Peas in a pod

Oh goodness, I'm not very good at this posting lark, am I?  My apologies for my absence over the last few weeks.  To be honest, I was on holiday for two weeks (and busily embroidering for you instead).

Well, I have finally finished the sampler for my friend's little girl (mind you, at the rate I'm going, she'll be married before I've ironed and posted it to her!).  So she and her brother will now have 'matching' samplers.

I embroidered the 'brother sampler' shortly after he was born:

And have adapted the design to suit a girl, as you can see, by changing the colours and some of the toys depicted.  My remit included her favourite colour (purple) and that she's a horse fan, so I've done my best to include those requests.

There were a few dilemmas as I progressed, including the colour of the alphabet around the edge (it started out green!), were the 'little ladies' in the centre too pale, and most crucially, which letters of the alphabet should I put on the blocks!?!  Actually, it isn't as daft as it sounds really.  As you will see from the 'brother sampler', they have A, B and C on them, but as his name starts with G, that was easy (see the individual block on the right).  But with her name starting with B, I thought the 'sister sampler' would be a bit repetetive if there were two blocks with B on them.  Instead I opted for the end of the Welsh alphabet (which follows the original design by Brenda Keyes anyway).  I also thought of putting a B on the horse's saddle, but decided against it in the end.
Please post your comments on the two samplers - I'd love to hear what you all think!

Madame Defarge strikes again

Last week I was at the Llangollen International Eisteddfod.  I've been going there since I was a baby and during my teens (at the height of my embroidery obsession) I used to take my latest project with me and sit in the pavilion during the competitions and stitch.  We always sit in the same block and over the years have got to know the others that also sit in the area and a lovely man from Windsor, who we'd see there with his wife every year, started to call me Madame Defarge, from A Tale of Two Cities, because I'd stitch while the competitors danced/sang - a bit like the character knitting while the poor victims of la guillotine faced their terrible fate.

So, Madame Defarge was back again at Llangollen last week, stitching away as the choristers and dancers fought it out for first prize!  And I made some progress on my sampler (which will be the sister sampler to the one in 'They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace') at last.  I still have a way to go, but considering I'd only managed a couple of letters of the alphabet border and the bulk of the name before last week, I'm quite pleased with my progress.

“A man is known by the books he reads” - Ralph Waldo Emerson*

I know that this is meant to be a craft blog, and that I got distracted by the roses in the garden the other week.  Well, it has happened again, but this time it isn't the garden that has distracted me (well, how could it with this weather?!), but books.

I've been looking at all sorts of lovely blogs and pinterest boards recently, and quite a lot of them also mention books they've read/are reading/enjoy.  So, I've decided to do the same - we'll see how well I keep it up in the months to come!

So, since the beginning of June I've read ...
Julie & Julia - Julie Powell (the book of the film about French cookery that stars Meryl Streep)
Das Caffeehaus - Roman Rausch (a German novel about a ... you guessed it ... a coffee house, set in Würzburg, where I lived for a year)
Code to Zero - Ken Follett (I'd already read this, but hadn't listed it so thought I'd missed it!)
White Out - Ken Follett
Neverwhere - Neil Gaiman
Auf der anderen Seite ist das Gras viel grüner - Kerstin Gier (another German novel - chick lit this time)

I'm rather proud that I've managed to read two novels in German in as many months.  It has been ages since I've read in German for pleasure and high time too.  Whenever I go there, I buy myself some books in the hope that I'll read them and improve my German, but they seem to end up collecting dust on the bookshelves.  I bought the first over the Jubilee weekend when I was in Würzburg and the author is from the town, so it is lovely to read about familiar places/streets.  The second was bought on my birthday trip to Berlin in the autumn and had been waiting patiently for me to finish a fascinating (but heavy) diary of a women in that city at the end of WWII (need I mention, that I still haven't finished it?)

We have a library at the office where people donate books and you can borrow them for as long as you want (v, v handy!).  That is where I got the two Ken Follett books.  I've read quite a few of his books and tend to buy them in charity shops or jumble sales, but the office library is another great place for them.  As I mention above, I keep a list of books I've read dating back to just after my graduation when I felt I could finally read whatever I wanted, rather than what was on a reading list!  Somehow or other, though, I noticed recently that quite a few of my favourite authors' books hadn't been listed - hence how I thought I hadn't read Code to Zero.

*When I was looking for a quote as the title of this post, I was tempted by Maud Casey's "I was born with a reading list I will never finish" - like so many lists in my life!

There is no rose of such virtue

I know these photos aren't anything to do with sewing or embroidery, or even crafts, but I couldn't resist sharing our beautiful roses with you!

Handel (we think!)

Handel again - this was in the garden when we moved in

Cariad (Welsh for love) - a gift from MIL

I'm cheating here - this is a sneaky peak over the fence to our neighbours' lovely apricot beauty

Neat and tidy

On my long list of jobs to do I've had one item for ages, namely making a replacement pouch for my manicure set.  I bought a handy little set at Superdrug to keep in my handbag a while ago and although it is very useful, it came in a rather boring black pouch.  Whilst it is quite a sturdy pouch in many ways, the binding around the edge has started to come away, so it was a good excuse to make a prettier one for myself.
Now, being an expert procrastinator, I've had this on hand-written 'to-do' lists week after week and on reminders on my mobile phone and computer and have continued to skip it.
Until the Friday before last that is.

We were going away for the weekend and I had a pretty long list of stuff to do to prepare, but I thought that I just had to get on with it and make this thing.  So, I did!

I'd used the 'old' one as a template for a pattern and had rummaged through my supplies to see what I fancied using.  Years ago I'd bought some Liberty print bias binding for something or other, but never used it, so I quite fancied having some of that for my pouch, but I didn't really have any fabric that was suitable that matched.  Then I had some lovely red Liberty print fabric that was big enough, but the bias binding I had that matched was too wide (and I didn't really fancy trying to cut it down).  In the end I went with a slightly impractical colour scheme of white and blue.  It will probably get filthy pretty quickly, but at least it is 100% cotton so it can go in the washing machine.  It is far from perfect, but will do as a 'prototype' for now and is actually big enough to hold my lipstick too!

Curtain up

One of my (many) crafting projects this year will be new curtains for our bedroom and living room.  We've chosen the fabric for both rooms, but are just waiting to get new windows organised before we put up the curtain poles and then make the curtains.  It is a long drawn-out process, but I'm sure it will be lovely when it's done.

However, last year finished with my first 'make' for the house (we've been living here for almost 2 years now) - kitchen blinds. It was a fairly simple decision to make choosing what sort of window covering I wanted in the kitchen - plain, simple Roman blinds.  Then I'd got it in my head that I wanted stripes.  Friends of ours have some lovely stripey Roman blinds in their kitchen - totally the wrong colour for ours, but I'd got their fabric in my head and started looking for something similar in red and green (the accent colours we'd chosen for the otherwise plain, cream kitchen).

Who would have thought that finding stipes in red and green would have been sooooo difficult.  Red and blue - easy.  Pink and green - plenty.  But Green and Red - forget it!  We'd already started getting 'accent pieces' in a nice bright, pillar-box red and had some green bits too (not all the same type of green really, but it all seemed to work reasonably together), so that sort of tied us.

Thankfully, after trawling online fabric shops and fabric manufacturers, we finally found something suitable in good old John Lewis.  Not quite the pillar-box red I'd imagined, but lovely all the same.

After ordering the fabric and buying all the odds and ends to make the blinds work, it took me about 3-4 weekends to make them.  It was my first attempt at Roman blinds, and to be honest, I'm not sure I'll be making any more in a hurry (and I hadn't realised how difficult it was to sew in a straight line before).  But we are pleased with them (well, I will be once I've got over the critical-of-my-own-work stage).  The kitchen sounds so different now that they are up and it does brighten the place up a bit (it is fairly dark and north-facing).

So, here they are ....

Setting the table

I've been perusing some other crafty people's blogs recently (I'm being presumptious now and assuming that I'm crafty too!), and one of them reminded me of some napkins that I've half hemmed, but never finished (what's new?!).
Here they are:

So, that lovely blog inspired me to finally get my act together and finish them all some off.
Et voila!

So thank you Domestic Novice and may you (and I?) continue to inspire fellow crafters everywhere!