What I did this Christmas...

Besides family visits, playing board games and catching up with the 'Sherlock' tv series I also got a some cross stitching done. I bought the pattern at Radical Cross Stitch. Here's the whole thing (sorry about the terrible photo, it's dark all day!)

These e-patterns are really well designed and come with a lot of extra information. I also bought a pattern that says 'Embroidery tames my savage beast'. :)  Not sure if I'll start on that right away or finish one of the many embroidery wip's in my basket first...

Under the Christmas Tree...

Look who is hiding under the Christmas Tree...and she has found the one package that has her name on it too!  I'm taking it easy for a couple of days, feeling a bit under the weather and doing a lot of cross stitching at the moment in 'my' corner of the couch. :)  Merry Christmas everyone and/or Happy Hannukah. Hope to see you all back in 2012!

Perfect match

Nearly done with this cute Penelope Waits pattern and I'm so very happy with the colour I chose for the lettering! It's a hand dyed variegated floss and the colour is called 'cedar'. (Click on the photo to see the different colours) Very fitting for a Bear/Woodland themed embroidery, right? Because the Bear is stitched in only one colour, I thought the variegated floss would add a little more interest to the embroidery. I bought the floss in this Etsy shop a couple of years ago. I don't see this particular colourway there anymore but there are lots of other pretty variegated flosses to check out.

Polar Bear Dreams...

Look what I found when I was sorting my crafty supplies...my try-out version of the Polar Bear Dreams Ornament Pattern. Not perfect (as you can clearly see a gap between the head of the polar bear and his quilted blanket) but too sweet to chuck out. :)  This Sleepy Polar Bear stars on the cover of the book that I promised I wouldn't mention again until Spring. If you really need to know you can find it in the sidebar on the right. ;)

I wonder if this Polar Bear is dreaming of launching a really great e-zine for Stitchers around the world? Oh wait...that's what I'm doing at the moment!

 Carina and I are putting the final touches to a fun new publication we are releasing together as a dynamic (?) Dutch/Danish Duo in January! It's an ezine called &Stitches and it will be full of stitchy goodness: patterns, interviews with stitchers etc. Check our &Stitches blog for updates/sneak peeks in the next couple of weeks!

Besides my work on &Stitches there is still so much to do before Christmas! I have no Christmas tree yet and hardly any decorations up. Last year around this time we had lots of snow which makes it so much easier to get in the mood to put up Holiday decorations! I wonder how people in Australia (or any other place where it's summer right now) deal with that...

What every fabric stash needs...

When I bought some goodies for my Secret Santa Swap partner I couldn't resist adding a little something for myself to the order. This is the outwitted colourway of Lizzy House's Outfoxed  (I bought it here). I instantly fell for the sweet hedgehog print and the adorable foxes. When I just started buying fabrics, years ago now, I only bought the cute prints of a line of fabrics. I didn't really care much for coordinating fabrics of the same line that compliment the 'star' print of the line. Well that has changed. Every stash (and every line of fabrics) needs some good coordinating prints with their 'star' print and Lizzy does that so well! Love the leaf print and the geometrical design and the pearl bracelet print is a winner of course.

As I was about to send my Secret Santa Swap yesterday, my husband remarked that it might not be a good idea to send the cute flower bulbs that were in the package. Apparently there are regulations for importing plant related stuff. And I could have known as this happened to a small lavender pillow I once sent as part of a swap to Australia. So instead of the flower bulbs I have made a 'charmpack' with a few of my favourite prints that go really lovely together. At least I think so...

If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook you will probably have noticed that I'm very excited about the Fat Quarterly Community Sewing Retreat in London next year. I will be there on both days and I can't wait to meet many of my online sewing/quilting peeps. Check out the details here if you are interested in coming too!

Slightly Stressed Secret Santa

Secret Santa Swaps. It's not something we usually do over here, but I signed up for the crafty Twitter Secret Santa Swap anyway. :)  I always get a bit stressed about the swaps I do, mostly because I fear that whatever I make or send is not 'good enough'. And while the Secret Santa Swap hosts said that it was absolutely not necessary to include a handmade gift, I saw so many lovely handmade stuff pop up on Twitter and Flickr that I  thought I'd at least make this fabric gift bag. The pattern is from *that* book that I'm in (I will not mention it anymore until it is in print, promise) and it so happens that I saw the pattern pop up on the Sew Mama Sew blog yesterday as a freebie!

Update: and with all the Swap talk in this post....look what arrived just after I finished my blog post!

Some awesome goodies from my Feeling Stitchy colleague Jo! We agreed on sending each other a book (from our personal 'library') but Jo added a lovely book bag, a hand stitched Christmas card and an Apple Crumble (!) Chocolate Bar! Thank you so much  Jo!

My first stuffed toy pattern! (with matching pillowcase)

This is my first stuffed toy pattern and I think he turned out rather sweet! What you can't see on the photo is that he's got an apple stuck to the quills on his back! :) You can find this little hedgehog (and the pillowcase too) in the Pretty in Patchwork book I wrote about a couple of weeks ago! It's available now as a download from Zinio (and not too expensive either!) but if you prefer a printed version of the book, you will have to wait till spring 2012.

At the moment I am working on quite another, but equally exciting, project, together with my Feeling Stitchy colleague Carina. No hedgies involved there but it will surely bring colour to the grey dull month of January for you! More about that later this month....