FO Friday: The December round-up

December got rather busy and I missed out of writing several FO Fridays, so here is a round-up of all the things I finished in late-November and December!

Merry Christmas hooped embroidery
First up we have a Merry Christmas hooped embroidery. I bought the kit for this at the end of 2016, thinking it would be a nice quick project. One Sunday afternoon I sat down to work on it and very quickly realised that it might not be quick as quick as I had hoped!

Firstly, I had to sort the thread colours myself, and the lack of light in November made it quite difficult to distinguish five shades of green. I suspect that I didn't quite get it right as I ended up with one spare shade...

The next problem was following the chart: the chart had both symbols and colours, which should have been fine, but the regions of green were very scattered and I found it really hard to keep track of what went where. I had done about half the kit when I realised that the first half didn't line up with the second, at which point I took a photo of the chart and printed it out in greyscale as large as I could. I then coloured each square as I checked that it was correct. A little bit time consuming, but it did mean I only had to unpick a few stitches rather than the whole lot.

And when I finally got onto the outlining I discovered that the photo on the front and the chart didn't actually match! And I ran out of black thread... So I improvised a merge of the two and I think it turned out pretty cute! The final hoop was sent to my advent calendar secret Santa swapee. I am hoping to do some more cross stitch this year, but I'm going to be a bit more careful on choosing the kit!

 

 

 

 

Alice's Christmas stocking
A few years ago I made a stocking for a friend's daughter, and last year she had a second daughter and requested a matching stocking. It took me a little hunting to find my original notes, but once I had this was a lovely project. I knitted it in Drops Alaska, which is fabulously woolly, and the yarn comes in perfectly festive shades of red and green. There will eventually be a pattern for this, but I want to make a few modifications so keep your eyes peeled.

Nordic gnome
This was one of my favourite projects of last year, and definitely not one I was planning to make. During the Giftalong, these little gnomes kept popping up in the finished object thread and I fell totally in love with them. The pattern is Never Not Gnoming by Sarah Schira, and it's a super-quick knit - I finished this one in a couple of evenings using the leftovers from the stocking.

 

Advent calendar socks
Last year I took part in a secret Santa advent calendar swap, and over the course of December I knitted this pair of scrappy socks. I am not necessarily a fan of scrappy socks, so I decided to stripe the calendar yarn with a neutral (West Yorkshire Spinners Signature 4 ply in Milk Bottle), but this did mean that I had quite a lot of knitting to do each day, and got several days behind, hence there being only one pair of socks, featuring rather fewer than 24 colours! I did enjoy making these though, so might make another pair in the future.

Yarning Along: Christmas craft excitement

This weekend I took a bit of a break from knitting (I had a sore shoulder and elbow, so decided that knitting might not be the best plan. Turns out it was a trapped nerve, which fixed itself pretty quickly), so got started with a couple of festive activities. You may remember that last year I made my own yarn advent calendar. Well this year I am making a yarn advent calendar, but it's not for me: I am taking part in a yarn advent calendar swap organised by layfamilyyarn on Instagram. So I spent the weekend stamping number stitckers, winding minis and wrapping tiny parcels, which was all a lot of fun. I also took a walk to a local Christmas craft fair, which is always lovely and very festive. I didn't actually buy very much, just a Christmas present for a Secret Santa that I'm involved with this year, but I always enjoy browsing craft fairs.

Another thing I worked on this weekend was the cross stitch wreath I have been sewing. I'm sure that when I bought the kit I thought I could do it in an evening. How wrong I was! Last week I realised I has misaligned one side of the wreath by a couple of stitches, so did a huge amount of unpicking. I was finding the chart that came with the kit too small to follow easily, so I decided to take a photo of the chart and print it out much larger. This was an excellent plan as not only can I now see the stitches to work from, I can also colour them in as I go, which makes the chart much easier to follow! Why didn't I think of that before? I am a little concerned that I have a whole length of thread that is a slightly different shade of green to all the others, but that I have assigned yarn to each of the symbols already, so may have done something wrong. I'm pretty certain it doesn't matter...

Back on knitting, I am making good progress with my Christmas socks, and love how the stripes are developing. Other than those I am currently between projects, which can only mean one thing: tonight I get to cast on the Christmas stocking! I'm quite excited about this project, and finally got round to writing the pattern up this morning, so should be able to publish the pattern in time for next Christmas if not this.

I'm still reading Into the Water and enjoying it, even though I'm not that far in. The story revolves around the drowning pool, which, as the name suggests, is where many people have drowned, and the unexpected death of a local author who was writing about the pool. Each chapter is told from the perspective of a different character, and the narrative jumps around in time. I'm finding the writing style really engaging.

Stocking yarn and the current read. And fairy lights. I bought them a couple of weeks ago, and now they're out of the box, expect them to appear in far too many of my photos!

What are you crafting on and reading this week?

Not Yarning Along

Rachel, who took over with the Yarn Along knitting and reading theme that was started by Ginny, has decided to pause the offical weekly Yarning Along, but have no fear, I am going to continue to have a crafting and reading post on a Wednesday beacuse I enjoy writing them, and it gives me an excellent excuse to take half an hour off from work and share what's happening in the rest of my life. I might even give the feature a new name, although I am currently drawing a blank on that! If you have any suggestions, feel free to post them in the comments. And if you want to join in sharing what you're reading and crafting on, go ahead and share that too. I've started a book post in my Ravelry group too, if you prefer to chat on Ravelry.*

This week I've been surprised by the sudden approach of winter. October was warm, but last weekend the cold snap happened and I had to dig out all the winter woollies. I am always caught out by the start of winter, never fully believing that the weather gets that cold in the UK until the first frost. My car has been to the garage for it's annual MOT and service, so I've been relying on the buses. This morning, after one person too many smoked a little too close for my liking, I decided to walk home from town. It's a good few miles, but the clear skies and glorious sunshine made it worth it. I happily crunched through the leaves and enjoyed the last of the autumnal colours.

The other thing I've been doing this week is frantically knitting to try and get the last couple of commissions for the season complete. Between 8pm on Sunday night and midnight on Monday night I knitted an entire adult UK size 7 cabled sock in 4 ply. Even I am not sure how. I know I knit fast, but that was pushing it even for me! I have one more magazine commission to complete before I can properly get started on my Christmas crafting, but things are a little more relaxed round here now.

My Christmas socks are now on the needles, and I'm pretty certain the yarn is going to microstripe, with larger white stripes and a variegated section spiralling round the leg. This pair of socks is going to become my out and about knitting, so don't expect speedy progress, but I am hoping to have them done by Christmas.

For a change, I started a small cross stitch project this weekend. I bought this kit from Hobbycraft last year, but it's taken me until now to start it. It's my first time sewing with the fabric held in a hoop, and I pretty quickly abandoned the hoop and held the fabric freehand. I am enjoying the sewing, but not the chart - the squares are tiny, so it's very, very tricky to keep track of where the stitches should be. If I had a colour printer I would be scanning the chart in and printing out a larger version to save my eyesight!

As for reading, I have paused on The Power as I've had too much else on to concentrate on the story. Last night I started reading Into The Water, which I am enjoying so far, and can read it while knitting as it's a hardback and stays open. Maybe it's time to start only reading on my Kindle...

What are you reading at the minute? How's the Christmas crafting going?

For those of you that entered my 1st birthday giveaway, I drew the winner last week and the prize went to Mary in Toronto. Thank you to everyone who entered, and for your thoughtful responses. If you'd like to be in with a chance of winning a different prize, how about joining my Christmas Knits KAL? It's running until the end of November, and all you have to do is knit something festive and join in the chatter in my Ravelry thread.*

*This is a Ravelry link. You'll need to be logged into Ravelry to read the thread.

World Craft Week 2017: Cross stitch

This week for World Craft Week I am looking back at all the crafting activities I have enjoyed over the years. Today it's cross stitch.

The walls of my parents' house is evidence of my love of cross stitch: most walls feature a design stitched by me. I started cross stitch very early, possibly as young as three or four, using binca (aida cloth with 6 stitches to the inch), brightly coloured embroidery threads and no pattern. My Mum really encouraged me in this - she has always been creative and has a huge stash of craft materials, which I had pretty free access to. At this point my sewing was more crazy freehand embroidery than cross stitch, but my skills and patience developed quickly and I was soon following charts and creating little pictures.

I carried on cross stitching (and raiding my mum's craft supplies) for many years, with the fabrics getting finer and my ambition increasing. Every year I would request a cross stitch kit, often Country Companions hedgehogs, which I loved doing in spite of their slightly faffy variegated spines. My favourite designs required using only whole stitches - I never really enjoyed making quarter and three quarter stitches as they slowed me down - and I never enjoyed backstitch. I did try evenweave (around 28 strands per inch, with crosses worked over two strands), but it made my eyes hurt!

My mum used to buy a lot of cross stitch magazines, and each one came with a small kit for a card, needle case, or gift tag and I worked my way through all of those, enjoying the speed at which I could create a finished object. I didn't always have uses for the items, so we occasionally had a stand at a craft fair to sell some of the items on.

Once I'd exhausted the supply of kits I started designing my own cross stitch charts. My favourite images were based on the Bang on the Door characters, whose bold black outlines suited the pixilated nature of cross stitch. Had it been as easy to create and sell cross stitch designs as it is now, I may have gone down the cross stitch route over the knitting route for longer, but one day I stopped as I had run out of wall space!

I haven't done any cross stitch in well over ten years. While I enjoy it - the repeated motions are very therapeutic - there really are only so many ways to use the items you've stitched, and my parents have enough of my cross stitch cushion covers and pictures to last a lifetime. I have a few pieces that still need framing (I stitched the Winnie the Pooh picture at least ten years ago!), which I might get round to one day.

To be framed, ten years on...

Last year while I was in Hobbycraft I did briefly entertain the idea of doing some more cross stitch and bought a kit for a festive design to be mounted in a hoop. I ran out of time to do it before last Christmas, but think I probably will of it for this year. 

A nice quick project when I fancy it

Have you ever done cross stitch? What have you done with the finished pieces?