WOYWW 615 - caution warning, stitched spiders ahead!

 Greetings, Desk Hoppers!  Welcome to What's On Your Workdesk Wednesday!  All the deets are here, provided by our Mistress of the Hop, Julia...  Just a quickie from me this week, so I hope you'll excuse the brevity of language throughout.

I'm back. A brief absence, but an absence nonetheless.  No real excuses, just time gets away from you.  Plus the next bout of Stitch Wars is on, and time is a premium when you need to be a-stitching... LOL

So what gives at Morti Mansions this week?

The desk is a mess.  A proper mess.  What you can see front and centre is a stack of cards we've received over the last 18-24 months, including New Home cards!  they've been left to pile up on the Welsh dresser (hutch for our American friends) downstairs until I've had enough.  At the very least they're up here to go through, decide if any require keeping (like from the olds) and which can be thrown.  And if there's anything to be salvaged from them to make gift tags or components for other cards.  Do like a good recycled card, me.

Speaking of which, I never posted the outcome of my last Rudolph day, so here you are...

and a second one

Inspiration from Pinterest.  The ornament stamps were by Stampin' Up!, and  I used a Sakura Gelly Roll pen in white for the strings and doodle border.  The tall card was made using paper and components from various magazine freebies.  Again, inspo from Pinterest.  The next Rudolph Day is next Thursday...

I made these on 25 Feb, the day after my last blog hop, and I had a stark reminder of just how long I've been a crafter.  When I made the ornament card above, and heat embossed the ornaments in white, I managed to put my thumb through the lid of the EP pot.  Now, you could say it's French quality that caused it, LOL, but I've had two other pots go that way, brittle with age.  I've worked out, based on the fact that the pot is all in French, that I probably bought it back in 2004/5. The other two were bought for me by my mother when I was 15 and heat embossing had just become a "thing", back when it was de rigeur to use a toaster and judicious placement of fingers to avoid burning oneself.

Stitching-wise, I've been stitchin' up a storm.

Siren's Lament has moved on considerably...

As has Mr Moose.  He's looking adorable.  Won't be long before I'm done with brown and can do some other colours!

I've finally picked up the Peppermint Purple Stitch-A-Long, and am almost fully caught up with it.  I say almost - a new square was released today and I've yet to stitch that, but as of last night I was up to date with all the released elements at that point.

March Mayhem has not quite gone to plan.  I've managed three of my kits so far  The big spider needs to be fully finished off yet, with snipping out around the legs and a hanger attached.  A bit dismal, that we're halfway through the month and I've only managed three, but I tell myself it's three more than before and we still have two weeks left!  The first one I did, the lovely blue background for web and spider, has about 1300 stitches in it which is quite a bit, I can tell you!  The other two have about 700 and 500, for comparison. Considerably smaller.

What other news haveth I?  Well, the re-enactment season is somewhat upskittled but provided everyone plays ball and campsites can reopen on April 12th, we have a re-enactment social weekend where we can camp and see our friends, and spend some time ensuring kit is ready for the rest of the season, such as it may be.  Many events have been moved or cancelled - certainly those in April/May/June, but the July, August and September ones all seem to be going ahead at present.

Mr B has fixed the car - we needed a new fan for the heating and air con - t'was rather horrid driving along without it.  The windows kept misting up which meant we had the windows open and in January, was not fun!  The fan cost us a whole £330 new from Renault, but fitting was free as he did it himself.  I'm not sure what labour is at Renault, but at the garage 300 yards up the road its £50 an hour, and the whole fit from removing the old to replacing the new took about 5 hours.  Quite a saving...

The offending broken fan

Anyway, this is turning into a ramble, so I shall leave you with a lovely photo from a couple of weeks ago, sunset up on Carn Brea, 

and a "and finally" in honour of our lovely Shaz.

WOYWW 579 - except it's Thursday

Oops - missed yesterday.  Intent was there, even took the photo, but then forgot to post!  Doh. Some habits are hard to get back into but it will be there.

Not much has happened this week.  I've progressed somewhat on the Barn Owl cross stitch, and the back for Miss Bs jumper has been finished.  I've now got to work out how to do the sleeves, and connect all the parts together, but I'm more than halfway through and the end is in sight.

Here’s a view from my stitching “desk”:

Home-wise, the car has caused us a major headache - it needs a new radiator and is currently sitting mournfully outside the mechanic's, waiting for the new rad to be delivered and fitted.  Poor old girl - she's done us proud over the last five years, including driving all the way to Umbria and back last year.  I suspect she's protesting now!

Unfortunately the not inconsiderable cost of replacing the radiator means that our plans to go away for a medieval social event next month have had to be cancelled but we will make good use of the time off getting the house a little more sorted, and prepping for a proper event at month-end, when we go to Herstmonceux Castle.

A new phone also became top priority over the weekend but it does mean that Miss B gets my hand-me-down once we've replaced the battery.

That's it, really, in terms of news for this week.  Until next time!

On the dangers of archery.......

One of the little known (well, to non-archers) but common problems with archery is that of the breaking bow.

No particularly common with the fibreglass, take-down composites or compound bows, it is - unfortunately - an all too common occurrence with wooden bows, and especially longbows.

Witness below - what happens when a wooden bow breaks at full draw (that is, the string pulled all the way back).

In nearly 20 years of shooting, I've only ever witnessed this event four times.  And each of those four times the archer has stepped away from the broken bow with no injuries at all.

We thank all the Gods (and Goddesses) that she still has two eyes.

Sketch Saturday again

Despite having said I must blog more often, here we are a whole week later.... LOL

It's my second week as guest designer over on Sketch Saturday and we had another fabulous sketch again. Keeping up with the medieval theme - here's a card that uses minimal stamping - the only stamps used were the alphabet to create the word "sempre".



Papers used were by SEI - fabulous, yummy sheets of 12x12 from their Windsor collection which I picked up at the Craft Barn on Wednesday - and the fleur de lys is a Tattered Angel glimmer chip. Metallic cards in Mirri gold, mirri copper and matt gold. In the two top corners I've used the new Card Candy, by Craftwork Cards. I have to say, it's fabulous. I suddenly came to the conclusion at the end of making the card that it just needed a little extra, but by then it was too late to add big shiny brads. As I hadn't bought gold Card Candy, I used dark blue ones from the Army & Navy set, which I then added some gold metallic rub on to, and attached using foam pads. Perfect! Inks used were Distress Inks in Aged Mahogany and Frayed Burlap (as well as some encore gold just to lift the colours a bit) mainly used to colour the glimmer chip and to which I added more metallic rub on.

Oh, I lie. There's one other stamp used and that's a crackle background from LB Crafts.

I think that's it - if you have any questions please feel free to ask!

And one last point of geek-interest. I've used the Italian word "Sempre", which means always, rather than the Latin word "Semper". Why? One reason, and one only - I thought sempre looked better!

Medieval card

I don't know why - maybe it's because of my interest in all things medieval - but I seem to be most comfortable creating with this theme. Here is my latest card, which I've made for my sister-in-law's birthday.

I scored and folded an A4 sheet of black card, onto which I layered two different patterns of paper from the Robert Adams Medieval CD; the rubber stamp is an unknown I picked up from ebay, stamped in black versafine onto white card and layered up onto silver mirri. The metal embellishment was a pie case dry embossed using a Dreamweaver stencil. I love it, I hope Ginnie does! It's quite a simple card, but looks very sophisticated.