Update

Thank you so much for all your words of encouragement! They meant a lot.

I'm finally feeling better today: the fever has dropped, which makes me more efficient with the packing and all. We'll be moving on Saturday, and finish off on Sunday with the more fragile items (the sewing machines for instance!). Luckily, many strong friends will lend us a hand to carry everything from the 12th to the 11th arrondissement. I feel very touched that so many friends are willing to be so helpful! I'm going to bake batches of cakes and buy boxes of chocolate to thank them all.

I did manage to put the first stitches into San's round robin fabric - this is the perfect stress killer. As I started by daylight I wanted to make the most of the sunny day, and started with the lighter colours. I'm just done with the white.

Here is a ridiculous update picture... Just for San as I promised it to her!

I'm not telling you which design it is... as I would like San to guess it!
I apologize for this not very interesting, monochrome picture...

That's all for tonight... I guess I need to make some dinner. We've had a crazy day!

A whole lot of news

Hello everyone!

It's more than time I told you about the week-end and my mother's birthday. It was great, my mother was ever so happy and loved her gifts...
The only bad thing is that I caught the flu... and I feel terrible.

Besides, on top of our work Seb and I have been very busy lately calling estate managers and visiting flats: the flat we're living in at present is great, except that it's located in a very busy street and we get a lot of noise at night (as there's no double glazing). I've had serious insomnia troubles on and off for the last 5 years, and I simply can't sleep when the place is not perfecly quiet. I'm just fed up with this! I feel I'm very near to getting over my insomnia problem, but I will never succeed if there's noise... The final impetus came from our stay in the Alps - I managed to sleep as well as last year when I was living in North Carolina... And we've become even more sensitive to the noise since we're back.

To make a long story short, today we finally found the right place. It's slightly larger, very smart (in the Haussmannian style), and looks out to an inner courtyard. The other wonderful thing is that we will be able to have a cat at last. This is one of my oldest dreams...
And it's closer to all the places we usually go to - both our works, my brother's, the "Gare du Nord" (the train station to go to Lille, where my parents and my 2 sisters live).

The only thing is... We have to move in 10 days! And I'm knee-deep in work... and sick.
I'm not sure how I'm going to cope... But some way or other we'll manage!

I hope you understand that I won't be able to blog much for the next few weeks... Please be patient! I'll be stitching and blogging again soon, from a whole new environment!

Snowdrops for my Mum

Tomorrow's my mother's birthday. We all managed to take the day off but we didn't tell her... She's expecting us for the weekend after this one, and we'll make her a big surprise! I'll be at my parents' just after lunch and in the evening my brother and sisters will come too... We all planned the birthday dinner between us, and I said I'd bake the Birthday cake; as we're going to be quite a lot (we're four and we're all coming with our boy/girlfriends) I decided to make two cakes: an apple cobbler and a yummy, yummy chocolate cake. In France it's called a moelleux, meaning "soft"... it's the cake my Mum used to bake at our birthdays when we were kids, so I think it's her turn to be treated to one!

I didn't have time to create many gifts for her... So besides a DVD and a little crystal deer that I bought in the Alps, I merely embroidered and framed snowdrops - which are after all the flowers you can find most easily in the French (and probably many other!) countryside in February.

I'm happy with the way it turned out! But... this wasn't hand embroidered. Can you believe it? The design is by Ellen Maurer-Stroh; I believe she first creates the hand-embroidery design and only then converts them into machine-embroidery designs. Hence the high quality of her work.

That's all for tonight... I've got a lot to do before leaving for tomorrow... Although I'm going at my parents' to celebrate my mother's birthday, I can't afford not to work until Sunday evening, so I'm planning which books etc. to bring there...

Have a nice week-end everyone!

Stitching Blogger's Question: Favorite Fabrics

What is your favorite fabric to stitch on??

Oh dear... I haven't experienced enough with stitching fabric to be able to tell. I've been mostly stitching on aida, simply because it is the easiest to get in France. The simplest and cheapest way is to buy online from the UK... I do have some evenweave but haven't found the time to stitch on it yet. When I was 19 I remember stitching onto a piece of linen, that wasn't intended for cross stitch but that was well on grain (this is a word used in sewing... but I'm sure you understand what it means!). I liked its deep blue colour and stitched a kite in pastel colors on it. It actually turned out fine, very delicate as the stitches were so small (I weren't using waste canvas) but still regular.

What's it all about?

Hello everyone! I hope the week was good. I posted my round robin parcel to my friend Namuelle this morning. It feels weird not to have my pink fabric around anymore! Apart from that there's nothing new "craftwise", as I'm working truly hard on my dissertation at the moment. But tonight I took a break and browsed through the online xstitch shops... I've been wanting to give a try to Newton for quite a

while and I saw that one of my favourites was on sale at sew and so!

Luckily it's one of Sébastien's favourites as well so guess what... He just ordered it for me! Isn't that sweet? I hardly hinted that I wanted it! Hardly.

(I also like the saying below Newton because it's in the lyrics of a song I love by Ella Fitzgerald, "No sense"...)

And yet... Honestly, I don't know when I'll be able to stitch him as San's RR will soon be there, and I still need to finish the Poppy Fairy, and then I want to stitch a French kit (the Angel of Sleep by Angèle & Cie), and the Lesley Teare sampler from the January's Cross-stitcher... I'm not even talking of my sewing projects, which are just as plentiful.

And all those shall have to wait, as I plan to work a big big lot this month: you know when you're in a sort of "productive impetus"? You feel just have to seize the opportunity and "work till you drop" (or almost ). That's exactly how I feel since I'm back from the Alps and I really want to make the most of it.

So my only crafty project in the next few weeks will have to be San's fabric. But of course, that means I'm taking some advance on my schedule and after that I can have plenty of time stitching and sewing my summer's clothes!

Just why do we need to sleep? It would be so nice if we could spend our days working, and our nights crafting and having fun!

ps : Blogger changed their commenting system and it's much, much better! Even non-users of Blogspot can now add their own website addy at last... I think Haloscan is no longer needed so I removed the link from my posts!

Stitching Blogger's Question: Crafty Hobbies

Here's my answer to Renée's "Stitching Blogger's Question":

The question this time around comes from AngelSan and is:

Is cross stitch your only crafty hobby or do you have others?

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you all know this answer to this. I love all crafts provided, that I feel... "creative". And those change with time... Right now I'm more into "fiber arts" because I can't paint in my flat; but I used to paint a lot when I was younger and lived at my parents'. Cross-stitching has been my most consistent hobby - I've been cross-stitching since my teens. But I feel I've really discovered a passion in sewing since last year. I believe this passion will be lifelong.

So today I'd say that cross-stitch is my relaxation hobby, and sewing my passion hobby. :)

Travel log... a day late...

Hello everyone!
Sorry I'm a day late in posting photos of the travel log. I was working so hard yesterday that time flied and when I finally stopped working it was more than time to go to bed.

So here is my little travel log at last...

Here are the front and the back:

I'm quite happy with it as I created it from scratch, including the bookcover pattern and the embroidery design. A while ago I had sketched a cat after one of Margaret Sherry's drawings, and digitized it. This seemed the perfect occasion to stitch it with my embroidery machine.

I also embroidered the names of every stitcher at the back of the cover, in the order in which they will stitch on my piece.

I'm also happy that my bookcover idea came out allright at the first try! It's lined, and has flaps to secure the travel cover inside (I haven't stapled the rest of the pages yet), and I sandwiched some ribbon between the lining and the flaps+top to make ties:

Now I was wondering, would anybody like to have the explanations for the cover? I plan to alter the dimensions to fit a paperback and to make one for to add to my gifts for my mother's Bday, which is just around the corner!

Round Robin fabric all ready!

Hello everyone! Hope you had a nice weekend!

Here's what I did this week-end:

The kitty is one of Margaret Sherry'd "coaster cats". Here's a close-up on him:

I stitched the round robin title with Anchor ""Iris" multicolor threads. It takes a bit more time as you can't use the loop method to secure the threads and you need to make the full crosses one at a time, to create the colour change effect.

I'm a bit ashamed: I still haven't had the chance to take a pic of my travel log to show you... days are so full right now.
But well, at least you've got this little kitty to look at today! I'll really try to take some photos of the travel log tomorrow...

End of a busy week

Hello everyone! Hope you all had a nice week. I've been very busy since last week's holidays, but I feel refreshed after this time in the Alps. So I'm getting a whole lot done workwise, and this makes me feel even better.
Have you noticed also how the days are finally getting longer?

I also found some extra time and thinking to fiddle around my travel log for the round robin I'm involved in. It's all done, and I'm really happy how it turned out as I created everything from scratch! I'll post pictures later...

Now I'm working on the title square of my round robin piece.
And I still need to write into this travel log...


Oh, and it's more than time I answered Renée's "Stitching Blogger's Question"!

On a scale of 1 to 5 with 1 being the lowest and 5 being the highest, how comfortable do you feel changing a design's colors or the entire color scheme? Elaborate if you wish.

A year ago I would have said 2: I only changed colours very occasionally. But since I purchased 100 skeins of Anchor threads last summer, I'm getting more and more inclined to change colours - when stitching DMC designs, and also when I don't have the Anchor colour that the pattern asks for. And I find that the more I experiment with it, the more I enjoy it! So I'd say 4 now - knowing that I'm still a bit afraid of making mistakes...

Another reason is that I've started machine embroidery. A lot of the fun comes from choosing the threads and finding the right harmony.

Have a great Saturday everyone! News of the travel log later.

Back from Fairyland

Hello everyone!
I hope you all had a nice week and week-end.
I'm back from a fairytale world...

It was really cold (-15°C in the afternoon on the first days), and we had loads and loads of snow (well, too much actually: there was no going out on the first day, and we skied twice under a snow storm!). But how beautiful and magic it all was, coming from Paris! And I know how to coss-country ski now. I love it, I really do! I think (at least, Sébastien thinks - he's been skiing for years) I got the hang of it. I fell only once, on the first day - and honestly, this was with a storm of snowflakes flowing into my face.

In the evenings, once we were all warmed up, I read and stitched (provided my arms were still in working order!) all my heart's content. I read the whole of the Forsyte Saga! Something I could never have managed to do otherwise...
Look how cosy it looked.

Now you must be wondering what I was stitching... It's "Cautious" from Margaret Sherry's Cattitudes Calendar! I was stitching it onto my round robin powder pink fabric...
And tonight I finished him! So here he is:

I'm not sure yet where I'm going to put his name and mine... Maybe put "Cautious" above him and my name in the right-hand corner?
I really thought I'd be done in the train back from the Alps, but this was counting without the green background... This took me forever and those rows and rows of green nearly took all the fun away. I think I'll spare my fellow stitchers the background in the robin.

Anyway, I'm glad I put him to life - even though he looks so nervous!
This is the 3rd Margaret Sherry cat I've stitched to far... Believe me, it's far from being the last.