Friday 2 October 2009

All buttoned up


Finally something I can write about - but it's all wrapped up (some of it, anyway, I haven't shown the sweeties here)! This is my button swap, ready to go off to Maxine of Tiny White Daisies. The deadline is next Tuesday so I'm really pleased to have got it all finished on time. This is the inbetween-time now...waiting to see if she likes what I've made (or indeed, whether it's actually arrived!) and waiting to receive my part from her, and waiting to share with everybody what I've had so much fun doing over the last few weeks. My button stash has increased significantly, oops, but I love the way I've been able to bring in almost all of the crafts I'm reasonably good at, centred around some beautiful buttons. And I can't say any more than that for now!

Over the last week I've been even busier, if that's possible. The huge stack of orders for cakes and Mr Suns is almost complete - I just have three more Mr Suns to embroider to complete everything I've guaranteed for conference. I am SO not taking any crafting with me for the train journey and overnights; I reckon I've got at least 15-20 hours of reading time ahead of me so I'll be attacking the enormous pile which has been accumulating by the bedside.

Alongside the crochet I've been wrestling with cross stitch software - a couple of years ago I designed some sweet little stockings for hanging on the tree. I stitched six of them and then decided they were too small, really, so I left them, intending to go back and redo them for sale eventually. Then I learnt to crochet and that was it for cross stitch for a long while. A lunch date with Ali from Craft Matters last week reminded me of the existence of these patterns (how, I've no idea, but I always feel full of ideas when I've seen Ali!), so I fired up the software and suddenly remembered why I haven't gone more into designing. After a couple of hours tweaking and enlarging, the RSI kicked in from all the mouse use. Then I discovered I couldn't export the patterns in a useful format which I could get into a PDF for sale. By this point I'd already lined up ten friends (hi guys!) who were willing to test-stitch the patterns in return for chocolate, so after a reasonable amount of panicking at my other half (thank you, you are my hero) and a suggestion from friend Ben, I've had Kxstitch installed. Unfortunately I can't import the patterns from the original programme so it's looking like it's going to have to be a total redraw. Luckily most of the designs are repeating, sampler-style patterns, but I have a feeling my poor wrist will be quite sore this time next week.

Wish me luck, and I'll post what I made for the swap as soon as I know it's been safely received!


2 comments:

x vInTaGe VioLeT x said...

whoah loads of parcels!

Caroline said...

I think I did go slightly nuts, oops...I had everything ready yesterday morning, then spotted a lovely bead in the afternoon which was I just going to add to the stash. This morning it got turned into another piece :O