A Stitch-a-Long Week with Dragons

This week has been hectic thanks to the kids being off school for the Easter break and me having some medical issues. One of the positive parts has been that on Sunday I got to chill out with my stitching whilst my DH took care of our 3 children plus Peter's girlfriend Becky who was with us for the day.

On Saturday night my 2 boys had their presentation at Sheffield Dragons to collect their new karate belts. Luke our Little Dragon collected his green stripe belt.

And Peter our Junior Dragon got awarded his green belt.

Stitching

My SALs have been going great guns lately. As some of you know last year I joined the Beau Bands SAL with my yahoo group Friendly Stitchers. This was designed by Abi Gurden and is no longer available. But I finally finished my Beau Bands this weekend on my lovely Sunday stitching day. Here is the stitching all completed...now I just have to make it up into the hussif.

I've also managed to catch up on my Tree of Stitches and my Little Lace Hardanger SAL, both of these are with The Stitch Specialists yahoo group. 

Tree of Stitches.

Part 1 was cross stitch

Part 2 Smyrna stitch

Part 3 French knots

Part 4 Eyelets

Part 5 Rice stitch

Part 6 Cushion stitch

Part 7 was Jerusalem Stitch

Little Lace Hardanger SAL

This is my first proper go at hardanger and I'm so enjoying it. Spent Monday night happily counting from 1-5 working on my Kloster blocks. The cutting is coming soon....argh!

Next week the kids are all back in school so I'll be back to stitching on Luke's dragon, my SAL's and my UFO which is my French postcard SAL. This time though I'll have a full 2 days with no kids :-)  The housework is never going to get done as fast!!

GIVEAWAY

If any of you haven't come across Ruth and her stitching yet then take a look at her blog. She has some wonderful projects that she's working on. www.ruthsrunningstitch.blogspot.com

Ruth is also holding a giveaway to celebrate her birthday, hop over and have a nosy at the stitching (The John Clayton piece has caught my eye as he's a favourite designer of mine) then enter the giveaway.


Giveaway number 2  This is on Cross Stitch and Cupcakes  and is a 3rd blogaversary giveaway.  While you're there have a scroll down and check out the fabulous stockings, they're wonderful.

One Happy Son

Yes we've a happy DS2 as now that the Darcy photostitch is finally finished I've started on his dragon. Here is Darcy all stitched up, she just needs sending to be framed now.

Luke's dragon is from a book by Lesley Teare. It's stitched on red which at first I was unsure of as I'd tons of plain already in my stash but he wanted red. Over the last few months I've been picking up the threads and fabrics for it. I started it Saturday evening when Luke had gone to bed, the following morning he went downstairs and saw it on my Lowery with some stitches done...we could hear the screams of excitement everywhere in the house LOL!  Now he checks every morning to see how much I've stitched....heaven forbid I want to catch up on my SAL's!  This is what it's going to look like finished 

And this is my progress so far - not a lot for 3 nights work but I've enjoyed working on it. Makes a change from the skin tones of Darcy anyway!!

I'm also working on a small gift for my son...or should that be on behalf of my son as he picked the design he wants stitching for his girlfriend. Yes you read that right, our 6yr old DS1 has had a girlfriend for the last few terms at school. She's absolutely lovely and as I've told DH at 6 it's so innocent that it's sweet.

DD will be going to full time nursery after the Easter break so I'll have 2 1/2 days of freedom :-)  I can see housework getting done super fast and some extra stitching on MY projects being snuck in *happy sigh*  All I need now is DS1 to see a project that he absolutely must have stitched for him LOL!

Thank you for all your lovely comments, it has cheered me up immensely after the last horrible couple of months I've been having. Happy stitching xx

Two down...many more to go!

Yes don't faint but I've actually finished two of my UFO's. For the new stitchers out there who haven't heard this term they're "Unfinished Objects"  Many of us start a project only to be sidetracked onto something else soon after....I'm totally guilty of this much to my DH's annoyance.

Anyone who has followed my blog for a while will have heard about the gift SAL I was stitching. This was my Monopoly board that I started stitching for my mum's birthday in 2010. Yep a year and 2 birthdays later and it's finally finished. After much decision I decided to quilt it instead of a frame and she had it in time for Mother's Day. Mum taught my brothers and I to play Monopoly and we spent lots of happy hours playing with her...until she turned into the original slum landlord and cleaned us out!!  Here is the finished SAL that I tried to match to my mums original board as much as possible.

The second UFO I finally finished was for my MIL. I started this Quaker bookmark last year whilst sat in Runaround which is a playcentre near us. The kids all took off playing so I started this but a few days later I went wrong, put it to one side and forgot about it. After frogging the incorrect stitches I re-did it and managed to send it down to my MIL for Mother's Day. I stitched it on some spare aida that I hand dyed pale lavender and the thread was Purple Iris from The Gentle Art.  I couldn't tell you where the chart came from as it was a freebie that I found in my folder all printed out, unusually for me I hadn't written the website on it.

The next UFO to be worked on is my French Postcard SAL. DS1 is starting private French lessons this month so I'm going to finish this for him. I'm up to April which is apt really (pity it's last April's square though!). This is what it looks like so far -