I finished Little Ted’s advent calendar just in time.. I decided to make it a week and a half ago, I always loved having a chocolate advent calendar growing up and as our little chap is both dairy and soya intolerant, it’s difficult to find anything he can have. I have actually got him a lovely paper calendar which is a nativity play – ill photograph it when we have more pieces in place..
So I am once again over compensating for the dairy thing by giving Little Ted extra treats

It’s made up of heart and stocking shaped pockets cut from red and white felt blankets from Ikea.
On one side is the number and the back is decorated with embroidery and felt hearts.. Each is different. The pockets are then pegged onto a ribbon with little pegs (it’s actually a kit to hang christmas cards – £1.99 from a local craft shop).

I worked on this for 4 days, with more time I would have put more planning into it, especially the embroidery – I did just make it up as I went. I also might have used templates and appliqué for the numbers, but given the tight deadline I’m fairly pleased!

And so we come to day 1, tonight we’ll be getting out the Christmas books. I love The Night Before Christmas and Raymond Briggs’ books and am looking forward to sharing them at bed time.

At the beginning of July I did my first module in the RSN’s Certificate in embroidery. You have to do four techniques: Jacobean, silk shading, blackwork/canvas & gold work.

For each subject you get 8 teaching days. I’m working at Hampton Court, but there are sites around the UK, San Fransisco and I think Japan – check out their website for a better list..

I did the Jacobean course as a 2 week intensive block and boy was it intensive! We were taught Monday to Thursday for 2 weeks and had the Friday and weekend in the middle for homework. Not realising how tough it would be when I booked it I worked the Fridays, which was fine but I was exhausted! I’m not sure if being local was an advantage or not, I had my family around me to keep me going and bring me food, but also to distract me..
I think I added it up to 60 + hours of work on the piece.

I’m writing this on the train to the first day of my second technique, silk shading.. I have tonnes of ideas and some lovely silk a colleague gave me a few years ago..

Just pulling in to clapham junction, need to change trains..

WARNING!! I MAY GUSH IN THIS POST!

So what did you think?
Over a week after the event, blog posts all over the web discuss the dress in detail so I won’t give you the low down of all the detail, thought the BBC have a good [article](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13249018) and [video](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13249682) of the embroidery and lace detail.

It turns out I had (Royal Wedding fever!)[http://www.suzical.co.uk/blog/quilting/do-i-have-royal-wedding-fever] I loved it! I was glued to the TV for the arrivals and ceremony – good choices in music too, though my Mum doesn’t think Jerusalem is a wedding hymn and had a huge argument with my Sister about it when she got married! We travelled over to Oxford that afternoon to visit friends for the weekend and gate crash their local Royal wedding party – D came second in the welly wanging competition!

I loved all three dresses – Kate’s wedding and evening dresses and her Pippa’s bridesmaid dress…
I was pleased with the choice of designer and loved that they chose to use the Royal School of Needlework for the lacework. I can kind of understand why some people thought that an Alexander McQueen dress should be more controversial, but really? For a British Royal wedding of that scale?? I think they got the mix just right – the sleeveless bodice with lace sleeves – apparently Royalty have to have sleeves- I loved that lace. I’ve been reading all the details I can get my hands on about the making of it, though apparently the detail will be kept quiet for 30 years, surely this comes under the freedom of information act??

The simplicity of her evening gown was just stunning – hopefully it allowed her to let her hair down on the dance floor that evening, she certainly deserved a good boogy after the formalities of the morning!

I’ve had to hold off on this post until my Father-in-law’s birthday present was delivered!

Richard is both a big Schubert fan and difficult to buy for so this year we decided that an embroidery of Schubert was a good option.

I took this image:

Traced the outline and simplified the detail a little. I used split stitch for most of the design and fly stitch to shape the curly stitches on the hair. I’ve run the picture by a few of my musical friends and they assure me that it is a recognisable likeness! What do you think??

When Duncan visited Seattle recently, he stayed with a Search Marketing associate of his, [CEO of SEOmoz - Rand Fishkin](http://www.seomoz.org/team/randfish) and his wife Geraldine.

While he was there they visited [Archie McPhee](http://www.mcphee.com/) a store who’s tag line is ‘slightly less disappointing than other companies!’ The store sells [Yodelling Pickles](http://www.mcphee.com/items/11761.html) – I can’t wait to go visit myself at some point!
Geraldine bought a jar of fake eyeballs.. which I wish Duncan had photographed! Not least because we decided that it would make the perfect thank you card!

The photo’s not great, but the iris is done using buttonhole stitch, the pupil a french knot and the red blood-shotness is fly stitch.

Since making my own eyeballs I found some kits over at [Creative Kismet](http://blog.creativekismet.com/2009/05/20/getting-ready/) who would have thought there’d be so much call for embroidered eyeballs!

One of my favourite stories as a child was the Princess and the Pea, so I’ve been really excited by some of the projects I’ve seen around recently.

This embroidery is just so lovely, it looks so simple, which I find are often the hardest projects to do!

Over at Soulemama [this amazing project](http://www.soulemama.com/soulemama/2009/04/myprincess.html ) really captured my imagination and I’ll be saving this one up for the future

Just realised how ambiguous this is and that I didn’t properly reference the embroidery – just to clarify it’s not my work! It’s by the very talented [Georgia McDonald](http://www.flickr.com/photos/georgiamcdonald/3454882796/)!
Also after a bit of digging I’ve found [the pattern for it](http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=25472265) over at etsy – very reasonable at $5!