WOYWW 802/22 - Dismal, damp, and dreary...

Greetings, fellow deskers!

Short and sweet (and late) from me this week.  Circumstances as ever conspiring against me to get me here on time.  One day I may even be early.

So, no desk from me because nothing happened to it.  I did however start the inexorable task of going through the boxes that came from Mum's and we've managed a whole two.  Well, one and a bit to be precise.  The trouble is they're full of small things and treasures that were either too good to let go, or two useful.  Rulers and stencils, a box full of Windsor & Newton inks, this little witchy poo diorama...

One treasure was a box full of embroidery skeins that had been wound onto home-made bobbins (probably made by Dad) and which will turn out to be their very own nightmare.  You see, (and as some of you know) there's more than one brand of floss.  And did Mother write on the bobbin which brand it was?  No - she only numbered them.  And each brand bar a couple have different numbering systems. Jeez..... I will need to go through, unwind each floss and rewind onto an acid free bobbin, then work out what number it's meant to be and which brand. What a task, eh?  Some would say I'm crazy, others that I'm frugal.  LOL

Mum was what we call a promiscuous stitcher - she used lots of brands in one piece.

Not sure what we have going on here… yikes

There's also been some amazing finds - vintage British silks which I think are from the late 40's/early 50's, and some imitation silks which were lurking in Mum's stash.

Such beautiful colours!

It's a shame you can't zoom into the photos - you used to be able to but now you can't and I will need to work out how to fix that.  So, for the time being, here's a close up of the moons on the Cryptids piece.

I rolled the scroll frame down, and last week was mostly about frogging (unpicking) the border that was in the wrong place.  A whole 919 stitches had to come out but I feel much better for it.  Some folks think I'm crazy.... oh, I said that already.... 

Before

After

I've put it to one side to do my other WIPGO for this month, Nevermore, and I've finally picked up Siren's Lament after 9 months' break.  And after two days have realised exactly why I took a break - I was struggling with the basic stitching.  It gets hard work when there's lots of "confetti" but we have some progress. You can just about see the masts of a ghostly ship to the right of the mermaid's head.

Mary Anne asked last week if I have all my stitched pieces up on the wall.  I have one my Mum did, and then eight, I think, I stitched (including two of my own designs, tralala) myself and two that David did. There's a further 7 (2 mine, 5 his) waiting to be framed, and one which my best friend stitched for me currently at the framers.  We have plenty of wall space though.  Once the 7 waiting to be finished are done I'll share those ones here.  I think the others may have already been shown at some point. I don't sell them, but I have gifted some in the past, and so has David.

What was that about short and sweet?

Happy Hopping!

Morti x

PS - I was offered the job, which I've accepted, and Jeanette I think has an interview for hers.... yay!

WOYWW 801/21 - Where did that week go?

Blinked and missed it, that's where.  How is it Wednesday again so soon? I didn't get round anyone's desks last week either (shame...shame....) but I have every intention of doing double duty this week to make up for it hehehehe.

WOYWW - currently hosted by Sarah at Sarah's Craft Shed - is a fascinating blog hop across the desks of many crafters, a warts and all look at what's actually going on.... hehehe.... rather than the pristine display conditions you often see when folks display their beautifully made cards.  Well, not such pristine display conditions here!  Lots of mess and plenty of stitching. instead.

This week's desk is.... same as the last two.  In fact, I dare you to play spot the difference.  Go on, do!  I know that something has changed there but I'm not telling you what... hehehehe

Second desk is looking a little tidier but that's only by dint of the fact that it's normally where my sewing machine lives.  As the machine is not currently there, there's a little encroachment going on (no I did not make the project bag you see, that's a purchase from Big Stitch)

Stitching wise, I've not done an awful lot in a week to the World of Cross Stitching SAL, but the first skein of thread in the right hand box is now complete.  3 to go, and the border, then I can move down and work on part 9.

(By the way, any weird grid/mesh effects or whatever disappear if you click into the pic!)

WIPGO called Cryptids for some love, for the second time this year.  You last saw it week 790/10, and now it's out for another 5 days.  I've done 2 days so far and definitely moved it on - Nessie is now complete and I'm working on the border.

Zoom in and you’ll see pale cream moons down the right hand side - they need an outline, I think, though they’re more obvious in person.

Busy Busy Busy....

Good news - gosh, how things can change in a week - is that I have had a verbal offer of a permanent, part-time role with one of our existing clients, starting Feb, and several others have expressed an interest in retaining my services on a formal basis going forwards.  Watch this space to see what happens!  Even my colleague Jeanette is in talks with the same client and may have a job out of it too.  Just so happens that they have a couple of leavers themselves, who are in roles that would suit us.  Yay!  Fingers crossed it all pans out.

Happy Hopping everyone

Morti xx

WOYWW 800 - What a milestone!

I’m here!  I’m here!  I nearly wasn’t though 😬

It's WOYWW time again... and this week sees the 800th post/week of WOYWW.

It was started by lovely Julia Dunnit, and Julia has recently passed the torch to Sarah Brennan of Sarah's Craft Shed to continue the WOYWW phenomenon into the future.

Last week, Sarah asked us to share this week our first ever desk picture that we posted for WOYWW. I'm quite fortunate, I think, in that we've moved around quite a bit and I recall which house we were living in the first time I posted - so that gave me a date range.  I was quite surprised to learn that my first week was week number 62, all the way back on 10 August 2010.  So about 15 months into the "show and tell" shenanigans.

It's a bit cleaner and tidier than the current state of affairs, and I had all the intentions but still didn’t make the effort to get the space tidy for this week. The week 62 post says that I'd been instructed to keep the space clean and tidy so Mr B could work at it as well for school stuff, because he didn't like clutter.  ROFL.  Our house is one big clutterfest these days.

It's also interesting that, back then, WOYWW regularly got over 100 joiners.  That number has considerably dropped off now (still doesn't necessarily mean that I get round to everyone though!) and I took a hiatus of a couple of years myself before re-joining albeit somewhat intermittently.  Life gets in the way, some of our deskers have passed away or stopped crafting (or changed what they were doing), and some just stopped posting. I do need to get back into my crafting a lot more though.

So this week, what have I been up to?  

More work on the WOCs SAL though it’s not the most up to date photo...

Five days for WIPGO on Lilith of Labrador...

A trip to Bristol for the stitchers day at Engineers House in Clifton... (that was an early start - I picked my travel companions up at 0530 - yikes!)

Family news this week - as it's now official following an announcement to our clients on Tuesday, I can share that the job I've been working at since moving to Cornwall in May 2019 is coming to an end.  The decision has been made to close the business for various reasons which I won't go into now, and that leaves myself and my colleague Jeanette looking for alternative employment as of the 1st Jan 2025. I see it as a big opportunity to make a change, although whether or not I will remains to be seen.  We will have to see which doors open...

Dare I say it? Here’s to the next 800 WOYWW’s? That’s a tad ambitious I suppose, but the sentiment is definitely there!

Happy Hopping to you all…

Xxx

WOYWW 799 - Madam YoYo

 Hello again

I'm not very good at keeping up with the blog.  I'm doing better this year than the last couple of years but we're a work in progress that far.  Actually remembered on Tuesday that Wednesday is WOYWW (previously hosted by the lovely Julia and now by the equally lovely Sarah Brennan at Sarah's Craft Shed), so here I am prepping a post for tomorrow. 

The trouble is that there's never a lot of movement on my craft desk, other than to pile things higher!  

The dolls' house is still hanging out on the dining table.  I'd like to get that cleared before Xmas but unfortunately it's more likely to be the new year before that happens.  There's a few spanners in the work between now and then but things will ease up in the new year and I'll have more time for fixing the behemoth,  More on that next week.

I did finish Three of Crafts but I'm not sharing a pic of that until it's fully finished off (FFO'd).

Dragon With Embroidery has moved along a little....

As has the World of Cross Stitching's SAL.  Will I ever catch up?  Of course - however the last part will be released next month, and I'm considerably behind (4 parts - yikes), but it's been enjoyable to stitch.  

Will I do another one next year?  Not sure - I have a lot of works in progress (WIPs) and I would really like to reduce the number and get some finishes in.  I've got a couple of really big pieces to work on that are going to take a couple of years at the current rate and so I'd like to give them a bit more time and attention.

I've also worked on Lilith of Labrador - here's her current state next to a pic of what she's supposed to look like finished.

I'm off to the Bristol Stitching Day in Clifton on Saturday with some friends, and will take her with me to work on.  She's part of WIPGO for September and I'm running out of days to get my 5 day quota worked on.

Energy levels here are pretty low.  We just had a week's holiday in Tenerife to rest and recharge our batteries, and both ended up catching stinking colds - typical!  Nearly over those now though but it did spoil the end of the trip for us a bit.

So a bit of a brief catch up, see you when I next see you!

Morti

x

WOYWW 790/10 - a tentative hello

I've been AWOL for 9 weeks....

I've thought about joining in with WOYWW (hosted by the lovely Sarah @  Sarah's Craft Shed) again for the last couple of weeks, but today I've finally made it.  I feel a bit like I've been driving through fog and am just coming out the other side to clearer skies.  Grief is a bizarre thing in the way it affects people in different ways, and one of the ways it affected me was with inertia.  A need to just stay in one place and not move unless I had to, mentally as well as physically.  There were weeks with no stitching, and weeks with lots of stitching, there was a week of mad clearing, sorting, packing, moving to get Mum's bungalow cleared.  And weeks of overwhelm - at the sheer amount of stuff my mother had (nearly two dozen boxes & bags of fabric and trim gifted to a local theatre group for costume, for example) and which now needed rehoming, mostly into my house it seems.  We hired a Luton to bring everything home and we filled it.... sigh.  My dining room has disappeared under a dolls house.  Yikes....

Ah yes, the dolls house.  The first place we went to declined the offer of our donation, citing a lack of available space for display (to be fair, true), and on reflection we decided to bring the behemoth home to make repairs (turns out some are significant) before sending it to its forever home.  We have our eye on a couple of National Trust venues, so fingers crossed they take it.

Crafting wise, it's mostly sorting out books and supplies Mum had.  She had a Bisley drawer unit just full of trims, which I'm enjoying stroking (LOL) and coming up with ideas.  There was a whole drawer of golden supplies just for Goldwork, and another with loads of silver fabrics and thread too.

I've worked on a few pieces of stitching - I won't go into great detail here at the moment about who/what and when, but will just leave pics of where I'm at with each.

Maybe in the next couple of weeks I'll be able to get to sit at my craft desk and do something creative aside from standard stitching.

Speaking of which, though, I'm a bit busy over the coming weeks.  This weekend coming is Big Stitch 24, the first big stitching convention in the UK.  Up until now we've had smaller retreats where the maximum attendance I think has been 60 attendees - BS24 has over 200, and from overseas as well as the UK, with a guest speaker (Jacob from Modern Folk Embroidery) and vendors from lots of locations. All very exciting and just 2 sleeps before travelling up to Rotherham... eek!

I'm also away in Brixham for a weekend in August with the girls from school.  We've known each other as a group for 42 years, although a couple have been friends since the age of 5.  Lots of years. Mr B is going to stay home for a weekend by himself with the fur babies.

And then in September we're off to Tenerife for a few days, followed by a visit to the final  Overlander show in Stratford Upon Avon.  Time to pick up some campervan conversion ideas for our new van, Gomez.  

More on him in a later post.

I think that will do for now - plenty enough to be going on with!

Happy Hopping!

Morti x

WOYWW 781 - All change, please!

 Gosh.

I missed last week - reasons themselves being fairly obvious from the previous week's post, and I was disappointed to have missed the week and the ATC swap (Helen, I still owe you an ATC and you WILL go the ball.... um.... I mean you WILL have your card!), and also to have not made it to the crop.  Turns out I ended up in Braintree on house clearance duties, but also visited Mum at the chapel of rest and did some Executor business type stuff with my sister on Saturday morning.  Saturday evening and Sunday were spent in some frantic house clearance - more on that in a mo...

Helen’s ATC

And so I logged on today to celebrate WOYWW which hithertofore (good word, that) had been hosted by the very lovely Julia on Stamping Ground (stamping-ground.blogspot.com) but found that as of the 15th Anniversary (last week), the reins have now been handed over to the equally lovely Sarah at Sarah's Craft Shed (sarahscraftshed.co.uk)

Slap me sideways and call me a gurnard.

I have GOT to stop missing weeks!

So - congratulations/good luck in your "retirement", Julia.  May your desk ever (never?) be tidy, in the spirit of WOYWW.  May your rotary cutter stay sharp, and your ink pads never be dry. A toast to Julia Dunnit!

Sarah has been a long time desker herself, so has able control of those reins.  Change being as good as a rest I'm sure, and a new path in life I suspect may well be a welcome distraction from the trials and tribulations of life.  I'd say "welcome" but you've been here a while, my lovely.  But instead, very well done for stepping up and letting JD step back - Bravo!

My crafting bug has understandably taken a bit of a hike, but I've made the effort to get some stitching done at least. I hope to get my WIPGO done this month, but not much else of anything will be undertaken.

I have at least worked on the Snowman Pirate a bit....

But last weekend was all about Mum, really.  Amongst the things we sorted out, we had a good squint at her dolls house, and now starts the task of finding a home for it.  I don't think I've ever mentioned it before, because I don't have the appropriate labels, but Mum (and my late Dad) were model makers and Dad built this amazing dolls house for Mum starting in 1994 up to his death in 2007, and she decorated and furnished it.  I won't go into massive detail here but a couple of photos will suffice.  I'm in contact with a museum local to her, and hopefully they'll take it on.  If they won't, I'm sure somewhere else will, and as a very last resort, we'll just have to open our own museum.  Not quite where I thought my life was going but there you have it. Admittedly, it does need a little work to smarten it up a bit, but we'll see where it's going to end up, first!  

The loom is fully functional, if you have the patience to set it up…

I've also been passed a partially completed piece of needlework that Mum left, which she'd been working on during the last few months, and which I sadly think will need some unpicking of the most recent stitches, and I will complete it ready for framing.  I have a matching one she'd finished before that, and it also needs some TLC.  We'll get there, though!

I think I've waffled on enough for this week.  Not sure if I'll be around next week but I'll give it a try - we travel up to Essex again next Thurs, as my beloved Mum's funeral is on the 31st.... so see you again soon.

Happy Hopping!

Morti x

WOYWW 779

No snappy title from me this week.  Not even any photographs this time.  Nor a desk.

The saddest news - on Thursday 2nd May, 2024, my beloved mother finally joined my father in eternal rest. Her passing was not unexpected, not a shock.  We had been expecting it for some time - she was 92, after all, and in September 2020 diagnosed with chronic cardiac failure.  She'd been in and out of hospital since September last year, and the last two months were spent in a lovely care home in Braintree, Essex.

The Friday before, Mum was admitted to hospital again for the sixth time in 8 months, with her heart rate and BP  fluctuating quite wildly.  Ultimately, by the Tuesday she had contracted hospital acquired pneumonia, and at 19:20pm on Thursday breathed her last.

My sister and niece were with her at the end, and she went peacefully and quietly into the arms of her God.

I feel honoured to have known her, let alone be her daughter.  She was not without her quirks, but she was steadfast in her faith, and had love for all (occasionally a somewhat judgy quip too but we won't dwell on that!) opening her heart and her door to many through the years. Grandma to all children - even those not related to her - and as my eldest niece put it when she was a small bean "Grandma from London has sweeties in her bag" generous to a fault.  

Mum was very much a creative herself.  A demon with the knitting needles, she taught herself to crochet much later in life, and took to it like a duck to water.  She wasn't adverse to wielding an embroidery needle, and stitched a few beautiful pieces with enthusiasm if slightly lacking in skill.  Mostly, she was an adept on the sewing machine.  I don't believe she ever had any formal tuition, but her entire life she made clothes for us and costumes for the stage school and amateur dramatic society she ran.  Mum rather jealously guarded her machine, and whilst she - without hesitation - encouraged us to sew and bought me my first machine, it was more than my life was worth to ever risk touching hers! Mum also painted during my childhood, reasonable works of art (though no great master) in oil and she loved Nancy Kominski's tv programmes. A genuine and happy dabbler in most things, card making included.

Mum missed my father greatly, and when the time came, confirmed to us that she was ready to go. She will be so very missed by us all.

Constance Ware (Fenn)

1931-2024

WOYWW 778 - Did ya miss me, briefly?

Ha!  I'm here.  I kind of forgot last week, and didn't have very much to show really.  So I skipped a week but I'm still here.  Heheheh

Today's gratuitous desk shot - more of the same really.  The needleminders all have been resin'd and magnets attached, and the scissor fobs made.  All bar one.  I was short by one solitary 4mm red, faceted, crystal cube.  So naturally I bought a couple hundred.  LOL.  I could have bought a single Swarovski bead for about £4 including postage but imagine if it didn't turn up, or wasn't the right size.... or was the wrong colour?  So I bought two job lots in two colours and the rest will go into stash. I'm sure I will use them before long.

Stitching wise, this month's WIPGO is now complete with 5 days stitched on this Spooky House design by Sandra Parlow, charted by Xs and Ohs. I started this back in 2022, I think, so you won't have seen it before.  Here's a shot of what it looks like currently, and one of what it will look like when done.  The windows and the moon are stitched with glow in the dark Kreinik braid (the devil's floss) and look fab for all of 9 seconds after the lights go out.  A bit of fun nonetheless.

The WOCS SAL moved along and I have completed part three - still three sections behind but I'll be cracking on with those shortly.

The May WIPGO was called and it was three numbers - 5, 13 (spare square) and 19.  For me that means I have two more - and different, for a change - works in progress to work on, The Pirate and Alluring Sorceress, and a new start. The new start will be a blackwork piece which I'll commence on Saturday for Star Wars day. :D

Speaking of May 4th, tomorrow I start a few days' holiday and will be heading up to North Wales for that stitching retreat with friends that I mentioned last post - it's suddenly come around very quickly, and indeed, our Michigan friend starts her journey tomorrow with the first of three flights.  Once in the UK she'll be having to navigate London to get a train up to Chester where I'll be meeting her.  Brave lass!

So, that's my two penn'orth for this week.  I'll say it now, I don't think I will have time to hop around the blogs this week because today is a full and extended working day, tomorrow is shaping up to be manic, and after that I'll be busy socialising (how very dare I?! LOL), so please accept my apologies for not paying you a visit.

I will be making an ATC or two, by the way, although I'll not be able to join the Crop this year, sadly, so do let me know if you'd like to swap ahead of time and I may just get myself organised enough to do them in a timely manner.

Happy Hopping!

Morti

x