The End of November

 What a strange month it has been with dank, grey, damp days followed by bright crisp mornings with frost and the odd sleet shower and then howling wind, rain and floods. Now we are having a very mild couple of days before the temperature dips again. 

Tomorrow is officially the fist day of winter and being the first day of December I shall be making my first batch of mince pies of the season. The mincemeat has been maturing for the last couple of weeks and I am looking forward to my first taste. And of course my Advent calendar is hanging up and ready to go.

Since my last post I have completed the first Kingfisher sock and no 2 is well under way - pictures next time. I have also been busy quilting Wings and am almost at the end of the wide border - again, pictures next time.

But what I do have pictures of is my completed November Stitch Journal page which looks like this.

My photographs make it look like all the stitching was done in white but there are some cream threads in there too and the odd bit of sparkle here and there!

The table runner is completed and ready to wrap and gift. Sorry about the slightly skewy photos!

The big news of the week is that this came home with us from the charity shop yesterday!

It is a lovely Victorian writing slope which we could not leave behind. I have always wanted one of these.

It is in very good condition (and has a key for the working lock) and I have given it a good clean and polish. It smells delicious!

I love the ink stains and it has three secret drawers too. So looking forward to filling this with lots of stuff!

Well that is all from me for now - I am off to draw up my Stitch Journal page for December and sort some threads. Hope you have a great week and that I shall se you at Cheryll's on Friday for Friday Night with Friends.

FNWFs November

If you are just here for RSC then please feel free to scroll straight to the bottom!

 Friday was not a hugely productive day as other things were happening. However I completed my Stitch Journal piece for the day after lunch. It was the 1st of the month so I was starting on a new 'page'. Squares this month and I filled this one with some simple rows of herringbone.

I am working with white/off white threads this month and pulled out my white box of threads to work with.

In amongst all my threads are some old Pearsalls threads that came to me from my Nana and Aunt when I inherited their stash. Interesting because the bulk of their threads were Anchor stranded. Most of the Pearsalls are a fine floss which I tend to avoid as it is tricky to work with but in this box I found a couple of skeins of 'Broriche silk'.

 It's like a fine silk perle thread and I used it for the herringbone in my first square. It was a delight to work with I must say. Pearsalls the company intrigues me too as they are based in Taunton just down the road from me. They no longer make embroidery threads though, just concentrating on medical threads.

My brown leaf page is of course finished and here are a few pictures.

I did get some knitting done in the evening while watching TV - I made good progress up the leg of a new pair of socks.

As always I am using a West Yorkshire Spinners sock yarn, this one is called Kingfisher.

So that was my FNWFs - many thanks to Cheryll for hosting again this month.

In other news I have been busy quilting Wings - sorry no pics - and also had the sewing machine out during the week to quilt my Magic Lantern runner.

Trimming and binding to come but I must put this away for now - it is a Christmas present and I have a more urgent birthday present to produce!

Also I don't think I have shared with you all my RSC log cabins for the year. I laid them all out on the bed recently just for the fun of it - I have no intention of sewing them together until next year when I shall also have to find some sort of border fabric.

In fact, now that I look back - I don't seem to have shared pictures of my October brown log cabins, so here they are.

Linking up with Angela at some point!

Well that is me all caught up for now. Have a great week.

FNSI October

 It's a beautiful Sunday afternoon here after a night and morning of rain - storm Ashley, the first of the seasons named storms. Fortunately for us it was not as fierce as expected although more rain on top of what we have already had will be looking for somewhere to go.

Friday was a dry day and we had a few errands in town in the morning. I spent a couple of  hours in the afternoon catching up with friends so not much sewing happened. But I did of course do my Stitch Journal leaf for the day and the page is filling up nicely, if a bit too quickly!

I also cut the backing fabrics for my Magic Lantern runner which is now almost ready to layer up - just some little black feet to add first.

It does rather resemble a Dalek at the moment though!

In other sewing news I have been working away on quilting Wings and Pretty Things and have turned the first corner of the wide border.

And have been dipping into another white sampler piece destined for the tea and rust pot!

It will eventually be attached to the first piece and I am on the lookout for a suitable piece of driftwood to wrap it round.

So that is me all caught up, thanks to everyone else for their company and I will see you again soon.

End of an orange month

 And I have enjoyed my oranges, lovely to play around with some different threads and how warm and cosy orange is! Probably not appropriate for some parts of the UK which have seen high temperatures but here it's been in the low 20's. Very pleasant it has been too. Dry though and cracks are appearing in the garden and the grass is browning in places.

Anyway, back to orange and here is my Stitch Journal orange page completed and pressed ready to go away.

It is nice having different shapes to work in each month - next month is ovals but no RSC colour yet, hopefully it will come by tomorrow so I can make a start!

Over the last couple of weeks I have been working on my Boro flower panel and it has progressed nicely.

I have finally finished the blossom on the tree

and added some flowers to the right hand side.

It's filling up just as I imagined. Going to start on the left hand side next. 

I have had it in mind for some time to make a table runner for some friends. They are keen Magic Lantern collectors and I thought a lantern would make a great design for the runner. This week I finally planned out my design on squared paper and have most of the lantern put together using EPP. I just need to get to an LQS for some brassy gold fabric to make the lenses that need to go on the front. The doors also have 'portholes' which need the gold fabric too. Anyway, here it is so far - I plan to applique it to a cream background.

I have been busy knitting in the evenings whilst TV is on - football is back! Two pairs of socks on the go - I may have a finished sock or two next time I blog.

In the meantime

Happy stitching!