Cross Stitch: Wheel of the Year - Restart

I'm not going to bother posting a photo today, but I've actually managed to get a couple of hours of stitching this week! It's been a busy week, still, with getting ready to start college (Induction was today), and the Imp...well, the Threenager has seriously struck over the past week and a half (part of the reason that there was no Joy Pockets post this week...on top of me being absolutely wiped out lately).

Tomorrow, my classes aren't going ahead, but the Imp still has a place at nursery. So, after dropping her off at 8am, I will be returning home, doing a quick tidy, putting on my multiple episodes of "Torchwood", and sitting and stitching all day. :)

As for the Imp and nursery, today was the longest that we've been apart since she was born. I was busy today, but tomorrow, I think will be a complete culture shock for me. She's 3 2/3ish, and more than ready to be independent. She loved being there all day, and is looking forward to tomorrow...so much so that she's just brought me her night time nappy without being asked, at 7:15pm. Her hair is in her 'night night braids' (so we don't have to fight with it to brush it in the morning), and she's gone and put her own pyjamas on. I guess that's a hint for me to tuck her in.

Mel

Cross Stitch: Wheel of the Year - Week Off (yet again)

Again, this week has been a complete fail on picking up my stitching. I'm not normally as busy as I have been lately, and I don't normally go to bed before 9pm, as I have been for almost the past week and a half. I'm putting my foot down and actually going no where tomorrow, and aiming to get back to my stitching. At the very least, I'd like to finish that first page before starting college next week. Fingers crossed.

But, I will at least post a recipe tonight, and tomorrow I will be posting this last week's suggestion from Pagan Blog Prompts, because it's a rather apt topic.

Mel

Cross Stitch: Wheel of the Year - Week Off

I've been rather busy over the past week, so not much of my cross stitch has gotten done. I'll be counting next week as week 7. I hope you're all having as fantastic a week as I've had.

Cross Stitch: Wheel of the Year - Week 6

Again, I've not been able to get as much completed this week as I wanted to, but I had a bit of a shock today as I was working on more of the dark brown stitching. The shapes of leaves all of a sudden popped out, and that gave me the biggest boost--that I'm actually getting somewhere. I'm now at a point where it's a lot of scattered colours, in small bits. I'm not sure if I will finish it over the next week or not, because I'll be busy, but fingers crossed. If not by next Wednesday, then by the following one.

Mel

Cross Stitch: Wheel of the Year - Week 5

I did actually attempt to post this last night before bed from my mobile, but it obviously didn't make it through. when I checked the laptop tonight. I am successfully trying to take time away from my laptop being on all of the time, but I do find that instant messaging on my mobile can be a bit awkward, and Facebook doesn't always send my messages through. 

As for my cross stitch project this week, I'm still frustrated that I'm only on the first page, but I'm starting to see the spaces filling out even more. I'm coming across a lot of highlighting colours, and more and more definition coming into effect. I still don't see myself finishing the page over the next week, but we can keep our fingers crossed. I think it's probably the most that I've ever worked on before, so I want to keep pressing on. 

Mel

Cross Stitch: Wheel of the Year - Week 4

Well, I'm a month into my Wheel of the Year wall hanging. I'm not as far in as what I had hoped for, but I still feel like I've done quite a bit. I'm a bit in awe at there being six or seven shades of chocolate brown, all mixed in together. My eyes can only discern three or so of them when looking, but I'm sure that once the project is complete, it'll be all about the light hitting it. I've also managed to tarnish my needle. If it starts squeaking any more than it is now, I might have to find a replacement. That'll be the first hand sewing needle that I've ever worn out. I regularly do it on my machine, but not my hand needles.

I thought I would add a photo comparison of where I started, compared to where I'm at tonight. I'm getting ready to stop for the evening, because I've been battling a weather-migraine (seriously...we need a really good storm and my head will be happy).

The beginning of the project

Where I'm at tonight. It's not all browns, reds, and golds any more. You can't see them well, but there are also greys, pale blues, dark green, and light green.

Mel

Blessed Lughnasadh!

Happy and blessed Lughnasadh Eve to you all! This is one of my favourite celebrations on the wheel of the year (along with Samhein and Yule), because it is quite dear to my heart. The main reason is that it was the first celebration that I had truly celebrated, by attending a weekend festival with a friend in 1997 at Lothlorien Nature Sanctuary, in southern Indiana. 

Midsummer Moon Dance is not an event that they hold any more because it wasn't one of the big ones, but it's a weekend that I still remember very clearly. I remember the circles that were held, that were kept open and informal. The amazing feeling of sleeping under the stars...there was no light pollution and the weather was hot, humid, and clear for the entire weekend (too warm to be sleeping in our tent). Everybody going skinny dipping in the creek at the bottom of the hill, to cool off. Getting my head around the concept of 'Skyclad is welcome'. And the Thunderdome. Nothing will ever compare to it...everybody sitting around, people who brought their drums, flutes, and even a home-made didgeridoo, and spinning and dancing around the bonfire (and almost catching my skirt on fire because I semi-tranced and got too close).  The energy over the entire weekend was amazing, and I went home buzzing.

Unfortunately, I've not had the opportunity to do anything similar. Here in the UK, most of my friends don't really acknowledge it because it's not one of the major celebrations. Because so many of us have no real connection to the harvests, we've lost the celebration of the first harvest, and even the second harvest (Mabon, or the Autumnal Equinox). Even Samhein has lost it's entire meaning. Yes, the veil is thinner and we celebrate our ancestors and those that have passed on over the year, but it's also the celebration of the final harvest. Today I will be celebrating by cleaning my house (similar to a spring clean), adding a salad to my lunch with the lettuce harvested from my own garden, baking some zucchini bread with zucchini and eggs gifted from a friend, and taking a bit of that as an offering to Lugh with the Imp to the nearby river.

We'll also be spending time in our back garden, which for my first real attempt at a veg patch, I am really proud of. I'm in a rented house, and the landlord thought that it would be easy maintenance for the tenants to layer the garden in pebbles and peat. Unfortunately, the weeds are a nightmare, on top of it reminding me of a barren wasteland.  So, I used a load of the pots that people had given to me, scraped a few of the stones at the end of the garden away (I wanted to do more, but it's really difficult when doing it with just a spade), and planted seeds in whatever space I could find. I had planned on moving the pumpkins all down to the end of the garden, but I had a plant that had decided to reseed itself from last year's harvest (I only put pumpkin out last year as an experiment) in March, and it now is taking over my path and has a pumpkin the size of your head. I've had lots of kos lettuce that I have been harvesting, as well as beetroot (I dice it and roast it with potatoes, onion, smoked sausage, and herbs...yum). I currently have lots of little green tomatoes that I expect to get bigger and go red within the next fortnight (maybe? This is coming from a complete novice). The sunflowers, as you can tell from the pics, are now almost as tall as I am. The two sweetcorn plants that I randomly bought from the market for 10p a piece and threw into pots now each have a tiny ear of corn with the silk coming over the top forming. The pumpkin plants at the end of the garden are getting big really fast.  We don't have strawberries this year, but the plants that we bought to rescue are finally starting to thrive. As are the herbs in the 'mixed pot'...I've already snipped a few of those for a stew the other day, and it was amazing. I usually use dried herbs, but I'm definitely going to change my ways. I'm currently making arrangements to sort out the bits that we need for the arrival of quails, so we'll have quails eggs of our own, soon.

Next year, I've been offered the assistance of friends and a rototiller, so I'm now starting to plan in my head how to correct the mistakes that I've made this year (not enough compost in the pots of tomatoes, for example), and what more that we can put out. I do have cucumber and radish out this year, but I think they need to be somewhere else, where they're not being shaded by the sunflowers. I still have my fingers crossed for them.  I also want to put out onion, carrots, and possibly cauliflower, along with other veg. 

I can say that it makes pulling all of the weeds a lot easier and more enjoyable. And the bigger the veg (especially the pumpkins) get, the less weeds there are. And the Imp is actually getting really good at helping weed, even if she did accidentally mutilate one of the smaller pumpkin plants the other day (it was an accident...it's in a shady corner, so not as big as the rest of them, and absolute inundated with weeds).

Long view of the garden, trying to capture most of the plants.

My pot of mixed herbs (basil, oregano, sage, thyme, and a little lavender) and one of the lavender that I'm trying to rescue in the other pot

One of the many ladybirds that we've had this year in the sunflowers. Various bees have also been sighted.

View of the sunflowers from the neighbour's garden

One of the tomato plants

The pumpkin that helped itself

Quail chicks at my friend, Raine's, that I am getting prepared to start with.

Mel

Cross Stitch: Wheel of the Year - Week 3

Not the best pic in the world, but I thought I would actually try to take a daylight photo of the work in process. Again, it might not look like I've done much, but I've gotten quite a bit done this week. At the moment, it seems like a lot of tedious highlighting bits, but I actually added some green in last night, which shook it up from all the variegated browns. And I'm starting to see the individual spokes coming out of the centre. If I really make a concerted effort in the coming evenings, I might be able to finish this first page by next week, the four week mark. A bit slower than I was hoping (we all know about my lack of patience), so I'm looking at this potentially taking a year to complete. Some of the side pages aren't full pages, but I'll be going back to college in September, so that will slow it up a little. I wish that I could be one of the fast stitchers, but that will never happen. Oh well...I'm truly enjoying it, and I'm enjoying sharing my progress.

Mel

Cross Stitch: Wheel of the Year - Week 2

Apologies for the rotten pic this week. I managed to be rather graceful yesterday and sprained my ankle on a pothole. I normally am using my laptop on a wooden tv dinner stand, but it doesn't fit around the lap tray that I'm using as a foot rest, the laptop gets too hot for my lap, and I really need to break in the netbook before starting back at college in September. When I normally take the photo, it's partially leaning on the stand. Nothing like a bit of faff and drama, but self-enforced sitting on my butt is getting more stitching done, when Nurse Imp is really trying to be super helpful (and knocking my foot in the process, bless her. Luckily, I did a house-blitz a few days ago, when I washed the carpets, so I'm not freaking out about it not getting done.

I'm still on the first page of the twelve page chart, but I think I've made quite a bit of progress this week. I've cut it a bit short this evening because I'm just having a lax moment this evening. But even with as little as has been done, I feel so much energy coming off the work, because I'm sharing so much in it. I feel like I'm not getting it done fast enough, because I can see the entire completed project in my head, and where I want it to hang.  Patience, Patience, Patience. Oh, who am I kidding, everybody knows that my patience can be borderline sometimes. :P

Mel

Cross Stitch: Wheel of the Year - Week 1

Well, I'm not as far along as I'd like to be, but I had a busy weekend. We had an overnight guest on Saturday night, so it got set in the dining room. Doing that makes it less likely for me to randomly pick my work up and add. But, I am happy with how much I do have done, even amongst some other frustrations.

Frustration 1:  I've realised that I miscounted by 2 inches on my waste canvas, on either side. It could be that I didn't actually miscount or mismeasure. I'm using a cross stitch design program that I've not used before, so I could have easily put a figure in wrong. Not a particularly big deal...I have more waste canvas and I can tack more on to the edges when I'm ready for that bit.

Frustration 2: I could really use with a proper embroidery floor stand. I have a 24 inch frame that I am balancing against my laptop stand and arm. Not a real issue, just annoying. At least it lets me multi-task...watch telly, watch Facebook, Twitter, and Google+, and stitch all at once. Hmm...that may be a touch of the reason why I don't have as much done as I'd like. But, I do most of my stitching in the evening, and the social networks are the majority of my social life.

Frustration 3: Energy saving bulbs suck. Even with having the brightest eco bulb available in my living room light, it's way too dim for me. I'm going quite short-sighted and seriously need more light. I finally clicked and realised this evening that my clip light for my Kindle fits quite nicely on the top of my frame. Shame that I can't find the battery charger, because the batteries are all flat, and I can't find the spare set of non-rechargeables that I keep around for just in case. Granted, they probably landed into a remote or something when I couldn't find the spare rechargeables.

I'd normally work on it until midnight, but my eyes are starting to do funny things, so I'd probably better not. I think I'll probably just go veg and watch "Lady Gaga Presents" that I'm recording. I'm pretty sure I'll find the battery charger tomorrow, and having the clip light will make a huge difference to the work I can do after I lose daylight.

Mel

Cross Stitch: Wheel of the Year - Start

Well, I've finally gotten the chance to set up my large cross stitch project: a wall hanging of the Wheel of the year. I'm using a beautiful image that I found via Google, and converted to a cross stitch pattern, so fingers crossed it turns out as stunning as it is in my head.  I'll be doing a weekly update post, because I'm rather interested in watching the progression, myself, and I just really want to share :)


The original image

The planned size of the image is 16.1 inches in diameter. I am using 18 count waist canvas onto unbleached cotton (it was some spare fabric that I bought as 'grey fabric') that I've cut to 23.5 x 23.5 inches. The image in my head is to quilt it together with borders of grapevine fabric (that I haven't found yet, except some pretty prints in fat quarters on eBay that isn't in big enough pieces), and wide ribbons on top to tab over a dowel for hanging.

This is seriously going to take me a while.  It's the biggest project that I've ever taken on, and I figured that if I document it weekly on my blog, it will keep me motivated, and some of you can nag at me to keep going :P

This is what has been accomplished tonight. I know it doesn't look like much, but I did the set up beforehand,, which took a little bit of time...cutting the fabric and aida, ironing the fabric, baste-pinning it together, and stitching the fabric onto my frame.

I am on the lookout on Freecycle and eBay for a floor stand for my frame, because I'm having to currently balance it against my laptop table, which isn't ideal. But, I'll get on with it, and fingers crossed it'll move swiftly.

Mel