Well Hello September!

 It was as If the oak tree in our garden knew the date because yesterday the leaves began to fall.  I love this time of year but from now until the middle of November all I seem to do is collect leaves, there are too many to leave to decompose and anyway oak leaves take forever, so that's not an option, you just have to get out there and gather them up.  Luckily the weather has been good so I've spent the last two days tidying up the garden pulling up things that are past their best, emptying pots and cleaning out the greenhouse, if I can get those jobs done it will make the leaf collecting that much easier to keep on top of once they really do start coming down.

Because I've been spending time outside there hasn't been a lot of stitching or knitting done but I have finished my Stick6 stitching for July and August.

Jolly Jack by All Through The Night

Isn't he cute!  I stitched him on some 14 count Rustico Aida.  I haven't stitched on Aida for a long time but I do find the smaller count fabrics a strain on my eyes, especially at night, I loved stitching him and may stitch on Aida more in the future.  The frame is a cheap and cheerful one from Amazon and I laced him onto some mountboard.

Last time I told you about the accident I had with Schoolgirl Lessons and that I'd managed to rescue it by coffee and tea dying the fabric, I was in B&M on Friday and saw a frame that I thought might suit, It fitted perfect, and cost £2.50 😀

As with Jolly Jack I laced it onto some mountboard

I haven't knitted any socks in a while and had the urge to cast some on so I've wound the yarn this afternoon and that's what I'm going to start tonight.

The colourway is Pumpkin Spiced Latte, perfect name and colour for the start of Autumn 🍂

Hope your September has got off to a good start

-X-

Turned out nice again

My daughter, Joanne, bought me this chart Christmas 2020, I thought it was perfect for Spring stitching.

The Rain Fell by Little House Needleworks

 I'm stitching it on a 36 count fabric over two with one thread, I like the way it's stitching up and enjoying working on it an hour or two each day.

The weather has been wonderfully sunny and warm again and I've been enjoying sitting up in my summer house most days, stitching and listening to the birds and my audio book.

This week I've planted some more seeds and tidied up the garden a bit, still not cut the grass, after this week the ground should have dried out enough for me to do that, our green bin collection won't start until a week on Monday so I was trying to hold out until then.

I've never had much luck with Lobelia so we'll have to wait and see if that grows, my sister said she had great success with the Wildlife Mixture so I bought those to try, I've sowed these in a big container that I had, I really hope these take and I thought I would plant up the kitchen window boxes with Nasturtiums for a change.  We should have a nice colourful garden, if everything comes up.

We still have loads of daffs in the garden, although the smaller ones have now mostly died off.

I didn't plant any of these, they were in when we came.

There are a few Tulips out too.  These I planted a few years ago, I didn't plant many this year and I'm regretting it now

The Pieris is just coming into flower, we cut this drastically last year and I was worried it wouldn't flower this year, so glad it has.

It's Mothers Day here in the UK tomorrow.  I requested that mums stone be done and in place for then so we could take some flowers to the crematorium, we bought a nice planter arrangement which should last a while yet, we will leave some flowers too.

Hope you are making the most of these sunny day's and that you will have a lovely Mother's Day tomorrow.

-X-

Another Jolly July catch up and a couple of days out

For the second week of Jolly July I had said I wanted to have another three or four new starts. 

That didn't happen.  Instead I had one new start and three finishes.  It suited me much better to finish the small starts than add to a pile of stitching.  So here they are.

Gingerbread House No. 3

Frosty Flakes

My First Christmas by Lizzie Kate

My First Christmas was my only start in week two, but I'm happy to have started and finished three ornaments.  You may have noticed that it says 2nd Christmas.  Well, this is for Jacob, he was supposed to make his arrival in the first week of January and this Christmas would have been his first, but as you know he arrived a few days before Christmas last year, with everything that was going on I didn't have time to make him an ornament, so we thought this would be a talking point in the years to come 😆

The year is supposed to be stitched over one, no way that was going to happen on 32 count!  The fabric is a light blue, which is not showing up on this terrible photo, but trust me, it looks cute.

Jenny's partner, James, is serving in Afghanistan now until the beginning of November so we are helping out with the boys to give Jenny a break at the weekend.  We took them, along with Bonnie on a woodland walk on Saturday.

Arty likes to collect things along the way, sticks, pebbles, flowers, he picks up things until he can hold no more.  He's dissecting a buttercup here!

The Saturday before we took them to Bewdley.  This lovely market town is about twenty minutes drive and makes a nice change for a walk but the river, oh, and they have Teddy Gray's ice cream so worth the drive 😉

The boys really need a hair cut but Jenny hasn't been able to get an appointment yet on a day she's not working.  70's throwback, lol

I went to Bewdley again last week, this time with Joanne, Bonnie and Jacob.  It was nice enough for us to sit and have our lunch in the park, and of course another ice cream later.

Can you see Bonnie has her gloves on?  It was really warm but she insisted on putting them on :-)

That's me all caught up with the happenings here for now.  I hope you are all still staying safe and well and enjoying a little more freedom, if you are able.

See you soon

-X-

Finished stitching.....

I finished February's Calendar Girl a few day's before the 1st of the month :-)

And I also finished Easter Parade by Blackbird Designs :-)

I have an idea of how I want to finish this one but I don't know if it will work out ok yet, if not it will just be framed.  I've got a few weeks to thing about it yet.

I managed to avoid all temptation of starting another stitching project until both of these were done, quite impressed with myself for doing that :-)

Next ones on the list are the Calendar Girl for March, which I'm making a start on this afternoon and Autumn Dream by Cottage Garden Samplings

 Here's my tiny start on this one from yesterday

We have some lovely indoor blooms to brighten these dull days, when is it going to stop raining!!

My Amaryllises is very small this year, the smallest ones I've grown!
It does have two flower buds though, these are the flowers from the first, the second one has yet to flower.  At first I was disappointed that it was so small, but now I quite like it :-)

That's it for me today, I'm off to make a cuppa and do some stitching, it's wet and wild outside so inside is the best place to be today :-)

I hope you are all having a lovely weekend.

See you soon
-X-

Three things

Last year I got a bit bogged down with the stitching and knitting I had on the go, It seemed to take me ages to get anything finished.  This year I didn't want this to happen so I resolved to try and have only two pieces of stitching and one knitting, or crochet on the go at time.

It seems to be a trend, especially with stitching, to start lots of things and work on them in rotation, I admire you if you can do that, but if I had multiple projects sitting in bags with just a few stitches in them, it would drive me insane, besides, I haven't got the space to store them all.

I hope that by keeping it to three things it will keep me motivated and I will see more finishes.

Easter Parade by Blackbird Designs

February Calendar Girl by LHN 

I stitched on this one on Sunday so i'm now further along than this photo shows

My knitting is the Betwixmas Shawl

The free pattern can be found on Ravelry and was offered up by Black Sheep Wools in December, you may remember that I posted about buying the yarn in December.

Obviously I didn't get it finished in the timescale but I did have a few problems and had to rip it back a couple of times before I found my rhythm.  

Not much left to do now so perhaps I might get it finished this week.

I do have a finish of sorts, I made another project envelope to keep my second stitching piece in.  This one is a little bit taller than the one I made for my Calendar  Girl stitching so it will accommodate the larger clip frame.  

As before, the fabric is from stash and something I've had for a while.

I had some lovely post this month.

Andrea (who's blog is The Craft Room) had offered up a giveaway on her blog of nine Farmhouse Christmas charts by LHN.  I put my name forward and won!  I never win anything, not even on the tombola, lol so I was very happy when my name got drawn from all the entries :-)

I'm looking forward to stitching these and will do my best to fit them into this years stitching.

Thank you so much Andrea :-)

Once I've stitched them all I will be paying the kindness forward and offering them up here on my blog in a giveaway.

I think that's me all caught up for now, I've been trying to find time to post for the last two weeks but life keeps getting in the way.  I've been sorting some care out for my mum, she's 91 and doesn't get around very well anymore, she wanted help in the mornings but the emergency care package they put her on was four visits a day, she didn't like all the comings and goings so we have cut it down to twice a day now, mornings and lunch time.  She is still finding it hard to adjusting to having help, it's a case of her needing help but not wanting to give up doing anything, It's hard work. 
Up till now she has been sorting her own tablets out every day but it's getting to the stage that she can't see what they are unless she holds the packet right in front of her eyes (she has macular degeneration) and has a hard time even opening some of the packaging, now the chemist will supply all her medication in a blister pack that will be set up for morning, afternoon and evening for the week.  The first pack will be delivered tomorrow so after work I will go up and make sure she knows what she's doing.  Something else for her to get used to and she won't like it but it is the safest option I think.

There is always something to do and someone to worry about isn't there?  Fingers crossed she will settle into this new routine and get used to the people going to help. 
Mum does have a lot of help from us besides this care, there are four of us and we all help her in one way or another, my cousin also visits and does a few jobs for her once a week, she is very lucky really compared to a lot of elderly people.  Anyway, I'm sure we will all get back to some routine soon.

-X-

Mad Birds and Winter Houses

I haven't had the inclination to stitch much lately, when i have sat for any amount of time it's been easier to pick up some knitting.  I have got a knitty finish and something new on my needles but i can't share either of those with you at the moment, that will have to wait until after April 3rd.  Why April 3rd,?  Well, something exciting is afoot and I can't tell you just yet :-)

The kitchen re-fit went really well, I made countless trips to the tip that week, sorted, cleaned and swept and finally I have just about put everything where it belongs.  I'm very happy with the work that 's been done.  Many of you left me comments that you liked my old kitchen with it's green units and country look and i started to wonder if I'd made the right colour choice with the new ones, but now that it's all fitted I'm so glad i went for the cream units, they have made the kitchen feel so much lighter, and the whole space is so much more user friendly:-)  I do find the whole process of choosing things so stressful, and with something this expensive you really can't afford to get it wrong.  Now i have to go through the process of choosing wall and floor tiles...more stress, lol

Mark has been away for two weeks straight so as soon as he has a free weekend that will get started.  I don't want to bore you with kitchen photos so i will share some pictures when it's all done.

Back at the beginning of February, before my stitching mojo left me I started Elizabeth Jackson, 
This is my progress. (crappy photo, sorry!)

I changed some of the colours, the basket, wording and some of the birds were a really pale pink which was a bit nothingness, so i changed them for something a bit darker, it's made the birds a bit on the funky side, lol but it's growing on me :-)

Something else I started at the beginning of March was LHN Winter Band Sampler.  This is way smaller that i thought it would be, here's where I'm up to.
(Another crappy photo!)

It looks from the photo that there is a stain on the fabric, there's not, it must be a shadow, oh, and that brown blob is the roof on the house :-)

My plan was to keep this one for a weekend project, but the weather was so lovely last weekend that i spent my time in the garden tidying up and cutting the grass, so i didn't have any stitching time at all.


Thank you for all your visits and comments, they are always appreciated, i even think i have a few more followers since last time which is great, I've noticed that sometimes though i can't always find a link back to a blog from the followers list, so do stop by and say hello :-) 
Right, there is a large glass of red grape juice with my name on it, so cheers, till next time xx

Christmas Ornies & The Prague Tunic Part 1

Seeing as we are hurtling towards Christmas i got a move on and finished off two of this years LHN ornaments.

Last year I managed to keep up with all of them, I don't know what happened this year, I just couldn't seem to get going despite buying them as the were issued in the UK.  I chose two that I liked the most for now and will carry on with the rest throughout next year.

Little House Needleworks Gingerbread Village

Stitched on a scrap of mystery 28 count

using DMC threads

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And my personal favourite is this one -

Little House Needleworks Baked Goods

Stitched on a piece of Mystery 28 count fabric with DMC threads

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When i made them up this time i used a piece of iron-on interfacing to back them, it made a real difference to how they look and made it easier to stitch the whole thing together.

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I've put the stitching to one side this week in favour of knitting.  I used to knit years ago when the kids were small but nothing in a long time.  I'm an OK basic knitter, nothing fancy, but when i came across this pattern it quite appealed to me.

This is the back all stitched up.  I was quite impressed that I managed to get this done in 3 evenings.  It's chunky yarn so that helped.  On Friday I started the front and after a couple of false starts, (mainly due to me not being able to count and increase!), I made it up to the arm hole shaping last night.  It's pretty gratifying after not having many stitchy finishes this year to get something near completion in such a short time!

So why the Prague Tunic?  Well on December 12th we are all going to Prague for a week, daughters, boyfriends (or in Stevie's case, friend from College), me and Mark, and I want to get this finished to take with me.  I think it's just about achievable, as long as i don't have any mishaps with the putting it together bit, lol.

Until next time,

take care and thanks for your visits and comments, they really make my day :-)

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Getting Plastered!

You really couldn't make this up!

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It turned out to be a day and a half yesterday.   I started the day by falling down the stairs, top to bottom, wrenched both arms backwards trying to stop myself and banged my foot.  It did knock me for six but i carried on...as you do, with the weekly ironing. 

Then i get a text from my eldest sister to say they have taken mum to the hospital because she was having palpitations and trouble breathing, she'd been given a ECG and was waiting to see the doctor.  So off i go to the hospital, my foot was hurting but not too bad, i could walk. 

We waited 5 hours in A&E, yes you read right, they gave an 82 year old woman an ECG then left her in the A&E waiting room for 5 hours, i did go and ask how much longer, a couple of times, but you know A&E, makes no difference.  When she was eventually seen by a doctor he did a thorough examination and he was very nice with her, they checked her blood, that was OK but the doc didn't like the look of her ECG so she had to stay in over night.  My eldest sister stayed with her while me and my younger sister went to her home to collect overnight things.  By then my foot was starting to hurt more.  Took mums things back to hospital, i was having trouble walking then but got on with it.  Another couple of hours with mum in the Emergency Assessment Unit waiting for yet another doctor to come and check her over and confirm that she was to stay in, yes, she had to stay in and have another ECG in the morning then they would compare them.

We had to ask 3 times for a blanket and pillow for mum, she had had nothing to eat or drink since about 2 o'clock that afternoon, a nurse said they would bring a plate of sandwiches and a cup of tea, which never arrived and the shop had nothing left except some muffins!  We asked again and she was bought a packet of sandwiches with a choice of ham or salmon, nothing to drink, so off again in search of a vending machine!

So by this time my foot is really killing and by the time we left at 12 o'clock i was having real trouble walking at all, but i was the one driving.  We went back to mums to feed her cat and turn off lights etc.  Went to open the door to go, it wouldn't budge, we were locked in the house!.  Julie, my younger sister said, I'll climb out of the window and unlock the door, no can do, the windows are locked and we didn't know where the key was.  We then had to call my BIL to come up and let us out!!  He had to help me to the car and off home i went, Joanne took one look at my foot and said, mum i think you should go back to the hospital (my foot was a funny colour and swollen by this time)  So off we go again, Joanne drops me and Stevie by A&E and goes to park the car, but i can't walk at all and am trying to hop across the car park, Stevie trying to hold me up without laughing to much!  There was a guy stood outside the door who came to our rescue with a wheelchair, bless him, i don't know how we would have got to the door if he hadn't come to rescue us.

This time, thankfully, we didn't wait too long before i was seen, but while i was waiting for my xray the doctor who had seen mum earlier walked past and did a double take and came back and asked what I'd done and went away shaking his head, lol.  After xray i was wheeled back and the same doctor came past again and asked if i had been seen yet, (no i hadn't) he said he had finished his shift but would get the Doctor to have a look at me and my xray.  The doctor on duty didn't come, but he did and looked at the xrays himself and examined my foot coming back with the news that it was indeed broken!!

So now i look like this..

I have an appointment at the fracture clinic on Wednesday afternoon to have this plaster off and another xray and then they will decide whether to put another cast on.~~~

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On the upside i will have plenty of stitching time over the next couple of weeks (insert big grin here!) 

I put a lot of time into LHN last week, i love this one :-)

 And the whole thing so far.

Mary Glover had an outing at the weekend. How pants is stitching over one!!  I think i stared at it for ten minutes before attempting a stitch, then when i did manage some stitching i ripped them out again.  Finally i think i got it sorted, i still have the alphabet underneath the words to do and i will grit my teeth and get around to that this week.

Saturday was a better day than yesterday with the Hobbycraft and Sewing for Pleasure, i had a lovey day out and gsome goodies which i will share with you another time.  For now I'm going to catch forty winks as i didn't sleep very well last night.

Take care

Time has just run away with me again, i suppose it has something to do with the time of year but also to do with the fact that i have been a lazy blogger!

I owe a long over due thank you to Mylene, i won a give away on her blog a while ago and this is what arrived in the mail....

...My very first pyn keep! It is stitched and finished so beautifully, thank you so much Mylene, it will always have a special place on my tree xx.

My own stitches have be few and far between, i have managed to finish another LHN ornament and put it together at the weekend

Only one more of these ornaments to finish off now and i can proudly say that i kept up for the whole 12 months (that's a first for me!!) The little angel is almost stitched and the two little houses are stitched up but i have yet to finish them into anything (forgive me for not giving the charts their proper names, i have a mental block when it comes to remembering chart names!)

Daughter #2 had a birthday while I've been absent, she turned 23 on 2nd December

She took her driving test last Thursday but unfortunately didn't pass, she managed to get a cancellation this morning for January 8th, so lets hope she has better luck 2nd time around.

Today has been one of those horrible dark, cold and damp days, but for a couple of weeks we did have snow and ice causing havoc on our roads (if you know the UK then you will know how what little snow it can take to cause havoc, and keep us talking about it forever!! LOL) Personally i would rather have the snow and ice back, to me there is nothing better that a lovely crisp frosty morning :-) I took myself and my camera off to the park after work one afternoon last week so I'll leave you with some of the results.

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The guy in the red coat and the bike just happened to walk up as i was taking the photo, how lucky was that!

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I didn't realise until i looked at the photos on my computer that there was a couple sharing a kiss under the tree...how sweet.

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The last two photos are of a couple of friends i made that day ;-)

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My blog header photo is also at the park that day.

I owe quite a few of you blog visits and comments, i will be trying to catch up this week.

Thank you for stopping by today, and have a great week whatever you may be up too xx