A quick recap of 2011

Before I get into 2012, let's have a quick look back over the past year to see what have been accomplished:

Tried black-work for the first time:

black work portrait

Started knitting again - first time since childhood:

knitted portrait

mystery knitted project - unfinished

Did only one crochet project (unfinished as yet):

babette

Made two tutorials:

templates

embroidery pattern

Made two quilts:

stash-buster 1

stash-buster 2

Traveled to three countries:

Kenya

South Africa

Oman

Started a few long term project (still going...):

Project ABC

Arabian inspired designs

And a few other odd things:

I revamped the blog and designed a logo

I visited a few souks

I have many plans for 2012, which include lots of stitching, monetizing and travel.

Now, lets get to work!

Arabic Cross Stitch Design

I am in the process of designing a few Arab inspired cross stitch patterns.

Here's the first one:

How the colours were added:

Any constructive feedback will be greatly appreciated.

Anika's room

Our house was very much boy-orientated before Anika's arrival 16 months ago. With 2 boys aged 10 and 11 everything was about sport, cars and Star Wars... then the pink revolution happened. Our house became a lot more girly and soft. I think we all love it...although not all will admit it! For the first year Anika's bed was in our room as we did not have an extra room available. After long discussions about how we will rearrange our home we decided to 'build' an extra room. We have a huge living/tv room upstairs from where all the bedrooms are accesable. We built a temporary dry-wall to devide the room in two and so created an extra small bedroom for Anika. (We live in a rented house so permanent structural changes are not allowed.)


I painted a (pink) tree on one wall and decorated it with leaves and flowers. The tree is now attracting all sorts of creatures and we already have butterflies and birds living in the tree. I am keeping an eye out for frogs and insects... ;-)

The one end of the room is taken up by a changing table, but will be replaced by a play area in a year or so when Anika is potty-trained. Do you recognise some of the fabric in the curtain?

A lampshade from IKEA fits right into the theme of garden creatures...

and so does the cross-stitch sampler, grandma made for Anika.

Since we are plagued by mosquitos in winter (summer is far to hot for them too!) I made a mosquito net to protect the pink one at night..


More on her room to follow...

My secret project...

Just a quick "Hallo", to let you know I am still around.


I am frantically working on my secret project.


Only one week to go than I can reveal it - first to my friend and then to you.


In the meantime here are some teasers to tide you over.

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Mother's Day Special

With it being Mother's Day tomorrow, I thought it would be a good idea to show off some of the things my mother has made.

This cross-stitch pattern was published in an Afrikaans womans magazine called SARIE. It came just in time for the birth of our first son and Grandma got to work immediately to make this for her first grandson.

Then 16months later our second son was born and Grandma had to make another sampler. But where to get a different pattern? Eventually we ordered a pattern sheet from Jeanette Crew Designs and Mom made up a new sampler layout for Stefan.

Now, 9 years later, we are blessed with a baby girl, so again Grandma had to make a sampler. This time we had to look for a girlie theme. After much debating about fairies, angels, butterflies, etc we decided to make it a nature/South Africa theme. My mom had over the past few years completed a huge variety of the Mollink Designs Bird series so we decided to use some of those images. We included a few butterflies from Jeanette Crew. The other detail are my mom's own design.

I inherited my love for needlework, craft and creativity in general from my mom and my wish is that I can pass it on to my children too. Happy Mothers Day!!