A thousand apologies, but I’ve been very lax in not drawing names out of a ‘hat’ earlier for the winners of my 4th Blogaversary prize draw. I have finally pulled my finger out and can confirm that the following ladies are the winners of a beaded scissors fob made by yours truly, in a colour of their choice.
Kathy A (hope you see this Kathy, as my email has bounced back)
Congrats ladies! Two of you have the same preferred choice, but I should be able to whip a duplicate up (or close to it) 🙂
For anyone interested, I will shortly be adding the remaining items, plus a whole heap more of my fobs, to my ArtFire store shortly and it will then be open for business. Unfortunately it takes me forever to load up one item, so it’ll be a while longer yet before that happens properly. I originally starting setting up an Etsy store, then changed my mind after being charged US$6 just for adding the piccies – ArtFire don’t charge fees, so it’s much better for me if I don’t sell any! 😉
I intend the sale of the first 10 scissor fobs (assuming I actually manage to sell 10 of them!) to go towards a good cause. I am going to donate the proceeds of the fob sales (not including the postage) to help out a fellow kind-hearted blogger, whose family is struggling with the medical costs of one sweet little fella. Anyway, I’ll make a separate announcement as soon as the store has items available for sale!
As well as the blogaversary winners, I can also confirm that the following lovely ladies will be the recipients of a PIF from me some time during the next 12 months. Thanks for the support ladies – I hope you’re not disappointed 😛
I’ll send an email shortly, as I’ll need to ensure I have a current mailing address for you all, and then I have the fun time of starting to choose what to make 🙂
This week I’ve been a bit anti-social at home, rather being glued to the Ghost Trappers chat room and radio in my bedroom, so yesterday I made an effort to catch up with Katie while watching a bit of recorded TV, and decided to finish off a couple of old stitched ornies while sitting around. The following are the results of my wee finishing session – some were stitched by Mum (those on Aida), while the others were stitched by me.
The skiing Santa was one of the first XS pieces I ever stitched many years ago – Mum accidentally took it out of its hoop frame holder, so I made it into an ornie instead 🙂
I still have a HUGE pile of finishing yet to be done, but I figure if I just pull a few out every now and then it will eventually get whittled down. I’ve really lost my confidence with finishing over the last couple of years, so I think I need to just not think about it, and just do it – seems to be working so far! 😀
I also finished a pinkeep last night too, but I’m not happy with it this morning when seeing it in daylight, so I’m going to replace the ribbon used on it today, and hopefully will like the finished result a bit better.
This week’s theme is ”Veterans/Military” and the following photos are scans of some photos I took in about 1999 in Paris, France at the Arc de Triomphe. Perhaps not the best quality due to the scanning (and the fact they were taken on a crappy old point and shoot), but I love ’em just the same! 😀
It’s been an interesting weekend and start to the week so far … this week I’ve been totally addicted to Ghost Trappers on Facebook – I’ve been having a blast! I actually found the game’s Wiki and have been learning more about playing, and it’s all making a heckuva lot more sense! And I’ve been glued to the chat room and internet radio for giveaway prizes, and been exceptionally lucky to win 3 or 4 prizes … now all I need to do is transfer that luck to the Lotto draws, and I’ll be happy LOL 😉
I haven’t been stitching much at all – on Sunday (or Saturday night, I can’t remember now!) I managed to get the following paltry start into Mirabilia’s Enchanted Mermaid … quite pitiful, really!
What I did do, though, is to go online and order my first picture frames to give it a shot with framing myself. This is how I’ve chosen to frame five of my stitches pieces – the biggest piece size-wise is probably Graeme Ross’ Tiger, and I’ve chosen a total of three mats for that one. Fingers crossed the frames/mats all look OK when they arrive, and that I manage to actually put them all together!
And on that note, I’d better hit the hay – I’ve been up until 1am every night this week playing and hunting ghosties on Ghost Trappers and think it’s time I hit the sheets before the haunting hour!!
I also just remembered that I need to draw the names of the scissor fob winners, so I’ll rope my friend and flatmate Katie into giving me an impartial hand in drawing names out of the proverbial hat over the next couple of days 🙂
Here is my choice for this week’s Ruby Tuesday – White water rafting on the Wairoa River, Tauranga, Bay of Plenty, New Zealand. According to a tourism website “Open just 28 days a year, the Wairoa River is one of New Zealand’s most exciting rivers for rafting or kayaking. The rapids start with simple grade two cascades and gradually build up to thundering grade five rapids.”
If you look closely, there I am tucked down towards the front of the raft on the left … thankfully I wasn’t the one that was thrown out of the raft and who is at the back of the raft clinging on for dear life! It was a major rush doing this trip, but not one I’m keen to repeat again in a hurry – especially going over the waterfall!!!!! In hindsight, perhaps not the perfect idea to try a grade 5 river on your first trip 😮
Unfortunately I don’t think the Just Cross Stitch ornie magazine is very clear with their finishing instructions for ‘newbies’ so I thought I’d make one up myself to help people out that haven’t done this type of fnishing before – and show just how simple it is 🙂
CHRISTMAS ORNAMENT TUTORIAL
(the way Prairie Schooler finishes them)
Materials needed:
Stitched ornament
Felt in coordinating colour
Cardboard (I use matboard)
Batting (I prefer cotton)
Ribbon for hanger
Glue
Thread for lacing (I use crochet cotton or pearl cotton)
1. Firstly measure your stitched ornie for the size that you want the cardboard to be.
2. Next, cut out your cardboard/mattboard to the desired size. Add glue to one side of the cardboard, and place glue-side down on your batting. Even though I don’t show it in the photos, I actually smooth down the glue with a little offcut of mattboard so that the glue covers the cardboard evenly – that way you don’t feel ugly bumps on the front when it dries.
3. Once the glue has dried, cut around the cardboard shape and cut off the excess batting (my mattboard is black on one side, it just happened to be the piece that our local framers gave me).
4. Now it’s time to attach the stitched piece to the padded mattboard.
Turn the stitching over so the good side is facing down – place the padded mattboard padded-side down on top of the stitching.
5. My instructions for the next part are in relation to lacing the ornie together – I’ve found that this gives a much cleaner finish on the front of the ornie, and in particular in the corners. If you don’t want to lace, you can just use glue to stick the sides down in the same way – you’ll just have to be careful that the glue doesn’t dry before you have the stitched piece nicely centred on the front.
7. Next I start lacing – I usually start with a couple of little anchor stitches at the start, but here I used a waste-away knot first (this will be cut off later) – then you just work from one side of the ornie to the other, as you can see from the series of photos below.
8. At this point turn the stitched piece over and check that the stitching is sitting nicely centred over the mattboard. If it’s not centred perfectly, just give it a little jiggle around until it is nicely centred.
9. Turn the ornie back over again, and continue to lace the remaining two sides. Now I usually stitch up the mitred corners, as this really tidies up the corners and gives nice clean points.
10. The finished version should look something like this if you’ve laced it according to my version.
11. You now have the choice of adding your ribbon hanger now, or at the end. I always used to add my hanger at the end, but decided to try it this way for the tutorial, and have added the ribbon prior to adding the felt backing.
Cut a piece of ribbon to your preferred length – I ‘twist’ my ribbon to give it a nice loop, if you just fold it in half the ribbon doesn’t sit quite as nicely. Hopefully that makes sense, and you can see what I mean from the photos! Attach the ribbon with a couple of little stitches to attach it to the fabric – I prefer to stitch it rather than just gluing to ensure the ribbon hanger doesn’t fall off in a hurry.
12. Next, turn your ornie over and add glue to the back – I usually use Tacky Glue and once again I use a little offcut of mattboard to spread the glue out all over the backing, but this isn’t essential. I figure this will help to keep the glue stuck down for longer than just having a little bit on the edges 🙂
13. Now place your glued ornie down on the felt backing and ensure the felt is pressed down nice and evenly onto the glue. Then, using pinking shears, cut around the ornie shape – don’t forget to hold your ribbon hanger out of the way so it’s not accidentally lopped off!
14. If you prefer to add your ribbon hanger at the end, this is an example of one of my older finished ornies that I completed this way 🙂
15. And you now have a beautifully finished ornie – all you have to do is to hang it up on your (or a loved one’s) tree! 😀
I hope that’s easy enough to follow – if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to scream out and I’ll try to answer them.
Those in my family who know me the best will know I’m a crappy baker – one particular cake I tried making (an orange cake, from memory) sank nicely in the middle and had a heavy texture. Dad loved it! And afterwards asked me to make another “sad cake” ‘cos it was so lovely … I’ll never forget that “sad cake” 😉
Anyway, last weekend I had a HUGE urge to bake something … not being a baker, this was EXTREMELY unusual, as I just don’t bake anymore – but even MORE unusual is the fact that it turned out to be the best damned cake I’ve ever baked in my life (and those good ones can be counted on one hand with a few fingers left over!) … and I’d even go so far as to say it was one of the best damned cakes I’ve ever eaten in my life! Yep, BIG words!! Anyway, I thought I’d share it online so Mum can try it out – I should really try it again myself too to make sure it wasn’t some kind of huge fluke that it worked out so nicely!! 😛
ALL-OCCASION CHOCOLATE CAKE
1 cup (250ml) water
1 1/2 cups (330g) caster sugar
125g butter
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1 1/2 cups (225g) self-raising flour
2 eggs
Grease deep 19cm square cake pan, line base with baking paper.
Combine water, sugar, butter, cocoa and soda in medium saucepan; stir over heat, without boiling, until sugar dissolves. Bring to boil, simmer, uncovered, 5 minutes. Transfer mixture to large bowl; cool 10 minutes.
Add flour and eggs to mixture; beat with electric mixer, on low speed, until smooth. Pour mixture into prepared pan. Bake in moderate oven (180-190C / 350-375F) about 40 minutes. Stand cake in pan 10 minutes; turn onto wire rack to cool.
Top cold cake with 1 quantity Fluffy Cocoa Frosting.
FLUFFY COCOA FROSTING
50g butter
2 tablespoons water
1/4 cup (55g) caster sugar
3/4 cup (120g) icing sugar mixture
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
Combine butter, water and caster sugar in small saucepan, stir over heat, without boiling, until sugar is dissolved. Sift icing sugar and cocoa into medium heatproof bowl; gradually stir in hot butter mixture; cover, refrigerate until thick. Beat with wooden spoon until a spreading consistency.
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