A Lovely Weekend

The weather continues to be cold here but at least we are having some sunshine which makes the days seems better in spite of the low temperatures, and of course the clocks went *back yesterday so we will have longer evenings :-)

No stitching to show this week, although I have been stitching I haven't taken any photos yet.  DH and I have been on a little trip to Derbyshire, we stayed in a nice hotel in the centre of Derby, did some shopping, had a couple of lovely meals out and of course our  visit to the beautiful Chatsworth House, so I thought I share some of the photos of the house and grounds with you today.

This was the view of the house as you drove through the estate to get there.  There is some renovation going on which is why you can see tarpaulin on the left of the photo.

And from the gardens

There was still lots of snow around which made for a very pretty setting

The waterfall

(Please excuse my DH, he always seems to get into photos without trying, lol)

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This is the top of the waterfall, can you see the one behind?

This lady must have been freezing!

One of the ponds, the majority of it still frozen

Another view of the house from the Canal

 This is the Serpent, the leaves are still quite dead but I think that makes for a better colour.

Some of the beautiful tapestries in the house

This one is huge, covering the whole of the back wall

The house from the gardens again

The Hall

And it's wonderfully elegant staircase

And beautifully painted ceiling

Loved the library with it's shelves and shelves books

(I tried for an arty farty photo, lol)

The many bedrooms with their canopied beds

The very grand dining room

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I'm of work for a week now, Yayyyyy.  I have some jobs to catch up on but mostly I plan on lying  in and taking it easy with some afternoons  settling my derrière on the sofa for some serious stitching sessions :-)

A few people wanted to see the bags I bought last week, I will show them next time, glad to know that I not alone in my bag obsession, lol.

Thank you for visiting me and leaving a comment, It's always lovely to hear from you, if you are a new follower (and i noticed there were a couple) please stop and say hello so I can visit you in return.

Have a fantastic week whatever you are up to!

xx

*Edited to add: 

Ops, as Linda has pointed out the clocks should have been put forward, not back, lol.  We did change them to the correct time, it was a typo...sorry if I confused anyone :-)

Snow Anyone?

We are back in the midst of winter again here in the Midlands, will we ever see the sunshine??

This is what it was like on Saturday morning as i set of for the Hobby Crafts show at the NEC

This farmland is about a 10 minute walk from where i live, the 'green space' in an otherwise industrial area.  It looks very pretty clothed in white.

The roads for once were fairly clear so I thought the drive would be OK to Birmingham, and It was, apart from the spray on the motorway it wasn't too bad, traffic wise.  I don't do much motorway driving  and was amazed considering the conditions of the many drivers who are tanking along and without any lights on! the spray was horrendous and the visibility not that great, yet they don't think to put lights on?, crazy, stupid crazy!

I arrived safely and had a lovely few hours browsing the stands.  There is always a display of some sorts, and this year it was the turn of Pride & Prejudice.

I bet you will all recognise this little number from the lake scene?

It wasn't a huge display, but it was nice to see the costumes.

I was a little disappointed with the show this year, not so many cross stitch stands this time, Jane Greenoff wasn't there and neither was another big suppler who is usually there.  I did come back with a few things, mostly trims though, I only bought one chart,  LHN My House.

I also bought a new magnifier with a light as the light on my old one was playing up, and I treated myself to two new handbags, a girl cant have too many hand bags :-)

No stitching to show this week instead there is a knitting finish, a little jacket for my favourite little man.

He came to visit this afternoon so we had a fitting, I've just got to get some buttons for it when I go out tomorrow.

If you follow THIS link you should get a little video of the man himself.  I've never tried to link a video before so I hope it works.

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Just enough of the evening left now to get a little stitching in, Mark has gone back off to work, the job was handed over on Friday so next week is snagging and we have a couple of Bank Holiday's coming up, so the next two weeks are only 4 day weeks.  We are going away for the Easter weekend, just a little break for a couple of nights in Derbyshire with a visit planned to Chatsworth house, then I have the whole of the next week off work, can't wait!

 

Until next time, thank you for your visits and comments, they are as always very much appreciated :-)

Have a great week

Still Christmas Here!

I've been away longer than I intended, again, but I'm here at last, with finishes and starts to share :-)

My ornament for the Christmas ornament SAL was this little freebie by Whispered by the Wind, stitched on a scrap of light blue linen with white DMC.

The weather obliged me with a sprinkling of snow the day I took the photo.

My new start is a Shepherds Bush Christmas Stocking 'Thomas's Stocking'  re-named Oliver's Stocking for the little man in my life :-)

I'll be working on this every Friday night along with Julie, Catherine, Linda, and Riona.

I'm still waiting for some of the threads to come that's the reason for the skipping about with the stitches at the moment. 

This is 3 Friday nights worth of stitching, yeah, I know, not a lot!

I'm going to try and keep this a secret and give it to Jenny on December 1st when she puts up her Christmas decorations.

The cake baking continues, and I'm beginning to think pledging 200 cakes was a little ambitious, I'm just over half way there though, hopefully over the next two weeks I will reach  my target.

Last week was Chocolate Brownies and m&m cookies, they were mostly gone by lunch time :-)

And earlier in the week I made some muffins, but they were a bit disappointing, they tasted OK but didn't have muffin tops :-(  

If anyone can share a tried and tested muffin recipe please tell me.

That's all for now, I want to thank you for all the lovely comments on my ornament finishes in my last post, as someone who finds finishing a bit of a challenge your encouragement really made my day :-)

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This weekend is the Hobby Crafts Show at the NEC in Birmingham,     so that's what I'll be doing this coming Saturday, I've got my wish list ready and money saved so I can treat myself, can't wait!

Until next time x