Stitch From Stash 2014 May report

Hello everyone and welcome to another stash free stitch from stash post :)

Yes we are 5 months in and counting & I've still not added (or reduced) my stash!

While I've not yet reduced the stash pile mountain, I have reduced the WIP mountain mole hill.

This month I have worked on Autumn-ation & Green Flipits, both by Lizzie Kate.


I have finished Autumn-ation & made a decent amount of progress on the Green Flipits.

Speaking of Lizzie Kate, I mentioned her new 'Tingles' Series in my April report and I've decided that actually I don't like them as much as I thought I did, I still have the Halloween (not so) mystery sampler, the Christmas 'Jingles' designs as well as the 6 fat men & 6 snow belles to stitch, along with countless other designs so I won't be buying them anytime soon (if ever!)

Lizzie Kate has also announched the lastest 'string' designs and they are cats & dogs themed ones, these I do like but again I have the seasonal strings from last year to stitch before I invest in another string to stitch!

I think this SAL hasn't stopped me from buying stash but it does make me think more about the charts I already have in my stash and for that I am greatful as I have many wonderful designs tucked away in there that I bought with the intention of stitching them and if I had continued to buy with the gusto that I used to I would never get round to stitching any of them. As it stands I have 2 projects in my WIP molehill at the moment and I'm thinking that when it's down to one (next month) I'll be looking through my stash for something new and exciting to stitch :)

So an overview for this month would be:

May
Amount Spent: £0
Stash Starts: None
WIP: Autumn-ation, Green Flip its, June Stamp
Finished: Autumn-ation
Money Banked: £125

Pinteresting Poncho

Just occasionally I love designing my own pattern from an image...Allow me to explain myself

While browsing the Pintrest DIY & Craft board I stumbled upon this image for a Crochet Poncho & immediately fell in love (don't you just hate when that happens?!)  

The squares themselves are fairly easy to construct and join together (click here for a link to making the squares) but the problem I had was how to arrange the squares to create the poncho as pictured above. The link on Pintrest simply lead to someone's Flickr account, a quick Ravelry search proved unfruitful in finding any sort of pattern and I could find any other image apart from original image so what could I do except try and create one myself?

Which is where my cross stitch pattern maker came in! I used a 5x5 block of colour to represent a single square in the poncho and input the squares I could see from the picture then worked out the rest of the pattern layout from that. 

This is what I came up with (I've changed the colours to the colours I'm actually using rather than those used in the picture)

I'm really looking forward to making this poncho up, hopefully it shouldn't take too long but for now it's back to my May stitching goals!

xX Fiona Xx

Furbaby news & a pattern :)

Twiglette had her kittens!! She went into labor on Thursday at around 11am and gave birth to 5 beautiful healthy kittens, 3 black & 2 ginger :)

Happy to say mum & kittens are all doing well, here they are at 2 days old :)

In honor of this lovely event I'm posting the companion piece I designed to go with Lizzie Kate's 'Dog's leave pawprint's' snippet. I used elements from various Lizzie Kate designs to put this piece together so I can't take credit for it entirely :) just click to enlarge the picture.

Threads listed are DMC however I'm going to use the following hand dyed WDW threads instead :)

DMC 740 = WDW Carrot

DMC 3340 = WDW Maddison Rose

DMC 731 = WDW Moss

DMC 334 = WDW Sky

DMC 321 = WDW Liberty

DMC Blanc = WDW Whitewash

DMC 801 = WDW Kris' Bon Bon

Please ignore where the black dot is I'm going to attach a small antique cat charm I found in my stash, I added the dot in to get the placement right.

I hope you enjoy my pattern & happy stitching!!

xX Fiona Xx

Theme-a-licious 2014 April Roundup & May Goals revealed :)

May appears to have started without me really noticing.

April's Theme was 'April Showers' meaning we had to work on water based projects. Fine by me, I had loads of water to contend with on Super Mario and my only goal for the month was to get that project finished once and for all.  Which as readers of my blog will know, I did with about a week of April left.

Onwards to May's theme: 'Menagerie May'. This month is all about the animals in out projects :)

Good news for me as I already have a couple of WIPs/UFOs that contain animals.

So this month I will be working on: 

• Autumn-ation by Lizzie Kate (it has a crow on it!)
• Green series flip-its by Lizzie Kate (I need to finish keep out air clean and start Be kind to Animals)
• June Stamp by Lizzie Kate (Bees are animals too!)

I also have a cat themed piece I designed using various Lizzie Kate motifs to go with her 'dogs leave pawprints' chart I stitched last year.

Speaking of cats it's time I showed off a picture of my newest Furbaby.

Meet Twiglette

Twiglette came into our lives about a month ago but was made officially ours about a week ago. Basically she kept coming into our house any time we had the doors open and we didn't know who she belonged to. We did think that she might belong to a woman who lives opposite us who has several cats but didn't want to ask in case we were mistaken.

About 2 weeks ago we noticed that Twiglette was 'rounder' than she had seemed a few weeks before and so we felt we had to asked the woman opposite if she had a cat who was 'expecting' as one kept showing up in our house. She confirmed that Twiglette was hers. We cheekily asked if we could keep her as she seemed very at home in our house and kept coming in. We were told 'we'll see how it plays out' & after about a week the owner came round to see us and said that she'd never seen Twiglette looking so content and happy and that we could keep her on the condition that once the kittens were old enough to be weaned that she has the kittens to sell to good homes. 

We are fine with that as we would have had to give the kittens to a shelter to find homes for but we do get to keep one for ourselves if we want :)

Twiglette is also special to me as she is Gizmo's sister, she was the kitten that the woman kept from the litter we got Gizmo from meaning that Twiglette is about 5 years old. It does feel strange having a cat again after 2 years without one but it also feels like she's always been here.

That's probably enough from me for one night!

xX Fiona Xx