A touch of green

 and hearts!

Once again this is not the direction I had intended for this project. However it has evolved as it has progressed and this is the most recent set of design decisions.

Vertical sashing. 

You may recall I considered using this space when originally intending to add the groups names.

And if you don't well CLICK HERE for details.

I had no comments on my intended lettering there but did get some Facebook feed back about not using the vertical space. It was a bit distorting to the lettering.

Still once I had all the horizontal sections quilted, much as I would have liked to have been done, nope it needed more, OK I needed there to be more.

I thought about stars, four stars for Forestella, logical but the length to width of the space was still giving me issues.

Then just as I was thinking about it, and in the same fashion as a new logo appeared when I was just going to do circles, one of the Facebook Fan pages suggested that as part of the push to a million views before the group is once more united as four on a particular song we add an emoji comment of.

💚💚💚💚🍀

hmmm how about using that?

or a modified version 

OK that felt right, but just for the middle of the three sets of vertical sashing rows. 

However the idea of two then something in the middle then two also felt like a solution to the star issue.

I had wanted to add the fandom  name earlier in the process. Across the top alternating with Forestella. 

In this instance while using the Korean for the names had made them the same three batchim in length, Forestella and Soopbyeol  came out as five and two respectively and did not balance

So would the Korean for Soopbyeol work this time.

well I think it does.  As a side note upside down hearts points into the clover works for me, upside down stars pointing inwards somehow did not so they are all point up.

Not decided on the thread colour for the stars yet.

But I have for the Fore together hearts.

Green.

Amongst all that blue a bit unexpected perhaps.

I just happened to have the emoji shade of green in quilting thread (thanks once more to Mrs Jackson) and thankfully I think it is looking OK.

More design decisions as I stitch. Firstly to just outline the single hearts and use the dye pen to make them solidly dark.

Second to do the inner line on the clover as a continuous stich but to form the clover edge in just the running stitch.

For a sense of continuity I now intend to do the Stars the same way but remain uncertain of the lettering will be single strand or outlined.

That decision may depend on the colour and thickness of the thread chosen.

I am still hoping to get the "fan" addition quilting done for the reunion and listening to their music whilst I stitch might even help with getting those million views.

Now I have added the link to the You Tube video we are working towards the million before but I will add it again just in case you are new and missed it before, or you might like to see the proliferation of hearts that inspired me.

 

As a little after thought about blogging. There is a stats facility to tell me how may views by day and month etc. there have been and which countries they are from (and other technical stuff) but I am never that sure when those are real people or an algorithm of some sort. Single country visits feel like they ought to be people but sudden spikes of a few hundred or thousand from one place suggests to me that something computer generated is going on . So for today I have some hope that the one visit logged as being from South Korea was a person but that the 919 from Singapore much less likely. 

The only time I can be sure people read this at all is when they kindly leave a comment. Just a Hi would be nice on occasion. 

BFF 17 coining a new term

 we were both doing "filling in" tonight. And having a nice chat, my BFF even got to fit words in the right way and not just sideways.

I was mentioning that adding some stitches to the sky in addition to those on the pattern had crossed my mind but I was holding firm on not Deborahizing (aka adding things on and making things more difficult than they need to be) and my BFF noted she had been thinking in the opposite direction of leaving off the whisp of light blue cloud and the backstitch seagulls. We have therefore decided that leaving elements off without replacing them with something else will henceforth be called doing a  Roni. After all our word for complicating things is a lengthening of my name, so a word for simplifying is a contraction of hers. 

I finished all of the cross and half stitches this evening. Roni's eyes did not feel as cooperative as mine tonight so she did not quite get there. She has off screen time dispensation to get to the point of Backstitching and we will both be doing that next time. I say next time and not next week as we will have a two week gap due to other commitments of a Wednesday evening.

I have taken this weeks update snap in the frame that came with the kit, partly to see how the sky looks and if my shortened rocks gives too much sky that might need more cloud to balance it.

CLICK HERE to pop on over to my BFF's blog and her updated.

Sunday Stitchings March

 I suppose I could also link this post to the gifted gorgeousness as the pattern was a gift, but as it is currently my Sunday Stitching project it gets a post all of its own.

I started with a touch of blue, which let me back into the shades of brown in the edge of the eyes and then whilst that thread was in the needle then I kept going with that. It feels like it filled out quite a bit in the time frame.

 

Gifted Gorgeousness March 2025

 For an explanation of this link up (if you did not get here from Serendipitous Stitching) CLICK HERE  and if you are a crafting blogger perhaps you might like to join in.

You can find the rest of this months participants by Clicking THIS link

This delightful gift for my mother arrived quite serendipitously today, on the 15th of the month and the day of the link up so it certainly had to be shared. 

This was made by a lady I work with, but have never seen. We mostly communicate via Teams or e-mail.

At one point and I can't recall when our crafting was discussed and she does that magic with wool and a hook that I never have got the hang of. A later mention that my mother liked owls and this was the result.

 

He came with a little card with pansies, which just happen to be a favourite of hers. I took a quick picture, you can see a previous project on the left, which just shows I am still using them, and behind and to the right my current quilting project.

I told my mother she should have her picture taken with her Howlett, this is as much as she was willing to feature in a picture.

 

Thank you Elspeth.

BFF SAL 17 Sagt mir, wo die Blumen sind

 my brain offered up that phrase, yes in the German (where have all the Flowers gone) whilst I was stitching the pink in the section most impacted by the miscount of the grey. Which has resulted in there being less flowers on my piece than on the patten. 

And why that and in the German? Once upon a time in addition to French (which I struggled with) my school decided some of us would "do" German. So for a year I tried to do both languages. Not particularly successfully, and the teacher though that learning songs might help. So we did, Where have all the Flowers gone, which to be honest I thought was originally in German and translated to English and not as is the case the other way around. And an odd song that also circles back on itself about an egg stealing dog. Now in my memory that is 

 Ein Mops kam in die Küche,

Und stahl dem Koch ein Ei.
Da nahm der Koch den Löffel*,
Und schlug den Mops entzwei.
Da kamen alle Mops,
Und gruben ihm ein Grab,
Und setzten ihm einen Grabstein,
worauf geschrieben stand:

"Ein Mops kam in die Küche..."

Now I had to look up Mops tonight as I wondered if my memory was off as that is not German for Dog, but apparently it is for a Pug dog. So I guess the version we were taught was with pugs (ok I had to look up the everything past the first line ). Neither are what you would call jolly, and as a final song, well the teacher presented Elvis singing I don't have a wooden heart and noted his accent was perfect!

The year of German had a detrimental impact on my French and neither language continued after that experiment year.  

I find it very amusing that knowing I struggle with spelling in English (hooray for the spell checker, although I do occasionally stump it with what word I may have been trying to spell) and the sad state of my attempts at European languages, I am now trying to learn Korean!

So this evening sewing generated trip down memory lane for languages and a for song lyrics randomly generated by my brain. Sometimes my BFF and I have conversations that devolve into song lyrics, part of our same but different and also different but the same vibe CLICK HERE to see her progress and also see what I mean in the title of her blog.

Next session I have blue to sew and the backstitching if I get that far. 

Oh and that reason for trying Korean, and a link to their most recent original song 

Mind my language teacher may have been onto something about singing and languages, but perhaps not in the way she approached it. People who sing, hear the nuances in sounds and in hearing the differences perhaps they find it easier to then make the relevant sound. After all in English we say someone has an ear for languages not a mouth!

So on that thought a double video link , this one to a solo performance. Although I don't think he "speaks" all those languages he certainly sings them well.

Sunday Stitching into March

 and I thought I would do more of the cat, some of the shades around the white, to make those stitches more visible.  However, when I pulled it out that is not what my eyes felt like doing.

My eyes wanted colour, and it is not wise to argue with your eyes.

So a little more of the mid pink and a new shade were the order of the day.

At least it has stopped looking as if the cat is wearing a fez.

BFF SAL 17 A very Queen of Hearts solution

 to last weeks problem with the puffin...

Off with his head! Well that was the bit that needed unpicking, so at the beginning of this week  with off sewing time corrections I started here.

The evening was mostly shades of grey.

And finished with a little bit of colour at last.

Click here to see my BFF's Update

BFF SAL 17 Ah !

 Well, it transpires that last week I could not count. This week I can and have therefore discovered last weeks deficiency in my numerical competence.

At first I though it was just in the rocky foreground and I could work around that as I did not feel like unpicking it. So I then did the rocky background, in relation to the dark section initial sewn.

However, as I moved on the the next shade of grey it was to realise there was an error from the start.

At this point it stopping for the evening became the best option. Well after taking out that grey bit and the dark section on the right that I thought was the error but nope it was not alone! It is going to need a hard look and then a decision on which option is going to take more effort, unpicking to correct  or the mental effort of making adjustments to "fudge" the errors. 

My BFF happily was having a much better relationship with the counting and sewing this week.

She had not posted as yet, there is a link to her post on the right side of the blog..I will add a direct link later once there is one.

My current issues with counting and concentration level is making us rethink the potential SAL 18 as perhaps a bit more complicated than we want to take on just at the moment.

I think I am more inclined to the ease of quilting along predawn lines at the moment. No counting required,

BFF SAL 17 the post arrived

 for both of us on the same day.

We both started in the middle and with the same colour, and then both moved onto the same second colour!

The same yet the same! How weird, but worry not by the third colour we had each headed off in our own direction so the same but different vibe was restored.

We were both enjoying that and it felt odd after weeks of RAL that we would not be doing any off camera stitching.

The pattern estimates a stitching time of 8 hours, so approximately 4 weeks of SAL sessions.

However, at the moment with an initial speedy start we think that we might be done quicker than that, it might be deceptive we shall wait and see.

We also have a plan for SAL 18 and trying something we have not done before in a SAL. Indeed it will be something I have never tried before. Could be interesting. Just need to lay my hands onto the right size and type of material. I am fairly sure I have some in my stash.

CLICK HERE to pop over to my BFF's blog and see the bits that are the same and different.

Happy Valentines Day 2025

 apparently in Korea this is a day for the ladies to gift the gentlemen in their lives , it is the gentlemen's turn in March.

Given it is rather chilly still here at the moment and scarf and mitts are a good idea this felt like a good time to share this chap.

I have a red heart shaped hand warmer, so this makes me think of a warm heart.

Hope you all have a happy day being with or thinking about the ones you love..

Oh and a Forestella link I have just the one..

Ok never a favourite song for me and I have never watched the film  which is why I chose the link to the concert performance and not the version over the video of the film.

However, with some Forestella Magic vocals I could grow to like it.