Background stitching done

Here's the current field mice photo. I finished the background half stitching a little while ago and so am now ready for all the backstitch outlining there is to do, and there's quite a lot! Still, it won't take long once it's started - as with most things - especially homework and ironing!!!

No more done on the goldwork, I'm afraid, I just don't feel like doing anything that intricate and fiddly at the mo as I'm down with a bout of tonsillitis, but on the mend.=) Actually, once I've got started on a goldowrk piece, i usually find it hard to keep going with it. I guess it's really not my thing, although I admire the look of it tremendously! How Mary Corbet has the patience to do the lucious pomegranate she's working in silk shading and goldwork, I can't imagine! Maybe I should take 'The A-Z of Goldwork' off my Amazon wishlist after all.....

I won a give-away recently (possibly by virtue of there only being 4 participants and 3 prizes!!) and here it is. It's the needles really, but she kindly included the DMC floss as well.=)

I also got these 2 magazines at one of the big bookshops here in Taipei, neither of which are available in the UK. Well, one of them is, but only in London, I think. Just look at the cottage on the cover of the Aussie mag! Talk about wow! Daresay I'll never make it up, but I'd like to do something like that at some point. I was thinking of a cottage style jewelry case as a C&G assessment piece, but that kind of pre-supposes I'll ever get around to taking C&G!!=) I'm bacl to thinking about language based studies again now, but there's no need to decide for a long time and, as I've been reading all the Wiki How Tos on not worrying about the future, being patient and so on today, I will not fret about what I may or may not do in a year or more's time! There's a dictation tomorrow and I will work on that instead!!!=)LOL

I now have 65 followers, many thanks to all and also to the other almost as many who follow through Google Reader and anyone still tuning in via Bloglines (don't! It looks rotten on there!!)

Field mice cross stitching finished

Yay! I've finally finished the cross stitching on this piece. Next up is the half-stitched background colour (a paler green), and then I make a start on all the back stitch top-stitching of which there is quite an amount. Still, it'll bring the piece to life, even though it's very cute already, don't you think?=) I hope to have the background done over the weekend and get the back stitching done over the following week or so.

I did a tiny bit on the goldwork yesterday in that I took out the offending piece of copper Jap thread on the left hand side and cit another piece ready to 'fit'. I'm afraid it will 'fray' again, but I'll just have to keep on re-doing it until I'm happy with it, then I'll move on to the f-holes in gold Jap.

I'm not sure if many of you know about it yet, but there's a new ning stitching community that was started just last December called Stitchaholics. It caters for all forms of stitchery, but is more chatty than Stitching Fingers (which I enjoy as a more serious forum for needlearts), and the creator, Caroline from London, is looking to expand the community in the future. It's a 'by invitation only' group, so if you'd like to join in, please leave me a comment with your e-mail addy if your comments don't normally send it (ie if you have no e-mail addy available on your public profile here), and I'll send you an invitation.

The weather has gone mad here again recently and, although it was in the early 30sC at the weekend, it's now in single figures again - but, set to start to rise back to late 20sC+ from Friday. Then, of course, back down to about 12C middle of next week! As soon as the cold and rain started, so did my cough, and I took a day off school to rest today. We've been back a week and my new term enthusiasm is flagging somewhat already!!

On a stitching go slow...

Badly timed one as well considering that the TAST2 challenge has started. Still, I never expected to be able to join in all of it, esp. given that Tuesday is a rather impossible day to give a lot of time to needlework and always has been, but I plan to try and do it about once a month all being well.

Haven't done enough on either of my projects to merit a photo, only a little bit on the 2nd mouse on the cross stitch and have only touched the goldwork to move it to a safer place in the living room, but I hope to get on with both this weekend. I'm now back at language classes and trying to get into a good routine of study. Last term was silly, trying to cover far too much material and not enough time to practise using it or really learn it. This term looks much more balanced and I should even get a grammar book worked through.=) I'm trying to get almost all of my school work done actually at school, so that I can relax more at home and not feel I can't stitch as I haven't done my homework yet!!!

We went to a national park and the coast last Sunday - Tuesday (photos soon to go up on the Taiwan blog), and I bought some tribal inspired stash whilst I was there. There are 2 packs of quilting fabrics, one which looks typically Eastern and the other rather tribal. The chap assured me they were Taiwanese made, although they have Japanese on the label. I wasn't sure whether or not to believe him, but I remembered that quilting crafts are BIG in Japan and so the main market for those products will be through exporting up there. Anyway, either way I liked them. The bands are used extensively in Taiwan Aboriginal tribal clothing etc and so I got some of those as samples. Don't know what I'll do with them beyond using them as examples in my later C&G diploma country studies (although Taiwan is not strictly a country....), but they make a colourful addition to the stash, no? The picture above is the shop's display of the bands, or at least the top half of it. The bottom half was covered as it was raining. Fancy that! The weather is still totally mad here with torrential rain one day and temperatures soaring the next. A dull, overcast and drizzly time was forecast for our trip, but the sun came out with a vengeance and I, who wasn't prepared at all well, got rather nasty sunburn! Thankfully, although I've never had it before, knew how to treat it by applying cold, wet cloths to get the heat out and using lavendar essential oil etc. Peppermint oil soothed the itching later and the patch is beginning to heal nicely without any blistering or peeling.=)

I added some Pages to my blog recently. Nothing really exciting on them, just a start made at introducing my stitching history and so on. The page on goals is general, not just embroidery, and there's my CV for fun!! Might put more on it later on, we'll see. I also cleaned up the sidebars to just display a Gallery of favourite pieces rather than 3 years' worth that took an age to scroll through.