February Goals

Well seeing as January is almost over I guess it's time to look to the future as see what February has in store:

• Start LK Green Flip-it series
• Stitch 2 Halloween Rules
• Finish a Crazy or 2
• Stitch the new LK Love chart
• Organise my stash a bit better
• Work through some finishes
• Work on Super Mario

February is Fangirl month for theme-a-licious 2012, seeing as Lizzie Kate is one of my favourite designers & most of what I want to stitch is by her this theme is one that is very easy for me to complete!!

Still working on Good Things, should be finished before bedtime!!

xX Fiona Xx

LK Good Things Progress

Managed to get quite a bit of this design done but not as much as I'd have liked, watched Rise of the Planet of the Apes this afternoon which was quite distracting!!

Hoping to stitch on this Sunday Evening and have it finished on Monday. This design will be mounted into one of my DMC wooden boxes when complete as I use these to store my received exchange items :)

xX Fiona Xx

Life's a Stitch photo

Here it is as promised :)

Fabric is still in need of pressing so thats why the border looks warped in the middle.

Today I'm working on another LK Crazy 'Good Things Come' will update with progress tonight as I don't think I will finish it today.

xX Fiona Xx

Friday Night Happy Dance :)

I do so love these happy dance posts, I can only hope their frequency continues throughout the year :)

My latest finish is Life's a stitch by Lizzie Kate. I have omitted the satin stitch border as it won't look right with the finish I have in mind & I added some blue buttons to the flower centers to give a 3D element, also these buttons are the perfect size!

Photo will be uploaded as soon as it is a more reasonable hour of the morning (it's 10 to 3am!!) and I have enough light to take a decent photo....


Until then, sweet dreams!!

xX Fiona Xx

P.S forgot to mention that Life's a sitch is my 7th happy dance & my 6th Crazy finish, the finishes are flying through, now if only I could show the same momentum to Mario....

World Book Night

I love reading :)

So much so that I have signed up to be a giver of books for world book night, click here to find out more :)

I have chosen The Secret dreamworld of A Shopaholic by Sophie Kinsella to give away, it's one of my favourite series of books to read when I'm in the mood for girly chick lit!!


Now I just have to wait and see if my application was successful! Excited!!

xX Fiona Xx

ps If I am successful I will have a copy to giveaway here :)

Tuesday Night Happy Dance :)

It appears that my wayward stitchy bug which went AWOL shortly before Christmas seems to be making up for lost time, I promised a Tuesday Night happy dance and a happy dance I have!!

(excuse the creases, more excited about

photo-ing finish than I am about pressing it!)

Peep is my 6th finish for the year and is another Crazy Jan Challenge finish. Stitched using the recommended threads on sparkly blue aida instead of the linen provided, such a bright, cheerful design needs just that little bit of sparkly (not that it really shows up in the photos) Besides changing the linen for aida the only other change I made was to swop GAST morning glory for DMC 155 for the word Peep & to attach the egg button, I felt the finished picture was much more purple than Morning Glory which is very blue (at least mine is)

Not entirely sure what I'll be stitching on next, maybe Mario or another Crazy Start. Only time will tell!!

Happy Stitching
xX Fiona Xx

Sunday Night Happy Dance & TUSAL

Hee hee, I'm loving my happy dances right now :)

Sunday night's happy dance was Peppermint Twist, another of my Crazy Starts, only 11 to go!!

Stitched using the recommended threads except the green, I used the DMC conversion colour instead of the original hand-dyed. The hand-dyed I had was so varigated in colour that it probably wouldn't have looked like leaves!!

Sunday night was also the night I picked up my new car, photo's of it will follow as soon as I've had a chance to clean it :)

It's time for the first TUSAL post of the year, lots of ORTs in my old coffee jar this month (can't tell in this slightly flash glared photo!) all my crazy jan challenges, new year eve start & even a few threads from Mario.

Tuesday Night will have another Happy Dance to blog about!!

until next time, happy stitching!!

xX Fiona Xx

Weekend Happy Dances!!

yes you read that right, I said dances :)

Friday night I put the final stitches into my New Years Eve start, chart was day one of my cross stitch calender, I picked my own colours and omitted the backstitch.

Today I put the final stitches into Alphabet Pumpkin, my day 1 start in the Crazy Challenge, this makes 3 in total!!!

No real ideas on how I'm going to finish either of these yet but onto the finishing pile they go!!

Happy Stitching

xX Fiona Xx

CJC 2012 comes to an end....

and now the fun really begins!! 15 starts in 15 days is fairly straight forward, the hard part is finishing them by 2013!!

Day 14's start was supposed to be Jingle all the way, however the aida I bought to stitch it on is sooo soft & flexible that the stitches were getting distorted so I frogged and opted for Tigerlily by Nora Corbett instead, I've had this design in my stash since it first came out and I've been itching to start it, I'm stitching her on 22ct white aida but now I'm worried that she's going to be very small when finished (final design size just over 7x5!) so I may restart on 16ct. I'm looking at ways of stiffening the aida for Jingle all the Way and so far I think I need to get some interfacing to strengthen the fabric and stitch through that.

Day 15 was supposed to be Pumpkin Row by Chessie and me but due to some other news which I will get to in a minute I wanted to stitch something small so picked the scissor fob included with pumpkin row instead (just visible in the lower right corner of the pattern picture) & managed to finish one side !! I think I'm just going to stitch the year & my initials on the other side so this is technically finished too!! Stitched on 16ct? Aida using the recommended threads. The design is actually supposed to be made up of smyrna stars (sp?) rather than cross stitch but I felt more confident with cross stitch on the aida & I think the design works just as well.



So thats two projects completed and 13 to go!! I'm also starting a Lizzie Kate with my mum this week, she's stitching Christmas by the Letter & I'm stitching Halloween Rules!

Till next time, happy stitching!!

xX Fiona Xx

Has it really been a week??

It seems a week has flown by without me paying attention, luckily I have just about kept up with the Crazy January Challenge, even if I have only managed a couple of stitches a night! Hey a starts a start right?!
First up (as promised) the photos of days 5 & 6

Day 5, Darcy Day:

Day 6, Peep:

Day 7 was Life's a Stitch by Lizzie*Kate:

Day 8 was Dog's leave pawprints by Lizzie*Kate

Day 9 was Button Button by CCN

Day 10 was Peppermint Twist by LHN

Day 11 was Dandy Dreams by Silver Creek Samplers

Day 12 was Nose Garden by San Man Originals

Day 13 was Witchy Brew by Witchy Stitches

All designs have been stitched on Aida using the recommended threads with the exception of Nose Garden which I am in the process of substituting the recommended Six Strand Sweets for DMC, GAST & WDW.

Will post up final two days of the CJC tomorrow!!

Happy Stitching
xX Fiona Xx

Days 5 & 6 of the CJC

were filled with frogs!!! No photos to show just yet (will upload later) but day 5's start was Darcy Day by the sampler girl, mananged to get a few lines of Darcy's sillouette done after frogging several times!

Day 6's start was Peep by Lizzie*Kate, I've substituted the linen provided with 14ct sparkly aida for ease of stitching, again it was stitching up pretty quickly and I was just about the start the basket below the chick when I realised I'd started stitching way to low on the fabric, a quick stitch count showed that my finished piece would just barely fit on the fabric (3 holes from the bottom to be exact) which left no room for finishing so I had to frog it all and start again, only stitched a row before stopping for the night!

Hoping to do a little more on both of these over the weekend but will take photos of them first! I also received the buttons for 'lil easter' so later on I'll be doing the finishing work on that piece too :)

Day 7's start will be life's a stitch by Lizzie*Kate.

Happy Stitching
xX Fiona Xx

CJC Day 4 A Start & A finish!!

Today I feel the need to quote Winnie the Pooh and wish you all a 'Happy Winds-day' as it is undoubtably a rather blustery day here indeed! ( and a rather blustery night too!!)

My start for the January Challenge today was 'Lil Easter' by The Sunflower Seed, stitched on 14ct aida from my stash using the recommended Sampler threads. Really enjoyed stitching today as the colours were lovely and bright, the chart was very easy to ready and stitched up very quickly, so much so that I finished it today as well!

Stitching is finished, I ammended the chart as I felt the original 't' didn't look enough like a 't', I'm just waiting on the buttons which will hopefully be here tomorrow. Planning on finishing this as either a flat fold or a mini cushion for my display....

Tomorrow I will be stitching but I haven't decided what!!

xX Fiona Xx

crazy january challenge day 3

Not much to show off today but here is my pitiful start on Snowman '10 by Lizzie Kate, had massive problems with the WDW thread tangling and knotting so this is as far as I got before calling it quits for the night! (Was gone midnight as it was movie night at my friend's house!)

Tomorrow's start will be 'lil Easter'

xX Fiona Xx

Crazy January Challenge Day 2 Good Things

Today's start for the January Challenge was Lizzie Kate's Good Things. It's stitched using the recommended threads on aida & I plan to mount this in my DMC box when it's finished. Didn't get to much done today as I only started stitching once I got in from work but here is how far I got:

it's not much but it's a start!!

Tomorrow I will be stitching Snowman 10 also by Lizzie Kate!

Happy Stitching!!

xX Fiona Xx

Crazy January Challenge Day 1

So today was the first day of the Crazy January Challenge (CJC) and as I was working I decided to take my start for today into work with me so I could get started during my lunch break. Seemed simple enough as the chart, threads and fabric had already been kitted up all I needed was my hoop, scissors and I was set...that was of course until it came tomy lunch break and I realised I'd forgotten the most important part of my stitching kit...the needle...DOH!!

Despite my grandparents coming over to spend new year's with my parents and my friend popping round for a few hours this evening I have managed to put needle, thread and fabric together on JBW Design's Alphabet Pumpkin and this is as far as I got before stopping for the night:

It's stitched on brown cloud 16ct aida using the recommended sampler threads. The design actually only uses 3 colours and I've finished 2 of those today, the lettering that makes up the main body of the pumpkin is all stitched using a single colour.

Tomorrow I will be stitching Lizzie Kate's Good Things.

Happy Stitching

xX Fiona Xx