Everythings Coming Up Hostas!

Well at least in my garden! I love these plants, i have two fairly large variegated ones planted in the garden and 3 containers, i managed to pick up some of the dark green ones at the farmers market last week, someone was selling them for a £1 each, bargain! so four came home with me

and have now been planted in tubs. They all have a fair bit of growing still to do, but this is them

today.

Last year the slugs and snails feasted on them, i have to be careful what i put down to stop them nibbling because of my cats but a friend recommended egg shells because apparently they don't like or can't crawl over them, so that's what I've done this year and so far so good...bye bye beasties, lol.

It's a lovely day again here in the Midlands so Ive planted up some hanging baskets ready for our scorching summer, (yeah right!). It's still not warm enough to leave out all the time so they will be put in the shed every night until probably April is out at least.

I'm having one more go this year with tomatoes and if they don't happen this time i will give up, last year i think i was just too wet for them outside and i don't have a green house. I'm having a go with some peas too, it says 'patio peas' so I'm assuming they won't grow too big. This is how the rest of the garden looks at the moment.

Everything looks very green but the dandelions in the grass add a bit of colour! now these i can grow without even trying and they don't need any maintenance at all! there will be splashes of colour come the summer from plant too...i promise.

I have been stitching this week but I'm not going to post any photos this time as i only have Alla Turca and Grand ABC to show and you must be fed up with seeing those right now ,so I'll be showing my progress another time. I do want to say a BIG 'thank you' to Sandra though, she sent me some NN thread for my AT so at least i can carry on until my LNS has more in stock. Soibhan, thank you for passing on the message you got (you didn't say what her name was) but Sew & So was my first stop for the NN thread, they had been waiting for it for 3 weeks when i phoned but i may give them another call this week, thank you.

I've nothing else planned for today except to sit and stitch and watch Twilight, it came last week from the DVD club and i haven't got around to it. Wishing you all a lovely weekend whatever you are doing & thank you again for visiting me and leaving your comments, they are very much appreciated. Tara-a-bit x

New Start & Updates

So what's been keeping me quiet? My laptop, that's what! it was my own fault, i installed a new programme not realising that i should have uninstalled the version i didn't want first, and it caused a few problems but luckily it's been righted by the guy who sorts out our laptops for work and everything is fine now. I'll know to ask before i do anything again!

We had a very pleasant Easter weekend, my family came round for lunch on Sunday, what started out as being 5 of us ended up being 10 of us! It was nice to have everyone together but i can now understand why the air is blue in restaurant kitchens! We had the full turkey dinner with all the trimmings and everyone presented me with a clean plate :-) and no one has got in touch to say they suffered any adverse affects, lol, Dessert was home made Key Lime Pie, (the first time I've tried this and i was surprised at how easy it was!) it went down particularly well so i will defiantly attempt again, my eldest daughter contributed with a lovely Easter cake made with whole cadbury caramel bars which was really yummy, even the weather was unusually kind to us seeing as it was Bank Holiday. I really should have gone for a nice long walk on Monday to try and burn off a few of those calories but my sofa and stitching was calling me and i couldn't ignore them! This is my progress on Alla Turca, the fabric looks lighter on this photo, it's actually more of cream colour.

I've still got part 4 to stitch to be caught up, but think i should manage that this week. I'd been trying so hard not to be wasteful with the NN thread i'm using because my LNS only had 2 skiens, she didn't think there would be a problem getting more and i thought i wouldn't need much more anyway, i should have known my inability to count would have tripped me up, I've had to un-stitch one bit, well, actually rip it out while muttering under my breath how stupid i am would be more accurate. knowing i will need some more thread i go in search the next day only to find that NN is now Threadworx and the name & number have changed, fortunately they are still dying the same as NN so shouldn't be a problem, except the particular one I'm using is not to be found anywhere in the country! i have tried several place in the US too with no luck, one place told me that Threadworxs was having trouble obtaining the thread from Anchor that that is used as the base for this particular colour and it was not expected for another 2-3 weeks. Last week my LNS said that their supplier is due a shipment in 2 weeks and she will let me know as soon as she gets it in. Fingers crossed that i won't have to start all over again with something else, i prefer not to think about that at the moment so we'll say no more for now!

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I made a new start with the Grand Abecedaire SAL on Gazette94 blog, this is how far along i am this week. I am using Anchor threads 1013 & 1014 with 28 count evenweave (again) i seem to get on better with evenweave than linen, it's kinder on my eyes too, lol.

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My evenings have been turned upside down a bit at the moment, my husband, Mark (bless him) who usually works anywhere in the country and who i am used to seeing from Friday night to Sunday night is working closer to home for about the next 2 months! (that's 8 weeks, or 60 days!!!), you get the idea, he is here EVERY evening and i have had to resort to wearing my earplugs every night because of his snoring!, if anyone has found a good remedy to stop snoring please, please, please share it with me i would be eternally grateful!

Tonight I'm having a night out with some girlfriends so off now to get ready, hope your weekend is great whatever you are up to, thank you for taking the time to visit me and leave a comment, i love to read them :-)...till next time, Tara-a-bit xx

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I Joined a New Yahoo Group!

And i couldn't resist joining the SAL they have going on, the group is Stitchers Heaven, the SAL, Alla Turca. There have been 3 parts released so far with another due out on 1st April, i managed to finish part 1 last weekend, I'll start part 2 tomorrow and try to get caught up by the end of April.

I'm using 28 count evenweave and Needle Necessities floss, number 153.This is the first time I've used NN and i'm loving the effect.

I'm not going to show my progress on Yesteryear this time, it really is too pathetic to show!! i did get settled down with it a few times but i was struggling, it started off in a hoop then i put it in a frame, then back to a hoop, I'll persevere with it in a hoop now. It seems i couldn't count either! but I'll put that down to the fact that i was without my reading glasses for most of the week as they were having new lenses fitted, now they are back with me so i wont have that excuse next week :-) I have the weekend to myself this week as Mark is away working, all my chores around the house and the weeks laundry are done so apart from the usual Sunday morning ironing i can please myself and sit and stitch all day if i want too !, can't be bad :-) So until next time, I hope you all have a great weekend whatever you are up to....Tara-a-bit xx

Hobby Craft Show & Sunshine

What a lovely weekend we've had here in the UK, the sun was shining and at last it really feels as though Spring is on the way! There is a rumour that it's to continue for the rest of the week too, how good is that! My weekend was just as good, i visited the Hobby Craft & Sewing for Pleasure show at the NEC in Birmingham, what a great day! it was just lovely to have the day to myself and browse around the many stalls. The Hobby Craft show was filled with lovely goodies for scrapbooking & card making, although i love the idea of scrapbooking i am really not that imaginative, nor could i be surrounded by all that equipment, as lovely as it is :-) The Sewing for Pleasure show was filled with the stitchy type goodies i was in search of and i came away with just a few essentials ;)I treated myself to a new magnifier (i just cannot stitch without one of these now!) this one is a little larger than the one i already have and with a longer bendy bit (see I'm so technical, lol). Two charts, LHN 'The Bookshelf' which i've been looking at for ages, & 'Simply Live' which i thought was simply wonderful after seeing it on someones blog:-)
I bought two more storage boxes, you can never have enough of these, right? There was a really cute cat needle minder that begged to come home with me.... and who can resist a cute kitty :-) Lastly i bought a sheath for the scissors my daughter bought me last year and I've just started using.
I did meet with a couple of non stitchy things, the little wooden box & peg board are to be painted and decorated with decoupage, never tried this but it looked fun to do, and the wool is for a cute knitted bag, these little bags looked great and the instructions say they are a weekend project (I'll let you know if that's true lol), the kit came with pattern, wool, lining material and button, so there you go, that was my day's haul!

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Progress on Yesteryear has been almost non existent this week, so no photos to show, i couldn't seem to get back into any sort of routine for anything last week, I've now caught up with the washing ironing & cleaning so this week i shall be able to get back to my normal nights stitching starting right after tea tonight.

On that note, DD#3 has just come in from school which is my cue to start tea.

Thanks to all who take the time to leave a comment, i love to read them and they are much appreciated, hope everyone has a good week....Till next time, Tara-a-bit

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Four Days in Prague

What a wonderful place! if you have never been to Prague let me urge you to book a trip as soon as possible, you won't be disappointed :-) Here's a taster of what we saw starting with our hotel. We could not have chosen a better place, it was a great place and we were very well looked after. It was central to everything being just around the
corner from the Old Town Square.

This is the reception area, it's like a conservatory the lift is to left, you could only gain access to your room with a card which operated the lift and the door to the stairs so it was very secure.

The hotel has a great history and dates from the 13th century, the story of the building, which at one time used to be an ironmongers is told in the walk way from the entrance to the reception. The front is decorated by the 19th century artist Mikulas Ales and looks fantastic.

Our hotel room & the view from the window to the Square

As we rounded the corner from our hotel to Old Town Square on our first night this is what met us

The Church of Our Lady before Tyn What a sight all lit up at night, it look magical
One of the other great sights in the Old Town Square is the famous Astronomical Clock

Crowds gather to watch the clock strike on the hour. First the skeleton (figure of death) pulls on the rope he holds in his right hand and then raises and inverts the hourglass he holds in his left hand. Two windows at the top then open and the Apostles move slowly around, at the end of this display a cock crows and the clock strikes the hour. The other animated figures are Tuck who shakes his head from side to side, Vanity who looks at himself in a mirror and Greed adapted from a stereotypical Jewish moneylender.

The Astronomical Clock was not supposed to tell the exact time but to imitate the orbits of the Sun & Moon about the Earth. Legend has it that when a master clockmaker rebuilt the clock in 1490 the town did not want him to recreate another one anywhere else so they blinded him! poor man, what a thank you!

You can go to the top of the clock tower, the views are great, and i did brave it to get some photos, although i am not very good with heights, the last time i climbed a ladder OH had to come up and fetch me back down again

Wenceslas Square - New Town

Looking down Wenceslas Square, which as you can see is not a square! The monument is St Wenceslas and the large building is the National Gallery in which we spent a lovely couple of hours browsing around.
Charles Bridge

As bridges go this is one of the lovely ones :-) it is pedestrianised so is pleasant to walk across, although at the time of our visit there was a restoration programme going on and some of the one side is being worked on, still, it doesn't spoil this view which i took when we climbed to the top of the Observation Tower (another scary climb!). The Observation Tower is on Petrin Park which we reached via the Funicular Railway, which is well worth a visit even if it's just for the view at the top. For those of you still with me at this point, (thanks, you all deserve a medal, lol,) you will have got the general idea that i loved this City, it has such history and the most amazing buildings. We visited many more places, and i would be here forever showing you and i have the dinner to get ready!! so, i have many more photos in my webshots album to share if you want to take a look the link is in the sidebar. I will leave you with one more photo of a really funky building.
"Ginger & Fred" building, or "The Dancing Building" Whichever one you choose to call it it's a cool looking building! We didn't go in there but apparently there is a restaurant in there somewhere! Thanks for taking time out to visit me see you soon, Tara-a-bit x

Look What I Collected Today!

My LK is back with me all framed up! and i think they made a smashing job, i wasn't too sure I'd chosen the right frame but it works quite well don't you think? You can't see all the little cute charms from this photos but they are really sweet. It's hanging in the dining room at the moment but may find it's way to one of the bedrooms at a later date, for now i want to admire it :-)

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I've been working on my Yesteryear this week, not so much as i would have liked though and i did stitch for a whole hour one night then discovered i couldn't count! so threw it on the table and gave up for that night, next night was spent unstitching my mistake and trying again.

This is my progress then.

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For Mother's day last year my eldest daughter bought me a beautiful pair of scissors and i have forced myself not to use them until i had made a scissor fob for them, this past week i have managed to make one at last, the chart was found in a very old copy of Cross Stitcher.

So now i can use them but have to remember to hide them when i am done for the night, as daughter #3 and OH have been know to use my scissors even though i have stressed on more than one occasion that they are for threads ONLY!

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So...no stitching for me next week, we are off to Prague for a week tomorrow morning, just me and OH. It is a sort of birthday present to each other, his is in October & mine is in December and as there wasn't anything in particular either of us wanted / needed we booked this holiday. Daughter #1 is looking after daughter #3 for the week, she is having a weeks holiday with her so she will be able to see her off to school and be here when she gets home. Our winter woollies are packed, looking at the weather in Prague it's just a bit colder than the UK at the moment so we will need them, the guide book is jam packed with things to see so hopefully i will have lots to share with you next week. Until then, thanks for visiting me and taking the time to leave a comment, i do appreciate it :-)...Tara-a-bit x

The Weeks Goings On

I was going to leave blogging until tomorrow but had a phone call from OH at lunch time saying that he has to stay so that some job or other gets done in the morning, he will be back around lunch time tomorrow. DD#3 has gone out with friends so that leaves me myself & I accompanied by a bag of mixed nuts & raisins and a LARGE glass of red :-) excuse me if i start to waffle further on down the post, that'll be the wine! I do have finishes to share (note the plural?) first up is the LK double Flip It's i started this last year, can't remember when. Photos are taken in three sections because it is rather Long.

It is now in the safe care of my LNS for framing, to be collected next Saturday, i will try to get a photos of all of it then.

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Next up is my SAL ornament finish for February

This is a freebie fromhttp://needlenecessities.blogspot.com/ Heidi's blog. Every month she is making a free primitive design available on her blog, (designed by her)this was the first one.I hope she likes my interpretation of 'primitive'. I do not find it easy to come up with ideas of finishing or sewing nor the fundamentals of a machine come to that, but i am quite pleased with how it turned out, my Home Economics Teacher would have been proud that her lessons had not been entirely wasted on me, however, i am glad that none of you could hear the expletives that were uttered whilst this was in the making :0

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One last item before i go and that's a WIP.

I started a LHN called Yesteryear, i am a week into it and this is how it looks so far.

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I must end on a sad note, my mother phoned late this afternoon to tell me that her little dog, Dot had been taken to the vets and has had to be put to sleep. Mum took her to have some teeth out at the beginning of the week and she has been poorly ever since, she took her back to the vet on Wednesday because she didn't seem herself, the vet gave her some vitamin shots and various other things but at lunch time today she took a real turn for the worst, luckily my brother was there and took mum to the vets with her where they gave her oxygen and put her on a drip. My brother took mum home but the vet phoned her about an hour later to say that Dotty was not doing very well at all , she was a very poorly girl, her kidneys had stopped working and they could not do anything for her, the best thing would be to put her to sleep, my poor mother was crying when she was telling me, i feel so sorry for her, i know she will not sleep tonight for thinking about Dotty and the fact that she wasn't with her to say goodbye properly, but the poor thing was suffering and they could only do what they did. My mum is going to miss her so much, she has always had a dog, in fact i cannot remember not ever having a dog in the house when we were growing up. Mum was 80 last August so i don't think she will have another dog, she has a cat that was a stray she took in so at least she has something for company, but i don't think she will replace little Dotty.

Thanks for visiting me, till next time.... Tara -a-bit x

Note added: I hadn't noticed until Sharon mentioned it that i had left out a photo of my LK finish, i have included that now, thanks Sharon, i wouldn't have noticed, well i did say i was accompanied by a Large glass of red last night, lol. Have a good day all x

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