August and September were busy months!! We seemed to cram an awful lot in and didn't have a weekend to ourselves at the end as we were all over the place. Luckily the calendar seems to have calmed down a bit now and today has been really nice just to have a lie in and a chilled out morning. The only thing planned for today is Reece having a hair cut about two minutes walk from our house so, as it's sunny, I think we'll walk with him and maybe go to the playground. That sounds like an excellent chilled out day to me!!
I've been going through my photos and there are a few things that I thought I'd just chat about on here, the first one being this little sheep hoop which doesn't appear to have made it on previously. It was the sample piece started at the Frittenden workshop and I used it as my bus project for a little while. It's not anything spectacular, and reminds me of how I'd started this whole journey, simple layers and stitches just for me rather than for anyone else or to experiment with something new.
Some layers were quite fun, the sheep were my usual technique of french knot wooly coats, although this time they were in different shades of brown and white. I used variegated purple/green thread to make two strand straight stitch stems with one strand pistil stitches and I had a play around with the squares above to make an offset crossed stitch in two colours which was quite effective.
I was using up green threads I had so some of the colour changes in the above layers were because I'd run out of a colour, there are lots of colours in the french knot edging, and about four I think in the big back stitch between the french knot spots above.
We had a lovely summer for weather, although I seem to recall last summer being hotter? Reece asked for a day at the beach and, whilst that was a tad unusual for him to request, I was happy to go along with it. We spent a wonderful day mooching around Eastbourne seafront, and ended up on the cliffs near to Beachy Head where he asked me to marry him!! (Ulterior beach motive after all.) Before you ask, yes I did say YES!
So now we have a wedding to plan and save up for. How exciting. That's like, a proper grown up adult thing!
I've had to concentrate a lot on my volunteer work as a Guide and Rainbow leader lately too. We participated in the Uckfield carnival at the beginning of September, for which there were several planning sessions on how to decorate the float and then getting the girls in to do the decorating, then the evening itself. I also organised a woodland craft and camp experience day for the whole District of Rainbows, Brownies and Guides where we took over a local campsite and cooked over fire, made things with leaves and twigs, wove wall hangings, pitched tents and enjoyed a visit from an archaeologist who ran an activity on Stone Age houses. What do you think of the Stone Age huts they all made?
At the end of the day some of the younger girls had asked to have their huts back but they were just poked into the ground so not particularly transportable. I ended up carefully dismantling them and resetting some into clay bases, getting my hands absolutely covered in the red ochre that had been used to decorate them! I've still got a whole village to do to make a display in our Guide hut - although I haven't got enough clay to make a base for each hut, so if you have any other inexpensive ideas do let me know!
I haven't had a huge amount of time for stitching but I have started working on a new kit idea based on my first ever kit, Summer Sweet. This time I'm going a size bigger to a 20cm hoop to add in some sizing variety to my current collection.
The fabrics for this have been collected for a while but I couldn't start until I'd found some trimmings to go with it. I think this petite ric-rac is just so darn cute!
Progress on this is slow though and I've stopped for the minute whilst I ponder over a few parts. I have stitched most layers down to the green leaf spray pattern but I don't like what I've done in the wheat field so I've stumped myself and it will all have to be unpicked I think.
Eventually it will be done though so watch this space!!
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