baking, Cross-stitch and Embroidery

Paws up for birthday cake!

wittychild

What is it with Margaret Sherry and cute cat designs?  While flipping through a back issue of Cross Stitcher magazine on New Year’s Eve (is that a debaucherous evening or what?), I found the perfect design to turn into a card for my mom’s birthday.  While the red velvet pancakes were charring cooking, she opened a rather unassuming white envelope to find this staring back at her:

I used 18-count fabric instead of 14 as called for by the magazine to get it to fit in the card, and used random colours that looked close enough to those on the model – perfect way to use what I had laying around.  I love the concerned look on his face, and promised to use fewer candles on her birthday cake – if only by one.

(Please excuse the “arty” shot.)

I don’t think the cake could have been any simpler to make: a double batch of the basic chocolate cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, divided between two round layer pans, topped with a coffee-and-Kahlua’ed version of the chocolate buttercream frosting from the same.  Because I had serious doubts about my ability to wield a tube of decorating gel, I had the foresight to trace the words onto the top using a toothpick, and then follow the lines.  Hey, it may not be terribly skillful, but it worked.

And now that it’s all over, I get to breathe easy again, at least until Mother’s Day.

craftmas, Cross-stitch and Embroidery

Take me right back to the track, Jack

wittychild

My dad likes trains.  (Remember the ornament I made him last Christmas?)  He doesn’t try to fit them in his mouth like Sheldon Cooper, true, but then, he tends to display more common sense.  Anyway, I had it in my head that he needed a new shirt with some nifty railway logo stitched on the pocket, and I eventually decided on a little red caboose designed by Jan Altizer – though apparently this design is only available on the CD, and not individually.  Bummer.

I was originally looking for a denim shirt to deface….uh, I mean, enhance…but when I saw this one, vaguely reminiscent of an engineer’s hat, I knew I had found my blank canvas.

I swear it’s not that psychedelic in real life.  Methinks that fine striping, drapey fabric, and camera flashes don’t mix as nicely as I’d like them to.

That’s a little more true-to-life (look at the shirt, not the pocket).

I took the pocket off the shirt to stitch, then, using waste canvas and a sharp embroidery needle, I managed to get my design on almost straight and centered, before reattaching the pocket.

Thank heavens it fits.  There’s no way I could return it to the store now.

craftmas, Cross-stitch and Embroidery

Nice? No, naughty!

wittychild

I’m alive!  Frustrated with mankind, mind you, but alive nonetheless.  So what have I been up to in my [checks calendar] nearly two-month hiatus?  Well…November was mostly occupied acquiring this:

Go me!  Novel #8!  However – November was not a great month for crafting, and then boom, December rears its Christmas-baking-social-function-shop-and-wrap-and-sign-cards head.  Sorry; I’m attempting to rationalize here.  And I actually was able to craft one Christmas gift, although I wrapped it before I took a picture.  That will be forthcoming.  In the meantime, I have this:

It’s one of those lovely Mill Hill beaded kits, but my  goodness, was there ever a lot of white stitching!  I have the accompanying “Nice” kit in my stash, too, but may tackle that next year.  (Being naughty is more fun than being nice anyway, right?  Right!)  I backed the design with silver paper after I cut away the excess perforated paper, and presto!  Instant ornament!

For those who are curious, my new favourite holiday memory was formed just today: crowded in the workplace lunchroom with roughly 2/3 of the office, listening to one of our inspectors play his guitar and sing, and having an office sing-along to “Last Kiss”.  I wish I were making this up.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Cross-stitch and Embroidery, General Sewing

She’s got the moon in her eye

wittychild

When I first found this pattern, I was abruptly reminded of driving to the grocery store with my mother, my cousin and I sitting in the backseat, singing along with the golden oldies on the radio.  When the Eagles came on, my cousin went right on singing, labouring under the delusion that the woman they were singing about was itchy, not witchy, and then interrupted herself to wonder aloud just why she was so itchy in the first place.  (The unspoken consensus in the backseat seemed to be VD, although this is an archaic term that we didn’t actually know back then.) From the front seat, my mother pointed out that the woman was in fact witchy, not itchy, and this put rather a kibosh on our impromptu concert.

After completing “Scaredy Cats” from the Just Cross Stitch Halloween issue, I tackled “Witchy Kitty” by Brittercup Designs, and then turned it into a cute l’il pillow ornament.

I used plain old DMC threads instead of the fancy-pants overdyed ones recommended in the instructions, but I think it looks just as good.  The one thing I’m particularly proud of is using Kreinik glow-in-the-dark fine braid to do her potion; it makes the piece really pop.  I fashioned a corded hanger using the same colours I used in the design, and then….

….I backed it with some wicked cool fabric with glow-in-the-dark kitteh eyes on it before stuffing it.  I now have the better part of .3 metres of that stuff in my stash, and I’m going to have to find a project for the rest of it.

Happy Halloween!

(And now the Christmas stitching begins…!)

Cross-stitch and Embroidery

It’s ghoulicious!

wittychild

According to the editor of Just Cross Stitch magazine, Halloween is the second most popular occasion to stitch for.  I don’t know whether the sample size for this pronouncement includes only readers of this particular publication, or stitchers in general, but that still can’t dissuade me from devouring the annual Halloween ornament issue.  My mother decided she liked “Scaredy Cats” by Val’s Stuff, so I stitched it for her:

I did not have 30-count Peoria Purple in my stash as prescribed in the magazine, but lo, 14-count Lavender Whisper aida still lends a bit of colour.  I layered the finished piece on top of two pieces of stiff, sparkly felt, and slipped a loop of black ribbon in between the black and purple felt to make a hanger.  I also tweaked the “a”s and the “s” in “cats” to make them slightly less blocky, but that was just a personal choice.

It now hangs in the living room, teasing the living and breathing cats in the house to no end.

baking

Labour Day Classic

wittychild

I didn’t set out to make Rider cupcakes yesterday, really and truly I didn’t.  All I really wanted to do was to experiment with my new cupcake pan (sturdier and not prone to bending the way my shiny disposable aluminum ones are; the trade-off is that the darker coating wreaks havoc with my baking times and temperatures and results in what I feel are overbaked cupcakes.  Hence, experiment), using a familiar – so I knew what I should be getting – and preferably light-coloured cupcake recipe, that I might better be able to judge degree of browning.  What better than the basic vanilla cupcake recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World?  The liners I used weren’t terribly important; these were just going to be “practice cupcakes” for home.  Yet when my eyes lit on an open package of green and white gingham liners, an idea started to form.  Green and white liners….white-ish cupcakes….perfect snacks for the Labour Day Classic between the Bombers and the Riders!

I substituted almond extract for the vanilla in the recipe since for some reason I have three bottles of the stuff in the cupboard, and found a lonely-looking lime in the fridge that seemed to be begging to be incorporated into the icing.  While almond-lime seems like – and is – an unusual combination, I thought the sweet and tangy might play off one another well, although my test audience remains uncertain of its status as the next power-combo.  It’s no peanut butter-chocolate, that’s for sure, but certainly not offensive, at any rate.  And I actually had enough icing left over for a 13th…what, too soon?  Okay…

While I realize that neither almonds nor limes are indigenous to the Land of the Living Skies, there’s also canola oil and wheat flour (101 varieties suitable for growth in Saskatchewan, according to the Saskatchewan Crop Insurance Corporation, which also lists lemons and oranges as viable crops but not limes), so I feel like it’s at least somewhat representative.  And I can’t say for sure whether my culinary toying affected the outcome of the game, but, well, Riders 27 – Bombers 7.

Which of course raises the question: can a blue and gold creation pull things the other way at next weekend’s Banjo Bowl?

Cross-stitch and Embroidery

Little Bundle (of joy, one assumes)

wittychild

Lo, the much-hyped birth announcement has been completed – and less than two months after the actual birth.  Go me!

It’s an Anchor kit, designed by Margaret Sherry (love her stuff!) called “Little Bundle”.  Much like the lovey-dovey Solo the Cat cross-stitch in the last post, this one is full of backstitch that starts and ends at funny places, and would have been easier on evenweave.  Despite that, I’m quite pleased with how it turned out; it really was an enjoyable stitch despite the vast areas of green and white.

Please excuse the rather dreary appearance; this is what happens when one waits until natural daylight is gone to take a picture.  Rest assured, the fabric and the diaper are white…ohhh, so much white…

It has yet to be washed and framed, but I’ll be holding off on that for just a little while.  When you hear the neighbours having a shouted conversation across the street: “Hey, Bill, how’s your water over there?”  “Brown!  Yours?”  “Yep!”, the prudent thing to do seems to be to wait for the municipal waterworks department to finish their water main repairs before attempting to soak what will hopefully be an heirloom piece.

After all that crazy backstitch, working on a perforated-paper ornament kit feels like some sort of dream…

Cross-stitch and Embroidery

Love and strangulation are almost indistinguishable…

wittychild

Okay, so….the anniversary gift I was stitching for my parents was just a wee bit late, say, a week and a half or so.  (But don’t worry, I’m not some slacker child; I did buy them dinner to celebrate.)  So yes, first I was late getting it to them, and now I’m horribly late in posting it, but better late than never, right?

It’s a Solo the Cat pattern by Anchor, found in an old issue of The World of Cross Stitching, and stitched with much cursing of backstitch.  This would definitely have been easier on evenweave.  It hasn’t been washed or framed yet, but that will come…in time.  I had picked Solo because he bears a slight resemblance to one of our cats (very slight – as in, they both have darker markings on a light body, but that’s about it); upon presenting it to them, I realized that I had also done pieces for them in 2004 and 2008 with cuddling cats.  I think I detect a trend.

In other news, the birth announcement I’m working on is almost, almost finished, although I won’t be seeing the new mother for a while, so time is not necessarily of the essence.

And I just received a few new Mill Hill beaded Christmas kits in the mail the other day, so stay tuned….

General Sewing

It’s (still) spring…do you know where your bloomers are?

wittychild

Not quite warm enough to wear these yet, perhaps, but I was pleased at actually having finished a sewing project, so bear with me.  These are the Colette Mini Bloomers that made the rounds on Craftster some time ago, and I finally got around to finishing them.

They’re not quite perfect, of course, although I’m pretty happy with how the waistband turned out, and the fact that my stripes are reasonably straight.  It was a delightfully simple pattern to follow, too – big thumbs-up!

Now I just need to figure out where to wear them…

Cross-stitch and Embroidery

Just for you…Mum!

wittychild

Yes, Mother’s Day was two weeks ago.  I’ve been remiss.  I did, however, manage to get both little stitchy pieces finished in time for the big day, even if I wound up putting in the last ten French knots the morning of.  It was worth the stress, though, and the end result was… ïжак!

(I can’t remember how to ask where the train station is, for example, but ïжак , I remember.  Oy.)

I found this Margaret Sherry design in an issue of Cross Stitcher magazine and knew that I had to do it up.  I did it on 28-count evenweave rather than aida, mainly to make the crazy backstitch just a little easier – and did this ever pay off the night before Mother’s Day, as I was frantically working the lettering.

And lo and behold, Mill Hill released new spring kits in plenty of time for me to stitch one:

This one was from the kitties.  🙂  The kit came with a magnet, but no one would ever get to see it on the fridge, so I finished it as a hanging ornament instead and backed it with some holographic paper I found in my scrapbooking stash.

(As always, clicking on the photos will make them larger – thanks for looking!)