Brackety entry

No pictures today (Did I hear sigh of relief?), but I've been stitching and there's some progress. I filled almost whole right bottom corner of Icy, and it'll be little happy dance in day or two (or three).
At the moment I'm stitching Dalmatian (5th part of Best Friends) and after I finished it's face I've enjoyed stitching it (it's so much nicer to stitch when your project stares at you from the fabric...), even it's mostly white (I've still serious issues with white, thanks to Hello Kitty Chef). Depending on length of my shopping spree tomorrow it may be HD tomorrow!
But in case I stuck in one craft shop drooling all over... who knows, maybe I'll get arrested or something.

I'm anxiously waiting for tomorrow, even though I can't spend that much (one reason for it is my latest Silkweaver order), as I haven't been in Helsinki in ages (in fact there were some plans about going to have a cup of coffee with one person, but in the end it's better it got delayed - I need to shave my head and dye my hair before I allow myself to do such a thing )

Good tip

Carpal tunnel related problems? Laura seems to have the answer (surprisingly it's not 42).

Tiny needleroll exchange and stitching goals

I just got my partner's name, and I think I have found the design which I'll use, so tomorrow I'll have little S.E.X. at Silkweavers - magnificent excuse for shopping these exchanges (and anyway I've to purchase few things).

This will be my first needleroll so I'm quite nervous, and excited! Fortunately deadline is in the end of March (27th) so I've plenty of time to figure things out.

Stitching goals

While reading Svenja's blog I realized that it's really end of the month and time to check-in with my goals.

My goals for January were:

1. Finish Valentine Exchange item!
2. Send SEBE and SECE items!
3. Stitch first part of the Silhouettes (Apparently Icy Blue).
4. Finish Winter topiary.
5. Stitch 5th part of Best Friends.

Oh, what a failure I've been....

1. Finished, ready to be sent tomorrow
2. Ready to be sent tomorrow. They'll be day late, but I've okayed it with organizer.
3. Icy is not completely finished yet.
4. Haven't even touched Winter (I think).
5. Only started with that 5th part.
6. Finished Welcome gnome as an extra (so I'm not that bad person anyway...)

Btw, thank you all for nice feedback considering mr. Gnomey.

Goals for February

1. Finish Icy.
2. Finish Winter.
3. Start with Spring.
4. Finish 5th part of Best Friends.
5. Stitch MSAL parts in time.

I think they were there.

Help with feeds

I tried Bloglines, it wasn't for me so I decided to check Firefox's extensions if there were something suitable for my needs (I'm addicted to FF's extensions, btw) and found Wizz RSS News Reader 2.0.6. It was bit cumbersome to use at first, but after few days I'm very pleased with this. No need to browse million blogs, I just open sidebar and check is there anything new. And it has preview so mostly I can say beforehand do I want to read some entry or not.
Nice little toy, if you ask from me.

About natural dyes.

I thought it'd be wise to save this post of mine (from this thread at EMS BB) about my dye experiments, as you can never know when it'll be victim of pruning:

"Greetings from my kitchen.

You can have beautiful, natural colours with spices. I tried paprika (curry powder and turmeric would be great too, I think) last night and got beautiful results. (Pics in here.)

I had small piece of (soft, I don't know why it is that soft...) ecru aida and bigger piece of regular pure white aida.

Results were:

• Ecru = peach
• white = light latte.

How?

• some excess time
• kettle
• 1 litre of water
• ½ dl of salt
• 2 ts bicarbonate (that thing used in baking)
• 4 ts paprika.

Add salt, bicarbonate (It'll foam a bit. ) and paprika to boiling water. Add moist fabric pieces (I had about
10x 40 cms (~4/ ~16 inches) all together) and let it simmer about an hour. Remember to stir(?) them frequently.
After an hour put 1 part of vinegar and 2 parts of water to suitable container and move fabric piece(s) to it and let them be a while.
Rinse.

This colour stands washing. I tried it yesterday. Though I don't know
will it take machine washing, but I made instant washing machine from jam jar (jar, hot water and washing powder) and spent some time shaking it.

Fabrics lost some colour but at least they should be more or less colourfast now.

It was so fun, I want to do more of that.

Btw, some may ask why I used bicarbonate? I'm used to as when I studied we used professional dyes and used bicarbonate (or some it's derivative) among salt. I don't remember how it should affect to colours. - - -"

G'day.

As we all see, I kind of flooded my blog with test results yesterday and today. So, now it's time for some 'decen't blogging again.

Metallics.

I've found new love: DMC's white metallic floss.

I bought one skein of it from my LNS and last night I stitched few snowflakes with it to SEBE 'Winter' bookmark. It looks great.

Little tip: When you've divided your lenght of floss to six parts, take one divided strand of that floss, divide it (as it's made of two filaments) again. First of all it's easier to stitch as it's more flexible, and it looks great. IMO it may look even better than if you were stitching with one complete strand.
In fact I think it'd be good bleding filament replacement stitched with regular mouline. I have to try that some day.

SAL.

Well, in a way it has been suggested that I'd organize one SAL (Stitch-a-long) at EMS Cross Stitch Board. I suggested one design (serie in fact) in one thread which has to do with SALs and it seems that there might be people who're interested of doing this particular pattern.

Design is a freebie and still available, and I checked yesterday that it isn't even very big. One part of design in 45x60 stitches so 2700 stitches per part (minus corners which are unstitched in pattern (though I think I'll stitch them too)), and on 14 count finished design is about 8,2x10,9 cms (~3.2x4.3 inches).

There isn't even that many colours needed, so it's almost perfect. Even beginners could participate.

Looks good? I think so. Anyway, I've to think this a bit (as I'm not sure when I've time, after DBF moves I don't have free time that much as there's piles of bureucracy related stuff to take care of.) and if I think I could organize it I think I should contact to that boards staff and ask what is their opinion of organizing and what would be 'wisest' way to handle it.