Needles and Thread, not Yarn and Hooks

Guess what? I’m stitching again!

My inspiration over the new Chatelaine designs lasted longer than the time it takes to get home, play with the girls, feed them and get them to bed! Yippee!!

I actually went and got out Medieval Town Mandala, set it up on q-snaps, and got stitching!

Gosh – I’m so d@mn pleased with myself! I’m loving every second!

Here’s roughly where I’d got to the last time I shared a pic –

I’d finished part 5 (of 12) and was making a start on part 6.

And here’s where I am now. Still part 6, obviously, but a little further on, I'm working on the big building in the centre of the north side of the square.

I’ve gone back to working on Gay Ann Rogers idea of 12 stitches per day, or as I do it, at least 12 stitches a day or as many stitches as I can fit in to the time slot I’ve allowed for it. So, what I’ve showed there represents almost a whole week of stitching.

It doesn’t make for fast progress, but it’s wonderful just to be doing it again!

Happy Dancing

Woo hoo - I'm dead chuffed with this! Yesterday I completed part 5 of Medieval Town Mandala - yay!


It's only taken me 2 years to stitch these 4 turquoise and gold corners. As there are still another 7 parts to go, it looks like it could be another 14 years before I finally finish this one!

Anyway, I'll keep going with it for now. I don't have a lot of time at the moment to dig through my stash and plan anything new to stitch, so it's quite useful just to plod on with this and I'm quite enjoying it. There is lots of planning going on in my head - I just hope I don't forget it all before I can do something about it!

So MTM is the main focus of my stitching, but there are bits and pieces of crochet going on too. I put this together last week, having seen similar on Flickr.


And someone I know was very pleased with her new pink sunglasses last week!

MTM part 4 finish

As it says in the title, I've now finished part 4 of Chatelaine's Medieval Town Mandala.


I was three quarters done when Iona was born and finished the fourth side on Monday. I've now made a good start to part 5 - I've been really looking forward to the turquoise silks in part 5, so I'm going to enjoy this one!

Iona is doing really well and is a wonderful wee girl. I just wish she would settle a bit easier and sleep better. Sometimes it feels like a real fight to get her to go to sleep, even though she cries and cries and you can hear in her voice just how tired she is. Some days it's a struggle to get her to sleep at all for more than 15 minutes at a time between early morning and late evening, and wants to be held and cuddled all the time, so it can be heavy going!

However, it's still early days - she'll only be 3 weeks old tomorrow! I can't believe where the time has gone already, sometimes I feel like the time is running away from me and I haven't been paying attention. I want to be able to savour every second.

Alexander, my son, is beeing really good too. I think at first after Iona and I came home, he felt rather neglected, but he can see now how much attention a baby needs but also we're trying very hard to keep to his normal routine, so he still gets time to snuggle in bed with me at the end of the day.


A big thank you to everybody who commented on my previous post and for all the good wishes. I promise to vist all your blogs and thank you all individually over the next week or two.

Stitchy update no. 1 - MTM

I'm rather pleased with where I got to over the weekend as I achieved the goals I had set myself and even got slightly more done than I'd expected.

This one I'm particularly pleased with - I've finished part 3 of Chatelaine's Medieval Town Mandala!

Isn't it gorgeous? I love all the beads and sparkle, and the turquoise colours are just beautiful. I'm looking forward to more turquoise in part 5! The over 1 butterflies were a nuisance to stitch, but well worth it. Did you know that it takes longer to frog one of them than it does to stitch it in the first place? LOL I managed to get one of them a stitch too close to the grasses so didn't have space for the bead flower underneath. That was one mistake I couldn't ignore.

I'd love to keep going with MTM for now but have switched to Paradigm Lost this week as I'd like to keep adding to it fairly regularly. I'll also be getting Lizzy's RR to stitch on before too long.

But MTM is still calling to me - can't be a bad thing!

My first PIF!

I'm feeling very brave for having signed up for my first PIF (pay it forward) on Deb's blog. So now it's my turn.

I will send a stitchy gift to 3 lovely people who sign up for my PIF by leaving a comment on this post. In return, you should also offer a PIF yourself.

I'm really looking forward to doing this. I don't think I'll be sending out any PIFs before Christmas, but I'll start planning and try to get them done before baby comes along in April!

In other stitchy news, I picked up MTM again a couple of weeks ago and am now nearly finished part 2. I'm very pleased and I've really enjoyed stitching on it. Here's how things stood last Sunday morning - I've finished the outer gold box now, so only the backstitching and beads to go!


My chart for Paradigm Lost has now arrived for the Snowbird's SAL. And I finally ordered my fabric and floss for it. I can't believe how long it took me to decide what floss to use! First, I found a lovely varigated green Anchor thread that I thought would be perfect, but then discovered that it looks like this is an old colour as I can't get enough of the floss for the design! So I had to start looking again.

I've finally settled on a DMC varigated floss in shades of light blue, lilac and grey, fading to white. And I'm stitching on Antique White jobelan. I'm really looking forward to getting started and seeing how the design looks in these colours. All other versions of this design I've seen use darker, stronger colours and I'm really excited to see how it looks in the paler, more delicate colours.

Thanks to everyone who commented on my finished Starflake - I'm glad you all like it as much as I do! And thanks to Anita for pointing out that I neglected to name the designer. For anyone else who's interested, Starflake is designed by Patricia Ann Designs. The grey and pink colour scheme is an alternative colour scheme included with the chart although it is illustrated in the blue/white colours. I just thought the blue/white combination looked too cold.

Now a huge thank you to everyone who congratulated me on my pregnancy! I feel great now that I've told everybody amd am managing to stop going around all the time desperately trying to hold my stomach in! LOL I've been browsing around the web looking into Natal Hypnotherapy which looks interesting. I've also found a lot of info on VBAC which threw me a bit as I'd never considered that there might be an issue with my having had a caesarean last time. And why does everything I read assume that having a caesarean is a bad experience? When I look at my beautiful, healthy, happy son, how could it possibly be anything other than positive?

Plans – HA!

I hadn’t planned to blog today, but have got myself feeling rather stressed out, and need to let off a bit of steam. It’s turning into one of those weeks when everything seems stressful.

And a colleague is off work this week meaning that a chunk of their work and responsibility has landed on me, just when I felt I was getting on top of things. Every day I seem to be moving slightly further away from the goals I set myself this week.

I think I’m also going to have to accept the fact that I’m falling behind with St Petersburg. It’s half way into June and I don’t feel as if I’m progressing very well. I knew this would happen, and in some ways, I’m surprised it didn’t happen earlier, so I’m pleased to have made such a good start. I also know that because of holidays in July and my sister’s baby due in August, I’m unlikely to be able to keep up then either. I'm also sadly neglecting MTM and would love more time for it.

So, I’m going to accept it now and revise my stitching plans (again!). No pressure on myself to even attempt to keep up with St Pete. I may even take a complete break from it, even though I really am enjoying it!

The Mill Hill kits I’m stitching for DS’s teachers are nagging at me, and I don’t like the one I’m currently working on. I really don’t think it’s a good idea to be stitching while telling yourself how much you hate it. However, I will finish it. I may stop working on St Pete just so that I can finish it sooner.


So the revised plan, when I get round to it, is 2 weeks St Pete/2 weeks MTM per month. Weekends flexible as it's been quite nice to do something completely different at the weekend.


I spent no more than 30 mins on St Pete yesterday, but spent last night dreaming/worrying constantly about it and, for some strange reason, the story CDs my DS has been listening to (Terry Pratchett's Truckers read by Tony Robinson (seems to have cured DS of his obsession with the Hobbit!)).

Definately time to chill out!

On Tintock Tap …….

I’ve been on holiday from work this week, staying with my parents in south Lanarkshire. The scenery is beautiful, weather great, and as usual, it's going to be a wrench to leave and head down south again tomorrow.

This is the view I have to look out on while doing my stitching –


The hill is Quothquan Law. Behind me and beyond a row of houses and some fields is Tinto.


The stitching you may have noticed is Medieval Town Mandala. Despite having part 2 of St Petersburg to work on, I didn’t particularly want to dismantle and transport my huge scroll frame, so MTM it is this week. I’ve now completed part 1, despite a little confusion over the backstitching (despite looking at both colour and black and white charts, I still wasn’t completely certain how it worked). The fountain also took me 3 goes.

Anyway, I’m now making excellent progress on part 2, after checking other stitchers’ work on the Internet to be sure it really does come so close to part 1. I’m not entirely certain of the benefit of the gold backstitching round the blue flower beds in part 1 when the gold border, although a different shade of gold, lies so close in part 2.


Finally, the doting mum takes over as we climbed Tinto this morning. It’s the first time my 6 year old son has done anything like this and I’m very proud of him!


It’s the cairn on top of Tinto that the Tintock Tap rhyme refers to.

Kitting a Chatelaine

This is a subject which has been occupying me faaaar too much over the last few weeks, so I thought I'd get it all down online.

Many Chatelaine designs use a variety of silk threads, both solid colours and varigated. As they're silk, this significantly adds to the cost of the project. Fortunately, Martina Weber also publishes a DMC conversion for these projects so that stitchers can choose how much they wish to spend or swap out those threads they dislike. The question of buying beads also needs to be considered as Martina normally uses Delica beads, but also produces a conversion to Mill Hill.

I've now got 2 Chatelaine projects started and will be adding a third fairly soon. Each of them has been kitted in a different way.

Project number 1 - Watergarden
Watergarden uses quite a lot of DMC threads, as well as silks, so is easier than for many other designs to get hold of all the materials. However, for this design, I chose the oprion of making a simple purchase from European Cross Stitch for all the silk threads and Delica beads. This really was the simple, easy option.

Project number 2 - Medieval Town Mandala
I started this project on my birthday but have made little progress to date as I discovered I have a couple of threads missing. Other than that, I have all the silk threads for this project, no DMCs at all. In this case, the silks were all collected as Christmas and birthday presents from my family. I emailed them a list of the threads needed and suggested a couple of online shops to buy from. From my point of view, this worked our fine, but I have now discovered a couple of threads missing and I haven't been able to find an online source in the UK. I've now emailed European Cross Stitch who have the necessary threads and will be able to send me them.

For the beads, I bought several of the colours required on ebay, but have one colour I don't have yet. I know of one or two online shops that stock this bead colour, but it seems a bit ridiculous to pay more in postage that the actual price of the beads!

I haven't made much progress stitching this one as I discovered early on that I needed to use the threads I'm missing. I could keep going, but would prefer not to as I don't want to risk mistakes.

Project number 3 - St Petersburg White Nights
This will be a 12 month project with the chart issued in monthly installments. The materials list and DMC conversion were issued in early February and the first chart will be issued on 1st March.

For this project, I've decided to go with the DMC conversion rather than use the majority of the silks. That part at least is straightforward! The problem really is to decide which of the varigated silks to keep and which to swap for DMCs. There are some online shops and thread producers who show sufficiently detailed photos of the thread to see just how much varigation there is. Even then, it's still not as good as having the actual threads in your hand. However, I have made my choice on this basis, and I'll see how it goes.

For the beads, I've given in and simply ordered the bead pack from European Cross Stitch.



Although I've mentioned European Cross Stitch several times already, I haven't mentioned the different options they offer for kitting a Chatelaine. For St Petersburg, they offer full kits with all fabric, threads and beads. You can get a kit without the fabric, without the solid colour silks, or just the bead pack. On other designs, you can order only the silk threads. I see that Needlecraft Corner too offers a similar service for some Chatelaine designs, althout I've never bought from them at all.

I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that, for me, European Cross Stitch is the answer. In future, I may just opt for a full kit minus solid coloured silks and fabric - the other ways are too much hassle!