X'mas tree Ornaments

Making some tree ornaments. I get to put up our Christmas tree every alternate year and this year is one of those years.
I'm making a couple of ornaments for the tree, I like to add one or two to my collection each year and I'm making a few to send to my sister in Hong Kong.
Other bloggers are busy making ornaments too, some have been making them through the year in stitch alongs and ornament swaps.
Here are some links to blogs which have freebie or complementary charts you can follow to make tree ornaments for your personal use.

http://gazette94.blogspot.com/

http://letempsdesxetautresbricolages.over-blog.com/

http://plumpuddingneedleart.com/Plumchart1.html

ATC's and an Award.

I've been doing quite a bit the past few weeks but I just haven't got down to updating all of you on the happenings. Let's hope that's going to be remedied starting this week.

I've recieved some ATC's in the post. So let me show you.
This one is from Anna who makes amazing corsets and is equally adept at creating unconventional fabrics.My ATC to you will be in the mail this week,finally got a few done - that's one of the things I've been doing the past few weeks.

This one's from Gina in Australia who organised the first ATC swap on Stitchin Fingers. Gina I finally have an ATC to swap with you, on that one on one swap we've been mailing each other about.About time ! I imagine you must be saying.
Thank-you Anna and Gina for taking my ATC collection to 3.

I've also been given an award by T&S a couple of weeks back.Thank-you for the Premio Dardos award.

The norms of the Premio Dardos award is to pick 15 blogs who deserve this award for recognition of cultural, ethical, literary, and personal values transmitted in the form of creative and original writing.

Hmm... 15 is a bit much and lately a number of people have blogged about the absurdity of awards and made their blogs "tag free zones" so I'm just going to list blogs I personally find culturally enriching,are creative and original.

Greetings from the Shady Grove

On being Tamizh and a Penn

The Beauty of Life

The Brat, the Bean and Bedlam

Art Propelled

ArtnLight

Masala Chai

At Home with the Farmer's Wife

Glass,Petal,Smoke

I'm not going to notify the authors of these blogs so there's no pressure and compulsion to comply with the rules and pass the award on to 15 people!!!

If you are reading this and have a culturally enriching blog , then please consider yourself a recipient of the Premio Dardos award.

TAST - Oyster Stitch

Cinzia is back after her holiday and TAST has begun again with Oyster Stitch.This one is new to me.

Get to see all the inspiring stitch samples done by the nimble fingers of the participants of TAST by clicking here.

Sep - TIF

The pages for the September TIF. I've followed the suggested colour palette.
The challenge for September was Lists. Lists....hmm..... gave it much thought and couldn't come up with anything all through September probably because I'm not a lists person.I have a diary and make notes in it - when the utilities have to be paid, birthdays, appointments and I stick in movie tickets , write short recipes that sort of thing but lists I don't make lists.
So in departing from the tradition of the TIF's done in previous months where I stuck to both theme and colour palette I've gone with the colour palette and created two compositions. I won't call them representations of the given theme, just compositions where I had great fun going wild with herringbone stitch.

The page on the left. I wrote out things I had marked in my diary in September but the herringbone stitch just grew organically outwards and obliterated all the writing done with a marker and I think it is better that way.

The page on the right.

I'm working on the TIF for November

Recording history in the Little Red Book

"The times are rare when history stands still to watch a man change its momentous course.
Barack Obama holds out hope for all the world's sidelined. For he has proved with conviction that nothing - neither skin nor suppression nor two centuries of vicious hatred - can stop a man from taking the centre stage of history. Yes, we can .... we all can."
- The Economic Times. 6th November 2008.

Have a good weekend.I'm going to be watching Quantum of Solace, the new Bond film.

October TIF

The challenge for October was to represent your studio or workspace.My work is done sitting on a black sofa listening/watching BBC or Bollywood music on 9Xm or the fantastic foreign language movies on NDTV Lumiere or World Movies. I have three round palm leaf baskets stuffed with the things I need to do my work. Embroidery thread, scissors, pin cushion, packets of beads and sequins. I'm a magpie and collect all manner of things which find their way into these three baskets - sweet wrappers, foil from chocolate bars,the plastic ribbons off bouquets, currently its beer bottle caps which I have flattened with the kitchen tongs and the labels carefully peeled off the beer bottles too. I work on more than one project at any given time and mingled in with all this is the newspaper, my mobile phone and the innumerable remote controls and when R is around there is his mobile and blackberry which gets added to the accumulation of stuff .

Now here's the interpretation.

The detail of the page on the right.That's the foil from a chocolate bar which is backed with polythene so it didn't tear when I stitched it down with running stitch. I quite like the texture that resulted and there's a small one inch square of card, pock marked with stabs of the needle which has been used a number of times as the foundation for the hand pieced patchwork scarves I make.
The page on the left.There are the beer bottle caps and the jumble of embroidery threads.The semi circle represents the palm leaf basket.

The challenge for November is to use typography or text which I really like.I'll be working on the September challenge too which was "lists".

A month to go and the year will be over.Its been a productive year and I'll have my first fibre book to show for all the work I've put into this challenge.

Sharon B has outlined the challenge for next year, read more about it here.