Back from Scotland with some stitching progress - WOW!

We got home last night at 10:30 after deciding not to travel back today and lose most of the day on the road. Felt nice to be home, although we had a nice time with friends who looked after us very well.=) (Hi Pauline!!!) Back to the regular run of things now though, but at least work finishes for me on 6 Dec until late January and even then some things will be done by someone else - HURRAH!

Did some cross stitching whilst I was away and
<- here are the results so far. Finished the bottom bird and started putting in some of the background half-stitching. There's still one more bird to go in the big gap on the right hand side, but it's not joined to anything other than the background stuff, so I thought it was better to put some of that in (contrary to the normal procedure, huh?) so that I get the last main element in the right place!! I hope to get that done over the next couple of weeks. I want to get both that and the 'Branches' card done before the end of this calendar year and to take both the 3rd birds trio picture and some small, fun kits away with me when we have our hols in early January. We've settled on a cottage not too far from home rather than going abroad. Less fuss, expense and more relaxing. Less fuss about food too!

Didn't spend as much this time....

So, after blowing a good £70 at the last show only about 6 weeks ago, I was a really good girl and didn't part with much more £20 this time.=) I think that everything I bought is actually for the branches card. Even though the GAST & WDWs skeins and the Kreinik cord I got were more 'I like those' and collection builders, I've since realised how useful the 'bark' colour will be on making the tree proper look realistic and that the other might well come in handy too, but we shall see! The card blank also arrived today, along with some re-stockers in other sizes and colours.

Anyway, here are today's buys:

3 balls of Anchor pearl cotton #8 in tree brown shades, one each of WDW, GAST and Kreinik, a peice of gold kid to make a saxophone out of and a piece of gold-ish silk to make the octagonal door plate out of. The real office name plate is a gold colour with lettering in black, so I wanted this one to be similar. I also got a bunch of keys charm to either hang off one of the branches or appear in the 'lost property box' under the tree. Either way, it'll save a bit of work.

I also enjoyed looking at info about various stitching and textile related courses, such as City & Guilds and the display of A Level work from a local school. I hope I get a reply from the local art college about their Textile Design A Level soon, as this is really much more my thing than teaching. Oh, met the new teacher yesterday and gave her copies of everything we've done in class so far and so on. She has no experience of teaching Chinese, but she has done other subjects, (including English to Chinese people - and she is Chinese), and has a fair idea of what sort of work is involved and also a keen and willing to learn attitude. Although someone with more experience would have been better, I think she'll make a good job of it in time.=) She's very enthusiastic and excited about it all in a way I never could be, so that's just got to be good for the students.

We're going away now until Monday and I'm taking my cross stitch with me, so hope I'll have something to report back on there soon! At least with work soon to take up SO much less of my time, strength and attention, there'll be much more time for creative pursuits.

New design as promised

Remembered to get a photo of it today! It's the initial plan, complete with notes, for a leaving card for our team's manager who's also legging it soon to a very fancy sounding job up in Durham. The above is called 'Branches of Your Life' and, although a lot of it isn't quite clear here, it's going to have characters from the various languages we teach interlinked and hanging from some branches. The others have stuff on that remind us of him - mostly sporty things, the fact that he's known for losing stuff left, right and centre, (even managed to lose his bike once, although I dread to think how he managed that!), and some 'roots' things - i.e. the Cornish bird and crown for where he was born and the Leeds Uni logo and Yorkshire Rose for where he's been for the last 8 or so years. I ordered the necessary jumbo sized card blank from Impressive Crafts, who make the most expensive, but nicest card blanks. We're going for the sky blue one. I'm hoping to make a start on the Uni logo and the octagonal door plate soon as they need to be worked separately, then attached. It's going to be a challenging (although not too badly), but enjoyable project.=)

Moira, you asked where I got my Elizabethan Embroidery books. The first two I got from the Viking Loom stand at the October stitching show I went to, but this link takes you (hopefully!) to their on-line catalogue. The other two I ordered from the New Stitches Stitch Direct site. Each book is £12.95. Don't look on Amazon as the sellers there are asking STUPID prices. I even e-mailed one and asked him if he was serious in wanting £200+ for a £13 book!! The thing is though, that I understand they've recently been re-printed, so they're not as hard to get hold of now. At stitch shows, many of the specialist book sellers who have stands there sell them too. I bought mine on the strength of the stitched models that Viking Loom (a fascinating stitchery shop in York) had on display. If you drooled over the photos, you would be positively swooning over the 'real things'! I'll be asking them for some thread suggestions for the thicker metallics when I'm at the Harrogate Halls show next Thursday.

Latest Acquistions

Have I spelled that right? Sigh! The downside to typing and the computer age.

Well, it's been an interesting week and today has been a good old 'duvet day' so far, but now I'm feeling a little more invigorated, esp as the post just came with these->
One of the new Anchor multicolours in light green, 2 of the 3 new Kreinik green shades in the fine cord, 3 DMC Light Effects metallics from the Antique Effects series and 4 reels of DMC fine goldwork thread in 2 shades each of gold and silved. You'd think that there was only plain 'gold' and 'silver', but there are ever so many!

I also got my ticket through for the Harrogate Knitting and Stitching Show. I wasn't going to go this time as I bought so much at the October Fashion, Embroidery, Stitch and Hobbycrafts shows, but I just really wanted to, so I ordered a ticket and it's just here on the desk.=)

Done no stitching again, but I have sketched the design for a very interesting card that I will post next time as I've just realised that I totally forgot to photograph it! However, below are the 2 latest embroidery mags I bought: I got the French one in Hamburg railway station last month. It's quite simple as it's got 'learn to embroider with us' on the front, but the designs are mostly very pretty.

I also bought the other two in the Elizabethan Embroidery books series and these are they <-. There is another on the alphabet, but I'm not so into monograms, for all I bought the Country Bumpkin book on it recently etc.

The new teacher has been organised for next term and I'm to meet her next week to show her what we've been doing thus far in class. I also want to tell her what I had planned, what I'd 'promised' the students and also a few tips on making it easier for them. She's Chinese and will have all the 'instinctive ability' that I lack, not being a native Mandarin speaker, but she'll never have learned Chinese as a foreign language and her recent training in English language teaching will only have limited relevance for this post. Only 3 more weeks of teaching left - 6 classes, about 12 hours. I'm looking forward to putting it behind me immensely, but part of it, oddly enough, will be a tremendous wrench. There's n'owt so queer as folk, as we say here in Yorkshire. (Leeds, Sandra)

Have a look at this....

Remember two posts ago with the dining table looking like an office? Well, no need for that anymore! I finally had the good sense to realise what a profoundly negative impact my job was having on me, that I hated both teaching and lesson planning/materials creation and that I'd only done it as others had wanted me to, and resigned on Wednesday. Above is the dining table as it should look!

Not had chance to do much on the bluetits, but <- here's the current status. Pretty awful, over-red photo, but I need more time on Photoshop before I get this right!!!

More stitching soon.....=) Oh how nice it is to feel that I have my life back!