Bristol Sampler update

 Hi

Do you remember my post about the Bristol Sampler that had been in my family for several years? Thanks to Jacob at Modern Folk Embroidery I now know that it has been in my family since 1887 !

It appears that Elizabeth Travel was my great grandmother. More about this in a future post once I get my head around this.

I did a little spending at the Face Book bobbin lace suppliers spotlight page last week. I haven't bought any lace patterns for years and I have plenty to last me but these are rather pretty.

I have a new cross stitch on the go, this one was designed for the Projet Chiens aide aux Handicapes which I think translates as service dogs in 2008 presumably as a fund raiser and offered as a free chart in 2010.

From Monday, we are allowed to meet other people outdoor ( up to 6 people) and since the weather forecast is good for Tuesday I might venture out a little further than the local branch of Tesco :-) We still have to wait until at least 12 April for non-essential shops to open .

I even managed to make a start on the bag of cheviot ! so all in all not such a bad week.

and todays challenge is to sort this lot out double quick so I can get my laptop out for a zoom meeting as I don't have a camera with my desktop which is my general go to more most things internet.

Have a great week , speak soon xx

I'm beginning to worry that this blog is morphing into one about cross stitch rather than spinning, hey ho, whatever. The truth is that its always been craft blog and if you scroll back 10 years or so you will see quite a bit of embroidery of different types.

I'm the sort of person who tends to fixate on different things at different times, often changing direction when my life takes a different turn. I never give up on any particular craft, just pop them on the back burner for a few weeks or in some cases years !

So for the time being the craft content will be mixed and blogs about my local area should start late April when we are allowed out and the shops begin to open again.

On a different note, we are puzzling over where to visit later in the year, I'm thinking about heading south to Somerset/Devon area for a change, we have friends in Somerset and north Cornwall so it would be good to meet up and gossip.

I did actually get the wool combs out and start on a fleece. I bought this Ouessant fleece back in 2019 so it was washed that summer and has been stored ever since in a cotton pillow case. I ten to store all my washed fleece in pillowcases as its easy to write the name on the outside :-)

I'm also playing with a small design destined to be a pincushion, its a long time since I've drawn out anything but will hopefully update you next week with the result.

later ...

In other news, the weather seems to be getting better, the birds are singing and we spent the last night booking 8 campsites and keeping our fingers crossed that we will not be back in lockdown later in the year !! We will be heading south to visit friends and catch up on the gossip :-)

That's about it for now, speak soon xx

link to free pattern http://e-subrosa.blogspot.com/2013/10/halloween-free-chart.html 

I found an interesting link to free spinning courses

 HI

Just a quickie

Check out this blog https://waltin.se/josefinwaltinspinner/courses-kurser/ Ive had a quick look and signed up for one of the courses just to check it out, will tell you more next Monday.

I've just signed up for Fleece through the senses challenge and will report back !

Bye for now x

With thanks to Shelia at Handspinning news , please check her out if you haven't always done so.

https://hand-spinning-news.com/about.html

 This week I've been concentrating on the Quaker Sampler, I'm a little concerned that I will not have enough thread so the choice will be to leave it until after 12 April when the local needlework store reopens or us something different like dark blue  and redo the small motifs in that colour.....

A few days later.

Its about finished, I need to decide whether to put initial/date on it  but will leave that for the future. I have maybe a foot or so of six strand thread left so cutting it fine but should just be enough.

this was a free pattern on a blog Gazette 94  the blog is written in French but google will ask if you want to translate.

I've also tea dyed some of my cream coloured evenweave fabric to play with next , I still have a few yards of this so plenty to experiment with.

Hopefully my life will get back to normal soon, the paperwork is coming to an end and hopefully the lockdown will start to ease more over the next few weeks. I'm hoping to get out with my camera and start on the new project and also summon up enough strength to start once again on the craftroom destash. I may even document the sheer madness that hides behind the cupboard doors for you .

That's about it for now, take care everyone, speak soon xx

( I may even get the spinning wheel out )

 I'm really starting to feel a little more motivated to do things, not just stitch but I've started to back up the last five years of photos on my desktop and sort out the documents file ready to back up. I have a small stack of letters to reply to so that's on todays list along with some baking.

The weather is definitely colder again but the mornings and evenings are getting lighter which is really helping. I knew that my first full winter at home would be a challenge but obviously the lockdowns since November have made this one a bit more taxing.

Usually we would travel away for a weekend breaks in the winter, recharge the batteries and breath some sea/country air but obviously this hasn't happened but the date for campsites opening in England in April 12 and we are still hoping the Scotland open theirs around the same time.

I've managed some stitching this week but really not enough to post on here but I did find some old stitching from the early 90's when clearing things out. At that time I generally gave away my stitching but here are some small finished pieces.

I think my favorite is the hedgehog :-)

Next weeks challenge is to finish the Quaker piece and think about what's next. I didn't want to go too far back down the rabbit hole but I'm having a bit of fun :-)

Is it spring yet?

 The sun is shinning!! I've even had washing on the line over the  last few days. Its due to get a bit colder again this week but the last week really lifted my spirits :-)

My knitting, spinning mojo is still largely missing but I'm slowly stitching on my two main projects, The small Quaker sampler and the experiment.

The Quaker is coming along nicely and I will definitely stitch another simply because I like the regularity of the designs.

AS for the experiment, I'm about 3500 stitches in so far and its sort of beginning to take shape. I'm reluctant to reveal what it is at the moment, I'd rather wait and see if it gets more obvious.

Today I have a sore arm, the result of having the covid vaccine yesterday ( I fall into the clinically venerable group) but hopefully that will be the only discomfort.

We have made a few more plans for roadtrips later in the year and we still have festival tickets from an event that was cancelled last year so I'm keeping my fingers crossed for getting out and about even if still socially distanced by being in the van .

Also, thinking ahead about this blog, I'm considering doing a series of posts relating to the area I live in  once the stay at home order is lifted and travelling by public transport is permitted. It's just an idea in the back of my mind at the moment but there are a lot interesting places within this county to visit and photograph and it would give me the opportunity to revisit many of them. It would be a separate post to my weekly crafty type update, probably a couple of posts a month. 

Would anyone be interested in this? BTW the county in question is Nottinghamshire, in the East Midlands, UK. 

Please let me know, thanks.

Take care, speak soon xx