Second finish

My second finish in 2010!!! And it's only January!!!!!!!!

Yes, this comes as a surprise to me, too. Mainly because I thought my second finish would definitely be a certain scarf. But it isn’t. You see, I sustained a knitting injury, making it well-nigh impossible for me to lift my left arm, let alone finish a scarf. Perhaps trying to break the world record for speed-knitting when your knitting muscles aren’t fully developed isn’t a wise thing to do. Anyway, no scarf for Pelle. It was going to be a present for him, because the poor boy is going to have his tonsils taken out tomorrow, but now he will have to make do with a store bought gift [which he will undoubtedly enjoy more, anyway :o)]
Someone commented that it seems my boy has had to make way for the terrorist cats on this blog, so by popular demand, here’s a picture of Pelle.

I'm sorry, but there's only one thing to say about this picture, and it has to be in Dutch: wat is het toch een lekker ventje.

But I came here (and you did, too, I think) for some stitching news. Some stitching and finish-finishing news, no less. You see, the finishing bug usually only hits me around November and it lasts until December 31st, resulting in ten months’ worth of starts (imagine, if you will, what the means for my WIP and UFO piles ) and not even two months’ worth of finishes (because I’m not good at finishing). This year will be different. Yes, it will. Hey, it already is, because here’s my second finish of the year:

Faith by Carriage House Samplings stitched on 40 count plplplplllll linen (the kind I normally use) with my own choice of DMC and GAST and WDW threads.

I needed a small stitched piece for this frame, and I think it works well. Now as for my next finish… I can’t see one coming, to be honest, but last Friday I didn’t see this one coming either, so who knows what you might find here next time.

Wish Pelle luck! Here’s hoping they will operate the snot out of him.

Yours fidgetily,
Annemarie.

Beyond good and evil

Okay. Turns out you’re all evil. Barring a few exceptions – kind people who comforted me with assertions about their own inability to knit – the majority of you urged me to hold on, to not give up, to try again, to follow this or that link for video instructions. What’s a girl to do? Well, this girl listened to the voices of evil (particularly Hazel’s) and started another Baktus scarf.

You see, contrary to the impression I inadvertently gave you in my previous post, I can actually knit. I’m neither a knincompoop nor a knitwit. A couple of years ago I knitted a couple of scarves and even a blanket or two. What I meant when I said I wasn’t a knitter, was that knitting doesn’t come naturally to me. I can never find a rhythm, I can never really relax while knitting, I keep clenching and un-clenching, but I really can knit. A bit.

The conditions need to be just right, though, and they weren’t when I started that first miserable Baktus scarf. Let me explain. Knitting according to Annemarie:

1) Knitting needles need to be short (I never know what to do with those large things. I mean, where do you put the ends? They either end up tickling my armpits, or they disappear up my sleeves, making any sort of vital movement with the needles impossible). So: long knitting needles were substituted with short needles.

2) Knitting needles must be made of a warm-to-the-touch, natural material, i.e. wood. Or bamboo. Metal needles are cold and unpleasant. So, metal needles were substituted with bamboo needles.

3) Yarn must be made of something that feels and looks natural. Like something a sheep would wear. So, cheapo Dutch sock wool in the colour ‘Surf’ was substituted with a natural looking, slightly more expensive German sock wool called ‘Meilenweit’.

Behold my second attempt at the Baktus:

I see plenty more Bakti in my future. Thanks to all of the ladies who cheered me on: you’re all delightfully evil.

Progress is not impressive, but only due to the fact that I had to copy another one of Staci’s projects. What with Valentine around the corner and a deadline looming, I couldn’t help but succumb to this wonderful freebie by Primitive Betty’s:

And this, honeybuns, is truly my first start and finish of 2010.

Hang on, don’t go away yet! Remember the giveaway? We have a winner of the Goode Huswife chart Wife Into Thy Garden and her name is…………………

SU!

Aww, Randomiser couldn’t have picked a nicer person. Su and I have known each other since forever (well, at least before either one of us had a blog) and it's been quite a while since Su has received anything from me. Picture me jogging to the post office right away, Su!

Kielrain asked me a question in the comments about the second chart on the second row of the Goode Huswife picture. It is indeed out of print (as are all the charts in this book), and it’s called In Her House.

Have a lovely weekend, all. I intend to work, work and… knit!

Yours knittingly,
Annemarie.

I'm done!

About once every year – maybe twice, but no more – I get the urge to knit. I see something incredibly crafty and at the same time easy (or at least, that’s what the knitter of the crafty item claims) and I think to myself: I can do that. Even I can do that. Even I can do that. Even I can do that. I go into my bedroom with a self-assured grin, I open my closet and there it is, on the floor: my secret stash of knitting stuff. For someone who doesn’t knit, I have an embarrassing pile of stash. I pick out the yarn I think would be good for this easy project, I take the right sized needles, and there I go, with my trusted and well-thumbed copy of Knitting for Dummies under my arm. The object of my knitterly desire was something I saw on the evil Staci’s blog (evil because whenever I visit her, she always has something to lure me away from my many WIPs to start something she’s been doing. I don’t have one original thought in my head. Ever.): the Baktus scarf. Easy-peasy, that’s the word on the World Wide Web. This scarf is so darned easy, you could knit it in your sleep.

Needles, yarn, book, coffee… I cast on 4 stitches, as the pattern dictates. Hmm. This is surprisingly difficult. My needle splices the yarn and so I end up with way too many stitches, and I haven’t even made it to round three. Ah well. I’m only just beginning. And this is a test scarf anyway (otherwise, why would I be using a colour that doesn’t go with ONE item of the clothes presently in my closet?). As I’m knitting along, I notice my left hand is starting to form a claw. I’m also clenching my butt and plowing my elbows into my armrests as if I’m on a plane getting ready for take-off. And the knitting isn’t getting any prettier.

Luckily, it only took me 30 minutes to decide that it’s not going to work. I’m not a knitter. And still it bothers me. I just don’t get it: why is it I can work with teeny tiny needles and actually find that incredibly relaxing, when the mere sight of a size 2,5 DPN (which isn’t a very large needle, now, is it?) has me reaching for the smelling salts? Why do I find it so embarrassing that I can’t knit? Why do I keep trying? Isn’t stitching exciting enough? Is that it? Huh? Huh???

As I said, it only took me half an hour to start and finish. Hooray!! My first start and finish of 2010.
Before:

After:

And now on to some serious stitching. Inspired by something I saw on Staci’s blog. Pictures on Thursday. Don’t forget the Goode Huswife giveaway! If you would like a chance to win the Wife Into Thy Garden chart, you still have time to leave a comment on my previous post :o)

Yours very contentedly stitchingly,
Annemarie.

Of Ladies Pink, Black and Blue

This is a post entirely about ladies and I will start with the first one I mentioned, i.e. the pink one. Because she is the most astonishing, beautiful and lovely one – I’m serious, she’s even more wonderful than the Blue Lady, because she is… my niece! Her name is Eline and she was born on December 30th. My brother – remember? The wise-ass who thought his sister was a moron because she didn’t know how to take a decent photograph? – is still to send me a picture of his daughter, but until then, you will just have to believe me when I say that she is a darling. She gave her Mum a good deal of trouble: the poor dear wasn’t released from the hospital until last week, but she is recovering well and very happy to be home with baby Eline.

With half my family in hospitals around Europe (my father was in the hospital with a viral infection, too) and a sick child at home, I was very happy to have something to divert my thoughts and this something came in the shape of our new, mostly black, kitty! She arrived in our home on January 2nd and she’s keeping everyone busy, including poor old Pantoef, who seems a grumpy old sod compared with the very lively, very smart and very fast Pipien. If you thought Pantoef was bad around my stitching, think again… Pipien has a lot to learn :o) Well, I found a description of the character of an average Rex cat online and I must say it is spot on: Cornish and Devon Rex cats can best be described as a cross between a terrorist and a monkey. And here they are, my Rex cats and their Wicked Ways

Claws and linen do not a good combination make

Meanwhile, on the other side of the scroll frame...

Pantoef is still a little flustered by the lady's presence every now and then, but mostly, they seem pretty inseperable already. When they're done terrorising, they can mostly be found in an intimate position on the bed.

As you see, stitching has become a bit of a challenge :o) STILL, I managed to make enormous progress on the Blue Lady:
Before:
After:
And just to give you an idea how idiotically large this piece is, here’s a pic of the lady in front of my book case

Sigh. I hadn’t seen her in all her glory for a while, so once she was up there, I sat down for a while to feast my eyes on the beauty of her. And then I rolled her up and put her away in my closet, because I’m always so afraid of over-indulging. What if I get tired of her? I couldn’t let that happen, could I??

And anyway, there’s another piece that’s been calling my name quite loudly. It’s Wife Into Thy Garden by the Goode Huswife. You can see my progress on it in the terrorist pictures, and here's a pic of the contents of the book. Wife Into Thy Garden is second sampler on the picture (sorry, couldn't be bothered to take snap myself):

I have the Goode Huswife Book of Designs III in my possession, because it was too good to not have in my possession, but I already had this chart before the book was published, which means I actually have two copies. Wife Into Thy Garden is no longer available as a single chart, so if you would like to have it, leave a comment on this post. You have to be quick(ish) though, because I will draw a name on Thursday and let you all know who the lucky winner is in my next post (which is planned for next Thursday) (if everybody around me stays as healthy as they possibly can) (and my computer doesn’t crash).

Hope to see you again soon! As always, thanks for stopping by. I really appreciate it, especially because my own presence in Blogland has been mostly… absent.

Yours as always gratefully,
Annemarie.

Chateau de Chatelaine

Warning: this is a looooooooong post. It’s about three posts rolled into one. With lots of stitchy pics though, so stick around :o)

I hope your Christmases were wonderful and warm (inside) and white (outside), though not too white, because, well...

…what does one do when one is snowed in and one’s computer crashes at the same time? Well, one weeps and tears out one’s hair and wrings one’s hands and when the weeping and tearing and wringing is done, one stitches. And what does one stitch? One stitches a strawberry. As one does, around Christmas time:

This is one of the strawberries designed by Niki Farrauto for Blackbird Designs’ beautiful Christmas book Joyeux Noel, stitched on 30 count R&R Iced Cappuccino that I coffee dyed and baked in the microwave because I was silly enough to stitch on the wrong side of the fabric. Luckily, I used DMC threads for the stitching, otherwise I would have been in the soup, with me coffee dying my fabric after the stitching was done. I didn’t stitch this strawberry because I felt particularly festive or Christmassy (what the hay? Feeling Christmassy? There’s no such thing, I’m sure), but because I needed a fob of some weight and length for the adornment of my self-made chatelaine.


You see, I’m always losing my needles and scissors around here, and I don’t mean between stitching sessions. No, I lose them during these sessions. Whilst stitching. My child and my cat take delight in getting into all sorts of impossible situations that I have to rescue them from (every two minutes or so), so I’m always flying hither and thither and when I settle my behind in my stitching chair for another round of two minute stitching, I will have lost every stitchy thing I need. It was obvious to me that I needed a chatelaine to put around my neck, so that I would at least always have my needle and my scissors handy and that there wouldn’t be any danger of one of the beasts gobbling up my needle while I’m busy rescuing the other. What to do, what to do? I thought. I knew The Drawn Thread has a magnificent design for a chatelaine, but I don’t have it and I don’t have time to order it, wait for it to arrive and then stitch it. By the time I would get to finish-finishing it, Pelle would be about 40 years old and I would have no use for it anymore.

What I do when I have to think about stitchy things is I go through my drawers filled with fabrics, threads and charts and it was in one of these drawers that I found the solution to my problem...

kumihimo

Now, I admit that this sounds rather like a fascinating and intricate way of killing oneself, but in actual fact, it’s a Japanese braiding technique. I went on the internet (when my computer was, as yet, un-crashed) and looked up some stuff about kumihimo. One thing I learned is that kumihimo is not cross stitch. There is hardly anything to be found on the WWW, but the information I did find I used, and you can see the results in the picture below. Once the braid was long enough (about four long evenings later), I had to think of a way to finish it. By this time, my computer was belting out steam in its quiet corner in the room, so I was pretty much on my own. Then I thought of the strawberries and thought they were the perfect solution to the fob problem.

I think the (Dutch) term Crea Bea has never been more aptly used :o)

Once I had shoveled a path through the snow and I could get myself and Pelle out of our cottage, what do you think I found in the mail? A very, very early (or slightly belated) birthday gift from Harmien!
Don’t you agree that, with these fabulous goodies made by the Queen of Neatness herself, my primitive-looking, sampler-themed stitching set is as good as complete? Harmien, you couldn’t have picked more perfect designs for my birthday gift. I love, love, love all of it. Harmien added a cute notebook and some needle magnets, and the gift came wrapped in that stocking you see in the second picture. I nearly fainted when I saw that stocking, because I was actually afraid Harmien had wrought that as well, but she admitted (as I would never have done) that the sock was not self-made, at least not by her. The Christmas ornie is lovely too, isn’t it?

And since this post is already so long I’m bound to have sent my readers straight to Snoresville anyway, I might as well finish with a progress picture of the Pistols:

And here’s my cute pixie in the snow:

Can you say Awwwwwwwwwwwwww!?
Wishing you a very sparkly New Year’s Eve!

Yours Crea Beatively,
Annemarie.

Blathering on

Thank you, thank you, thank you, for all the kind, thoughtful, sweet comments, e-mails and post cards I received from so many of you after my previous blog post. Really. Whenever I read similar messages on other blogs I always thought: ‘what on earth can I write that will give any comfort?’, but I will never think that again. Even the simplest {HUG} was felt and I can’t thank you enough.

Enough of the weepy stuff. I will keep you posted of course, but I’ve found that life really does go on despite it being rather crappy right now. And life without stitching is no life at all, right? Right. Hence the update.

At the start of last year (that would be 2008), I started a sampler for my parents’ 40th wedding anniversary. Being the experienced procrastinator that I am, I didn’t make it. Never mind that this was also the time when I left my partner and had to build a new life formyself and Pelle: I now know that’s a very poor, unforgiveable and silly excuse not to finish something like this on time. So I did finish the sampler for Christmas and took it to the framer’s this morning (more about my framer later). Here it is in all its un-framed but finished glory:

I Thee Wed by Blackbird Designs. I stitched it on some unknown 32 count fabric with the suggested DMC conversion (which I wasn’t always too happy about)
Yikes! I just noticed the yucky brown spoton my chair. Ewl. No worries: it's just coffee. My coffee spoon fell out of my cup just the other day. Annoying Dutch habit I have: I drink my coffee with the spoon in my cup. And I don't even take milk or sugar!)

This was a lot of stitching. This was a lot of solid stitching. So much so, that I decided to use half cross stitches for the grass because I would never ever have finished it otherwise. Not too fond of solid stitching, you know... Obviously, I changed the words to the initials of our nearest family: my parents, my brother and his partner and Pelle and me. My brother was kind enough to reveal the first letter of his daughter’s name, although she isn’t expected to make her official entry into this world until after Christmas. (And yes, I’m stitching her a sampler, and yes, I still think I will finish it next week to take it to the framer’s as soon as the wee one is born).

Speaking of my framer! You must all think either the woods I live in are filled with money trees, or that I am one of those divorcees who sits on her behind all day, stitching and sipping tea (well, coffee) while her ex brings round cart-loads of cash every month. Alas, neither of these suppositions are correct. No, the simple fact is that my framer is dirt cheap. Oops, I should really use very small letters and take care that this doesn’t reach his ears or eyes, otherwise he might perk up said ears and raise his fees. I understand that framing in the States is excruciatingly expensive. Well, I’m very sorry for all of you, but it is nice to be able to get something cheaper than you lot for a change (you do know how much one single simple skein of DMC costs over here, don’t you? 1,30 euri, ladies and gentlemen. According to my online converter that’s $ 1.89) (one skein. Of DMC floss. I kid ye not). In fact, it’s cheaper to get my things framed by this guy than to buy a cheap frame and do it myself (not to mention the fact that I am utterly talentless when it comes to framing anything).

It was really good to be blogging again. Hopefully, this birth sampler for my niece will be done shortly, so I will have something new to show you. And ooh, ooh, ooh... My brother and SIL aren’t the only ones expecting an addition to their family! Rather than selling Pantoef to a vivisectionist or giving him away as a blog contest prize, as I threatened to do a couple of months ago, I went ahead and got myself another kitty. It’s a girl this time and she will be here at the start of the new year. Her name is Pipien (which I couldn’t put into phonotype if my life depended on it. It sounds roughly like Peepeen, but with much shorter ‘ee’ sounds. Someday, I will record all of the Dutch names you encounter on this blog and play it by way of soundtrack to Orts and Ends).

I had no intention of blathering on like this, but there you go. Hope you don’t mind!

Yours blatheringly,
Annemarie.

Dear all,

My family and I have just heard that my father has incurable cancer. I don't know how I will feel in a couple of days, but for now, I can't see myself blogging or stitching any time soon. I'll be too busy keeping very close to everyone I love and to Papa in particular. Who knew your heart could actually, physically ache?

Please love your loved ones with all your might, before it's too late.

Annemarie.