Hello...is it me you're looking for

... probably not, but I'm here anyway!

Hello dear friends,

It's been 2 months since I blogged and I'm sorry I didn't post link ups for theme-tas-stitch, life has been so hectic due to work, family, college and all the other things that take up time in the run up to Christmas. I hardly stitched during November as I decided to do the School Christmas Fair and did my usual thing of making 100 felties in a month. (+40-odd pairs of earrings). I did make time for Flosstube - I guess that is still a new and shiny thing so still holds my attention, and is easier than blogging believe it or not!

Theme-Tas-Stitch October link up post

It's the 21st, so time for Theme-Tas-Stitch

This month's theme was...

Opulent October -

Break out the bling - stitch with beads, charms, metallics or on sparkly fabric.

A bit of a challenge for me this one as I have lots of projects that could fall into this but aren't necessarily blinged up yet!

I was reading my post from last month's TTS and realised that I didn't actually show the tree keeper from The Drawn Thread. It was stitched on some random fabric that was actually the piece from the kit up next. It has way more beads than were called for, but hey, it's a Christmas ornament it needs bling!

The fabric was from a cover kit from Crosstitcher in 2015 I think. The kit was enough to stitch one of the houses but I liked all three and had some nice natural linen from Sew it all grab bag and the kit floss was actually enough to do all three houses so that's what I did. I substituted the single cross stitches for beads to show snowfall. The little Christmas tree has gold beads and the snowman has petite black beads for coal.

My last bit of bling was on Plum Street Samplers 12 days of Christmas and I finally put in five gold rings. It wasn't as hard to stitch on 25ct with metallics over 1 as I thought it would be.

I also made some needleminders from buttons and pendants I've had for a fair while. If that owl isn't opulent then I don't know what is!

Link up here and show us what you've been up to. 

Next month's theme is:

No X November - 

Blackwork, Hardanger, pulled thread or speciality stitches the choice is yours or maybe it's time to tackle the backstitch on some of those almost finished projects.

I have more ideas for this month than stitching hours in the day so we'll just have to see how well I do. I plan to start the black work lady from walks, finish the half stitch on my giraffe silhouette and have a new Christmas start as part of #santasundayxs on Instagram. November is a very busy month for us so no X November could well be no stitching at all Eek. I'm back on the PTA at school so I could end up making felties all of November too...

You can now find me on Instagram as Kerry_in_stitches and I've also ventured into the world of Floss tube. I have 3 videos now - my channel is Kerry in stitches there too! Pop over and say hi!

Happy stitching friends. Have a great weekend.

Gifted gorgeousness October

Let's face it my blogging has been hit and miss to say the least so firstly apologies for not having kept up with my blog reading. 

I've decided to keep this one short and sweet to get me back in the habit and share some of the things I've been working on over the last few weeks as its time for Gifted Gorgeousness hosted by the marvellous Jo of Serendipitous Stitching.

September saw a new start on the cityscape from WOXS 251 which is on gifted fabric from my children for Mother's Day this year. Not a huge deal of progress as there is a lot more backstitch than you first realise. 

I also made some biscornu and used the teeny tiny ones to make scissor fobs which were gifted to my postcard pal from stitch from stash and to a flosstuber that I've become friends with along with some blackwork charts. They are stitched on gifted fabric too. 

I also had a good few days on my Just Nan humbug - spring frills. It's such a pretty pattern but is far more intensive than you think given its size. It is so pretty though. This was a giveaway win eons ago from Carolyn. 

I've been doing this next one as part of #santasundayxs on Instagram. (You can follow me there as kerry_in_stitches) I've really struggled for motivation with this one over the last year or more, so it has been so nice to really fall back in love with it and just spend one day a week working on it. I think I have about 650 stitches left to do so I am aiming for a finish next weekend. It's 12 days of Christmas by Plum Street samplers and was a free design from them in 2015. It also uses some threads left over from a gifted kit.

In other news I have been making Flosstube videos and you can find me on YouTube as Kerry in stitches. I'd love if you are a Flosstube watcher to go over and have a little look. I've done three videos now and do them fortnightly. I'd say that's the reason I'm not blogging but to be honest it's more that every spare minute is spent stitching at the moment. 

I have been fortunate to have won a couple of giveaways recently. I won two Nora Corbett charts from Tiff and I also won the Friday freebie from Crosstitch crazy which was fabric, a chart and threads. 

I've given up on trying to keep this short so I'll tell you about my final gift I've had this month and that was from three marvellous friends who took me to the Birmingham Hippodrome to see the musical Hairspray! It's my absolute favourite musical anyway so to see the stage production was just amazing so not a bad early birthday present at all.

I'll be back at the weekend with the theme to the stitch link up, until then happy stitching.

Theme-Tas-Stitch September Link up post

Hey Friends,

I'm sorry for the lack of posting and blog reading over the last few weeks. A bit of ill health put pay to the stitchy bug for a few weeks, but here is this month's Theme-Tas-Stitch.

 September Smalls -

What is the smallest stitch in your stash? Show us your smalls!

In my last post I talked about my plans for September smalls. I planned to do a whole host of of the free charts from The Drawn Thread and have a couple of starts of big projects. So get ready for a whole host of photos cos the girl done good! I've not had chance to make up all of them but here they are...

My favourite is tree keeper

And I've made up Autumn and pumpkin keepers ready for my Autumn display. The Autumn keeper is hanging on the picture frame and the pumpkin keeper is in the middle. 

I also was chatting on Instagram about blackwork and decided to stitch a couple of biscornu. I had a couple of tiny scraps of the fabric left so I stitched two tiny biscornu too and they measure less than an inch each.

I ran out of fray check and I'm too lazy to baste the edges of my fabric so I haven't started Elizabeth Shepard yet, but I did get a small start on the City Landscape from WOXS 251. I'm loving this and plan to stitch the current page of the chart which is basically 2 more houses and the tops of the two skyscrapers behind. By that point the fray check should be here and I will start ES!!

Opulent October -

Break out the bling - stitch with beads, charms, metallics or on sparkly fabric.

I don't have a clue about this one so I'll have to come up with something. 

Link up here and show us what you've been up to. 

You can now find me on Instagram as Kerry_in_stitches and I also made my first flosstube video too - my channel is Kerry_in_stitches there too! Pop over and say hi! 

Happy stitching friends

Theme-Tas-Stitch August link up post

Hello Friends,

We last left our intrepid stitcher on a quest to complete all the full crosses on Giraffe silhouette and wondering...

If the 900 ish stitches on the tree would be a stitch to far?
If the quarter stitches would be a fraction too much?
If the 3 shades at the bottom would brown our intrepid stitcher off?

Gifted Gorgeousness August

Hey folks,

In an attempt to get back on track with the blogging and not post 3 posts in 48 hours again, I'm preparing my GG post now! Thank you to everyone who commented on those posts and I'm sorry I haven't responded to everyone.

Gifted Gorgeousness is hosted by Jo and I'm sure you all know all about it by now!

August has been good to me so far with 6 finishes and big progress on 2 others, but here are my GG finishes, Apologies now, they all fit at least 2 other SAL's so expect to see them again and again!

Tea and cakes 14ct - Finished
Fabric and border floss were gifts and the chart was a free design from Lakeside Needlecraft by Durene Jones. The backstitch was a killer!

Anchor Sampler - Finished
A gift from my In laws and finished on 28th July after 3 years.

Mill Hill Squirrelly - Finished
A gift from Steph and finished this week. It just needs cutting out and a magnet adding.

So on to progress - I was really struggling with motivation for the Maia Giraffe Silhouette that my Mum brought me at least 5 years ago. I love the design, it's not hard but 550 black stitches took it's toll and I decided that I'd do 50 stitches a day so I would have a finish by the end of the year, anyhow, I picked it up yesterday to put in my 50 stitches on the black and thought might as well finish the row it's only another 32 stitches, that leaves me with 1 more row of black and odd ones on the row above that. By the end of the row, I was actually enjoying it and just carried on! I actually got 500 stitches done yesterday! So my plan is to do a week on it and then rotate it. My aim is to have all the full crosses done as about 2/3 of the piece are half stitches so that is about 1600-1800 full stitches to do this week - basically all the black and 3 shades of brown in the bottom third.

Will the 900 ish stitches on the tree be a stitch to far?
Will the quarter stitches be a fraction too much?
Will the 3 shades at the bottom brown our intrepid stitcher off?

Tune in to the next exciting episode to find out!  


Happy stitching friends, see you for Theme-Tas-Stitch next week.

Tenuous Shoe-Horn for Your Loved Ones!

Hey folks,

It's the summer linky  party hosted by Jo. This years theme is Loved Ones...

If you ask me about loved ones, my first thought is always my Nan and Grandad. I do love my kids - my son is funny, sensitive, loyal, clever and a whole other bunch of awesome other stuff. My daughter is crackers, determined, kind and helpful and also very creative. We went to the local country park Friday and made more jewellery. it's always lots of fun and she gave my daughter a bag of beads! - this is Lot's bead collection once we added the new lot of beads. She's very good at designing and makes lovely things. She clearly will be a stash addict and have her own SABLE and she is only 7 now! 

So on to Nan and Grandad, growing up they lived 120 miles away in Surrey, so all time spent with them was so precious. I spent every summer at their house for at least 2 weeks travelling the 120 miles without going on a motorway, all through the Cotswolds, I used to entertain myself by writing down all the pub names along the way - 117 if I remember rightly. We had a dog back in the 80's/90's called Jade who knew when we were about 10 minutes away and would get really excited! They came up 3 or 4 times a year too as Nan's sisters lived locally. Even in my 20's I'd get the 3 trains to their house for the weekend. They were wonderful, wonderful people and I miss them loads.

I think like most people of their generation they had so many hands on skills. Grandad was a carpenter and his shed was an incredible place. He would give me off cuts of wood and help me make stuff. I remember making a sofa for my Barbie and Nan cut up an old shirt to help me make covers for it.  When I started making jewellery at 13, Grandad made me a bead storage box. I still have it and I may get it out of the garage and put my stitching tools in. Nan knitted, crocheted and embroidered and was a fantastic gardener. She taught me to embroider and I remember our market had a haberdashery stall and you could buy printed embroidery pieces and threads. She showed me how to do it one summer.

I also have a blanket she knitted for me when I was in my late teens as she was making them for the great-grandchildren at the time. mine is made up of all the wool oddments she had in the footstool. I can remember what she used some of the wools for too. (the darker green at the top was a cardi)

 After they had both passed my Mum found a needlepoint that Nan had started and brought it home for me to finish. I had to match all the wool as most was missing. I had only been stitching for 6 months maybe and didn't know much about it, but I finished it.

My Grandad was born in Wimbledon but grew up on Box Hill, this picture is one of my favourites and was taken the year before Nan died on Box Hill. I was the youngest of the grandchildren of 4 so I think the time I spent with them was special to them too. I wish they could have met my children because they would have loved them (they got to see all of the other Great-Grandchildren, but I was the only one to get married and Nan died 6 months after I got married, just 7 days after their 58th wedding anniversary. Grandad died 15 months later just 7 weeks before I had Tom, I'm not sure If he knew I was pregnant as he had quite advanced dementia by then, but my son is named after 3 generations of Grandad's family.

I've enjoyed reading the other stories that have linked up, so pop over and read them if you haven't done so already.

Thanks for stopping by and happy stitching. 

Biscornu exchange!

Now despite my blog title I don't get to make that many biscornus of late, so when Mini from Miniz Diary made her first one earlier this year and asked my advice I offered to  do an exchange with her when we could both fit it in. So earlier this month the opportunity arose and after exchanging a questionnaire we made each other a biscornu and included some goodies too.

Mini told me one of her favourite animals/birds was the peacock so as I couldn't find a small a small feather design that would fit I used the colours from a pretty freebie design from Sew & So that was designed by Lesley Teare (also one of Mini's favourite designers) and made my own simplified version that included almost a full spool of Kreinik!

I did a simple design for the back that incorporated our names and the date.

I loved making up the parcel and deciding what to put in so I made Mini some beaded items -  a bracelet and earrings in her favourite colours and a hook book mark (made at my jewellery party) and a penguin scissor fob as Mini loves penguins too. I included some DMC variegated threads, a local magnet (to add to Mini's collection) and some chocolate all wrapped up in pretty paper, along with some cover kits that Mini chose.

Mini sent me this wonderful parcel with so many lovely things...The biscornu was a design I was familiar with, I stitched it years ago for a gift so I'm really pleased to have my own one now.

And the back...

Mini also included a detailed letter describing what she had selected all these lovely things for me including a Greek magnet and soap, an increadible bird painting from India on a leaf, a LHN chart, Fig cookies, a tin with charms in and a gorgeous cameo needle minder.

It was so much fun to do an exchange again as it's been over a year since I last did one and I'm looking forward to doing more in the future.

My next post will be for the summer linky party that Jo is hosting so look out for that.

Happy stitching friends.

WIPocalypse - July edition

This post might almost be on time!! Wipcalypse is hosted by Measi and gets us working on the projects languishing down the side of the sofa or under the bed.

I have a finish, this is big, big, huge news!! it is the Anchor Traditional Sampler, oh yes the Anchor Sampler that has been a wip since the end of 2013 and was a present from my In Laws in 2012.

This was the first picture I put on my blog of it.

the last picture I posted was a couple of weeks ago for Theme-Tas-Stitch's Just One July...

and a further 806 stitches and 22 french knots later here it is (and in need of washing and ironing!)

Measi also posts a question each month for us and this month it was:

What are your oldest and your newest WIPs?

Well, The anchor sampler was my oldest until earlier this week so now it is...

Blackwork band sampler from Kincavel Krosses - started spring 2015.

My most recent is MLady's Greenhouse Sal by Gaynor French of Stitcher Anon and hosted by Lakeside Needlecraft. This was started last month. 

They are both going to be focus pieces for August. That will leave 12 days of Christmas as my only pre 2017 active wip (started October 2015)

I missed last month's check in but the question was Show us your stitching space!  Where do you sit, and what is going on around you while you stitch (TV, audiobooks, etc)? I wanted to show you my little stitching corner anyway. I usually watch Netflix or something I can happily ignore like a rom com I've seen 100 times before. I sometimes have sport on - I love Tennis and F1 so stitch whilst watching those too along with Olympics and sporting events like that. I watch a bit of floss tube too. I have been known to watch Floss tube on my phone and have sport on TV at the same time whilst stitching!

I have gained a little room when we moved last year so I now have the small table too. I keep a small basket of odds and ends in, it usually has floss waiting to go back into my floss boxes, small finishes, hoops, the odd hair band, earphones and my phone tripod. My chart stand stays up on there and you can see I've been working on Tea and Cakes this weekend, there is a little tub for orts and my thread cards for T & C.

I still have my little unit that has things like my button tin, fray check metallic threads and other stitchy stuff. The two storage draws on top hold beads, needles and other small random bits. I have my two pin cushions - the cactus holds mainly pins and the jar has needles and is full of beads for jewellery making. You can see my wip basket full of the fab project bags I picked up at home bargains and my full DMC collection underneath. My favourite Gromit mug hold a half drunk cup of cold coffee (as always).

So that's all about my stitchy corner too. One more blog post to write and I'm all caught up!!


Hope you all had a great weekend. Happy Stiching

Smalls SAL - July

I've been a bit hit and miss with my check ins for the Smalls Sal - It's not that I'm not stitching smalls - Just not blogging regularly enough. The Smalls Sal is hosted by Heather at Stitching Lotus and challenges us to stitch and complete a small of our choice each month.

Theme-Tas-Stitch Just one July link up

Hello friends

I can't believe it's link up time already so here is this month's Theme-Tas-Stitch link up post.

This months theme was...

Just one July -

Pick a focus piece for the month and see how much progress you can make - show us before and after pictures if you can.

Well its been Just One gift after another for this month. I was really hoping I would be able to finish my Anchor Sampler because let's face it - it's been hanging around for too long now and I have less than 1000 stitches to go. that will be coming out today
Here is where i left it last time...

And after one evening of stitching

The right flowerpot is done and the second butterfly. That just leaves 726 stitches for the bottom border and 22 French knots in the trellis and snail feelers. I'm aiming for a finish this weekend! 

I did get 5 cards made too for teachers at DD's school. I started them in Maynia...

And here are the finished cards...

I had a biscornu exchange too with Mini, but I'll save that for another post.

I'm looking forward to seeing what you've all been up to. Here's the linky.
The theme for next month is...

Animalia August -

Give some love to those projects with our furry or feathered friends.

Tiff has had the idea of doing Dragons so there are a few of us going in that direction. I'm also hoping to do a bit on my Mill Hill Squirrelly kit too.

Good luck to all the mums embarking on the summer holidays!

Happy stitching

Kerry