Overdue, overdue, overdue.....

That seems to be the story of my blogging life lately - lol!

So, let me see if I can catch up a bit with this post - I am going to update you on my June TUSAL and June Gifted Gorgeousness (GG) and Friday Night Sew In  (FNSI).

Let's start with my TUSAL report.  Hmm... Only 13 days late!

Home ORTs on the left, travel ORTS on the right.

The TUSAL jar so far this year.

Next up is GG (only three days late),  with some FNSI mixed in.

Gifted Gorgeousness (or GG) is a SAL run by the wonderful SAL Mama, Jo from Serendipitous Stitching.  Basically, on the 15th of each month, we post anything which is stitchy gift-related.

Friday Night Sew In (or FNSI) is run once a month by the lovely Wendy from Sugarlane designs, and it is exactly what the name suggests - staying in on a Friday evening and "sewing". This, of course, runs in tandem for my with my  Kitten Stitching and the Friday Night Frolics SAL blog (or FF) which runs every Friday night.

I have a few things to show you this month.

First up is my Kitchen Kapers swap for the No Fuss Swappers blog group.  I sent to the lovely Helen of Helbel's World of Craft.  Unfortunately, silly me forgot to take photos before I sent my package (so, I have "borrowed" them from Helen's blog).

... and I was the lucky recipient in the swap from the gorgeous Cheryl from Cheryl's Stitchings.

Aren't they all gorgeous?  I am going to make the beautiful embroidered tea towel into an apron, I think - much too nice to use as a tea towel.

Thank you so much, Cheryl, I love it all.

My next GG item is a gift from the lovely Jo, sent to cheer me up as I happened to mention on a recent blog post that my daughter is moving to London soon for an indeterminate length of time.  It is a gorgeous design of Galahs, called aptly "What a Galah"

Floss toss....

First progress pic...

Second progress pic....

... and then for FNSI and FF, I stitched some more and now I am here....

Thank you, Jo, I truly love it and stitching it is giving me a lot of joy.

Next up is the knitting and soft toy ornaments I made for a family friend's upcoming baby.  The baby shower was today.

I aimed for a sophisticated, hipsterish colour palette for the baby blanket.

These soft toy ornies I made in a day (pretty proud of myself, if I say so myself)

Here is the mum-to-be, Hannah, opening the gift this afternoon - she was thrilled, so that made me very happy.

So, there we are, finally a stitchy post from me.

If you want to see what everyone else did for these SALs, click on the following links:

GG

FNSI

FF

Off to a Trivia night shortly - wish me luck!

hugs, 

Helpppp!

I have TOOTHACHE!

Not fair, as the last two week's has been this.....

... and there I was celebrating the absence of my cold and then WHAMMY! I think that I have an abscess on one of my back molars.  The whole left side of my face is swollen and tender.

Luckily, my dentist can squeeze me in for an appointment this afternoon, I am pretty sure that there will be some antibiotics and then maybe a root canal or extraction in my future (this tooth has already had a root canal done, many years ago).

In the meantime, I am planning to catch up on my blogging and posting today and tomorrow.  So, watch this space - it may end up being a bit out of order, as I do have lots to catch you up on.

Have a great day, I am aiming for having at least an okay day - pretty sure that great is not on the agenda for me today - lol!

hugs, 

Update:  My face is swollen more than ever this morning and I am now on antibiotics and facing an extraction once the infection is gone!  No fun at all!

The Alphabet Club - Saturday detention for K....

is for

KILLER ANIMALS of AUSTRALIA

Tricked you! You thought that I was going to give you a nice, sweet list of Australian "K"s, didn't you?  lol!

Koalas

Kangaroos

Kalgoorlie (where they mine for opals)

Kitten Stitching

Kaye (that's me!)

but no, just watch this video and you will know to be wary of the 

KILLER ANIMALS of AUSTRALIA

Now, if you are not sure what The Alphabet Club is all about ....

  Well, it is the brainchild of Chiara from The Grey Tail and Jo from Serendipitous Stitching and is loosely based on the premise of the movie "The Breakfast Club" - you can see the button for The Alphabet Club on my right sidebar.

On the first Saturday of each month, members of the club have "detention" and have to post about something that will enlighten others about their culture (as blogland is so diverse).  Of course, there should/could be something stitchy in there, if possible. Each month will be a different letter of the alphabet - hence the club's name - and, of course, we started with "A" and now we are up to "K"

If you want to see what the other detainees have been up to, please have a look here.

hugs,

A Milostone achieved....

..."Too cold to go outside" is moving along beautifully.  I have now finished Milo on the design.  I am really proud of this as there was a lot of confetti and I had to be very accurate in my reading of the chart.

I can't wait to stitch Furio next.

hugs, 

May Gifted Gorgeousness .... and Smalls SAL ....

.... both a bit very late - my apologies.

I have quite a bit to show you this month for both of these SALs.

Now, if you don't know what I am talking about.

Gifted Gorgeousness (or GG) is a SAL run by the wonderful SAL Mama, Jo from Serendipitous Stitching.  Basically, on the 15th of each month, we post anything which is stitchy gift-related.

AND

What is the Smalls SAL?  It is quite simple, really - it is run by Heather of Silver Lotus (the SAL Mama). Here are the main details:

1. Stitch a small every month. You get to decide what a small is for you. 50×50 stitches? 100×100 stitches? It’s up to you. You just need to be able to get it done by the check-in day. (WIP smalls that you complete in time for the check-in are great too!) You pick your design, I do not provide designs.
2. Post a picture of your completed small (stitching done, but the actual finishing is optional) on the last Thursday of every month, with the exception of November, which will be the last Wednesday.

So here we go, with what I have been doing for both these SALs this month.  Now, there will be a bit of interspersing as, wonderfully, some of the GG pieces are finished Smalls - Happy Dances all around!

First off, is the gorgeous Thirteen Colonies by LHN.  I recently picked this back up after last stitching on it way back in  January, 2012!!!!!! You can read all about it here.

I am certain that Thirteen Colonies was a gift from dear Gracie from Needles, pins and dragonflies and she generous gifted me not only the pattern but the fabric and the floss as well - thank you, dear Gracie.

Here are my progress pics....

 When I  first picked it up again , the stitching was like this....

Then I made some progress ....

Yay! I finished the little grey house - although you may notice that I am frogging the browny colour on the right - I realised that I had used the wrong floss colour, all those years ago - aagghh!

... and some more ..... It is moving along nicely now, I even have a couple of sheep!

.... and I think that I have stitched even more but unfortunately, I cannot quite put my hands on where I have put it, at the moment it is lost in the black hole of my Girl's Nest (which is what TraderVic and I call my sewing room).

Another dear bloggy friend, Barb from Wicked Stitcher kindly sent me this lovely July 4th design to add to my Americana collection to stitch for my Americana SAL. Thank you so much, Barb, I cannot wait to get started on this design. xxxx

I finished my second Nordic ornament from PS Book #191 for the Christmas Ornie SAL May theme of "Reindeer".

Isn't he a proud, handsome fellow?

He is a companion piece to the April theme of "Ornament".

I have been working on the final step of this quilt for my dear friend, Jenny P, this quilt has been a long time coming but is nearly there!  Furio loves this quilt and as soon as I get it out, he magically appears on my lap!

  I also finished my two versions of "All you need is love" by Lynne B of Happiness is Crossstitching.

Furio on the left and Milo on the right.  These will be made into ornies and I will send them to my daughter once she has an address in London (yes, she is leaving Australia and going overseas for a year or two - more on that in another post), so that she has her kittens with her.  I am extremely pleased with how these turned out.

.... and lastly, I am on the home stretch with the baby blanket - I am on track to get this finished by the baby shower on the 18th June.

So, that is all from me for these two SALs this month.

Ooops, no it is not, I nearly forgot my Counting Bats band by Just Nan for the Hallowe'en Ornie SAL May theme of spiders.

Now, remember, you can check out all the GG action here and the Smalls SAL action here.

hugs, 

P.S. Phew! I just made the GG link in with 1.5 hours to spare (and I had a cruisey 2 days for the Smalls SAL link in).

P.P.S. You know that I am really sick - see last post "Sick as a dog", when this is what I am having for morning tea!

Latte for the caffeine hit;
Chocolate for the comfort;
and Whiskey to kill the germs
(my sweet Uncle Ron, swears by it as the cure for what ails you!)
(and no, I am not an alcoholic - just desperate to get rid of this virus).

hugs again, a very mellow, Kaye

Sick as a dog!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That is me!

You might remember that it was only on the 20th May that I was last MIA due to the freelance work I was doing.

Well, it was a double whammy this time.  I picked up some more freelance work (which is great as it helps pay for my stash - lol!) but then I have come down with some sort of super bad head cold virus which has moved down to my chest and has triggered my asthma.

So, I have been trying to complete this intensive work on the computer whilst I have a stuffy head, a runny nose, a sore throat, ear ache, a racking cough and am unable to breathe - to put it mildly, I am miserable!

I really need to get a better hang of this freelance work so it is a better work/life balance, I think - it is not so easy as it seems to say "oh, I work freelance at home" - there is no sick leave and the deadlines are always looming!

So, unfortunately, as usual, it is blogging that seems to suffer - I am midway through writing my Gifted Gorgeousness  and Smalls SAL post - and hopefully will get it up in the next hour and a half (when the GG link expires).

However, I have managed to get some more stitching done, which I will post about soon, I promise.

Okay, breakfast for me and then I will write that GG/Smalls SAL post.

                                                         hugs, 

P.S. Plus I forgot to tell you that our Indian Summer finished with a bang and within the space of a few days we have gone from lovely, mild, warm days to what seems like the middle of a very cold winter - One day I was wearing t-shirts, the next I have my thick, winter woolies on!  Go figure!  Plus, the other day, they were redoing the gas mains in the street and they turned off our gas - so you guessed it, no heating!  Brrr!

Friday Frolics update ...

My dear friend, Jo, from Serendipitous Stitching, introduced me to a new acronym the other day - OAAT (One At A Time) stitching, when she commented on my last FF post about my new start "Too cold to go out".

Well, this Friday Frolics (yesterday) I actually did TAAT (Two At A Time) stitching.  During the day, when the light was better, I stitched on "Too cold to go out" and then in the evening (when I had less good light), I stitched on a new Christmas design from Rico Designs, which happened to take my fancy.

Now, enough chat, let's get to the nitty gritty - the pics!!!!!

Too cold to go out

This is where I got up to after last week's FF...

... and after some stitching during the week, I was up to here....

and then yesterday I managed only a bit of progress, as I had to frog the dark grey for Milo twice!  Aaagghh!

Christmas Design

 I had a bit more success with my Christmas stitch from the Rico Design book.

 This is what I had accomplished during the week.

... and this is my progress after FF (the fabric colour is truer in the pic above)

Now, this piece has no name.  It is rather prosaically called Design 77796.  However, I am calling it "Snowy Russian village"

 The reason for this is two fold.

One, the onion dome on the top of the tower reminds me of Russian churches.

Two, you may remember last week that I posted this pic of Furio reading my gripping thriller ...

I think that Brigitte, you asked the name of the novel, well, it was called Moskva and I found it to be a compelling thriller and can highly recommend it.

So, that is all for me for now,

hugs, Kaye