Last post of the year

I hope everyone had a great Christmas. Mine was spent with the family, a little bit with sadness, as we had a funeral on the 24th (an uncle of mine).

Someone asked what was wrong with my fur-baby, she had an infection of the uterus. It was already that bad, that there was a little hole in it, and the infection had spread in her tummy. The vet wondered how we didn't notice before, but really one day she looked perfectly fine (still coming for cuddling, eating normaly, going outside when she needed, jumping in the sofa by herself) and the next day, she couldn't walk anymore. But she's all fine again, as you can see in piccie below :-)



Still no stitchy updates...

Wondering were the updates are? There won't be any very soon. Stitching has come to a complete stop, I just can't seem to do it, high blood pressure is making things difficult. But I've got meds now, so hopefully everything will get sorted out soon.

On the positive note, my little fur-baby has made a great recovery! She was really shaking when she had to go back to the vet to removed the stitches out of her tummy, and she was really weak for about a week, but now she's back playing with her toys (and that at almost 13 years old!) I'll try to get a pic of my little one up next time.

Fur-babies

Last thursday we had quite a scare, my little 12 year old fur-baby suddenly didn't seem to respond to anything anymore. So she was rushed to the vet. He operated on her the same evening, she almost stayed in the sedation, but my tough little girl pulled through. Recovery is taking a while of coursse, but she's definately doing better. Here's to hoping here recovery continues and she can stay with me for a couple more years.

Birthday Stash

So, today is my 29th birthday, and yes I got new stash from my family! I recieved the Lanarte kits Day and Night by designer Maria Van Scharrenburg. These have been on my wish list for a long time. So I'm a happy girl :-)

The Egyptian Empire

Well, being confined to bed is no fun! And of course, stitching is quite impossible as well. But, I did get some stitching done before my enforced bedrest, and my mother took a piccie of it for me :-)

I was working on lanarte kit The Egyptian Empire by Maria Van Scharrenburg. I did a look of work on Toetanchamon. This Farao demands lots of work, because there are tons of backstitches in it, and most of those backstitches are in DMC gold metallic, and that's not always fun to work with.

So let me know what you think of it so far.



and now it's back to bed for me...

Mystery Animal SAL part 4/10

It's been a while since I've updated, oops!

It's not because I haven't been stitching though :-) I've been working on the mystery SAL, this time with a print-out. It seemed my printer was hungry for more ink, silly printer not telling me such a small detail! So after feeding the printer, I got a very nice print out of it. That did help a lot to get the stitching done faster. And this is the result...



I've also been practising my culinary skills, by making a vegetable quiche and a clafoutis for dessert for a dinner party, but well that hasn't got anything to do with the subject :-)

Anyway, can I also interest anyone in an update on the Great Empire of Egypt?

And a stupid question, what do I have to do to get a notification when someone leaves a comment on my blog?

Mystery Animal SAL 3/10

I finished the third part of the mystery SAL, and the mystery is starting to get revealed :-) I even did the backstitches this time for all the parts! I did have trouble with this part, because my printer seems to have taken a dislike to me, and decided to make it al quite unreadable, so I had to follow the pattern on the computer screen - which made me lose my place in the pattern often times. So I was very glad to be done with it! On to part 4...

Exchanges sent

This post is about the exchenges I sent out.
I didn't really have many small Disney patterns, so I had no other choice (yeah right!) but to go stash-shopping. My LNS unfortunately seems to be diminishing their cross-stitch section, but I did find one pattern-book from Winnie the Pooh, the ONLY Disney one they had. I chose a silhoutte-pattern with Tigger, Winnie and Piglet.
Made on 18 count Aïda.


The Magnet - does it look familiar to you - yes, I chose the same pattern as Nel, who sent me a Magnet. Luckily I didn't have to send back to her :-) The pattern comes from Borduurblad 33. It was a fun quick stitch. Also made on 18 count Aïda.




Next update: Tommorow - Animal SAL part 3

Exchanges recieved

I participated in two exchanges on the Dutch forum of the EMS cross-stitch board. One was a Disney Bookmark and one was an magnet with Autumn as the subject. I recieved two gorgeous exchanges. The bookmark was from Margot. She stitched Kwik, Kwek and Kwak.






The Magnet came from Nel, she stitched up a very cute magnet. It's in a protective plastic coaster, so it won't get dirty.







But I also had a few surprises in the mail. Evalina's blog give-away arrived, she gave me a pattern called 'Happiness' and a book of patterns 'Critter Careers'. And another surprise, I recieved my very first RAK. Lisa Nicholson send me three Winny The Pooh patterns.




Thanks everyone!


also
Annette is doing a blog give-away to celebrate her 6th blog anniversary. Check it out here: http://www.annettesacre.com/stitchblog/

Mystery animal SAL part 2

I've been a good girl, and have been working on part 2 as soon as I recieved it. Last time I barely made the 'deadline', so I decided to do better this time! I still have a week left now :-)
Still haven't done any of the backstitches though.

For the rest I have been working on two exchanges on the Dutch EMS board: a Disney bookmark, and a magnet with the subject Autumn. No piccies until everything has been finished up and recieved by my partners.

Last weekend

Last weekend, I went away on weekend to the Ardennen. We visited the castle of Veves. It's an 8th century castle, with other parts build on the original castle later on. It was the stronghold of the Lords of Beaufort, and the residence to their descendants, the Counts de Liedekerke Beaufort.

On the way back to our staying home we made a stop in Dinant.


In the afternoon we had a guided walk, we passed the Belgian borders into France. We went all the way up a look-out tower
It was quite a climb, but the view was definately worth it.

Had a lovely brunch on sunday, and then back home (with first some sightseeing) we went.

Egypt update

As promised last time, this time I bring an update on my BAP Egypt. I've been working on one of the pilars and I also did some of the border. The backstitch of the border is in gold metallic thread. This pattern uses a lot of the gold metallic. For now, the thread seems to be cooperating :-)






I've also been working on a mystery animal SAL for the CLS-group. This is the first part. I'm still lacking two colors, so it's not complete yet, and I also haven't done the backstitching yet.

A finish and some other stuff

I finally managed to finish Tiger's Chick! All those fractional stitches on the Aïda made it take a longer, but it's done! :-)









The last weekend of August, it's a bit of a tradition to go to the flower corso in Blankenberge. This year the theme was art. The flowers of Van Gogh, Magrit, Picasso... all made in flowers. These are two examples. More can be found at my webshots-page. (http://community.webshots.com/user/Katrien22)



I also have my own vegatable garden (tomatoes, beans, lettuce, potatoes), but this is a big example of a potatoe! It's about 24 cm long. It's too big for me, lol!




Next update will (hopefully) be about the Egypt-WIP!

Mel's blog give away

Mel (http://www.thedailymel.com/) is doing a give away on her blog to celebrate her 8 years of blogging. Go check it out! Deadline is august 26.
http://www.thedailymel.com/2009/08/16/blog-candy-time/

The Big Ask again

Next saturday (august 29th 2009), there will be another Big Ask dancing event in Ostend. See what's it all about, and the clip from last year here:

http://www.thebigask.be/nl/node/411

Late weekend update

First of all, those finishes I promised in my last update! I made two small X-mass ornies. Both are made on 16 count Aïda. They're mostly try-outs as I never made any before. Don't know if I'm entirely happy with them...












I also made the same snow-man motief on a smaller count (18) Aïda, for a X-mass card, and made a card for my best friend who just bought a house.


Just as last year, the neighbourhood had a small hobby-expostion during the anual festivities. I had my own stand again this year. As you might guess, the Monopoly was a huge succes :-) My mother also had a stand this year.







and last but not least: since we were expected to stay at the exposition and do some work, I took a smaller piece with me (the Egypt is just to big to take to such places): Tiggers Chick

The Great Empire of Egypt update

I have not been stitching as much as I would have liked - I used the month off from the IUI's for a thorough house-cleaning - but I did stitch some on my WIP. The pillars in backstitching are done, as well as the Hator Temple. The pillars were quite complicated, as sometines it went over one, other times over two but the pattern was not always very clear about it. I'm happy with the result though.

I had a few small finishes as well, but I forgot to take a pic. Will put them in a next post.

In a previous post, I showed the bookmark I made for Lila. I recieved a very beautiful bookmark from Lila in return, as you can see here: Thank you Lila!

new sofa's arrived

I bought new sofa's several weeks ago. They finally arrived. It was quite an ordeal getting them through the door. Thanks to a dose of manpower, my seats are were they are supposed to be. We did find three (!) needles after we removed the old seats (hangs head in shame)

Dutch Typing Speedtest

A little test I found thanks to Annette's blog (http://annette-werkjes.blogspot.com/). Since I took typing classes many years ago, and took my exams in speed-typing in four languages, I thought let's see if I'm still any good at it :-)

73 words

Speed test

You reached 350 points, so you achieved position 365 of 2266 on the ranking list


You type 447 characters per minute
You have 73 correct words and
you have 1 wrong words

real life stuff

Yes, I said I wouldn't mention my real life to much on here, and now I do it two post after another...

After my failed 9th IUI-attempt, I went back full of courage and hope to my doctor on the 12th of my cycle for the check-up, turns out I now have a cyste, so I'm out of the running for a couple of months :-(
I have wished for a baby for years, it took 7 months to get the acceptance for the IUI-treatment, and that for 12 treatments, I'm already panicking because I only have approval for 3 treatments left, and then I have to start the whole procedure up again (and of course pay it all again too). So yes, I'm stressed about it :-(

June update, continued

This bookmark pattern comes from Cyberstitchers.com It stitches up very quickly and I liked the result more than I thought I would.

This one was made for the ILCS bookmark exchange.

I grabbed pieces from several patterns, to make a bookmark for Lila, with her favorite color (blue) en subject (butterflys). I hope she liked it.

The next one was a small kit from cross-stitch greeting cards called 'pottery maker'. It was a quick stitch, fun to make.

On personal news, the 9th IUI-attempt was another big failure, and I'm really beginning to think I'll never become a mum., and my doctor just doesn't listen to my concers. Every one who knows I was trying is wondering why I still haven't brought any good news, and people are then wondering why I'm feeling so depressed?!

June update

After my earlier small finishes, I decided to rescue my BAP "The Great Empire of Egypt" from the treat of becoming an UFO :-)

So for the last two weeks of june, I have been working on this one.

This is how it looked on June 30th:

I also got another finish: the small Kit I recieved from Rene. It's a pattern called Welcome. My father immediately wanted it for his house!

some finishes

Since my emotional state isn't the best, stitchings has been real slow the last couple of weeks (and even a bit longer), so I kept myself to some small projects to at least see some progress happening. I finished two smal lanarte kits:

I also won a blog give-away from Rene a couple of weeks ago, she sent me a cute little kit 'Welcome' and have already started on it (bad quality pic!)

That's it for now.

My first post on this blog :)

I'm an avid cross-stitcher and proud mama of a furbaby Princesje. This blog will mostly contain updates of my stitching and stash-shopping. Not much happens in my regular life, so don't expect much from that, lol.

what kind of patterns do I like?, Anything Native American (before I discovered the wonderful world of online shops, those kind of patterns where veeeerrrryyyy hard to find for me), wolves, fantasy, Disney (especially Winnie The Pooh), dollhouses, horses and much more, lol!
Piccies of my work (and a wishlist) can be seen at Webshots: http://community.webshots.com/user/Katrien22

What kind of other things do I like?, I have lots and lots of books, and I love miniatures and dollhouses.