We'll count that as a fail then shall we

I finished knitting my Betwixmas shawl a couple of weeks ago, to be honest I made myself finish it because I wanted to start something else, and that's going to be my 'thing' this year.  

I didn't much like knitting with the yarn but I thought I'd like it when it was all done.

I washed and blocked it

The pattern came out good

But, it's not wearable, it is so small, I was really disappointed.  I posted it on the fb group and a lot o people commented that yes, theirs had turned out small too.  I know I could have ordered more yarn and carried on but I didn't eel inclined, I could have used bigger needles, but the stitches wouldn't have looked very nice.  Joanne has taken it back with her, no idea if she will be able to use it, I'll told her to put it in the charity bag if she can't.

I'll be triple checking measurements the next time I do anything!

I've been working a little bit on Autumn Dream over the last three weekends, still a lot o brown at the moment but once I start adding the colour it will look much better. 

The rain continues here.  The Midlands has had a lot of flooding in places, especially Bewdley and Ironbridge There are flood defences in Bewdley now on one side of the river at least, so not as bad as previous years.  It must be terrible when it happens all the same.

We have our own mini flood happening in the garden.  This has been the same for weeks and hardly has time to soak away before the next few days of rain.  

No chance of getting out and doing anything at the moment, everywhere you tread is like a bog!

I booked a day's holiday today so i'm having an indulgent day to myself :-)  I'm going to make myself a lovely cuppa and binge watch series one of  Last Tango in Halifax.  I've watched them all previously but I wanted to refresh my memory before watching the new series, (no spoilers on the new series please as I will get this on catch up) :-)

Hope you all have a great week and have something other than rain to look at though your window.

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-

What do you do with yours?

I love taking photos and I love looking at photos too, doesn't matter whether they are mine or someone else's.  I used to have a film camera before everything went digital and I would always fill an album with photos from holidays and trips away.  Since I've had a digital camera I don't get many prints done.  

I took a couple of short photography courses a few years ago and really enjoyed it, we used to be given a topic and had to get photos printed to take in the next week, I remember the whole discussion of where to get your prints done and how the machines in the high street shops are just configured to print everyone's photos the same, whereas if you take them to a professional printer they will look at your photos and adjust the machine to get you the best print.

I tested this out once, getting two identical photos, one printed at a professional printers and one at a high street chain.   The difference was amazing, the colour on the high street shop photo was just awful, and the top of the photo had been cut off too.  The one from the professional place was exactly how it was on my screen.  I would have probably been happy with the shop one if I had not seen how it should have looked.  Just shows.

It made me wary of getting prints, so most of my photos are on my laptop

The difference in price is not that much more from a professional printer really and for special occasions I would still send my photos to them rather than a high street chain, but I have as many photos that have been taken with my phone as with my camera so at Christmas I downloaded an app called FreePrints.  

Every month you get 45 free 6x4 prints and only pay for postage.  I tried them out in January and was quite happy with the results so I thought I would tell you about it in case it's something you haven't heard of it.

I've had this album for about two years intending to get photos printed, it's similar to a Project Life album, a four ring binder basically.  The idea is that it's a scrapbook project without the need to buy all the scrapbooking paraphernalia but I just can't get on with it so at the weekend i'm off to buy a good old fashioned photo album, lol

There is also a FreePrints Photosbooks, app.  With this you get a free 8 x 6, twenty page photobook and again you only pay for postage.  You have the option to add more pages for a small extra charge and you can opt to buy a larger book if you wanted too.

I ordered one last Friday, I made it for Oliver of when we took him on holiday to Padstow in 2017 and it arrived in the post yesterday.

There are a good selection of covers to choose from
(sorry, bad glare on this photos!)

There's a choice of layout's and you can choose to have full page

You could add a photo on the back cover too, I added a photo of Padstow harbour

I'm really happy with how it came out :-)  A couple of the photos are a bit too warm but on the whole I'm very pleased, and Oliver has something to remember our holiday.  He was thrilled to bits when I gave it to him yesterday :-)

I'll definitely be doing another one in February :-)

I added more pages to my book but when I do another one I'll make better use of the layout options to get more photos in.

-X-