Is your name Captain Jack Sparrow?

So on Saturday I didn't get  chance to stitch anything. I worked all morning and then drove up to Bribie Island for dinner. I will recommend that if you are ever in a rush don't go to Bribie Island for dinner. There is a thing called normal time and Bribie Island time. It goes just that bit slower than everything else around. But the company was nice and the dinner yummy when it finally arrived.

Then Sunday morning we played softball. Which is really fun when we finally have our whole team back :D We had a left field that actually can catch and a center that can run! It makes an enormous difference.

Sunday afternoon I got some stitching in and some organising. I realised I am very particular about how my project is organised before I will even put one stitch in! To start with I photocopied each bit of the pattern and then labelled the threads on the pattern A-L to match the thread organiser. Then I carefully cut off the threads and put them onto the thread organiser. After doing that I tacked up the project. I still can't start stitching yet because I just have to get the overlocker out and go around the edges of the fabric :D It will be neat and organised and then I won't make many mistakes. Tacking makes counting so much easier! Oh and my trusty highlighter! I could never survive without it!

 While between projects I also started this little one. Because I was also desperate for a bookmark, and desperate for something to carry with me. It really won't take me long to finish what's taking the longest is it's not my priority so I'm not rushing to get it done.

Floral Bookmark

 Lastly more fun stitching stuff. I tried my hand at designing I'm making a sewing bag to hold all my cross stitch stuff and I didn't just want to do patchwork I wanted to also add some cross stitch so I created these little designs. Once I get the pattern off the paper and into a computer form I will put them up here for people to have. There are also another couple that I haven't stitched yet. I'll get around to it ...

Sewing Motifs

Oh and to explain the post title I saw the latest Johnny Depp last night. He is awesome! If you are a Johnny Depp/pirates fan I would recommend this movie. He just makes the character :D Even without Orlando Bloom and Kiera Knightley it was still so full of the same fun that the other movies had. Though I did miss the two pirates, one with the eye missing. Still it's a great movie and more of a plot than the last one!

Caitlin

FINISHED!!!!!!

So it is finally finished! Way before my due date to get it finished I was saying mid June and it is done with plenty of time to frame!

Finished
Land In Sight

So now I have to actually start either Lickle Ted, or To Have & To Hold in the next couple of days as

To Have & To Hold

My package arrived in the mail and it is very exciting :D Now I only have one more the back issue of WOCS we shall see how long it will take to get it here.

I'm going to go and spend the day with grandma sorting threads :D She is emptying her collection and I'm getting all her old threads so they will need to be sorted so I can actually use them. Though apparently when I have kids she will want them back so she can embroider stuff with their names that's if she is still able to then.

So a bit of a vote .... which project should I start knowing that Lickle Ted and To have and To Hold have time limits. But I love the boxers :D Maybe I can have all of them going.....

So you decide!

GO QUEENSLAND!!!!!!!!!!

woohoo :D first game of State of Origin tonight and queensland is going for 6 years in a row. I don't usually want to watch the game but Phill has a plan we are having a fun night watching on the TV.

Other than that I have been really busy the last couple of days. Unfortunately not much stitching. I got a new baby ahhh... car on Monday. She's a gorgeous hyundai i30 called Henrietta. Yes she does have a name. All cars should have a name, the one I had before was called Betty. It will be sad to see her go but ... I now have a car that runs without humming, leaking, rattling and other sounds that really shouldn't come from a car.

I worked all day yesterday, teaching music. I don't know what happened to the kids they must have been on crazy pills. I had a class of kids who spent half of the lesson running around the other half laughing uncontrollably. So what can you do with that but run with it and hope that the class runs fairly smoothly, even if they are in fits of laughter.

As excited as I am about football .... I will be taking my cross stitch with me and I will be sitting and stitching all through the game. I'm on the home run with the cross stitching, then just the last of the backstitch left :D Picture updates either later today, or tomorrow.



Caitlin

Softball Cancelled means stitching day achieved!

So with softball cancelled all day today I spent the whole day stitching. I have finished all the sail now just the detail around the boom and the mast :D At least that is what I think it is called. Correct me if I'm wrong I don't really know my sailing terms. I have also done a whole pile of back stitch, it is really making it pop as annoying as backstitch can be it does have a very good effect.

Land In Sight

I also spent some time today pulling out the tacking around the guys. It wasn't easy at times because I pierced the tacking threads.

While I did this Phill and Dad spent their weekend under a landrover replacing the gear box twice. They put it in today and then realised that they had forgotten a bearing or something and had to pull the whole thing out, put the piece on and put it back. So a job that was meant to take 2-3 hrs took all day.

Oh and WELCOME to all my wonderful new followers :D It is growing slowly!

Caitlin

Land In Sight Update :D

So I spent ages yesterday stitching because that is what I wanted to do. I got home from teaching at about 2 and I started. Mum and I took a little break to visit the sewing shop and get 2 craft lights. One for me and one for her. My lamp is one the the portable ones with a cord. I didn't realise until I started using the lamp how sore my eyes were getting by not using the lamp.

So last night with breaks for food I spent most of my time stitching. I've finished one colour in the sail and it was the main colour and I've done some more back stitching.

Today

Yesterday

I'm putting up yesterdays update so that you can see the progress it is really noticeable when they are side by side.

I may even have another post today as we just found out our softball has been canceled due to the weather. Which is good because the diamond we were on would have been slush but bad because I wanted to play. Oh well another day of stitching for me then :D under my wonderful new light.

Caitlin

Surprise Heaven

I got home today and there sitting on the piano stool were two packages! It was so exciting to see. I had just spent the morning asking Phill do you think they're here yet... do you think they're here!

Now the question is which of my 4 packages actually arrived this morning.

I got the grab bag from polstitches. It was a collection of evenweave fabrics.

Polstitch fabrics

A mix of fabrics that this photo does no justice to. There are some gorgeous colours I will have some fun stitching on these. :D Though I now have to work out what to stitch on them.

Package number 2 contained threads and the boxer kit from anchor.

Boxers Kit

Mum is going to flip when she sees this kit :D She may want me to drop everything else and start on her gorgeous dogs. They will just add to the rest of the boxer paraphernalia we have around the house.

Then there are the threads that came so I now have the stuff I need to start my Lickle Ted chart.

Now it's time to start stitching :D I will have an update for Land In Sight later tonight but I have to go and babysit now :D


ETA:

And here is my Land In Sight update :D

Just the hair left on the figure on the left :D

Caitlin

Stitching Update

Hello to everyone,

Now that my frogs are out of the way I have finally got another update on Land In Sight.



Land In Sight

The boat is now finished and the fish is done with the back stitch started. I've also started the back stitch on the flowers to the right. I tried something different with this one. Instead of going to the next corner I did stitch by stitch. That's possible with this design because there aren't any odd shaped lines. It is mainly stepping.

Close up of Fish

As you can see with this close up how it steps rather than cutting off. It makes it look more cartoony.

I'm still waiting for a package to arrive, so as soon as at least one turns up I will have photos up on my stitching goodies :D I am really bad at waiting!

Caitlin

Cost of crafts

Now Cross Stitching is one of the cheaper crafts if you think about the price of threads is only a little bit. To buy cloths and aidas aren't too bad either just plain neutral colours don't cost that much to get. Compared to quilting which is expensive to get fabrics, threads, wading and backing fabric. When you think about the price difference it does seem like the cheaper option. Then I look at other stuff when it comes to cross stitch.

Framing!
I just visited a framing store to see how much they would charge to frame my frogs and although it looked awesome with the mat next to it, the price they charge was a bit much I thought. They were going to charge $64 to frame my frogs which measure 7in x 5in total. Though the final frame would have to be wider to take in the mat etc. it still seems kinda crazy to charge that much. I think I will need to work out how to lace up my own work easily.

So although I have come to the conclusion that cross stitch is one of the cheaper craft hobbies to start with it quickly becomes expensive when you actually want to do something with your work. Does anyone have a good tutorial for finishing work off differently? That way I can save some money but give my mum a beautiful gift of the frogs.

Caitlin

Shopping trips

So I have a friend who is getting married in September and I very kindly asked on the cross stitching forum where I could find kits. Once i finally managed to work out what exactly I was asking for I got directed to 123stitch.com. WOW that site is amazing. Or maybe it is the shipping prices that is. It only cost 11.34 AUD to get a chart shipped to me that they charge 12.90US for! That is what a good exchange rate does. I am very tempted to get some sets on threads, the price they charge is only $0.44 a skein, which with the exchange rate would be a lot cheaper than the $1.20 that I can get it here and if I buy enough the shipping won't even matter. But that is a very dangerous thought....

So I thought about it since I wrote the start of this message this morning and I visited with my mother who wanted me to get her a boxer kit and make up the picture for her, and I visited that site again! I managed to get the boxer kit for not a bad price and I bought some skeins of thread at the same time to get in on her shipping. I have now ordered the thread to do the lickle ted from WOCS issue 174, I'm going to make it a baby sampler for my cousin who is having a baby in October.

So my current list of projects is already spiralling out a bit more!
I have with dates to finish by next to it.

• Land In Sight (framed by July 12th)
• Tree Frog Trio (for mum sometime soon it will be a late mother's day present!)
• Warm and Fuzzy
• To Have & To Hold (September 29th)
• Boxers (for mum)
• Lickle Ted (October)

So I will have a very busy holiday over the June-July school  break!

But of course there has to be pictures in this post :D I will put up photos of the kits when they arrive but here is a photo of the Lickle Ted for those that don't get the magazine. I am going to change the background colours though to greens as I have no clue about the sex of the baby.

Lickle Ted

So I have an update on Land In Sight. There is now as beautiful finished ocean under the boat and I have done more of the boat to the left.

All I have now is the last person to the left, the rest of the boat, the fish, and the rest of the sail. So it really isn't too much... hopefully should get it done in the next month which is plenty of time to get it all ready to go in the show.

Hopefully I should have kits to show you really soon. It's very exciting!

Caitlin

Finished Frogs

Yeah the frogs are finished! They have even had a bath :D

Frogs getting a bath

It was interesting reading the pattern instructions for finishing. They said to wash it in dish washing liquid. So that is what I did.

Tree Frog Trio

This is all lovely and dry :D It is so exciting ... now I need to decide on a frame.

At least I can now focus on all my other things. Like my list of crafts that are coming and the land in sight. I am going to put the entry in today for the Brisbane Show and it is so exciting. I am looking forward to seeing my work being displayed. I've never been good enough with any other craft to even contemplate competing with my work but for once I think I can.

Caitlin

Waiting ....

I have to admit that I do have at least one fault and that is that I hate waiting. I have a number of packages flying somewhere around the world on the way to me and I have no clue when they are going to arrive!

The list goes like this.

• Issue 173 of World of Cross Stitch ordered on back order because I missed it in the shops. 
• A Evenweave grab bag from Polstitches. It looked kinda cool so I got myself one of them to try. 
• A wedding sampler for my friend
• A boxer dog kit and random threads

All of these wonderful items have been paid for and I am waiting ... waiting ... waiting for one of them to turn up. It really is a toss up which will arrive first since the first 2 were ordered a couple of weeks ago but they  are coming from Europe while the other 2 were ordered last week but they're coming from America. America tends to ship faster but Europe is cheaper.... odd how that works.

Now I do also have a stitching update. My last frog is one colour away from being ready to back stitch and then I am done!

Tree Frog Trio

It just needs some black around the eyes and then I am ready to start back stitching. It may even get done tonight after I finish teaching depending how tired I am once I get there. I do enjoy watching the frog appear from the stitching but I have had to unpick quite a lot of this one because I wasn't counting very well or looking at my tacking enough!

Hopefully there will be a finish to show tomorrow and some time this week I will put my entry form in for the EKKA (royal Brisbane exhibition)  which means I will definitely have to finish my Land In Sight by mid June so I can get it framed. Exciting Stuff.

Caitlin

A Weekend Of Fun

A lot has happened this weekend and I wasn't able to get on Friday with the site down. I have an update on my Frogs and just general updates.

I have finished the second frog it now has a very pretty back stitch and I'm a bit through the third one. I hope to finish it by the end of this week so I can focus on my other projects with so many new ones coming in.

Mum is looking forward to getting these frogs and putting them up on the wall. She just hasn't decided where.

This Saturday was kinda crazy! We had our engagement party Saturday night which involved decorating and organising the hall before and then packing it down after. It looked awesome.

This is the hall almost set up in the afternoon. It looked very good, as you can tell the colour theme was based around purple. And who would guess it but it is my favourite colour :D The evening was great but it was amazing how crazy it was. There really wasn't a chance to see everyone and it was amazing how many people I never got a chance to talk to before they were coming up to say goodbye. It is a great way to spend Saturday nights.

Then on Sunday after waking up late we had to go play softball. All I'm going to say about that game is just be glad that you weren't there. We didn't play very well at all.

On Sunday I got given a wonderful stash of books. My Fiance's Grandma when she came up for the party brought a bag full of craft books with her and there was a couple of quilting magazines, a cross stitch one and some mixed magazines. It is pretty cool.

I am really excited to see what comes in the mail this week hopefully some of my shopping packages will arrive very soon.


Caitlin

A lot to tell

Well to start with we drew our game on the weekend and we were playing the best team in our grade so we were very happy. I think I got home at least twice. I'm actually not sure because I had to come off the field and let someone else run for me because I'm the catcher.

I've started teaching more music classes and parents are asking to have me as their teacher. It's a great feeling to know that I am making a difference. Music is such an important part of life and early childhood music makes such a difference to children and parents. It's great the see children bond with their parents over the music. Now all I need to do is get better at piano so I can teach the kids once they get out of beginner piano books. Though they don't learn piano until about 4. I do music with 1 year olds.

I've actually done quite a bit of stitching recently. The blue is almost finished in the sea. I've done all the blue to the right of the fish and only one colour left on the left side.

10-5-11 almost done with the blue.

But that is the photo from last night. It is fairly early in the morning and I'm not feeling particularly well so I may get quite a lot of stitching done today. I've haven't been working on the frogs at all, so maybe I might finish the blue and then finish the back stitching on that. Maybe that is why I haven't finished that frog ...

Hopefully stitching will happen.

Caitlin

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day to all those mothers around the world. I know I'm a day early but I don't know whether I will be able to get on tomorrow.

I've had a very busy day today. I made 2 cards for mother's day, one for my mother and one for my grandma. I used teabag folding to create the front pieces using wrapping paper cut up to make the squares.

Mum's Card

Grandma's Card

I also managed to get a little it of stitching done the last couple of days. I have another frog done except for the back stitching I've only just started it.

See No Evil

And I have started the blue in the waves in Land In Sight. I've managed to finish one colour.

Bit More Blue Done

I really do love when I get the chance to baby sit. I had myself set up under the big craft light with one kid next to me doing her own cross stitch. It's one of the bears from WOCS but I can't remember which one right this second. Then I had another kid sitting on the bean bag with my pokemon book in front of him planning what to do and which pokemon he wants, all the while asking me my opinion on one pokemon or another. The last kid is on the computer playing pokemon vortex. It makes for a very enjoyable evening, no dramas and they even went to bed quietly.

More softball tomorrow and a wonderful Mother's Day. 
 Caitlin

Thank you

I wanted to say a big thankyou to my followers. It's great to know my work is being looked at.

I haven't done much stitching recently because I visited the borders store near me and because it is closing down. I ended up with 7 books, a pile for my lovely fiance and a couple for me. I managed to find a mercedes lackey for half price. It was only $9 which is great since you can only buy them new here for at least $18 and you have to wait 6 weeks to get them in. I was so glad the day I found the book depository. I can get books really cheap but my wallet doesn't like it.

Caitlin

p.s. here is a link to http://tangledthreadsstitching.blogspot.com/ she is doing a wonderful giveaway and her work is amazing!

I've Been Bad

Hello Everyone,

Well since the last update I haven't had any chance to do anymore. I have had a crazy day. 4 classes and cleaning this morning and then 2 classes this afternoon then a group council meeting for scouts. It was very empty, we had half the leaders still away. But I got a chance to talk to the cub leaders and plan out a couple of things, which is always useful. Yesterday was a couple of classes and joeys and then collapsing. Although my fiance is now home so that is great :D. That could be one of the reasons I didn't get much stitching done.

Unfortunately that's about all that is happened.
Caitlin

Softball

So I finally had another game of softball today, what with Easter and rain this is only our third game this season. I forgot to ask dad to take photos which probably isn't a bad thing since it wasn't the nicest grounds. It has been raining on and off all week until Saturday morning so when this morning rolled around it wasn't the best idea to be out on a field that is on a flood plain. Anyone playing in left field ended up covered in mud. The Left fielder on our team got coated in mud when she slid through it after a ball. It was a funny sight. Unfortunately for us, our uniform is WHITE pants!!!! Who makes white pants for a softball team. I'm the catcher and usually I walk away with my pants in a mess after I spend the game scrambling around after balls. Today was quite a pleasant change with mum's pitching actually staying off the ground (my mum and sister are on the team as well) and the driest place on the field actually appeared to be home plate. My sister out in short stop ended up dirtier because of the mud kicked up every time she moved. Now to the important bit of the game. I managed to get home twice, struck out once and then caught out by the right fielder. It was a gorgeous hit though it just sang off the bat. We WON 9 runs to 7, until the last inning we were up 9-1 but they finally got over their hangovers and started batting. (I do love playing Women's C grade it really doesn't matter about the state of the players we play to have fun.)

Now onto the crafts. After I got home from softball and recovered from the mud I picked up my Tree Frog Trio and I have now finished the Hear no Evil frog. I have a couple of photos of the process, photos before and after the back stitch. It is amazing the difference back stitch makes to a project. As mush as I dislike back stitching over every other stitch, I love watching the way the designs jump when you put the back stitch around them. Does Anyone else find this aspect really makes a design pop?

Without Any Backstitching

Starting the backstitching

Finished all the back stitching

I'm very happy with this frog and it really didn't take very long to do. Also very late last night I managed to finish quite a bit of Land In Sight. A lot of the boat is filled in, not the stuff to the left and it needs to have a lot more done, of course.I'm going to keep going with the blue soon, just haven't worked on this one today.