://satsumastreet.com/) 

 

 

Much like yours truly, Jody's signature is her joyful use of bright colour and as you can probably imagine, I instantly fell head over heels in love with her style. I think she has become most well known for her "Pretty Little Cities" designs, but it was her Zodiac designs that captured my heart.

Satsuma Street cross stitch designs are beautifully photographed for Jody's Etsy shop, which is an absolute delight to browse through. With each listing, Jody explains the type of fabric you will need, and the finished size of the piece. Etsy makes this kind of online purchase an absolute doddle - you click on the Buy-it-now button, pay your money, and as if by magic a PDF file appears for you to download to your computer.

The only information I found that was missing was the total number of different colours needed for each project - I kind of wanted to know this in advance so that I could calculate the cost of the project. So I simply messaged Jody via Etsy to ask her and she told me that the number of colours varied with each design but that on average she used 20 - 30 in each one. Now that's quite a lot of thread to purchase if you are starting from scratch, but well......who can resist the lure of a fistful of thready colour???

The downloading of the cross stitch chart is pretty much instantaeous, but there is an inevitable delay when ordering up supplies. Oh, it was AgOnY waiting for them to arrive!!!! I kept looking at my printed out chart and itching to stitch, and I am not known for my pateince when it comes to the Creative Urge.

I bought my basic supplies on Amazon, as follows :: 

Fabric - black 14 count aida

Scissors - duck egg blue polka dot

Needles - size 24 tapestry 

I was a little scared of the black aida when it arrived - the holes looked awfully close together and very hard to see, but actually it wasn't nearly as tricky as I feared.

The threads are DMC brand "stranded embroidery threads", and I went to an independent online retailer for these. I was recommended The Patchwork Rabbit on Instagram so thought I would check it out (always nifty to get good advance info on these things) and I found their threads to be extremely well priced, all in stock, and super-speedy with the delivery too. The website makes it easy to order - you simply type the colour number code into the "find it easily" search box, and the listing pops straight up with no messing. So I guess there are hundreds of places you could find DMC threads online, but I can certainly recommend the Patchwork Rabbit. 

Now I am not new to stitching or embroidery by any means, having been an avid stitcher for most of my life. But following a counted cross stitch chart was something I'd never done before. Jody's charts are in full colour, but also have these little symbols to make it a bit clearer. In a nutshell - one little symbol in a square = one cross stitch. It's all pretty self explanatory really, although when you download one of Jody's charts you also get an additional PDF file which contains some basic cross stitch know-how.  

The first thing I did was to grab some white sewing thread to mark out the central lines (vertical and horizontal) so that I would know where to begin stitching. Jody advises finding the centre point on your fabric (also marked on her charts) and begin stitching from there, working your way out towards the edges. 

The Zodiac design I'd chosen was made to fit inside a 6" hoop, so it all felt very achievable for this newbie x-stitcher. None of the areas were too big or too complex to count, and Jody's designs use frequent colour changes worked over small, detailed areas so I  never felt bored of the stitching, not once.

In fact, I very quickly became mesmerised by the whole process of slow stitching and absolutely loved being able to see the overall design gently emerge as if by magic. I particularly appreciated all the little design details - being able to stitch highly decorative flowers and leaves as well as the larger areas kept me completely addicted for hours and hours on end.

I couldn't decided at first whether to stitch with my fabric stretched in a hoop, or to keep the fabric floppy and free - there seems to be some debate about this when I looked it up online. In the end I kept my fabric stretched in the flexi-hoop which would eventually become the frame and I enjoyed stitching in and out of the taut fabric. Flexi-hoops have a little metal hanger screwed into the top of them, so before I began stitching I unscrewed it and put it somewhere safe. That meant that my hoop was completely smooth all the way around and there was nothing for the threads to get caught up in. I much preferred it to a traditional embroidery hoop which has the tightening screw at the top.

Flexi-hoops come in all different sizes and finishes - the one I'm using is Woodgrain (although it's plastic of course), and 6" which is the finished size of all Jody's zodiac cross stitch pieces.

{6" flexi-hoop on Amazon} - also easy to find in abundance on eBay.

I popped all my cross stitching paraphernalia inside my best-favourite project bag, a treasured gift hand made for me by my lovely friend Sandra-Cherryheart.

I must confess to you that I really did become obsessed with the business of making weeny crosses onto this black fabric. The above photo was taken just 3 days after I began my adventure - I know!!! Yikes!!! I started out on a Saturday morning, and by Tuesday I only had the birds left to stitch. 

I deliberately saved stitching the birds until last, oh I did SO enjoy creating them! It amazed me how much character and charm could be created using a load of simple little crosses - Jody's designs really are an absolute joy.

The other pleasing thing about the finished piece is the overall supreme neatness of it all. There is a precision in counted cross stitch which I thought might possibly get on my nerves, but actually it was the opposite. I found I loved the necessary concentration, the methodical counting and changing colours in exactly the right place. It gave me a sense of calm to follow each tiny little symbol on the chart, producing so many hundreds of regimented rows of crosses. It was just delightful to know that someone else had carried out a huge amount of design work so that I knew for certain that my picture would work out and become a wonderful finished object.

My cross stitch isn't without it's mistakes mind you. There are a few places where I completely miscounted but had gone too far ahead to be able to unpick my stitches. So I had to tell myself it was ok to leave the mistakes and nobody would really know except me.

I finished my first ever cross stitch within a week, and I am completely in love with it. In case you aren't familiar with the zodiac signs, I'm a Libra which is the sign of balance and harmony, represented by weighing scales. When I think about a set of weighing scales, absolutely nothing inspirational springs to mind at all, so full credit to Jody for designing something so pleasing and beautiful. She is a true artist, and if you delve into her Instagram feed you'll catch glimpses of her design process in action. It's genuine (paper and pencil!), and every finished design of hers is stitched and photographed so that you get a real good sense of the completed piece. Almost every other cross stitch design I have come across online is simply a computer generated representation - it's absolutely not the same as seeing a photo of the real thing.

I thought you might appreciate getting a look at the dirty back side of my cross stitch - ha!!! I didn't use any knots when I started a new colour - I either stitched over the end or carried it under existing stitches....I'm rather proud of it!

I can't remember where I read about finishing off a piece of stitching in a hoop, but I found some general instructions online somewhere. I made sure the design was exactly in the centre, pulled the fabric nice and taut, then trimmed it around with about a cm overhanging. I then used a strong black thread and made a running stitch all around the circle, pulling it tight as I went so that the fabric was gathered in neatly. I finished it off by painting over the raw fabric edge with a little white craft glue to stop it fraying. 

I absolutely love what I made, I love every single little thing about it. I even love the black background, and the way it makes the colours sing. I love knowing that the hours I spent quietly stitching during a cold, snowy week in February turned into something so lovely.

I always intended for my Libra hoop to hang on the wall in my bedroom - it somehow seemed the perfect place for it, and I look at it every single day when I first get up in the morning, and just before I snuggle into bed at night.

The wall looks a bit bare at the moment but I'm hoping to build up a little collection of pictures and pretty things to add over time. Little B made me the hama bead heart, and the pictures are just greetings cards stuck on the wall with washi tape.

So what's the next chapter going to be in my cross stitch adventure??

Well...................................................................................................

photo credit : SatsumaStreet

 ............I'm already started on a second zodiac design, this time it's Pisces which is J's sign. Aren't the fishes amazing?

I found that I only needed to buy 6 additional colours to add to the ones I already had for the Libra design and I was good to go full steam ahead with the fish. I'm still loving the whole cross-stitch process, although I sometimes find the lack of good direct light a bit of a problem. I've found that if I keep the white paper chart on my lap whilst I'm stitching, I can more easily see the holes in the black aida fabric, but good lighting is essential for this kind of close work.

I would love to hear if any of you are on your own cross stitch adventure, and if you have any good recommendations for modern designers. I haven't dared look too far into the world-wide-web just yet, but boy, I'm tempted. There are probably some amazing stitchy bloggers out there, just waiting for the likes of me to tumble fully down their stitchy rabbit holes. But first - the fishes are calling..................................

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