Work on the Way To Completion

OK! What on earth is this I imagine you are saying!

Well, the year before last (I think it was anyhow!!) I had two little needlepoint projects on the go that were small enough that I didn't need to do them in a frame. However, this did mean that they did get very slightly pulled out of shape in the course of stitching and needed to be stretched before they could be made up.

At long last, just recently I asked John to mark up a couple of sheets of marker board with ruled lines so I could do this stretching.

This little kit is from Cleopatra's Needle and is a spectacle case worked entirely in tent stitch using wool. As you can see above, in the working the canvas has been very slightly been pulled out of the true square.

Now ...... in looking round the Internet, some sites say to damp the work before trying to stretch and some say to do it after pinning it out on a board. Nevertheless, one thing for sure, as I live in a hard water area I decided that if I used tap water, I'd probably end up with limescale marks on the work.

So, I bought some ironing water and, deciding to damp first, I lightly damped the back of the work.

I then set off and started to carefully pin it out on the board.

Never having done this before, I wasn't really sure how best to do it! In the end, since the top edge was straight and 'true', I carefully pinned this edge, putting pins in approximately every centimetre. I then carefully stretched and pinned the left hand edge, then the bottom edge and then the right hand edge.

 I used stainless steel mapping pins; rust proof and strong!

One minor hiccough! The pins are long enough that they go through the board a little bit and can stick in you if you're not careful!! But ..... hey ..... perhaps 'art'(?) needs a little pain :)

Since the spectacle case went so well, I went onto a square pin-cushion that I bought a long time ago when we visited Winchester Cathedral. I really enjoyed making this since it involved several different needlepoint stitches that I hadn't tried before. However, you can see how these stitches have pulled the side pieces out of true.

A back view of the work! Something people don't often see!

The following closeups show more clearly how the side pieces have been pulled out of true. You can also see some of the different stitches used.

Again, I damped the work before pinning to the board. Stretching was a little more tricky but here is the finished pinning.

Once they are dry, I can remove the pins and see how well the stretching has worked!

Another Creative Catch-Up Post!

Am I the only Mum who inherits mobile phones from their children? Although I like technology, I resisted mobile phones for a long time as ...... well ...... people seem to become welded to them, and I fiercely resisted this! However, even I could eventually see their worth, but my first phone was a free one after applying for a credit card and I had if for ages!! It was bright pink and I got a lot of stick about it from my son!

It was very basic but eventually, when James was making one of his frequent phone changes, I inherited his old one and this pattern has continued ever since! My latest inherited phone is an iPhone but I decided it needed some some of case to protect it.

One blog I follow is Wendy Gratz's Shiny Happy World and I was inspired by a pattern on her blog. Also, recently I found a lovely embroidery book for sale in a local charity shop for only £1.50.

 The embroidered butterflies in this book are gorgeous! I was especially taken with the Orange tipped butterflies you can see on the cover. We've seen quite a few of these on our walks recently (when it hasn't rained!) and they just shout out 'Summer' to me.

The felt I had already bought some time ago. It is very thick woollen felt, approximately 4mm thick, that I got from Blooming Felt. The beauty of this felt is that, since it is so thick, you can do embroidery on the surface just by holding it in your hand; no hoop or frame is necessary.

You can see from the jumble of my supplies that I traced the male and female butterflies onto thick tracing paper. I then used the prick and pounce transfer method, using cornflour as the 'pounce'. It just about worked! I traced over the cornflour spots with a permanent marker, happy that all the pen marks would be covered by the embroidery.

I did the female butterfly at the top first. It has been a long time since I last did any freehand embroidery, so she was my trial run, if you like. She's not bad, although I can see one or two places where my stitching is not quite as accurate as I would have liked. The male looks better ..... although overall I'm pleased with how they've come out.

I then just used black cotton a broder to stitch the sides of the pouch ..... and now I have a very practical, girly, phone cover :)

A Creative Catch-Up!

This is definitely a catch-up post! I really should have posted about this little cross-stitch card I made for my Mum back in March, but I just never got round to it!! I made it for Mother's Day ..... and for us in the UK, this is in March. This little card was a freebie from a cross-stitching magazine from several years ago; it was a kit that John's Mum gave me, but it has taken me until now to do it.

It's on quite a fine Aida but only took me a couple of evenings to complete. I love making things like this for my Mum. In 2013, it will be her 80th Birthday, so I need to decide what to make her for that :)

It's Stopped Raining!

..... for the moment at any rate! In the UK, this must be the wettest draught on record!

The gloriously blue sky and sunshine were a welcome change this morning. Having seen that the weather forecast is for more rain and blustery winds, we thought we'd make the most of it and go out for a walk. We didn't go far ...... only through the Lea Valley Park down to Waltham Abbey ..... a round trip of 5.37 miles. We chose this route because we knew everywhere would be very wet and the Lea Valley Park has lots of good paths.

One thing that has changed in this part of the Park is the appearance of some slightly odd looking wooden 'sculptures'. Someone told us they are there as 'interest' for anyone walking through here when the Olympics is on; the White Water centre is just down the road from us in the Park, near to Waltham Abbey.

 Whether this is true or not, I have no idea!!

Still .... the walk in the sun was a nice change and it included a brief visit to Waltham Abbey Church itself. I didn't take any photos inside the Church ..... my little camera can't quite cope with that sort of interior .... but it is a very peaceful Church with lots of interesting features.

It was great to get outside before the rain comes back again!!

RootsMagic 5 Essentials Review

I guess I'd best not publish screen shots of the software in case this breaks any copyright rules!!

However, a quick glance down the comparison website I mentioned in my earlier post does show RootsMagic 5 in a favourable light! Since I have easy access to the 'Essentials' version of this via the free CD that comes with my monthly Family Tree magazine, I thought this would be the most logical one to start with!

Having installed the software, my first impressions are favourable! Each tab in the window has a 'hover' information pop-up and from this, without even typing in anything, I can see that there is provision for creating notes linked to a person or to the family and you can also create a source for just a person or for a family ..... this should be useful when linking Census information to a family.

Creating a person is very easy and only the gender, date of birth and death is entered at this point. It is quite easy to then add subsequent facts such as a marriage and enter source details for a marriage.

It is very tolerant about entering dates in different formats; for a number of people, at the moment I only have some dates as 'circa Dec 1904' for instance and it is quite happy with these.

It is easy to add more than one marriage for a person. John's grandfather had a marriage before he married John's grandmother. This spouse died in childbirth, and unfortunately the daughter she gave birth to died at birth and infact, both deaths are recorded on the same Death Register page.

You do have to keep your wits about you though to notice where it shows you that another marriage partner exists by looking at on one of the tabs near the top of the screen.

It copes well when entering the details for John's great-grandmother whose surname was 'Benjamin' on her son's birth certificate but was 'Bingmann' at her earlier marriage. It also appears to allow you to set up a fact, like a Census entry, and share it between lots of people. However, this feature can't be tried in the Essentials version; it is only available in the full version.

The reporting features are quite good, although some are only available in the full version, as is the feature to generate webpages from the data. Nevertheless, all sources that you enter are cited in the indexes of the reports so everything is self-documenting.

As the first piece of software I have attempted to look at, I am quite impressed with it.

Family Tree Software

My Maternal Grandmother - Emily Smith

One thing that has been on my do-to list for ages is to investigate different Family Tree software packages. For ages and ages, I have used Brother's Keeper. This was a free download, although you can get additional features if you pay for the registration key. I have only been able to find one supplier in the UK who sells this key but I have repeatedly hesitated to buy it as I'm not entirely happy with Brother's Keeper.

It is OK .... up to a point ...... but it has a very old-fashioned feel to it and it's a bit 'clunky' to navigate round. Also, the reports it produces aren't particularly nice in their layout. I also don't think it enables you to easily make use of Census information. It would also be nice to easily produce PDFs from the data to share with other people and having a way to automatically produce web pages might be a nice feature.

My Maternal Grandfather - Frederick Brett

Although I subscribe to The Family Tree magazine, I can't recall seeing any comparison reviews of different software in there and, in any  case, on the free CD that comes with the magazine, they always give a copy of RootsMagic 5 Essentials, so seem to be biased towards them I guess.

Nevertheless, some considerable time ago, I found a website that has a high-level comparison of different software and I thought this would be a good start.

For many of these, you can download a free version that enables you to try it out, so this is what I think I will do!! Luckily, a have some pretty good 'live test data' in my own Family Tree in that both my Maternal Grandmother and John's Paternal Grandfather married more than once as an example of 'slightly challenging' data to take account off.

Well .... better get started! Let's see how I get on!!

Our First Radishes

This year, John has been planting all sorts of seeds as he wants to grow more in our garden this year.

He's planted all sorts of things ..... tomatoes, onions, beetroot, carrots, sweetcorn, peppers .... as well as different flowers.

But here are our first crops! Some radishes! John has grown them in one of two raised beds he put together this year. Although the raised beds had some copper foil around the outside to deter the slugs, some did get through (probably up through the soil) as you can see a little bit of slug damage on the leaves.

Nevertheless, these radishes were lovely! Very crisp and slightly peppery! Delicious!