3 in 1 Update

We have all been busy with our cross stitches. I was right, Kerry and Emily both wanted to do more cross stitching while Jessica was away at my Mums.

And of course when Jess came home all she wanted to do was stitch. Love the highly contagious stitchy bug lol. Here is the latest on their work.

I'm sure you would like to see how I'm going too with 'The Wedding' well here is update one

Update Two

Update Three

I love being able to see the progress like this as when I'm actually stitching I don't feel like I have got anything done. But I can clearly see on here where I have gotten to. Does that make sense to you??

As you can see I have started on the flowers, this part is becoming a pain in the butt, as there are so many colour changes in them. I will get there with them though, and I am actually really excited to see how they will turn out.

Did I tell you my Mum got herself a puppy?? Well he is called Monty and looks like this.

He is such a cutie.

Mum is very happy with him.

While I have been absent I have created a to stitch list by going through all my World of Cross stitch magazines. I have worked out that if I stitch one of each design, and stitch everyday for 3 hours, it will take me 2.2 years to complete it all. That is working on the estimated hours stitching the magazine recommends. I know I stitch slower than what it says in the mags so, so far I have aroung three years of stitching to do lol. However each time the mag comes out my to stitch list will grow bigger and bigger. 

Have you got a to stitch list?? If so, how big is it??

Speak soon xx

Family cross stitch day

The girls and I have been working together again today on our cross stitches, I love how my hobby has sparked their interest too.

Here they are ready for bed still stitching away. In fact they were so excited to get back to their stitching that bath time was a breeze they wanted to be in and out as fast as they could.

Jessica is 'finishing' a project started 3 years ago by our former lodger. I won't be finishing it off and so I gave it to Jess. She wants to get up early in the morning to finish it off.

Emily is putting colours on in her own style. You can see at the top in the green she is getting the hang of doing the actual crosses to make up a stitch. Once she understands this part I can move her on to an actual chart so she ends up with a finished 'proper' picture.

And last but not least, Kerry is doing a butterfly as a gift for Jade, who is coming over on Wednesday. She is really wanting to get it completed in time for the big arrival.

In fact all the girls  (this section has been removed as it mentions my OH)  are excited to see Jade again. It's strange not to see her everyday. 

As for me, my stitching had had to take a back seat, as I have been helping the girls with theirs. Though Kerry is now getting really good at threading her own needle, I still have to help her occasionally. Jessica however, needs her needle rethreading after virtually every stitch lol. Emily just needs hers doing at each colour change.

Here is how 'The Wedding' is coming along.

This is a closer version of the one on the right.

I still haven't had any guesses for the 'prize stitch' here it is again for guessing. Just put your guess in the comments box!

Jessica is going to my Mum's for a couple of nights tomorrow, wonder what we will end up doing without her. The way it's going they will just want to stitch all day lol. Speak soon xx

Update from the week

Well, it has been a while since my last post, but to be fair I have been very lazy lol.

The girls were taken away for a few days for a little holiday. MIL took them to a friends caravan where they went on a pirate ship (according to reports, the girls were singing all the way 'when I was one, I ate a bun the day I went to sea. I jumped aboard a pirate ship the captain said to me, 'We're going this way, that way, forwards, and backwards, over the Irish sea. A bottle of rum to fill my tum, that's the life for me.' and so on and so on for the whole hour out at sea lol), they went to a circus, where the high light of the show was where 'a baby was crying and the mr picked it up and it wee'd all over everyone.'

Although I knew where the girls were going, we kept it secret from them. I gave them a few clues as to what was happening, but made them so vague they couldn't work it out, though Kerry came close (A police officer in the making I think).

Here are the clues given. 

1. G.G.A.S is taking them. (Kerry came up with well it can't be Grandma Gill because she is at work, I didn't tell her otherwise, she went through everyone she could think of, she even thought that Great Grandma in Spain could be the one coming bless her.
2. They are going on the train to Doncaster, and then somewhere else. Kerry was coming up with all sorts of destinations.
3. They would be visiting family, Kerry thought that they could be going to Thetford, as my MIL's sister lives there, she then discounted this as Grandma Gill was working. She forgot that her cousin and aunt and uncle had gone on holiday a couple of days earlier.
4. They would have buckets of fun. Kerry came up with going to the seaside. But she couldn't work out how visiting family and the seaside would work together.
5. Fish and chips. They thought they would be going to a fish and chip restaurant for a meal, as this is one of their favourite treats.
6. They needed their toothbrushes. They were thinking they were having a sleep over somewhere.

I can honestly say they had no clue as to what they were going to be doing it was great. This is the moment the discovered where they were going. 

They had a great time, I'm just sorry I missed it.

I have been doing a little work on 'The Wedding' cross stitch. I really didn't like the way the faces were coming along and so I tried making some more charts, hoping to make it look better, but no matter what I did the faces would look off. I decided to try to use some backstitching to make it look better, which it does so I am going to keep on it. Here is where I am up to.

From a distance it does look OK, but close up no so great but hopefully when it is done I will be happy with it.

Because I was so disheartened but the progress of 'The Wedding' I did another little stitch to get my mind off it for a while. My World of Cross Stitch mag came through with a small card kit. So I completed that. Here is the result at the end of 4 hours or solid stitching (well the kids were away I had chance lol)

I completed the stitch the next day with a further 2 hours of back stitch. Because this stitch has most of the backstitching going between the stitches it made it very difficult to do, even though I had a very sharp needle to do it. Also because it was so small my rings didn't fit it properly which meant I was holding the fabric awkwardly and so I got major hand cramp. But here is the finished result.

Isn't he cute? But you can see here especially the importance of the backstitch. He really does come to life. I will not be doing this stitch ever again though because of that horrible backstitching.

Well, I think I have updated you with everything I have been doing and so I am going to bed. Speak soon x.

Colouring in is not just for kids

(this section has been removed as it mentions my OH)

Are you jealous?? I would be lol.

Today has been an exhausting day of tidying. I decided to tackle the girls bedroom, including the toy box. Now I know normal toy boxes are only big enough to hold a few toys, however our toy box was made by my hubby and is bigger than my bath and holds loads of stuff, they also have a second box that is a normal sizes box. The girls boxes were over flowing and I decided to streamline them. I got the girls to help me but boy I wish I had done it myself lol. Everything I got out seemed like a new toy to them as they hadn't seen it in so long, or if one wanted to get rid of it the others didn't and vice versa.

In the end we managed to donate 3 black bags of toys and a 2 foot pile of books to a local charity. They now have plenty of room to put their toys away and they get to play with all the toys the have so everyone wins. We now only have to go through the cuddly toys to see which ones can be donated now, really not looking forward to that as they do actually play and cuddle them all. I will be happy if just 5 go.

I have managed to do some cross stitch today, here it is, 

As you can see I have basically coloured in the hair. It seemed really easy and quite fun to do actually. The hair isn't the only thing I have been colouring in though, because the chart is so big I have been colouring in the chart as I complete stitches so I can keep track of where I am. The exciting bit is... almost one full page of chart is now coloured in woo hoo. See...

I have worked out that there is now around 3200 stitches done yay me!

I have also worked out which direction I will be going when I have completed the page... I will be going across. I have decided to do it this way because as I have been 'colouring in' the face area I found I don't like it so I am going to complete the face and see what it looks like to see if I want to carry on with it or redo the chart and start again. If I decide to start again I will not be happy with all the frogging I will have to do, but as I have been doing this stitch I keep thinking I should have done this or that to make it look better etc. If when the whole face is done, I actually like it I will leave it as is though. Stay tuned to find out what I do lol.

Play and problems.

We had Harvey come to visit us again today, so we made more play dough (see earlier post for how to do it) they spent hours playing with it. Here they are enjoying making rabbits and biscuits etc, 

You also get two updates of 'The Wedding' cross stitch, I missed an update yesterday with it and so I am doubling up today as I got quite a lot done over the last two nights. On the left, is last nights update where there is around 1000 stitches, and on the right is tonight's with just over 2500.

Told you I'd managed to get quite a lot done, tomorrows update might not have as much done as Saturdays is my cleaning day, and I generally end up with just an hour or two to stitch at the end of it lol.

It may be just me, that I have been looking at it so long that I see things that aren't there, but I can see the brides hair and neck Her face is yet to be completed, but I am not sure which way to go with the pattern, Page 1 of the chart is now almost complete. So, my question to you is should I go across the image, which would complete both the bride and grooms heads, or do I go down, and start work on the flowers and the dress??

If I go down I will feel as though I have gotten more of the picture completed as there is a lot of block colour on both the background and the dress, with a little colour alteration for the flowers. If I go across, it will take me longer to get a 'result'. I know that I will have to do the exact same stitches to complete the full piece, but do I do all the colour changes and detail now and get it over with but feel I'm making slow progress, or do I save it up to do at the end when I am getting ready for the piece to be finished, and then maybe getting frustrated as it is taking too long to do the final bits. Does this make sense to you?? Any advice will be appreciated :D

Anyway, to bed with me now and speak to you all soon. I will be waiting for the emails to come through about which direction I should take lol. Signing off now xxx.

Long walk home

I took the girls to my mums yesterday, thinking we could walk it home and give the dog a good run while we were at it.

Never again lol to be fair the girls did fantastic walking the 3.4 miles it took us. Here we are walking

This is the route we took, like I said they did very well.

We stopped off at MIL's for a rest stop and the girls ended up playing for an hour outside with their cousin Harvey.

With regards to my cross stitch, I have finally finished the polar bears, here is the final result.

I have also made a start on 'The Wedding' here is my preparations I have set out my area to stitch, I have also put masking tape all around the edge to protect it from fraying (left), you can see on the right how large this piece is as you can compare it to an A4 piece of paper. Below is the whole 9 page chart. Each of those pages are also A4. 

I have also had a day of stitching (well a little more than a day) on it too here is where I am up to.

It doesn't look like much but there is around 500 stitches there, so it will take me a while to get this one done. Though I do have a little help as I am getting the kids to do some stitches too so it really is a gift from the family. here they are doing a couple of stitches each.

 I will get Alan and Jade to do some at a later date too, in the meantime I'm going to get some more stitching done speak soon xxx

Kerry's turn to copy Mummy

Today Kerry has been doing a cross stitch. She needed quite a lot of help and ended up doing quite a lot of frogging, (frogging is when you make a mistake and have to undo your stitches and you ripit ripit get it??) Here she is concentrating hard.

She is making a picture of a dancer for Jade (who loves to dance) so she is begging me to help her to get it done before Jade arrives.

My stitch seems to be taking forever, I feel as though I'm not getting anywhere with it then I look back on here and see significant improvement at the end of each day. I think having this is definatley spurring me on to better things, I honestly do feel that if I didn't have this, I might have given up on it by now. But here is the latest.

Anyway that's it from me tonight, I'm feeling very tired and want to get some sleep . Speak to you all soon xx

Oh P.S I have ordered the fabric for the wedding stitch. Getting quite excited to start it now.

Quick Update

Well what a weekend, I forgot that Saturday was Saturday and had it in my head that it was Monday. I blame the schools breaking up, there I was thinking it was the first day of the school holidays when really it was just the weekend lol. I blame it on a blonde moment ;)

So, I took a break from my cross stitch on Sunday wanting to give my hand time to recover a little but got straight to it again on Monday here is where I got to on Monday.

I then continued on Tuesday, and got this far,

This stitch has a lot of block colours and is very boring to do, I really want to get it finished now just to have it done.

I have chosen the photo for my SIL's wedding stitch, this one 

I have also been on Ebay (this section has been removed as it mentions my OH) and have bought the software to convert it into a chart. The software arrived yesterday and so I have made the chart up. I need to check my stitchy stash to see what threads I have and which I need, I also need to buy the fabric this pic is 128x192 stitches which those maths boffins amongst you will have worked out is almost 25,000 stitches. I have worked out that so far on the stitch I'm working on at the moment I have done roughly 1800 stitches and it has taken me 4 days to get that far, and so that's roughly 450 stitches per day. On this basis it will take me 55 days to complete the Wedding one. This means I should get it done for Christmas. But OMG it will be hard work. 

So I would say I have 4 more days on the pic I'm working on already before I can start on this one. I think I will have to take my mind off it by doing a few smaller pieces every now and again, I also have family life to fit in and the council business to do, and now the children are off school I don't think I will be able to do 450 stitches per day :( Ah well you will just have to keep tuned to see if I do manage to get it done lol. 

I'd better get on with it speak to you all soon xx

Nails and day 2

 

Well the girls had their nails painted last night as promised. Only Jessica and Emily had theirs done because Kerry stopped at her cousins house. they thoroughly enjoyed picking out their colours and having the paint put on. Emily had to have hers done twice as she scratched her leg and ruined the first coat lol.

And as promised here is my update on my work in progress (WIP).

Can you tell what it is yet?? Answers in the comments section please x

I have also finally gotten the picture I need for a very special cross stitch. My lovely sister in law (SIL) got married last year and I am going to cross stitch one of her wedding photos for her. I am just waiting for the software to change the photo into a chart and then I can get started. Woo Hoo. Very excited about it and will of course keep you up to date with it. I know my SIL doesn't read this so I am safe sharing it with you. 

We had a lovely Sunday lunch at my Mother in laws today. Most Sundays she does one but on the days she doesn't myself and my SIL fight over who get to cook it. Call me mad, but I love doing Sunday dinner. I must admit, it does help that I have all my Pampered Chef stuff to cook it in, making it super easy. I also love making things like sage and onion stuffing from scratch using the recipe that has been passed down five generations the first I know to pass it down was my Great Great Grandma Churms, and that I am teaching my girls now. When I next make a Sunday dinner I will post up the recipe with the step by step instructions on how to do it.

I also love going up to my MIL for dinner as we get to ride our bikes up there. I bought a Trailgator which attaches Jessica's bike to mine so we can all travel together. It took Jess a long time to get used to the 'bar' as she was used to riding on her own with stabilisers, but now she loves it. I am hoping that when she starts to ride on her own she will be able to balance better on her bike to start with as she will be used to how it works being on the back of mine. Hopefully this 'training' will get her off to a faster start when she does get on on her own. 

Will update on the cross stitch later xx