Birthdays and Dragons

Birthdays and Dragons

My birthday is coming up, actually it’s next Monday. I don’t know why but I still have an absolute childish glee around my birthday. When I was working I always made sure I had the day off. I would often spoil myself rotten and and get a manicure and take myself out to dinner and maybe even a deliciously wonderful film that I knew only I would want to go to.

Even now as a young newly-wed trying to live on one salary while waiting for immigration to decide if I can work and live in NZ for another two years I find myself looking forward to it. I know we won’t be going out to dinner and I won’t be doing a day of luxury, all manicures in this house are DIY. Part of what excites me is that this is my first birthday with my husband and I’m actually rather looking forward to being 30 (I’m only turning 29 this year). Every birthday I have now is a reminder that I’ve spent another year with my amazing husband.

I did make myself something a bit special for my birthday I tatted myself a dragon! Now I’m not a huge fan of dragons, and I know there are some amazing patterns for dragons out there, but this guy was too adorable. He reminded me a lot of Pete’s dragon a childhood favourite film. So I introduce to you Brookie’s dragon!

He’s Martha Ess’s paprika pattern done in navy DMC perle 8 with silver lined beads(whichare a bit too big but oh well)  I then permanently stiffened him with gel acrylic(same stuff they put on nails) to use as a bookmark thus why he has a super long tail. I will definitely be making more of these in the future!

P.S. thanks for all the well wishes, I’m still absolutely pathetically sick sleeping most of the day.

A whole lot of tatting

A whole lot of tatting

The thing with being confined to bed for weeks at a time is there isn’t much you can do. If you happen to also have ADHD like myself it can very quickly drive you up the wall.  Luckily I’ve had a drawer fulla tatting to keep me company. I haven’t got a whole lot of things completed like one would expect, mostly cause my energy starts to wane after a few rings and chains but here’s what I’ve been up to.

Tatting 002 

This is my one and only completed item, a simple collar tatted with DMC cotton perle 8 which is all I had at the time. I think this needs a bit of a starching and blocking again.

Tatting 003

This is a border That I have made up as I went along. It’s tatted in Twilleys size 20 crochet cotton and I’m not too fond of the thread it keeps twisting and turning and in general being a PITA

Tatting 004

Finally I have this an edging from Bessie M. Attenborough’s The Craft Of Tatting. I’m really liking how this is coming along I think I might make it a hankie edging. It is tatted in vintage coats mercerised cotton size 20 I originally didn’t like this thread because it was so stiff but have grown to appreciate the crisp look it creates.

UFO-a-go-go part 1

UFO-a-go-go part 1

as I laid out all my WIP/UFO’s that I’m actively wanting to work on a get done soon(some have time limits some just have been on the go for too long) I realized I have a lot of them that I’m currently working on thus why it feels like I’m going nowhere slowly. So in interest in not making and epic post of doomy-doom-DOOM I have split it into two posts. today will be about my needlework(I have more than what is seen here on the go these are just what I’m working on finishing!!

I have the skirt which I haven’t take pictures of cause it’s still just endless stem stitch at this point… but it’s going along fine and will hopefully be finished soon so I can proceed onto other parts of the skirt… It’s hard for me to work on this for too long because it’s such a big project all in white on black which also means I can only do it before 7pm when the lighting gets wonky. I can do maybe an hour before my fingers twitch for something lighter and colourful, although i can say this thank goodness for seat frames.

This is probably the project I want to work on the most cause it’s so much fun and beautiful. I really need to make myself a light box so I can trace designs a bit easier I also need a water soluble pen the pencil isn’t really precise as I would like. I’m loving the colours that I used for this so bright a vibrant, I believe the Victorians would approve. I originally thought this would be the pocket it’s self I think I might be more prone to turning it into a patch to sew onto the pocket. I still haven’t decided what I’m going to do about the border part of me is really unsure about doing it all in grey satin stitch, and might have to add blue whipped stitch over it or maybe some green vines with French knot buds, like I did on the stem portion.

This is a tatted necklace that I’m working on as you can see I’ve gotten ever so far… I think I was rather let down when I had to redo 12 hours of work thanks to a stupid mistake that I did very early on! Well I’ve put this on my bedside so hopefully I will be able to get to it a bit everynight!

This project is multi purpose, as I have gotten more into embroidery I have collected lots of needles and need to know what is what, and thus I need a needle book. I’ve also been really interested in quilting lately and started(and put somewhere I cannot find) a English Paper Piecing quilt, in a grandmother’s garden pattern. I figure since I’m hand stitching all the pieces I might as well hand quilt it all too. Finally my fabulous new Aunt I inherited through my marriage gave me some excellent 6inch squares of Aussie fabrics, not really enough for me to do too much with, but enough for a few small projects. This is the back of my needle book which is going to be hand quilted using some of my favorite fabrics from the stash(who knows what else I will do with them :-p ) (p.s. it’s not biased i just too the picture crooked and in a hurry cause a naughty bunny was trying to eat the frame which is loaned to me)

This is a project I started eons ago; before Ryan proposed I got started on a wedding sampler, NOT as a hint, but because I knew we were getting married(we both did) I just knew how long it takes me to finish things. well that was August 2 years ago and we have been married 4.5 months and this is where the wedding sampler looks today… very far from being done…. yes I know! Well I plan on fixing that I hope to finish this this year! one of the nice things about not finishing it till after my wedding is that I can add a band that has the Celtic knotwork that is on our wedding bands.

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