The longer I stay away, the harder it is to get back

Yes it's been a long time since I've posted. Three months in fact. The end of the year is just such a crazy, busy time. For those of you in the northern hemisphere I don't think you can appreciate the chaos that occurs when both Christmas and the end of the school year coincide. Add to all of the shopping and preparations for Christmas all of the end of year school concerts and celebrations plus work functions plus, in our case, preparations for our main summer holiday away. Then top it off with birthday celebrations for one of our children plus attending other children's parties. Then add in a minor day surgery (for me) with recovery.

This past year we also had my mother-in-law's ill health and hospitalisation and then finding a nursing home for her. She moved in to the nursing home in October but from August onwards we made an effort to visit her very frequently and since she is 30-45 minutes away from us this took up a lot of time. She's settled now and doing well but with her dementia she really has no idea where she is. At Christmas we took her out of the nursing home for the first time and she was confused especially when we brought her back.

Another extra function which occurred in October last year was deciding to change my son's school due to dissatisfaction with the education he was receiving. I was very fortunate to find him a good private school which had a general intake at his year level. He's not happy about this change so we'll just have to wait and see what happens.

So does life get in the way of crafting.

I have lost a lot of forward momentum but have tried to pick projects up at random and keep going.

We had our end of year holiday in Sydney this year and I decided to take the New England Sampler with me and I actually worked on it! (How many trips have I taken including long cross-Pacific flights where the stitching never made it out of my carry-on?) I got it out on both plane trips--which were only 1 hour--and a number of evenings and mornings in the room where we were staying. I've continued with it since at home but have decided it is now time to put it away and to get back into my rotations.

I chose to take this project rather than the obvious Sydney one because it is on Aida which is much easier to work on when on the go and because it has simpler regular areas of pattern to do. So I stitched straight lines and finished the alphabet area at the top. Photos to follow.

I just checked to see what my current rotation should be and it is Sydney which follows the New England Sampler so I have to steel myself for working with linen, and on tree branches with half stitches all over the place. But first I'm going to really finish LaTrobe Terrace which only needs to be initialled and dated.

Oh and I forgot to say I framed a few projects myself just before Christmas! Photos coming.

Finished the cross-stitching on Verandas

House #1 finished

I only worked on this project about 4 times over the past fortnight and got it out for the last time this rotation after dinner last night. After I'd worked on it a couple of hours I realised that I could actually finish the cross-stitching so I stayed up to 11:45 to get this done. Luckily I'd gotten involved in a Swedish movie that went that late and that I was surprisingly able to follow even though cross-stitching meant that I wasn't able to read all the subtitles. I finished the bushes to the left of the last house (House #1) then went back and filled in the one and two stitch gaps I'd left in the palmetto tree and house. The last area I did was the inserts on the front door of the house which were DMC #415. For some reason I didn't have this colour with my threads for this project and it also wasn't in my mother's DMC box so I had to go searching in my craft cupboard for it. Luckily I found it and so was able to finish the project.



The whole Verandas scene--cross-stitching finished!

I'm now back to New England Sampler. With only 4 projects in my rotations they seem to come around more often. Funny about that.

I bought a photo frame for the two Chinese projects and have cut the matting so that I can mount them. It's a cheaper alternative to having them professionally framed but I didn't think they deserved that level of expense. The photo frame is really nice and they will hang vertically one over the other so I think they'll look nice.

On to reading now--I'm on Book 3 of the Tales of the Otori which is titled Brilliance of the Moon. There is only the sequel to go after this and I'm trawling the library website to pick this up so I have it on hand and ready. I'm thinking of reading Stig Larsson's books after this.

Work going slowly

There have been a few personal happenings lately which have meant that I'm only working on projects sporadically. My mother-in-law has been unwell since late August so there have been lots of trips to the hospital and then the temporary care facility. The past couple of weeks we've been involved in the search for a permanent nursing home for her as well. Plus I've accepted three weeks part-time casual work! So personal time has been greatly curtailed. I have managed to complete the NZ possum scarf--just in time for the weather warming up. I finished the cross-stitching on Cottages II and started the backstitching but unfortunately didn't finish this before the rotation ended. I'm now working on Verandas and so close to finishing the cross-stitching on that as well! But the first week of its rotation I didn't work on it at all so I'll really only get one week's work in on it.




Here is the possum scarf!

I started reading a new series of books called Tales of the Otori and I'm enjoying them. I'm on the third book of the series which confusingly is called Book 2 because originally the series was a trilogy but then the author wrote a sequel and then a prequel. I started by reading the prequel. I'm enjoying the books very much. After these I must go back and finish a Series of Unfortunate Events which I've been slowly creeping through. I'm up to Book 11 there. My daughter Jade just started Book 12. (Of course there are 13 books in the series.)

It's a busy time of year!

Finally got a good start to The Rocks

I just finished one week's work on The Rocks. This is one of the biggest Juniper Designs street scenes, if not the biggest. Wish I'd figured this out before I started!

Anyway, it's going to take me a lot longer than Latrobe Terrace did. Here is a comparison of the stitching areas of the various Juniper Designs street scenes:

The Rocks, Sydney 16 x 53 cm (current project)
Latrobe Terrace 10 x 49 cm (just finished)
Beechworth 11 x 49 cm (stash)
Strahan 13 x 49 cm (stash)

Port Fairy 12 x 51 cm (completed)
Windsor 12 x 44 cm (completed)
Adelaide 12 x 45 cm (completed)
Maldon 13 x 49 cm (completed)

So you can see in both length and height The Rocks is considerably larger than any of the other street scenes. I guess it will be good to get this one out of the way especially since I'll soon be finishing the large street scene in Verandas.

It was good to have some concentrated time to work on this one as I discovered I made a mistake on the wall and was doing it two rows too high. I had to take a lot out but it didn't bother or discourage me. I just re-did it while I was doing adjacent areas. In the end I've got the wall area to a nearly finished state. The next part's going to be fiddly as it's a large spreading tree. Lots of potential for putting stitches in the wrong place!

I'm now back to Cottages II and, with a good push, could finish this this rotation. I'm getting spoiled with all these finishes! I will definitely have to be off to the framers soon!

LaTrobe Terrace finished!

Here is the full project, done except for the lettering of the name and my initials and date



The left side of the scene.



The right side of the scene

Yes Latrobe Terrace is finished! The backstitching took me a couple of days to finish off during this rotation. I had a bit of a problem interpreting what backstitching color went where as they used locations like 'paving' which could have been a couple of different things or 'grass' and 'tree branches' and I couldn't tell which lines near the trees were supposed to be grass and which ones branches. Process of elimination plus looking at the colour photo on the kit with a magnifying glass solved the problem.

I just looked back to see when I started Latrobe Terrace and it was July last year--so 14 months ago. When I used to work on one project alone it would take me 10 months to finish one of these Juniper Designs street scenes. So 14 months part-time work isn't bad considering how many other projects have been finished or nearly finished in that time as well. Looks like a trip to the framers is coming up!

So this rotation is now another Juniper Designs--The Rocks, Sydney, which I started on a trip to Sydney back in June. I'm working on a wall in the middle of this project and just discovered I did a few hours work two rows too high so I've been frogging and restitching for a couple of days. I've got it fixed now and am 'going forward' as they say. I'll put up a photo of it after this rotation ends this weekend.

I am close to finishing two other projects--Cottages and Verandas--and I've nearly finished knitting the NZ possum wool scarf.

You may notice I've condensed my rotations down to 4. I want to see if that hustles up progress.

Chinese II finished!

I managed to whip through the remaining three patterns of Chinese II in just over a week. With most of a week to spare in the rotation I decided to get out LaTrobe Terrace and try to finish off the backstitching in the remaining time. I managed to get through about 2/3 of it, which was good but a bit disappointing. I always think that I'm going to get through things quicker than I do!

Then it was back to the proper place in the rotation which was the New England Sampler. I think I spent three weeks on this because I didn't get around to doing anything with it for a week or so. I've finished the top border including the corners. (Just delaying having to do more of the internal pattern which is going to require some concentration.)



Here are details of the corner designs. I think they're really pretty.






I don't have any photos but I'm also working on the possum/wool scarf. I'm on the third and final ball now. Will have it finished just in time for the end of winter!!!

What else is new?

Well I went to Adelaide for a footy weekend with my son Jarrah and we also saw the pandas.



And our kitty Nimbus is getting cuter and more lovely every day. Here he is sleeping in his basket on the scratching post.



I'm also doing a lot of reading and have finished the first three volumes of the Twilight series. Now I'm reading Dan Brown's latest book The Lost Symbol.

Nearly Finished Verandas House #1

I'm a bit late with my posting this time. I had a good rotation's work on the last, far left house on Verandas. The house is very nearly finished including the foreground. There's just a bit to do around the palmetto tree. Unfortunately there is still the gate & bush area to the left of this house to do and with the way I'm going I think that's going to take a full rotation in itself. Then they'll be another rotation for the backstitching. So hopefully just two more rotations to completion.

I'm also knitting the navy scarf in New Zealand possum wool and this week I ordered and received an additional ball of this wool from a shop in Canberra so that I can make a matching hat for the scarf. The new ball is slightly different to what I had in that it has a touch more shine to it. But the colour is pretty much spot on. In order to blend this new ball in I unravelled the second ball of knitting I'd done on the scarf so that I can knit this new ball in as the middle of the scarf. I'd done about half of the second ball so that was a bit of work lost on the scarf. I've since made up that lost work with the new ball.

I also decided to knit a sweater so I took a pattern I already had (and had already knitted--but I'd given away the sweater) and went to a wool shop in Malvern and bought wool for this sweater. I'd hoped to start this soon but I think I've got too many things on the go and I should finish the scarf and hat first. Darn!

I'm now half way through my rotation on the second Chinese cross-stitch. I finished the second of the 4 patterns and I'm well into the third pattern. If I pushed it this week I could possibly finish the whole thing but we'll see how it goes. I won't post a photo of this until after I finish this rotation. I'm getting frustrated that I seem to be so close with several projects but it's taking so long to finish any of them!