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My obsession with HAED and crochet and yarn and stuff . . . . .

Monday, 23 May 2011

Where oh where ...


has my stitchy bug gone, where oh where can it blardy well be!

Stupid stitchy bug has got up and done a runner :-( I think it must have been the decanter on Curl Up which sent it running for the hills!

If anyone has seen it, kick it's butt back here please!

Sunday, 15 May 2011

Not feeling quite so guilty now ..

... that I have at last made a start on the SAL Curl Up piece :-) I've managed to get in just over a thousand stitches and despite the numerous colour changes, I am enjoying stitching him and wish that I had started him sooner!

After plugging away for a couple of hours with brown, brown and brown I was starting to get a little - shall we say - annoyed. But then I pushed my frame away and lo! there were all the little details that you really just don't see up close and yes, all of a sudden all that work was soooo worth it. Here is progress after the May 2011 SAL week:

SAL Curl Up with a Good Book
(c) Spangler and HAED

He's a bit messy with my parked threads everywhere but you can see the detail coming out in the book. You wouldn't believe the colours in the decanter - pink purple green and more!

Anyway, I've decided to carry on with him for a bit and try and catch up. I've got the first three pages to work on and I don't think page 4 will come until July so I've got a bit of time ... I'll see how it goes.


Wednesday, 11 May 2011

It's that time of the year again .. already


And the sign up for the HAED SK SAL has started. It only seems like 5 minutes ago we were signing up for the QS SAL but we are already 5 months in! As entry for the new SAL doesn't close until the end of the month, I'm not going to say here what I'm doing and you will have to wait until sign up is closed before I post a picture lol! As usual I have signed up despite already having sooooo many wips! 

The one good thing to come out of it though is that I have at long last made a start on the QS SAL Curl Up with a Good Book. I felt so guilty even contemplating another new start when I hadn't even started my draggie, that I quickly gridded up and got started. Some of the threads have been pinched for other projects but they were easily found. 

So far it is a little slow going as there is quite a bit of confetti and colour changes, but not too bad. I've managed to get about 700 stitches done in the space of the last three nights so I'm quite pleased with progress. I'll post a picture when it's worth showing. So far, when you are looking up close, it looks like nothing but already from a small distance you can see the swirl on the book. Very clever charting as usual from HAED.

Tuesday, 3 May 2011

And now for something completely different ...

What with the girls' Easter holidays from school and the extra long Bank Holiday weekend for the Royal Wedding and DH going off to Italy for training before he starts his new job in Saudi, it's been a couple of weeks since I was here last. I have been stitching ... honest gov! But I have also been doing something else - my completely different - running.

I have long battled with self-confidence and depression and one thing the doctor always said was "do something for yourself, it will help". Well yeah whatever I thought and promptly ignored her. Then, I set up my little stitching corner and lost myself in lots and lots of tiny crosses. I carried on doing this for a long time, but the problems never quite went away. Then I realised, I really needed to get up and do something else for me ... something that was outside the house, where there was no "mum! I need a drink!" or "muuuuum, I'm hungry"! So 10 weeks ago, I started running around the footpath on the estate.

To start with, I could just about manage to run the distance of 3 lampposts. I managed to get round 2.5K doing this but would be just flattened afterwards. So my running buddy and I decided we needed to be told what we needed to do, both being running novices and also having, in a complete moment of madness, signed up the 5K Race for Life. Couch 2 5K was the answer and, although it has been a struggle, in the space of 7 weeks I have gone from being able to run for a minute, to running (in the loosest sense of the word) for 25 minutes at a time.
We run 3 times a week - even when we don't feel like it lol! With just 2 weeks of the training programme left that time will gradually be built up to 30 minutes and the elusive 5K! So, has it helped with the 'me' problems? I don't know yet ... somedays my doubts kick in and I struggle (like today when I actually gave up because I just couldn't run any longer) but there is a great sense of "yay, I've done it!" when you finish. I haven't lost any weight yet, which of course would be fab, but I am definitely more toned and fitter than when I started! And yes, I am ever so slightly hooked :-) So, I'll carry on.

Anyway, back to my first love, my stitching :-D After kitting up and gridding Ophelia I started her last Tuesday. Two and a bit columns in and I am going insane already. It's just black, black and more black! I don't mind block stitching but I know that I stitch slower with black, trying to ensure that my coverage is good. On 28ct it looks patchy when under a daylight bulb and close up but once you get a normal distance away, it looks good. Here is progress so far, as you see, not much.

Portrait of Ophelia (c) JBG and HAED

So as that black is driving me crazy, I'm going to swap projects this week .. to my Wall. Talk about one extreme to the other lol! I've not stitched on Dragon Charmer in what seems like forever but seeing her finished by another stitcher on the BB recently has put her in mind. No doubt my next post will be about how much the confetti is driving me mad - but lets face it, us stitchers are never happy are we?! Here she is as I left her last (threads all over the place) I think in October of last year. Stitched on 28ct light blue jobelan, one over one, full crosses.


Dragon Charmer (c) Josephine Wall and HAED

Finally, FF150. I stitched on her for a bit for the themed SAL last week but starting Ophelia got in the way. I have managed to make good progress on her though so here she is. Not sure about the green on her face, it looks a lot brighter in real life but I'll trust the charting and go with it!

FF150 (c) JBG and HAED

Lastly in an effort to clear away some cobwebs, I've changed my online profile pic. The old one was taken last April and has been there far too long. The new one was taken on our 10th wedding anniversary last year at 15 (Jamie Oliver's restaurant). I've put a photo filter over it to jazz it up a bit because it was a bit grainy. How long will this one be around for I wonder?