White rabbits, white rabbits, white rabbits (and a March mantle)

Did you remember this morning?

There are variations on this superstition, saying it once, twice, or three times and even one that says it must be 'White Rabbit'...but you must also say 'Brown Rabbit' at night and walk downstairs backwards, (?)

Whatever you do, (or don't) say on the 1st of the month i hope March will be a lucky one for you.

And, if mine is as productive as February, I will indeed be a happy bunny :-)

I changed my mantle last night before i went to bed because i've got a lot on today.  I enjoyed looking around to see what i could use.

Easter is in March this year so there are lots of Easter decorations in the shops, but i didn't particularly want to be stuck with Easter for the next 3 weeks, (it will come soon enough), so a Spring theme seemed a better option.

I will probably change / add a couple of things for the Easter week when the time comes.
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As for stitching, i've stitched and made up the two little Spring freebies you can see on the mantle.

Tulips & Bunny

Free pattern from The Snowflower Diaries 

Which you can find here

My own choice of threads and fabric

A closer look

And below is:

Happy Spring

Free pattern from The Snowflower Diaries

Which you can find here

I stitched this with the recommended threads

 Just a simple hoop finish again, I wrapped some fabric around the hoop this time

I have to say that these two were an absolute pleasure to stitch.
Although not what i would usually choose to do, i did enjoy every stitch and working with the lovely bright colours.

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Did you notice my little friend?

I just couldn't resist her when I saw her, and I knew then that the theme for March just had to be bunnies :-)

Look at that sweet little knitted cardigan!

Mark of course, thinks i'm slightly mad,
(that's nothing new, I'm used to people thinking i'm strange ;-)
Luckily i can get away with adding my touches around the house, he just says 'very nice' and occasionally rolls his eyes :-)

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Millie is doing just fine, thank you all for you comments last time.

She is eating much better and had actually put on some weight when i took her back for her final check-up last Tuesday, which is great! 

Fingers crossed for healthy, happy cats, (and bank account!).

Until next time

-X-

A mostly expensive start to the year so far

On Friday Millie was booked in at the vets to have dental work done.

We knew she had a build up of plaque and, for a while she has had very smelly breath.

but lately she has not been eating much, and although she has never been a fat cat she was starting to look a bit too thin.  

At almost 12 years old, she is getting to be an old lady, but apart from her teeth her pre-op check showed that she is in good health otherwise, thank goodness.

So I dropped her off at 8.30 am on Friday and at around 1 pm they phoned to say that she was all done.  Unfortunately they had to take the majority of her teeth out, 13 in total, she is just left with a couple at the front now.  Plus to get one of her teeth out they had to cut her gum, so she has a few stitches too.  She was not very happy with me on Friday I can tell you!  I expected her to be off her food for a few days, or at least not to eat much, but no, I opened a tin of pilchards for her, mashed them up and she was right in there, finishing off most of the tin!  

Happily she is now more or less back to her normal self, her face was a little bit swollen but that is mostly gone down now and she is eating more than she has done in months!  She has pain killers once a day and has to go back in 10 days for another check-up, but hopefully we should see a big improvement in her eating and weight gain now.

Of course those of you with pets will know that vet visits don't come cheap and this little visit lightened our bank balance by £318. 

What with Molly's abscess just after Christmas we have forked out almost £1000 so far this year in vet bills, and we are only in month 2!  We have no pet insurance, (I know, I know, not very insightful of me), but as they are getting to be quite 'old ladies' now  the insurance would probably be quite high and of course wouldn't cover what they have already been treated for, so, I have decided that every month I will put a little money away to cover any future vet bills.  

Touch wood, my two cats have always been quite healthy and well, they don't wander out of our garden and they are not hunters, and I think that helps, but there is no getting away from the fact that they are getting older and may need other treatment in the future, at least if I start a fund now at least I will know that some, if not all of the money will be covered.

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I'm still plugging away with the February instalment of the Joyful World SAL.

I have to say that although I love this, I'm not enjoying stitching it, does that make sense?  Plus, I've miscounted somewhere, so there will be a bit of fudging going on.

I will keep on with it because I've got so far, but I think it's fair to say that I will be glad to see the back of it.

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This weekend we went to pick up a little cupboard for the hall.  

Our hallway is not very big and I hate to see shoes cluttering up the space, this has solved the shoe problem perfectly.

(excuse the fuzzy photo, it was taken with my phone at night)

The mirror was a little make-over project last week, It was originally black, (another one of my Home Sense finds a couple of weeks ago), I liked the shape but the black was too stark so out came my trusty Annie Sloan paint and a couple of hours later it was transformed :-)
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I'm just getting over another cold, second one this year, I don't usually have many colds but these two really slowed me down, must be my age, lol.   I'm still a little bunged up but feel tons better than I did last week.  I bought a pack of multivitamins for 50+ when I went shopping this weekend, apparently you need a different set of vitamins when you are 50+, who knew!

Hopefully they will help to put a spring back in my step, ha ha ha, I think in order to do that they will have to transport me back a decade or two as well :-)

I hope you are managing to avoid the Winter cold germs and keeping warm and well :-)

See you soon

Have a great week

-X-

Some finishes & my February mantle

Hello again, I hope you survived storm Imogen without to much trouble.

Saturday was an awful day here weather wise, the rain and the wind were horrendous.  

I only popped out for a few bits late Saturday afternoon, it wasn't a day to be walking about town.

The rest of Saturday I spent stitching and catching up on some missed TV programmes, mainly Endeavour and Midsomer Murders, (Midsomer for all it's prettiness must be the most dangerous place to live in England, good job it's fictional)

I see lots of people joining in with the Joyful World SAL and who can blame them, the first two patterns are so cute!

I started with February because we were already at the end of January.

My little duck looks like he's got a deformed beak doesn't he?  Unfortunately the stitching ended just by a 'snowflake' and with the yellow thread its making it look a bit strange, I'm hoping it won't be so noticeable when it's all done.

Not sure yet if I will finish it as a flat ornament or look about for a frame and change the months around.
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I've also finished my first Christmas ornament of 2016.
The fabric is a little darker than this photo is showing, (night-time is not a good time for taking photos).

Just a simple gingham backing

This is  a free design from 2013 offered from The Nebby Needle, which you can find here 

I changed the thread colours to some that I already had.
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I was browsing Pinterest last week, (as you do) and came across some various ways that stitching hoops had been used, there was one in particular that featured red buttons and a heart that I particularly liked, well, I didn't have many red buttons but I did have some left over red/pink fabric from my February ornament and lots of white and opaque buttons :-)

It actually came out much better than I expected, to be honest I was just going to sew on one layer of buttons but didn't arrange them too good and there was quite a bit of fabric showing between them so I just kept adding layers until I thought it looked ok.  I think it's made a nice addition to my February mantle.

I wanted to get some pink candles but couldn't find any, so these cream ones had to do this time.  I happened to meet with this little jug in Home Sense just at the right time, don't you think it's cute, and just the right colour!

An ornament finish

A very quick post today for this first day of February.

My February ornament

For the first time I've used Crafters companion, stick & stay when making it up.  

Usually I get glue in places you would never imagine when trying to make these ornaments, (which other people make look so easy to do and which I find a right pain in the butt!).  But this time everything seemed to be working in my favour, for once.

I was hoping to have my first Christmas ornament of the year finished too but I'm still working away on that.

I've had a day off work today, so I'm off to sit and watch Columbo, which I recorded yesterday, and stitch on 'Christmas'.

Have a good day all

-X-

A little stitching, a little knitting and meeting a favourite author

One of my aims this year was to keep up with blogging once a week, I was aiming for the same day each week, I'm afraid I'm failing at that already, but I have been stitching, crocheting and knitting more so I suppose that's ok.

I found this little Christmas freebie on FB and liked the simplicity of it,

Just a little bit more stitching to do so i'm hoping to get this made up before the end of the month.

I've also been working on a February design for my mantle but as we are so close to February i will save that for another post.

My little pink blanket just needs the other side boarder knitted up.

Actually, i'm not too keen on this moss stitch boarder, I wish I had done something other than moss stitch, it looks a bit loose compared to the rest of the blanket to me, perhaps it will be better when it's washed?

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Reading...

This weekend was our first reading group meeting of the year.  I was really looking forward to it because we had an author visit.  The author was Angela Marsons, she lives locally and writes crime novels set in the Black Country.  Rachel the librarian who runs our reading group recommended her some time ago and it was a month or so before i remembered and went in search of her books and, of course her name kept cropping up at each meeting, soon between us we had got everyone else in the group interested!

It has taken over 20 years for Angela to get her work noticed, time after time her work was rejected as being 'ok,' but not quite good enough.  She had more or less given up when Bookouture contacted her and said they wanted to publish her books, she was then signed up for a 4 book deal, (that is now turned into an 8 book deal).

  She has also recently secured a print deal for the first 3 books, so they will be hitting the shops latter in the year, but she is still staying with Bookouture as well.

Her books are here on Amazon, if you are interested, and where you can read a bit more about her too.

She also has two other books which are stand alone books, nothing to do with the Kim Stone novels, these are also on Amazon, I haven't read them, but they are on my reading list for this year. 

She is such a lovely person, unassuming and totally blown away with the success and attention she is getting now and from hearing her speak on Saturday she will remain loyal to Bookouture and her feet will stay firmly on the ground, her words were, her family will always come first, in particular her partner, for whom she is also the main carerer.   But now she is living her dream of being able to write full time.

Her sales for Silent Scream have already hit over one million and it has been released in Italy and due to be released in Germany too!

Don't you just love it when something like this happens to a nice person?

And....It's one in the eye for all those who rejected her writing for all these years...Like Julia Roberts said in Pretty Woman...Big mistake.  Big.  Huge.

Have a great week all!

-X-

Sorting it out and using it up

Over Christmas I had a clear-out of my craft collection, at one time I could contain all that I had in a few boxes, now it seems that I need a whole room!  

But, the room I use for all my crafty bit's and bobs now also has to double up as a (sometimes) bedroom for when Oliver sleeps over.  Since he has gone into a 'big boy bed' and to save me lugging backwards and forwards between his house and ours more luggage than I take on a weeks holiday, it was decided that when Jenny is on a late shift, i.e. 2pm until 10pm Oliver would sleep over at ours and she would collect him or meet me at work to collect him the next morning, We have done a couple of sleep-overs now and it's worked out quite well, hence the wanting to clear out a few things so that it feels more like his room.

I have listed (and sold) quite a bit on ebay, either things that I don't think I would ever have got round to using or things that I have bought and have just been sitting there collecting dust.  

My plan is to get everything down to this one cupboard, charts and patterns will stay in the folder and box they are already in.

(The bottom half of the cupboard hold my threads and fabric)

I don't know how it happened, but I seem to have collected rather a lot of yarn, (see those draws at the side of the cupboard, they are full of yarn too!), so i'm on a mission to turn some of it into something useful.  This little blanket used up a few balls of my chunky yarn and I'm quite happy with the colours too :-)
I'm also quite impressed with myself how quickly I did this, less than a week!!
Good going for me, lol

Seeing as I'm on a roll I sorted some shades of pink out yesterday and cast on another blanket.

This one is using Sylecraft Special DK

That's all the craftiness I've had time for this week.

I'll leave you with a couple of photos of my Amaryllis.

I have 2 of them this year, this is a new one I planted up a while ago, it was already starting to flop over so I've had to use one of my orchid supports

And this one is last years bulb planted up in a vase with some moss, I saw something similar when I was out and about just after Christmas and thought it was a bit different, I collected the moss while i was on a walk a couple of weeks ago so this one has some catching up to do.

Until next time
-X-

A New Year crochet finish from last year

It's still wet and windy here, not much sign of an actual Winter, you know, one with frosty mornings and a need for a winter coat and cosy scarf, and the need to scrape the car in the morning (ok, well i don't miss that bit, lol) 

But, I do wish we could have a change from this horrible dreary rain!!

We are thankfully far from any flooding areas, I do feel for the people affected, it must be terrible, because lets face it it's not just water, it's all the dirt, and debris it brings with it.....awful.

I do have a cosy finish to show though.  

I started this Autumn blanket back in March, (I think) last year, better late than never!

I didn't know it at the time but the colours complement our newly decorated sitting room perfectly.

Close up of the 'V stitch'

So easy but so effective 

I started the boarder a couple of times and pulled it out again, finally I did one round of (UK) trebles followed by one round of 3 (UK) doubles, 1 chain, 3 doubles in one space, skipped 2 spaces and repeated.

I love how it came out, even Mark commented that it looked good, (this from the man who even after all this time calls it knitting, whether I'm crocheting, stitching or knitting, lol

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I know it's supposed to be a children's book but.....

Just before Christmas I saw the new Illustrated Harry Potter book and thought how lovely it was, I debated then if I should buy it but at £30 I thought it was a bit expensive and sadly put it back, but when I saw it on Amazon the other day at £15 it jumped straight into my basket!

It is truly wonderful

I'm just blown away by it.

I had thought that Oliver would love this, the pictures will really make the story come alive, but it will have to be kept well away from jammy fingers until he is older I think, Nanna might read it to him but he will only be allowed to look at under supervision, lol

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It's back to work tomorrow for me, I've had a nice long (ish) break, and enjoyed it but bizarrely i'm quite looking forward to doing something other than cleaning and tidying ;-)

-X-