BFF SAL 9 The Never Ending Story

Oh dear, the 'sameyness' has hit big style with this set of borders.   And whilst I am glad that I have a couple of options to stitch on by starting the outer body too, oh boy I wish I had not added it.

The yellow border was tonight's focus, a bit more on the side and a stretch along the top to feel like I'd made any progress.  I prefer the stitching on the side, but it honestly never feels like I've made progress for the amount of thread consumed! 

I know it's all going to be worth it in the end but I long for the fun of the tree again! 

Check out my BFF's update on here

Gifted Gorgeousness May link up

It's time for Gifted Gorgeousness again, how did that happen already??

Gifted Gorgeousness is hosted as ever by the lovely Jo at Serendipitous Stitching.  We are tasked with sharing our stitching on gifts, or with gifted fabric, or any combination of these things. 

My share this month, you've already seen a little bit of on my earlier post Adventures in Evenweave

But the reason it still fits here, is that I received the lovely book it came from from my BFF on our joint Xmas/Birthday real world meet up. 

There are SO many gorgeous patterns in here, I'm very excited to be starting on one of them. 

Here's the my abandoned evenweave version alongside for size comparison. It's about the size of one sleeve!

I'm looking forward to stitching a few designs from this book, I think it was one of my favourite pressies.   It didn't make me laugh quite as much as this one though. I'm getting through a lot of 550 on the SAL. 

The Road To Somewhere - BFF SAL 9 and other stuff

It's been a weird old week this one.  I think I've finally reached exhaustion point with the borders on the SAL.  On the plus side I have a choice of borders and corners to be working with, on the negative side then it resulted in a feeling of incompleteness everywhere.

A good friend of mine was successful in getting promoted at work, for a job which I chickened out of applying for. I have been living 'in my own head' way too much lately, I think, doubting my capabilities with work and real life skills. Oddly this comes along at a time when my crafty confidence is higher than usual. However, I'm guessing that some of that annoyance with myself spilled over into my stitching tonight, as I just couldn't get properly motivated on the SAL.  My BFF has her own tales to tell on the SAL side of things, so I'll let her update you later here.  Progress so far, mostly on Monday all in one long session after a muchness of grass cutting. 

So I dropped off the SAL and worked a little on my latest small piece, I'm working the kimono on a random piece of 14 count leftover fabric.  It wouldn't leave me alone, so I just had to start it. 

Remembering as I go along just why I don't love metallic thread... This tendency to split and pull. But as there's only a little bit of it in the pattern, I'm going to persevere as I think it will be worth it. 

Sew close... BFF SAL 9

Just a small handful of stitches remaining to the end of the first border.  Deeply relieved when they finally met up successfully. 

It's quite telling, though, that this is still only 49.19% complete!!  Ironically, the borders feel much more like hard work than the tree did. 

Sometimes I find the repetitive nature of this soothing, and others I long for a little variety. 

And I'm excited but very nervous about finishing and trying to find a suitable frame. 

Check out my BFF's update on http://apatchworkofcrafts.blogspot.com

Adventures in Evenweave

I've had a hankering for some time to try out stitching on evenweave. I've done it only once before, on a baby afghan my BFF and I did as a round robin for my son, 16 years ago!!

Having seen the spectacular nature of the BFF SAL on evenweave, one over one, though, that's what I wanted to try. 

But I also knew that I didn't really want to be buying a full piece of evenweave without a project in mind. 

So on our day off in person, my BFF gave me a little swatch to play on, about 60 x 70 stitches if working over 1.

Me being me, I decided to start with the Kimono from the Oriental Odyssey book by Joan Elliott. Pretty full on as far as coverage goes, although it's only 43 x 57.  So I'd have liked to have seen a shrunken version of this. 

This is as far as I got before deciding that the speed of stitching one over one is not for me.

(I should have anticipated this actually, given that I prefer to knit or crochet with thick wool which makes up faster) 

I could have stitched the entire piece on aida (or over 2 on evenweave) in the amount of time I have struggled with this a single stitch at a time. 

I think I would now be happy to work one over one in a small piece of work.  And I'm still keen to do something else on evenweave. But definitely over 2.

I shall contemplate it for the next SAL. That will be plenty of time to buy myself some fabric, as I have more than 50% of the current SAL left to work!! 

It's been an adventure though.