Today I am grateful for my three closest friends. No, they're not mice. They're real, honest-to-goodness amazing friends.They're continents apart, each of them, but still we continue to stay in touch and share. You know those friends you can speak to after months of not speaking, and everything just falls back into place, as if it had only been a few minutes? These ladies are special.



Each mouse is filled with wadding and dried French Lavender. They aren't pests: they're quiet, they sit still, and they smell lovely.

They don't pee over everything and eat your precious Kidsilk Haze yarn which now needs to be thrown away.

Hurrumph.

Still, a positive thought makes up for the negative one, doesn't it? I think so. The real mice have been replaced with these lovely friendly felt ones, which shall soon be making their way across the oceans. New Zealand, South Korea, South Africa. It's a long way to travel for a little mouselet.

Are we really on day 8 of the gratitude journal? I can already feel that focusing on one big, positive thought per day has made an enormous difference to the way I approach each day, and the way I deal with (and process) things, just as it should. 22 days left.

There hasn't been a whole lot of crafting this week.

Happy New Year! I'm delighted to say that I woke up yesterday feeling completely sniffle-free, and ready for a positive January. I think I was the only person who woke up on the first of Jan feeling good; we had more than one hangover in our house! After an enormous feast of the best food and a jolly celebration with friends to see off 2012, I'm ready for the year ahead.

There's nothing a little good food and positive thinking can't fix.

The one good thing about being "out of action" over the festive period was that I spent quite a bit of time on the couch, wrapped up under a cosy blanket and merrily stitching away at my Up & Away Cross Stitch Project.

I got a few extra rows done, but not without promising The Little Cousin that I'd make him one too, one day.   I also had to explain (after many questions) how many hours there were in a day, how many hours of those one person can reasonably spend stitching, and how many seconds each stitch takes. After a lot of maths, he'd decided that he'd be too old by the time I'd get around to making it.

Ha.

I've been doing a lot of Christmas Crafting (pictures to follow) - and I don't know how, but I also managed to find time to stitch up my Moroccan Cross-Stitch Cushion.

It's not quite done. In fact, this is the second time I have stitched it up this week.



I wasn't paying a lot of attention the first time around. I sewed up the side panels : brilliant! I sewed the side panels to the bottom : brilliant! And then I realised that I would have to do some sneaky seam stitching on the top of the cushion where it would be visible to all : not brilliant. I tried it out though, and sure enough, I didn't love it. It had to come out.

So, I ripped it all out and sewed it all up again - even the side panels.



You can see it's not over-stuffed and presses down quite easily, and I think I learnt a valuable lesson about stuffing this week. Stuff it until you think you have enough and then check that the seams line up. If they do, then stuff it some more. After sewing this up the first time, I realised straight away that it was too soft and definitely needed more stuffing. I'm pressing down on the top of the cushion in the photo above, and I really want it to provide some resistance...

So, after re-stuffing and re-sewing the cushion, I'm about to add about half a bag more of stuffing and then whip the side seams closed. It has already found a use in it's half-done state: it currently is a beautiful pedestal for our TV remote control. The Mister has dedicated this Moroccan Cross Stitch Cushion as an intricately detailed shrine to the TV gods. Sigh.

It's raining today. I have a pot of tea with me, and I'm working my way through some intensive documentation for a client. What better way to take a break than to reflect on some happy stitching from this last week? And - lo! a Wednesday WIP post on a Wednesday? My, things are getting better around here.


I've finished the mint stripe on my Up & Away balloon. I love this stripe. It's not only marks the half-way mark on the balloon (not counting the bazillion rays of sunshine that go in the background, of course), it also marks a happy deviation from the pattern which turned out exactly how I had imagined it. While stitching in my mint green, I also recklessly abandoned the dots in between each star's top point which was supposed to be done in yellow and caramel brown. I think that the green is very light, and it just stands out as it is against the pink and yellow stars. I didn't want to complicate it with dots. That also meant that I had to go back and fill in stars where I'd skipped a block for the brown, but that wasn't too bad.


Okay, not all my stitches go the same way. That's mainly due to the stop-and-start nature of the project (I'd like to think). I really like the mint against the warm cocoa brown bunting, like an Aero Mint chocolate feast for the eyes. What an excellent pairing. Ho hum.


In between my stitching, I also cut out the appliqué letters for that bunting project I mentioned. Traced, applied, cut, ironed and voila. We have names. The bunting's going to need another ironing to straighten up those edges, though.


Here's the "boy bunting". I still really like this fabric, it's very cheery. The robots look like they're doing the hokey pokey.


This is my favourite square. Once I've finished sewing up all of the squares, I'm going to stitch around the appliqué letters in a matching thread and neaten it up.

We're off to Paris next weekend. I'm beside myself with excitement.

It's Thursday. I know.

I my defence, I didn't have computer access yesterday, and I did try to post this blog post last night using about a thousand mobile thingy-whatsits. It just wasn't meant to be. It's a "Wednesday WIP" in spirit.

















And so, here's my progress. I changed the colours a little bit and have decided to use the mint green instead of lime green. I like it. The stars along the top alternate in bursts of pink and yellow, and then there's another row of the pink sea waves in blue.

It's coming along rather well, despite the frequent colour-changes and details. I do feel that the scalloped detail along the bottom of the balloon might need to be outlined, it seems to get lost in the oatmeal canvas.

In other news: my mother-in-law leaves London today. We're going to jet off this morning to do last-minute visits, and then it's up, up and away. The luggage scale is going to be put to good use, there will be a lot of repacking, there will definitely be a few tears, and I plan on taking my balloon stitchery for the ride. More updates soon!

There hasn't been much crafting here at Bakercourt this week. My mother-in-law is visiting from South Africa and we've spent most of our time scooting around Oxford, London and Hobbycraft.

We have a rule in our house: if we go away for a weekend, I need to take a project with me. There's nothing I find more fulfilling and relaxing than blocking out thoughts of the week, work and worries with a cup of tea and a bit of creative stitching. I've taken knitting camping, I took English paper piecing hexagons to Silverstone, and I regularly take a bit of cross-stitch to Faringdon.

Cross stitch is wonderfully portable.

This weekend past we went to a Big Family Event in Toddington. There was roast chicken and assorted buffet foods, there were children playing mini-Olympics, and there was the ever-important Big Family News (we learnt, this weekend, that we will soon be welcoming a new mini Cousin to the family!). There was champagne and wine, designated drivers, and hours of sunshine. And there was cross stitch.

















This is the project I've started working on. It's an Emily Peacock design from the Cross Stitcher magazine, issue 254, July 2012.

















I gathered my threads before setting off for the weekend so I didn't have to lug around a bag full of extra embroidery floss! I've swapped the red in the pattern for a dark pink, and I'm still undecided about the green. I'm either going to use the dark green on the right, or the mint green on the left. The pattern calls for the dark green - I'm just being difficult.

















This is the Aida I chose - 14 Count Rustic Aida. It's not quite cream in colour, more like a flecked oatmeal. I like the way the pastel colours show up on this. We had to stop off at my Local Yarn Shop on the way to the Family Event to pick this up because I didn't have a piece of Aida big enough. It turns out, neither did they. I had to settle on a piece that is 15cm short, all round. It's okay. It looks like the balloon will just fit.

Did I mention that this is, according to Cross Stitcher, a 75-hour project? Good golly.

After a good few hours of stitching, this is how far I am -

















The sizing issue is starting to make me feel nervous. I might stitch the outline going up so that I know whether or not it will fit in before embarking on detailed balloon patterns, guy ropes and baskets. It's very difficult to resist the urge to stitch in straight left-to-right lines when you're working in counted grids like this!