Drage Feuer Stitch

I managed to put in the last few stitches to complete my 5th full page. I thought I could had finished it by yesterday but too many things going on at the same time.

I've been playing with new blog templates for the past 2 days. I am NOT going to change to a new template as long as I still have my blog. I've lost quite a few things, even though I've saved the original template, still I lost all my blog lists. Well, I am still trying to put some colours to the Header as I think it is too plain.

I finally received my ebay items won on ebay.uk. The seller sent it out on the 9th Feb and I only got it yesterday. When I received it, the whole package was opened up by Postdanmark. I still have 3 more packages which I have no idea where they are now. The sellers had sent them like a week ago. It is a Eva Rosenstand used chart, a DMC colour card and a magazine. Only 2 were won from ebay.uk and the magazine Cross Stitch Favourite Christmas 2008 was bought from someone on the forum. Oh! I won a Permin used chart too on ebay.de a week ago and it is now at my inlaws' house. Save me from spending €50 buying the whole kit.

We are supposed to visit my inlaws this weekend but my inlaws and my brother in law are all down with lung infection. My mother in law is a bit worried that it might be contagious, so she told us not to visit them until they are up and running again.

So, what should we do tomorrow? I thought of going to Kreative Hobbymesse which is held in the town where we used to stay. After reading and looking at what they have there, I changed my mind. They are mostly oil paintings, patchwork and doll houses making, which I am not good at. Nothing on cross stitch at this exhibition.

I just got enabled recently. Since I only know how to stitch, doing xxx or///, so anything that involves sewing is out for me. However, these Glorious Cupcakes are so sweet. I would love to do some of them but I would rather stitch other patterns for these cupcakes instead of those shown on the book. Any idea where I can find some blogs with cupcakes tutorial, like how to join the ends together to form the finished stitched work into a 'muffin'?

I am almost done with page 3 for my Sleeping Beauty. I would love to start on something else beside this one. The problem is that I am too lazy to gather all the floss together for another project. I am still not done with putting the floss together for my Permin Christmas Town SAL.

Silkweaver is accepting entries for Showcase 2009 till 30 June 2009. Have you entered your finished works? I sent in 5 entries, all are in except for Isabella's Garden and I've tried to enter her twice but it is still not up on the gallery yet. I did had some problems at first as it won't go through when I typed 's. So, I changed to Isabellas Garden instead of Isabella's Garden.

Sorry about the dark video. The main light in the room wasn't working at that time. Hope you can see something.

These are all the stuff prepared for tomorrow's Fastelavn party. We are using the Fastelavnsris made by DD in the kindergarten today. DH and her went to prepare the goodies barrel while I cleaned the living area up a bit. I had to remind them constantly not to throw all the sweets into the barrel. Last year, I could see our friends' eyes nearly popping out when they saw the amount of sweets and chocolates inside after the barrel was smashed. Well, we gave the task to DD last year and went off to do other preparations for the party. So, she was happily opening all the huge packages of sweets and chocolates and threw everything into the barrel.

DH gave me a report this morning after he came home from sending DD to the kindergarten. He said EVERY girls there were princesses, except her who was Minnie Mouse. My heart sank and thought of the worst. I thought she might feel like an outsider or weird as she didn't dress up as a princess. Well, he said she wasn't even a bit sad and she was beaming with joy and smiling when she saw that she was the only Minnie Mouse there! All the other princesses kids went up to her and asked whether they could look and touch her dress :0)))

One of the families we invited, will put their twin girls at our house 5 hours before the party starts. They need to drive over to Germany to get some materials for their house building. So, DD's good friends - The Twins will be here at 9.30am onwards while the rest will arrive at 2.30pm. Some people might think it will be stressful for me to have 3 kids running around in the house. Actually, it is not at all. I've had the twins over rather often and I could actually wash the windows while they play together. They always tell me not to worry about them and I may go and do my own stuff. The only time they come to me is when they need help in the toilet or to open up some stuff.

So, it will be a long long day tomorrow as all guests are staying for dinner too. French Hotdogs is tomorrow's menu.

I received 2 more packages this morning. Cross Stitch Gold won on Ebay and HF 2009 book + Danish Flower Thread Colour card. I won the magazines at a very good price and they don't look as if they've been used before. I even think they smell new :0)))

I was rather surprised when I received my HF 2009 book so fast. I paid yesterday morning and I got it this morning. The lady from Ingridmarie is such a sweet and helpful lady. She was very fast at finding out the price for DMC colour card too and she hasn't had them in her shop for a long while. It cost approx. dkk 100 and I would say that is reasonable as I've seen some shops here selling for dkk200. I think I would buy it from 123stitch as I remember I have 2 GCs :0)))

Tove just gave me another brain racking suggestion. She suggested that I leave about 5cm between the motifs from this HF book and also to keep the original colours for all the motifs. She would backstitch the month and the name of the berry for each one according to the book. I thought stitching these 2 would be a bit too much but I love the idea of stitching the name of each month's berry underneath each motif. It is a bit difficult as one of the month's berries has a very very long name. Anyway, I reserved a book from the library called 500 Danish Alphabets by Eva Rosenstand. Hopefully I can work something out from there.

I asked my friend, Tove as to how to arrange these 12 motifs. My initial concern was whether I should put accordingly as shown on the book. There is a different motif for each month from this Haandarbejdets Fremme The Year in Cross Stitch 2009. Should I rearrange them? On these 2 pictures, I've arranged them accordingly to the month. She said it will look much better if I put them 3 by 4 rows (which she would do) or 4 by 3 rows and use 2 standard colours for the motif. I like her 3 by 4 rows. So, what do you think? Should I just stitch them as how I arranged. What 2 colours should I used for the whole border? I noticed that green is rather standard for most of the motifs, just that they are in different greens. I ordered the book and HF colour card from Ingridmarie. Her prices are cheaper than any other Danish ONS. I only have to get the DMC colour card. All these conversion works will take me a long time as I have to convert them to HDF silk after that. Wonder when I can start stitching this. Well, I am going to start on 1 first using DMC for the Help Aussie Bushfire Victims.

It wasn't a real surprise as Jackie had already told me that she is sending a Cross Stitch Gold magazine to me. What really surprised me was all the extra goodies she enclosed - English books for children! As I've mentioned, it is not easy to get English books in Denmark and they cost quite a lot if I have to order them online. My first Cross Stitch Gold magazine and after going through it, it is my kind of magazine, beside Cross Stitch Collection. Thank you so much, Jackie!

Won these 4 Cross Stitch Collection Magazines 1 1/2 week ago on ebay. Flipped them through and I like them, nicer pictures to look at and also my kind of taste. I won more Cross Stitch Collection Magazines from another seller just 1 day before I won these but haven't got anything from her yet.

I also won some more magazines on ebay few days ago. Really nice ebayer. It was the husband who was sitting behind her items and really great communications from him, just that he wasn't sure how to change the shipping fee to Denmark. Really sweet of his wife to run to the post office to get the exact shipping which is not necessary at all. I think they were not sure of the shipping as they usually only ship within UK. In my first email to them, they said they don't ship out of UK. Just hours before the bidding ended, I told them I would like to put in my bid if they agree to ship to Denmark (no one was bidding) and they said YES.

Nothing much happening during the weekend. I gave the last Mandarin lesson to this Dane who will be flying to China tomorrow for 10 days. I also gave him the contact number to a China woman living around his area. I just think it is pointless for him to drive 20 minutes each way to me just for an hour of lesson.

DD will stay at home this whole week as she is down with a flu. We really want her to attend the Fastelavn party in the kindergarten on Friday and also our Fastelavn party at home on Saturday. So, we hope she will recovers by Friday.