Stitcheries and Brown Owls

Isn't technology annoying sometimes?! I had all these grand plans to update my blog in the last week as I was making my latest creations. I have this new fancy phone, so I thought transferring images would be easy......NOT SO! For some reason the only way I can manage to transfer my files at the moment is either by emailing them from my phone to myself (probably expensive given how many pics I took) or via bluetooth to my computer. I tried to do the whole USB thing, but then my mac was trying to make me pay for some phone connection thing. Anyway, needless to say I am well and truely confused. I will have to charge my trusty old camera and just use that, this phone thing isn't worth the trouble!

Anyway, I have done a LOT in the past week or so, so I have decided to split my endeavours into a couple of blogs. This one I will document some of the stitcheries I have been doing as presents for Xmas. I am still working on others, so I will post about them when I am done, but for the time being you can see what I have gotten up to.

I will start with my absolute FAVOURITE stitchery.

I stitched here....

.....And I stitched there (there being at basketball whilst I was waiting for our game)

And I finally came up with the final product.....it's GRUG!

To be honest, this one turned out MUCH better than I was expecting. It isn't 100% finished. As much as I want to be selfish and keep this one for me, I am going to give it to my friend Christine when she has her baby (which is due tomorrow). So the plan is that in the apple I will stitch the name of the baby (or its first initial if the name is too long), and then I will stitch the DOB etc to the right of the tree.

Apart from my Grug triumph, I have completed a few other random stitcheries that have been sitting in my things-to-do pile for a while.

I can't even remember where I sourced the patterns. I think it might have been from The Red Thread at a craft show in Rosehill, but I have never seen them on her site, so maybe I am wrong. I haven't decided what I am actually going to do with them yet, but I am sure eventually I will figure something out.

I have also started doing some Xmas stitcheries to give away as gifts. I got the patterns for these from So September who has a really awesome etsy store that I only just discovered (and I may have made multiple purchases....oops). I am giving away these to some work colleagues.

I also have one more design I am working on, so will post that when it's done (it's a peace dove). I am just putting these designs in embroidery hoops (as you can see in the last couple of pics) and attaching some ribbon so they can be used as ornaments. I hope people work out that's what they are meant for.

The best thing about this project has been that I have FINALLY worked out how to do stem stitch. As a stab stitcher, I never got my head around stem stitch, but I recently came across a great tutorial by Early Bird Special when I was going through all the blogs I have missed this year (there is still a long way to go on that catch up task). Anyway, I realised that there is a cheat way of doing stem stitch! I feel like I have just entered a whole new world now that I can do the stitch. I feel like a real embroiderer now! Quite sad that this has probably been the most exciting discovery of my week haha

So, there you go, you have now seen what I have been up to the past couple of weeks in terms of my embroideries.

Before I go on to write a new post about my jewellery making adventures I will leave you with some pictures of nature from Hazelhurst Gallery gardens. We met at the gardens last weekend for the final Brown Owls Shire event for the year (and the first one I have been to in about 3 months!). I think I need to visit the gardens again with my DSLR. There were SO many dragonflies around there that I would love to chase and get some photos of.

And finally, a few lovely gifts from the Brown Owls Kris Kringle swap