Yet more angels

I've spent the last few days refining the design for my new angels. These angels ('yoyo angels') were my inspiration. They were designed by Dimity Llewelyn, and I found the pattern in an old issue of Handmade magazine (2008, Volume 26, No. 4).

This is my first attempt at making this style of angel. I made a few changes - both to the materials and the construction method.

This is the front of one of my angels:

and this is the back of the same angel:

And here are all 20 of my yoyo angels. They're designed to hang, but they do sit quite nicely too.

These are my last angels for a while. I'm packing away my beads and fabrics, and getting back to what I am meant to be working on - my Jolly Old Fellow. I meant to start stitching on it again at the beginning of July - and here we are, almost one week of July gone already, and JOF has not even been brought down to the stitching corner. It's almost a year since I packed him away. It will take me a little while to re-adjust to stitching on my lap-frame, but it's time to get moving - I do want to finish this design sometime in the next few years, and that's just not going to happen if I leave JOF sitting upstairs untouched. He'll be my only project for the rest of this month, and then I'll re-assess.

More Angels

I've just finished a batch of 16 button angels - more Christmas angels! They are actually much cuter than the pic suggests . These little angels either sit or hang.

More Angels

Another 31 angels beaded for Christmas 2010. The larger ones and some of the others will be in my Christmas display this year, and the others will go in the take-home gift basket for Christmas visitors.

I'll be packing away the beads now. That's all the angels I plan to make this year. I'll be stocking my stitching basket tomorrow and bringing it down to my stitching corner. I'm thinking of bringing down my HAED Jolly Old Fellow - it's due for some attention, and I had planned to start on it in the first week of July, so I may get an early start.

A batch of Angels

I've been playing with my beads in the past few days, making angels. There are 8 prs earings (for Christmas gifts), and 25 Christmas angels - some will be gifts, and some (well, OK - quite a lot of them) will be part of my Christmas decorating.

I'll probably keep making angels for another day or so - unless I run out of beadcaps, which is on the cards.

Another little finish

I stitched this for a Half-way to Christmas SAL on the Life's A Stitch Board. The stocking is adapted from LA's Christmas Caboodle leaflet (1986).

Front:

Back:

My Angel is home from the framer

and now she is hanging on the wall of my study, next to my Angel of Hope. She is, of course, Lavender & Lace's Angel of Grace, the third (and last!) of the L&L Angels I've stitched. At first I was disappointed when I saw her framed, as the framer didn't follow my instructions. I wanted her mounts to be arched at the top, like the ones on the Angel of Hope, and also on my Angel of Love. As you can see, the framer cut the mounts straight across rather than arching the top. The framer did offer to re-frame her, but after really thinking about it, I decided this mount does suit her, so I accepted her as she was.

I'm quite bonded to her now, and think that she may have looked a little unbalanced if she was in an arched mount.

Home again ... and here's where I've been

I really did enjoy my trip to Broome and The Kimberley. Here are just a few of the hundreds of pictures I came home with. The first one is of one of my favourite places - the bungle Bungle ranges in Purnululu Natinonal Park. This photo was taken from a helicopter.

This one is Chamberlain Gorge, taken from aboard the boat.

This one is from another cruuise - this time on the Ord River, near Kunnanurra.

This one shows the bus crossing theKing Edward River.

This one shows me swimming in the swimming hole at Mitchell Plateau.

I really wasn't ready to come home - I could have stayed in Broome and The Kimberley for much longer. We travelled 35oo km in the 'bus' (actually a specially converted Isuzu truck) on the trip, mostly on unsealed and very rough roads, and also had three long river cruises. Some of it was hard work - long treks over large rocks to get into some of the gorges, for example - but all of it was so much fun. I learned so much about the indigenous and European history of the area, and also about the geological features of the region. It is truly spectacular country.

I'm still on a 'high' from my trip. I'm sure I'll come back to reality sooner or later. I've not picked up a needle at all in the past 3 weeks, and for once I really haven't missed my stitching. I need to stitch a Christmas ornament for a SAL, so I'll have to get moving on that sometime in the near future.