Ahhhh Time.

Something of which I don’t seem to have all that much of lately.

I think I used to somehow make better use of my time while we lived in the UK, I had a full-time (+extra) job, crafted, and managed to fit in some exercise, yet at the moment I am struggling to do all these things alongside my training. Some claimed I must have an extra hour in my day/ day in my week.

Bah.

Anyhow, if you follow me on instagram (@lindsay.marsh), I posted some progress on a little cross stitching project over the past few weeks, and allowed myself some selfish sewing time to finish it off this morning 🙂

This project was inspired by recent craziness, which prompted the watching of a nice comforting Disney cartoon. Et voila! The Gospel according to Gaston:

(You can see my pencil drawing of the cross stitch template I drew here, and on a side note, given that I have been making a few of my own cross stitch patterns for things, I have been debating buying some proper software for the job so it is easier….. That led to another problem in that I am now debating MacStitch/WinStitch, based on the fact we are debating replacing our sad, old, heavy, slow, and unreliable laptop for a shiny new macbook pro. The trouble is, I am not sure I can justify it, given that I have a….. functioning laptop already, and I am just surely after some new shiny in my life? And then the decisions on 13″ or 15″, upgrading RAM……… For the time being, my diagrams remain in pencil/graph paper form!) .pdf pattern available here.

The main stitching is done in DMC 414, but I decided to emphasise the “ideas” and “thinking” and so picked DMC 4200, which is one of the variegated threads in shades of red through to pink:

The size/shape of the piece meant it was kinda awkward to mount/frame. The stitching itself is 80 x 117 squares, measuring around 5.5″ x 8″ on 28 count evenweave = not quite standard sizing.

I decided to frame it using a patchwork(ish) method, using some fabric I had (they were part of a bundle of fat quarters):

A little wonky, but the colours work well! The grey dandelion seed fabric I also used as the backing, tacking the two layers together with some little knots in the corners:

I think I will just stitch some little silver jump rings to the back/corners and use those to hang it on the wall.

I also did a little bit of slightly selfless crafting this week, making a little something for my friends for their belated (1 year on!) housewarming. It is kind of customary to give a pot plant or something… But, being as they are fans, I made them a little potted baby Groot, using this pattern by Twinkie Chan:

He is adorable. And now Mr M feels that we need one in our place too. He comes together really fast, and the pattern is super easy to follow, even is crocheting the arms is kinda awkward (4 stitch rounds are really small!) I couldn’t get yarn in quite the colour I wanted, but this is Patons Classic Wool Worsted in Chestnut Tweed, and works ok, the green leaves were worked using some random old balls of yarn from my stash.