Gifted Gorgeousness SAL July update and my first ever Stitchy exchange

Hello Friends,
Its been a month I haven't posted on my blog...I have been busy with stitching and socializing.
I didn't post for TUSAL as I wasn't feeling inspired to continue with this SAL and have bowed out of it now.
Before I write any further, I would like to welcome my new followers and thank them and other blog visitors for commenting. I really appreciate that.

Well, this is going to be a picture heavy post as I have lot to show.

First of all, I would like to show you how my stitchy friend Diya pampered with me her gifts. I have known Diya for a few months now, we met on facebook in a cross stitch group. Since then, as we interacted we discovered, we had similar interests and some of her family/friends visit Kuwait for work or personal reasons.

Last month, I asked Diya would she be interested in a Stitchy Exchange, the answer of course was Yes! This is what she sent me

See how the packets are numbered as each of them had a gift related to one of my hobbies.

Look at the Cute Penguin she stitched for me, isn't it adorable. She has been so generous to include gifts from her trip to Thailand ...painting, hand cream, soap, cross stitch kits. Also she added a book for baby gifts with some linen and Aida...Oh Diya, I can't express how I feel about these...Thank you Sweetie.

Here is what I sent her

 

Yes, that's an ornament..my first one and I'm tiny meeny proud how it turned out. Herez a side look

Another gift which I stitched for first anniversary of my friend couple is a cover kit that came with Cross Stitch crazy 202.

This is my first time stitching a cover kit and I was really surprised by the stiffness of aida that came in it. Initially I thought I will break the needle and was stitching at snail speed. Then I realized its because I use the sewing method rather than stab method for stitching .The lengths of threads were too short to use loop start, so I switched to stab method and used knots to get comfortable. However, I'm really happy how the finished piece looks like and the recipients liked it too.

Did you notice so many firsts in these post- first exchange, first cover kit, first ornament :)

Other than stitching, I haven't really tried any new recipes in cooking. However, I did explore few new cafes and restaurants and will post about my experience later. I also have few other crafty things to share ...so watch this space.

As promised about sharing a picture of my life in Kuwait in each blog post, here's a pic of view of water front from one of the sea side malls in Kuwait.

Hope you are having a good stitching time

Gifted Gorgeousness SAL June Update and Lovely WWKIP Day

I was so excited to write this post that I prepared a draft on Saturday evening hoping to post first thing on Sunday, only to realize that it isn't 15 on Sunday ...

This time for the GG SAL, I have two finishes to show

I finally put last stitch on the Sunflower bouquet on Friday evening and it turned out more beautiful than I expected. This is a retirement gift for a very generous colleague.

After the initial hick ups of bad chart quality and not having required floss, the second innings went smooth. I  skipped backstitching the flowers (You all know my fear of backstitching, don't you !) .This may be my best attempt at backstitching ...lol
Here is a close up of the stitches.

Notice how in the second pic , stitches are in all directions. This is my first project where I tried having all my \\\\ and //// in same direction. It took me 36 days to finish this piece. Other details can be found here

The second partial finish is the EMS April flower of the month, except the inner borders. I have decided that I will stitch the borders during my crafty meet ups as it requires less counting. The fabric was a gift from a friend ,hence I can include this in GG SAL.

13th June was World Wide Knit in Public day and I decide to take the initiative for organizing it here in Kuwait. This was first time for Kuwait and we had an attendance of 8 wonderful ladies.

Image courtesy :Tammy



The café where we met was situated by the Sea

We had such a gala time chatting and crafting that I'm sure everyone made new friends.
I even tried my hands at crochet and failed terribly. Tammy was patient enough to teach me the basics. Look what wonderful gifts Tammy gave me :

My knitty friend L from ravelry group will be leaving Kuwait soon and this is what she gifted me.

                                           

Thank you Ladies for such a great time and gifts.

I will now have more stitching time from Thursday because of lesser working hours in the month of Ramadan. I hope to finish my pending projects and start a new one.

I'm off to see what other stitchers have to show in their GG posts.

New recipes and An Upcoming Meetup

The cooking fairy is here (that's my equivalent of stitching bug) and I have been trying a lot of new recipes in the past few days.

DH & Me are again in that mode where we refuse to eat the common daily food and everyday we want to have "something new" for dinner.

I'm going to add a new feature to my blogging about cooking. I'm now going to  rate the recipes I try for ease of cooking, time required for cooking,ease of availability of ingredients and DH's rating for taste.
I'm not a big chef or food connoisseur that my ratings or review will matter much . However , there are reasons why a person would decide to try a new recipe. Ingredients and time required to cook are the main factors which let me decide whether I will cook that recipe or not. With my work schedule. I'm prefer less time consuming recipes.

1. Oven roasted Zucchini

Zucchini in one of the new ingredients I have added to my food plate now. Zucchini is not native to India and is only available in special stores there. Since I have moved to Kuwait, I wanted to use it in my cooking so I bought a big box of Zucchini last week.

DH loves roasted food and this what I cooked ...
Recipe source:http://www.cookingclassy.com/2014/05/garlic-lemon-parmesan-oven-roasted-zucchini/
Ease of cooking : 9/10 if you have a oven at home(Higher rating -easier to cook)
Time required : 30 mins , Rating 8/10 (Higher rating -less time to cook)
Availability of ingredients :8/10
DH's rating : 8.2
Changes made to recipe: I used a table spoon of cheese spread instead of parmesan cheese .

2. Zucchini With Corn and Cilantro

Of course one more zucchini recipe.. remember I bought a box. Sorry no picture

Recipe source:http://www.health.com/health/gallery/0,,20509747_8,00.html
Ease of cooking : 10/10
Time required : 15 mins , Rating 9/10
Availability of ingredients :8/10
DH's rating : 6.6
Changes made to recipe: I used coriander instead of cilantro .

3. Spinach with Eggs (Yumurtalı Ispanak)

Recipe source:http://almostturkish.blogspot.com/2009/04/spinach-with-eggs-yumurtal-ispanak.html

Ease of cooking : 9/10
Time required : 30 mins , Rating 8/10
Availability of ingredients :10/10
DH's rating : 6.2

Spinach is not one of my favourite greens and DH absolutely loves it. Turkish cuisine has many spinach recipes and I chose Yumurtalı Ispanak this time.
Please do not hesitate to try this recipe as the DH rating is based on the bitter taste of spinach. Turns out that he had bought a local green leaves(don't know the name) thinking that it was spinach.
I'm sure if cooked with spinach the rating will go up to 8 :)

4. 3 B Stir fry

Recipe source:http://www.tarladalal.com/3-B-Stir-fry-(-Healthy-Diabetic-Recipe-)-33690r

Ease of cooking : 9/10
Time required : 30 mins , Rating 8/10
Availability of ingredients :7/10, May have to buy bean sprouts from a super market
DH's rating : 8.75
Changes made to recipe(not intentional): I read baby corn as sweet corn ;)

The recipe turned out to be delicious...I wasn't expecting that.
Next time I'm thinking of serving it with plain rice.

That's all on cooking front, let me know if you try any of these recipes.

Remember how I told you that I'm desperate to meet crafters locally. I think my prayers may have been answered...I read about World Wide Knit in Public day somewhere on the internet, and thought why not. I'm a part of knitters group and I know the basics.
So I'm now hosting World Wide Knit in Public day in Kuwait (I'm teeny meeny proud of this).
More prayers answered--I found Tammy through one of fellow bloggers post.
Tammy is an active blogger, crocheter, crafter and a lady with most infectious positive attitude. I haven't met her yet ,all this is what I gather from her blog and few email interactions. So I contacted Tammy and told her about my idea WWKIP in Kuwait. She encouraged me and have been actively spreading the word about the event. Thank you Tammy.

Well when I say I'm hosting the event, there is not much I need to do apart from some internet posts and registering the event.
I know I shouldn't expect a big turn around for the event but I'm sure I will meet new knitters/stitchers/crocheters there.

Inspired by Tammy's blog I will now try to include one picture of my life in Kuwait.
This is a picture of the first flower which bloomed at my house in Kuwait.
We just loved it and couldn't help clicking a picture ...

On stitching front ,I have finished stitching the Sunflower bouqet with only the dreaded back stitching left to do. There are 5 shades of back stitching and the chart is in black and white . So I will use my imagination ....

See you soon for the GG post.


 

FOTM SAL May update and some cooking

Here is my entry for Flower of the Month SAL hosted by Alyssa .

I have not been able to stitch much of this as my current target is to finish Sunflower bouquet for my colleague who is going to retire soon. As advised by my stitchy friends, I am now using two strands for stitching for the flower series. But I didn't have the courage to frog what I had already stitched using 3...do you think the difference is too obvious or looks ugly?

In other news, I'm happy to tell that I have attended two meet ups of a group of knitters in past 2 weeks.
Don't be surprised...I don't knit but this is result of my desperate attempts to a have a group of cross stitchers. I have been trying really hard since last 1 year to gather or meet people interested in any type of needle work here in Kuwait. Sadly, nothing worked ..so I  signed up on Raverly and joined the local ravelry group.
The ladies in the group have been kind enough to absorb me and we had fun in the last two meetings. While the ladies chit chat and knit, I stitch (at the pace of a tortoise) counting everything thrice. I must say that cross stitch is not a easy craft to take along...I am finding it difficult to stitch sitting in a chair with chart in hand and I'm already thinking of learning crochet specially for the meet ups ;). At home, I stitch sitting on a sofa with my legs stretched and the chart pinned to one of the cushions.

The weather here is at its worst now with the temperature nearing 50 degree Celsius. This Friday, DH & I ,dared to step out of the house in the noon and we repented it so much. The sun was blazing and our feet started burning...Well its just the start of summer.

On the cooking front, I have lost my cooking bug...however guilt took me over and I tried my hands at making my mom's recipe of a lentil cake last Tuesday. The result wasn't upto my expectations so I'm not going to blog about it until I get it right.

Today I made Menemen (Turkish-Style Scrambled Eggs With Tomatoes)  for dinner.

This dish is very similar to Indian version of Scrambled eggs-Anda bhurji.
I like tomatoes in my Anda Bhurji but DH doesn't like tomatoes much...
So when he asked me to make something eggy today, I proposed making Menemen instead of Anda Bhurji .
I'm a conservative and usually don't make changes in recipes. The only reason I divert from the original recipe is unavailability of ingredients.

I followed the recipe by Burcu and used capsicum instead of green peppers.

The other reason I like Menemen is because I like eggs to be slightly undercooked and this a perfect recipe for that.


Its end of another month and good time to think how productive the month was craft wise...





 

May TUSAL Update

Its time for TUSAL check-in for the month.

My ORT jar is growing as is the stitchy portion of my Pie Chart.
This is because I have been able to stitch almost everyday this month even if its 15 stitches in a day.

 

Gifted Gorgeousness SAL May update and some ramblings

GG SAL is by far my favourite SAL ... Every month, I eagerly wait for Jo's link up post.
I love looking at what stitchers are working on: gifts they are making or gifts they got.

My stitching priorities have changed in last few days and there is a reshuffle in the gifting ideas.
As I mentioned in my first GG post, my goal this year was to stitch 3 pieces for my college friends.
Seems like I'm not gonna meet them this year...so the pieces which I were stitching for them will now be gifted to one of my work friends (whom I showed the piece and she liked it, not shown in this post) and a colleague.

Below is the piece which I'm stitching for my colleague now, as a thank you gift for being a perfect host in Windsor (I know my London post is still pending). He will be retiring in July and will be re modeling his house after that. I think this will look good as a wall piece in his house.

I started stitching this piece on 21st Nov 2014 but had difficulty reading the colored chart and was short of so many colors then. I kept it aside and thought may be I will never stitch it again.

This is where is left it on 28th Nov 2014.

Picked it again on 4th May and this is my progress so far. Yesterday I reprinted the chart in black and white and A3 size and what a relief to my eyes.

This is how it will look when finished

The second piece for the GG SAL this month is part of another SAL I'm participating in...you can read  about it here.

As the fabric (even the needles I'm using for this piece) was gifted to me by my stitcher friend Ms. G from London, I can include this in GG SAL too.

I plan to finish this a hanging and gift it to one of my friend's for her kids room.

Last Saturday I invited my colleagues for lunch and cooked vegetarian Indian meal. It was a big hit and nothing was leftover after we finished eating. They were inquisitive about the ingredients of the dishes prepared, method of cooking  and this is definite a boost to my cooking adventures.

I have been feeling low since Sunday mainly because I'm not feeling challenged at work. I'm not happy with the type of work I have been assigned these days. Instead of feeling depressed for various other reasons I was able to stitch for more time in the work week.... which is a plus point.

Oh how can I miss telling you about the panic attack I had while I was comparing my DMC to Anchor conversion sheet. It seems that for few shades  DMC to Anchor conversion is not same as Anchor to DMC conversion. I was almost in tears when I realized that but then DH very calmly explained to me that the pieces I have stitched till now using the old sheet are still beautiful.
After 5 hours of referring to various online conversions available I now have a new conversion sheet.
All this because I work with Anchor floss and most of the designs use DMC.

I hope the coming week I feel better emotionally and really hope to finish the Sunflower bouquet in time.


Till then...take care you lovely people.

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