October makes and celebrations

October was a busy month and seemed to pass by really quickly.  We had two family birthdays, Oliver turned 12 on the 17th and It was Marks birthday on the 21st.  Mark never likes a fuss and is really hard to buy for so we just went out for a meal on the Monday night, just the two of us, not something we do very often so it was nice, and being a Monday night it was quiet too.

Oliver requested that nanny make his birthday cake, a lemon one with sweets was the brief, I think he was happy with what I came up with 😀

It's been a busy month for stitching too with the Quarry Bank Stitchers day retreat on Sunday 13th and on the following Tuesday six of us met up at the Nimble Thimble for a stitching and shopping day then last Saturday was our monthly meet up at the Exchange cafe in Birmingham.  The retreat day is always a good day, this time there were a couple of new ladies at our table, ( hi Esther if you are reading this, it was lovely to meet you and your friend).  Esther emailed me after reading about the previous meet-up on my blog, so that was lovely to be able to share information about our meet-up, and happily they were able to secure a place.  

Our monthly meet-up in Birmingham is as I said in a cafe, the only requirement is that we purchase something to eat and drink whilst we are there. In the past they have reserved an area for us all to sit together but have now decided that they are no longer going to reserve tables, hopefully that's just because with Christmas coming they will be expecting more trade from shoppers and the Christmas market.  It would be a shame if we had to cancel that meet-up because it's a lovely atmosphere.

Mary Margaret has had quite a few outings this month and this is how she is looking at the moment.

I'd say she is over half way done and If I can get a few evenings stitching during the coming weeks I should be able to get her finished before the end of the year.

I only made a couple of purchases at our Nimble Thimble visit, a couple of charts and  I took some charts from stash with me to get fabric for, which prompted my next start. 

Black Bird Designs Red Bird Sampler

I can't tell you how many years this has been waiting to be stitched!  Once I started it was all I wanted to stitch and was done in no time.

Although I took it with me to buy fabric for I ended up finding something to suit in stash along with the threads.  Not sure If I'll take this to be framed or look for a frame and do it myself, depends if I can find something that suits and I like.

The end of October is the time to share our Stick6 finishes, this time mine is a Prairie Schooler Santa.

Only one more to stitch for this year, I do love taking part in this SAL, It keeps me motivated to stitch with no pressure. 

My final finish for the month are my socks.  I thought the colours were perfect for Halloween month.

The yarn is Opal, from their Beauty Collection, colour no. 11300

Back in the Summer my five year old laptop died and was beyond repair, reluctant to buy another one at the time I've been using my fifteen year old laptop, which works fine except for the fact that I have to keep it plugged into the mains because the battery is no good and I just keep putting off buying a new one.  Then a couple of weeks ago some of the keys weren't responding, rebooting solved the problem a few times but then that didn't work so I was left with no a,s or d and no return key either!  I was still reluctant to get a new laptop as there may be some black Friday deals soon or offers over Christmas, plus I hate shopping for new appliances of any sort.  It took me a good few days to realise that I could buy a separate keyboard quite cheaply which would enable me to still use my old laptop😂  So that's what I'm doing at the moment and I have to say that typing on a proper keyboard is way better than typing on a laptop keyboard.  That is rather a long winded way of saying that I am way behind on commenting on blogs at the moment, but I will try and catch up soon.

I was going to share some charity shop stitching finds with you but I've rambled on far too much already so I'll save those for another time.

Hope you are all well and have a fantastic November, It'll be Christmas before we know it!

-X-

Last week

Last week was a week full of sorting, again.  

I do declutter regularly but always manage to fill a bag for the charity shop each time.  I didn't pick up my knitting or stitching much during the week so no progress worth showing but I did manage to pickle the beetroot I'd harvested from the allotment.  Only enough for one jar this time but we do have more in the ground which aren't ready to pull just yet.  I've not tested it yet, the recipe I found online was a simple one, just vinegar and brown sugar and it said to leave in a dark place for about two weeks.

If it's not good at least there is only one jar and I can try out another recipe for the rest.

Since the oven had been on to sterilise the pickle jar I made us a cake for the weekend as well.  

The recipe for this Anglesey cake came from this little book, 

I have several of these Favourite Recipe books picked up from various trips, I added The Grow Your Own Recipes to my collection from our recent visit to The Black Country Museum, there are definitely some things in there I will be trying out at some point and If they are as good as the cakes I have made from the baking ones we won't be disappointed.

I also had a lovely surprise parcel arrive last week.  

My lovely friend Jo, who I'm sure you know blogs at Through the Keyhole sent me the most thoughtful gift.  She has been reading the Seven Sisters series by Lucida Riley and thought I might enjoy them too so she sent me the first book to get me started, but not only that, look at all the other Autumnal goodies she included along with the book.

I admit I got quite emotional when I opened it.  I shall enjoy using them all, in fact the Caramac chocolates have already been enjoyed and I made a hot chocolate using one of the chocolate sticks last night 😋 Thank you again Jo for being such a kind and thoughtful friend.

Speaking of reading and books, I noticed that for Prime Members Amazon has a three month free trial offer on Kindle Unlimited.  I haven't read anything on my kindle for at least four years but when I looked into it I quite liked the look of some of the books on offer, so I signed up and right away downloaded a couple and chose to start The Lost Bookshop.  Evie Woods is a new author to me but one that I will look out for again as this is so far a very enjoyable read.

I made the most of the sunshine yesterday and spent a couple of hours in the morning at the allotment, I have onions to go in so prepared where they will be planted and gave all over a general tidy up.  In the afternoon took everything out of the bathroom and sanded the woodwork down, horrible job but has to be done.  Today I've painted the woodwork and the ceiling and tomorrow will give it another coat and put everything back again.  Sometime in the next couple of weeks I will do the same to the shower/laundry room, although giving the shower a good descaling on Saturday Mark discovered that the inside had corroded so badly that we now need a new shower 🙄 

At least we found out before any damage was done.

-X-