X-Stitching Xmas 2012 – April Update

Hello, my fellow Xmas X-stitchers,
And welcome to the FOURTH monthly update!

Firstly, please let me apologise to my fellow challengers – this post should have been up last Saturday, but I’ve been so busy lately I didn’t get round to any of my regular blogging at all.

Anyway, let me make amends by sharing the pieces I’ve been working on a little. Progress is slow because I’ve had a commission to stitch (which is now finished, but I can’t show that yet as it’s wedding invitations for someone!) and am also working on other projects, fitting them all in between real life – LOL!

 

The first piece is the Winter Quaker Bookmark. I’m actually no further on with this than I was last month, as I was working on the aforementioned commission and projects.

The second piece is a new start. Another Quaker-style design, this is a small kit which I plan to make into an ornament for our Yule tree this year.

Don’t forget to check back the first Saturday of May (5th May) for another update post.

I hope all my fellow challengers will post a comment linking to their own progress so we can
cheer each other on.

Please link directly to your progress post, not to your blog homepage

Happy stitching!

Monday Memes

It’s Monday, What Are You Reading?

Hosted by Sheila at One Person’s Journey through a World of Books.

KEY:
E– E-book Challenge
G – 2012 Genre Challenge
BFF – Bookie Friends’ Favourites Challenge
BL – Bucket List Challenge
S – Off The Shelf Challenge
AZ – A-Z Challenge
C – Classics Challenge
R – Review for author or publisher
K – Reading for Kindle Klub Book Group

Robyn Young – Insurrection (R)
I’ll be reviewing the sequel when it comes out too! Looking forward to them both immensely. I’ve only just started this one and it’s over 600 pages to it, but it looks great! I adore historical fiction, and one set in Scotland is an added bonus, because that’s where I live!

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Cover Crazy

Jane Austen – Emma
Anna Sewell – Black Beauty
Frances Hodgson Burnett – The Secret Garden
All from the Penguin Threads collection

What I love:
The very fact that the covers are stitched (well, the original design was anyway) speaks to both my stitchy side and my bibliophilic leanings. They are such beautifully crafted covers that anyone would love to have them in their collection.

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Musing Mondays

Hosted by Should Be Reading

Have you ever found a book out of the blue, read it, and then had it be surprisingly good — one that stuck with you for years?
If so, what book was it?

Yes! For me it was The Stand by Stephen King. I’ve mentioned this book countless times before as it’s one of my all-time favourites, so I won’t rave about it again in case I bore you all rigid! I’d never even heard of it and I’d only ever read Carrie by King (and love it), so when I came across this massive chunk of a book at over 1000 pages in hardback, I thought, “Well, let’s give it a try, shall we?”

Two days later I emerged from that book with my mind blown!

I remember very well it was the Saturday morning I came across it, bought it, and started reading it. I finished it late on the Sunday afternoon. I was fortunate I had done my homework on the Friday night, or I would have been in a heap of trouble on Monday!

I must have read it at least a dozen times since then and it always has the same effect on me. I love it completely!

Stitchy Saturdays

Each Saturday, I will feature either something I’m currently stitching, something I’ve just finished stitching, or something I’ve just designed. I hope you’ll all join me in displaying some of your own work and leaving a link to your post in the comments below.

New Designs

Design: ChrisTening
Size: 63w x 27h
Design: ConfirmaTion
Size: 65w x 29h

Design: Quaker Easter Egg
Size: 51w x 79h

Design: Quilt Block
Size: 69w x 69h

 

Design: Team Twilight
Size: 123w x 52h each
Charted for a single colour for adaptation to your preferences.
Available individually or as a trio exclusively from my Folksy Store at a very reasonable price.
Designs inspired by The Twilight Saga by Stephenie Meyer. (I know I’m not a fan of the books, but many people are and I know many of them like stitching Twi-related projects!)

Friday Finds

What great books did you hear about / discover this past week? Share with us your FRIDAY FINDS!

By following links to blogs taking part in various memes, I’ve heard about so many great books it would be impossible to list them all. I’m also a regular visitor to our local library and am always eagerly awaiting newly published books by my favourite authors. However, here are the ones that really stood out for me this week and for which I’ll be looking out on future book acquisition expeditions:

• Julie Otsuka – When the Emperor Was Divine
• Julie Otsuka – The Buddha in the Attic

They’ve both gone onto my wish list!

Booking Through Thursday – Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better

Hosted by Booking Through Thursday

Ever read a book you thought you could have written better yourself?

Yes. The Twilight Saga by Stephanie Meyer. Personally I think a chimp with a typewriter could do better, so it’s not much of a challenge. I found the story unoriginal and the writing very poor. I know that flies in the face of the millions of fans the saga has, but I thought they were terrible books.

WWW Wednesday

WWW Wednesdays are hosted by MizB over at Should Be Reading.To play along, just answer the following three (3) questions…

* What are you currently reading?
* What did you recently finish reading?
* What do you think you’ll read next?

What are you currently reading?
Thomas Hoover – Caribbee (E)
I’m about 3/4s of the way through this and I’m enjoying it immensely.

Georgette Heyer – Regency Buck
Borrowed from a colleague. So far, so good.

What did you recently finish reading?
Nothing – but I did abandon Ben Hur by Lew Wallace because it was boring me rigid. It’s a real shame because a) it was for discussion in Kindle Klub, and b) I nominated it, so I feel rather guilty at having suggested a total duffer. At least one other member has also found it impossible to get on with this one.

What do you think you’ll read next?
Robyn Young – Insurrection
The publishers have sent me this one to review and I’ll be getting the sequel around the time of its publication in August this year. It looks like it will be right up my street, so I’m looking forward to getting to it as soon as possible!

Tuesday Memes

Teaser Tuesday
Halfhead by Stuart B MacBride

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Just do the following:

1. Grab your current read
2. Open to a random page
3. Share two “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
4. BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
5. Share the title and author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

My teaser:

There’s blood everywhere.

It sparkles in the artificial light like diamonds scattered onto dark red velvet. It fills the air with the scent of burning copper and hot rust, tugging at her belly. It soaks through her jump-suit, making the cheap fabric cling to her gaunt body like a second skin.

– page 1, Halfhead by Stuart B MacBride

Synopsis:
Glasgow, not too far in the future. A new punishment has been devised for the perpetrators of serious crimes — one that not only reduces the prison population but also benefits society at large. The process is known as halfheading: the offender’s lower jaw is removed and they are lobotomized. They are then put to work as cleaners in municipal areas like hospitals, where they serve as a warning to all that crime doesn’t pay. But for one halfhead, it seems the lobotomy hasn’t quite succeeded. Six years after her surgery, Dr Fiona Westfield ‘wakes up’ surrounded by the butchered remains of a man she has just brutally killed. As her mind slowly begins to return, she sets out on a quest for vengeance. William Hunter, Assistant Section Director of the ‘Network’ — a military wing of the police — attends the crime scene left behind by the newly awakened halfhead. Sherman House is a run-down concrete housing development full of undesirables and Hunter and his team quickly find themselves in a firefight with the locals. With the help of old comrades and a new friend in the form of prickly but attractive Detective Sergeant Josephine Cameron, Will gets on the trail of the killer. But before long the investigation leads back to a terrible tragedy in his own past, as well as to a terrifying conspiracy to sow violence and misery among Glasgow’s most vulnerable citizens.

What I think of it so far:
I actually read this quite a while ago, but it pretty much jumped off my shelf at me today and I thought I’d give you the opening paragraph. It’s a slightly futuristic crime thriller written with the same pitch-black gallows humour that MacBride shows in his Logan McRae series. If you’re not usually a fan of sci-fi, this can be a nice ease-in from the crime side of things.

Top Ten Tuesday
Top Ten Books On My Spring To-Be-Read List

For various reasons, from being given books to review to getting books out of the library, to books I have waiting on my shelf to be cracked open, here are the top ten books I’ll be reading this spring:

1. Insurrection by Robyn Young (for review)
2. Gladiator: Fight For Freedom by Simon Scarrow (from library)
3. Ultraviolet by R J Anderson (from library)
4. The Body at the Tower (The Agency 2) by Y S Lee (from library)
5. Huntress by Malinda Lo (from Xmas)
6. Praetorian (Romans #11) by Simon Scarrow (from Xmas)
7. A Game of Thrones (Song of Ice and Fire 1) by George R R Martin
8. Paranormalcy by Kiersten White
9. North By Northwest by Ernest Lehman
10. The Transformation by Catherine Chidgey

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Monday Memes

It’s Monday, What Are You Reading?

Hosted by Sheila at One Person’s Journey through a World of Books.

KEY:
E– E-book Challenge
G – 2012 Genre Challenge
BFF – Bookie Friends’ Favourites Challenge
BL – Bucket List Challenge
S – Off The Shelf Challenge
AZ – A-Z Challenge
C – Classics Challenge
R – Review for author or publisher
K – Reading for Kindle Klub Book Group

Thomas Hoover – Caribbee (E)
I’m about 3/4s of the way through this and I’m enjoying it immensely.

Georgette Heyer – Regency Buck
Borrowed this from a colleague – so far, so good.

~***~

Cover Crazy

Around the World in 80 Days
From the Earth to the Moon
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
Journey to the Centre of the Earth
– All by Jules Verne

What I love:
What’s not to love about these gorgeous covers? Looking at them, you get a real feel for the contents of Verne’s wonderful tales, and the vintage look of them speaks of the time in which they were written. Truly, these classic novels deserve such stunning covers. Everything from the colours to the composition, to the style of cover art and typeface just screams class and is just so beautiful to look at I could cry right now because I do not have these versions on my bookshelves. I shall have to remedy that situation as soon as possible!

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Musing Mondays

Hosted by Should Be Reading

Would you choose to review a book if its description sounded interesting but the cover was terrible?

Short answer – yes. I’ve reviewed hundreds of books over the years and some of them had truly dreadful covers. Some of the contents matched the awful cover art (“art” being a very kind description in some cases!), but others have been wonderful.

Even looking at the books in my permanent collection – the earlier Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett have, in my opinion, hideous covers – ugly, bulbous characters sprawling across the cover bearing little-to-no resemblance to the characters on the pages, with garish colours to add to the offence. However, the contents of those books are wonderful – some of my favourite books of all time come from that very series. If I had let myself be put off by the covers, I would have missed out on so much enjoyment.

In general, a pretty, unusual or striking cover will tempt me to pick up a book and at least read the blurb to see if it might appeal to me, but sometimes the ugly ducklings turn out to be swans too.

Kid-Speak Sunday

Being a Mum is the best job in the world and sometimes there’s the added bonus of hearing your kids come out with an absolute gem…

Stitchy Saturdays

Each Saturday, I will feature either something I’m currently stitching, something I’ve just finished stitching, or something I’ve just designed. I hope you’ll all join me in displaying some of your own work and leaving a link to your post in the comments below.

New Designs

Design: Don’t Fence Me In
Size: 71w x 41h
A quick-stitch sampler with a message for all!

Design: Outside the Box
Size: 33w x 64h
Charted for two colours, this simple chart encourages unusual thinking.

Design: Mum
Size: 39w x 34h
A small, quick-stitch Assisi-style heart – the perfect size for a Mothers’ Day card or gift.

Design: Royal Diamond Jubilee Sampler
Size: 139w x 70h
Available exclusively from my Folksy store. Stitch and share your patriotism!

Design: ChrisTening
Size: 63w x 27h
The perfect size for a card or small gift to mark the occasion.

Don’t Fence Me In

utside the Box

Mum

Royal Diamond Jubilee Sampler Exclusively from the Kincavel Krosses Folksy Store

ChrisTening

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if you would like a birth or wedding sampler (or for any special occasion, really) designed to stitch yourself, drop me a line with details and preferences:

kincavel_krosses@yahoo.co.uk

prices are very reasonable and will not break the bank!

All designs delivered via email in PDF format, so no delivery charges and you don’t have to wait an age to get them.

All payments by Paypal.

For examples of previous commissions, click here.