Thank you Khristine!

It was a pleasant surprise to see my blog being nominated for One Lovely Blog Award on Khristine's blog seeing I'm quite new to world of blogging and cross stitching.

Khristine has been very encouraging through her comments on my humble cross stitch cards which is all I have stitched this year.

Thank you Khristine for the appreciation and nomination.

Please visit her blog to see her beautiful stitching specially the HAED "Hannah" she is working on these days.

The purpose of this award is for bloggers to nominate fellow bloggers. In order to accept the award, the nominated blogger must follow these rules:

• thank the person who nominated you and link back 
• Share seven facts about yourself
• Nominate 10 other bloggers for the award.

 

1.     I have been married for almost 8 yrs now and my husband is the nicest person I have ever met in my life. Trust me I’m not exaggerating…

2.     I’m a Chemical Engineer by profession and my work field is in Oil & gas industry. I’m a career oriented person and competition brings the best out of me.

3.     I’m close to an atheist.

4.     I cannot stand discrimination due to sex, religion, race, nationality etc. and I have been raising my voice whenever required for this cause.

5.     I have inherited the crafty genes from my mother and maternal grandmother. I’m really thankful to my mother for constantly reminding me to keep practicing what I have learnt in various craft classes, so that I don’t lose touch.

6.     I believe in living the moment rather than worrying too much about future.

7.     I want to revive the art of cross stitch in my home country India. A small attempt in this direction was to get associated with Eclectic Bloke designs. Still a long way to go …

 

  I would like to nominate:

1. Maria    : Not only Maria stitches beautifully, she comes up with the most unusual ways of finishing her stitched pieces...coin purses, craft envelopes etc.

2. Shammi : I'm so impressed by the fact that Shammi knows so many type of hand embroideries: satin stitch, kantha, kasuti, kutchi, cross stitch along with crochet .

3. Neha : She is newbie like me and indulges in quilling, cross stitch and decoupage.

4. Fatema : I love her choices of designs and she is brave enough to tackle 2 or 3 HAEDs at a time ;)

5. Lulu  : Cross stitching blog with a flavor of life in different countries.

6.  Jo : The name itself is enough ;)

7.  Alicia : She is HAED obsessed and a RAK queen, always late in posting SAL updates ..;)

8. Kay : Look at the gorgeous Spanish rouge sampler she is stitching .

9.  Kaye

10. Justine

 

Please have a look at these wonderful blogs.

 

Thank you again Khristine for the nomination.

 

Hugs

Mini

 

April Check in for Flower of the Month SAL

I'm really enjoying participating in SALs as these keep me motivated to stitch for monthly progress reports.

As the Gifted Gorgeousness SAL hosted by Jo and TUSAL hosted by Daffy require posting in the middle of the month, I have now joined a new SAL where I will be posting at the end of month.

This is the 2015 Flower of the Month SAL hosted by Alyssa. The patterns are the flower of the month charts by EMS Designs.

Though I enrolled in this SAL middle of the month, I kept delaying the start thinking that I have enough time in hand and then on the Tuesday , I panicked realizing that its 26th already ;)
So after 2 hours of stash hunting for appropriate fabric and threads ,here is the progress for the April flower "Sweet Pea" so far

I'm stitching this on 14ct white Aida gifted to me by my friend Ms. G using three strands.
This aida is a lot stiffer than what I have used all my life and I feel three strands is a bit two much for this count.

I'm happy to tell that I'm using pin stitch for starting my thread for this piece. Its my first time using Pin stitch and I find it lot easier than the dreadful French knots.

I'm looking forward to a creative weekend ...what are your plans for the weekend folks?



 

Adventures with Food(Continued)

There is a famous proverb in Hindi which says "Why do we live, to eat "...and that very much defines why food and cooking is such a big deal in common Indian house hold.
Until a decade ago, the practice of eating in restaurants/hotels/cafes wasn't so common in India. With more females starting to work full time in offices and daily commute to work places eating upto 3-4 hours of a day..eating in restaurants has become a more of a necessity.

Not that I think low of females who don't cook three meals at home...I still am a traditional at heart who loves to cook for family and guests.

What fuels my passion for cooking and food is that my partner and I are big time foodies .We get bored of eating the same cuisine daily and crave for "something different" everyday.

So it turns out that I tend to feel guilty if I don't try a new recipe for a long time or cook an elaborate Indian meal each week.

Here are few new recipes I tried this week. I'm sure many of you must have tried these many times.

1. Guacamole en Molcajete

This is a new dish which I ate at one of the restaurants in Covent Garden in London. It was the restaurant's recommended dish and I'm must say it met the expectations.

It's essentially freshly prepared Guacamole served with nachos.

I followed the method they used  :

Ingredients:

1.Avocado - 1big
2.Chopped onion
3.Chopped tomatoes
4.Chopped coriander
5.Lemon juice
6. Jalapeno
7.Salt and black pepper

Recipe:

Mix salt and black pepper in the lemon juice. Deseed and scrape the avocado from its cover and mash it nicely. Mix all the ingredients above with mashed avocado and lemon juice mix.The dip is ready to be served with Nachos .
As I wasn't able to find Nacho chips nearby I served Doritos with the dip. A bit sad that I had to settle with Doritos as they contain MSG or E621 which is not a healthy ingredient.

2.Dal Baingan(Lentil-Aubergine with spices)

Another dish I ate at one of the most famous Indian restaurants near Brick lane in London.

It's amazing how even after eating and cooking Indian cuisine for 33 years I still find dishes in Indian cuisine which I haven't eaten .

I used the recipe from this source:

http://sanjeevkapoor.com/recipe/Baingan-Chana-Dal.html

The dish turned out it to be a bit different from the way it was served in the restaurant may be because I  over cooked the dal. The one served in the restaurant was cooked such that lentil retained the shape of the grain and whole aubergines were served on that.

3. Dosa chutneys(Red chutney and coconut chutney)

I'm usually reluctant to make chutneys or dips as I think it takes too much time to make them and  if the main dish itself is tasty...who needs them ;)

Today I decided to make these chutneys to make the meal complete and DH was so happy.

The complete Dosa meal

Recipe source:

http://www.vegrecipesofindia.com/coconut-chutney-recipe-coconut-chutney/

http://www.vegrecipesofindia.com/red-chutney-for-dosa/

April TUSAL Update

It's time for TUSAL and stitchy pie update.

Here is picture of my ORT jar, which is now richer in colors  :)

I had a relaxing weekend with ample time to do everything that includes doing nothing ;)

I'm happy to say that I have managed to stitch 893 crosses since 15th April which is a lot for me. My target is to complete my current WIP by next GG post and am thinking of joining one more SAL.

DH & I are big movie buffs which can sometime means a movie a day. This weekend we watched two movies and I particularly liked 'Amazing Grace'.If you haven't seen this movie, I recommend watching it. Its a tale of a great human being William Wilberforce who worked hard his whole life for a making world a better place.

That's it for today...

Goodnight my friends

P.S. Mrs. K hasn't recieved my card yet :(

Gifted Gorgeousness Overload (April link up post)

Hello Fellas,

I had a fabulous trip to London and have brought back loads of cross stitch supplies.

Those who have read my earlier posts know that I wasn't quite excited about my trip to London which is not the usual me. Travelling and exploring the world is one of my passions.

The fortnight spent in London was full of meeting new people, exploring the historic places of London, its natural beauty and some yummylicious food.

The weather was a bit cold for spring but I loved it, as I'm a winter person.

May be I'll write a separate post about my London experience.

This is the card I made for Mrs. K from whom I bought a few charts .She hasn't received the card yet so I don't know whether she likes it or not.

Here are details of this piece.

I had a great chance to meet a cross stticher "in person" while I was in London. A while ago, Ms. G posted on WOCS page that she wanted to give away some 18 ct aida . I jumped on to the opportunity and told her that I will be in London shortly and can collect it from her. After a few interactions, she kindly agreed to come down to my hotel. It was lovely to meet her and her son. We talked about cultures, food and the world. This is what she gifted me :

These are the charts I bought from Mrs. K :

Some goodies from Mrs. K:

Ms. G overwhelmed me by sending a lot of magazines, needles and 14 ct.aida, the second time.

Sorry for the flash :(

I plan to stitch Pretty Little London from the latest issue of Cross stitch Crazy some time soon

Few pics from my trip




Chapel at the Windsor Castle



Tower Bridge

One of the exhibits at British Museum



Wouldn't this make a beautiful cross stitch design? Exhibit at National Gallery

I have stitched only once during last 15 days and I'm surely not feeling bad about it ;)

Kuwait has been hit by a series of sandstorms. The one on Sunday, the day I came back, was the worst I have seen till now. I got a little scared and poor DH had to seal close every possible source of air / dust.
Hope I get some stitchy time today after 3 days of consecutive cleaning. I'm planning to complete my fractal since now I have got the colors which were missing.


What have you been guys upto?

Happy Dance

Yes you have guessed it right...my order from 123stitch has arrived and the Kuwait postal system hasn't failed me.
Well I got my packet yesterday all thanks to DH who drove 55 kms one way to search for the packet.
I'm a bit guilty for being impatient and pestering DH to go and hunt for the packet. What is a lady supposed to do when the packet(all full of floss) doesn't arrive for 2 months...yes that's true 60 days.

Can you believe this small packet has cost me a fortune?

After one hour of sorting this is what we got-208 shades of floss

 

Yippie my first ever DMC floss and I'm now a proud owner of all color shades of floss available in the market...oh what a feeling!!!

 

Last Friday I wasn't able to find one particular color of floss and we re-organized the whole stash only to find the skein in the stitch bag which was lying next to me ;)

 

New folder for patterns

 

 

I'm so excited about my travel to London that I could hardly work today in office and the semi finals between Australia and India added to the cause.

Yesterday while I was digging my stationery box, I found my travel diary. This is the travel diary I started writing for our first vacation after marriage. I don't know why I stopped recording in this diary after that.

Well its never too late to start again..isn't it?

 

Looking forward to a great Easter weekend in London and bring back beautiful memories.

 

What are your plans for Easter guys?

 

 

 

 

TUSAL March update and Wonderful giveaway from Maria

Here's is my entry for the TUSAL this month. As you can see I have added some aida trimmings to my jar...well I want to fill my jar as soon as possible ;)

I have also updated my pie chart and I'm happy the red portion has come down to 54% from 59% from the last update. This week was a good one as I got two hours daily for stitching.


I would like to talk about a fellow cross stitcher in this post of mine. Maria Demina ,is a very talented lady who creates most gorgeous things from cross stitch. I know her thru my facebook cross stitch group and I'm a big fan of her work. What makes Maria's work different from others is the way she finishes her cross stitched pieces....none of the ones I have seen are pictures for framing, pin cushions etc. So what does she do with her pieces...go check out her blog(use the google translate button) to find out for yourself.

Maria is having a give away on her blog until May 22nd and you know what, she is going to give away one of her own creations in the giveaway.. I'm not going to miss this chance....

Hoping to get some stitching done this weekend..

Hugs