All the stitched ornaments

Mark got the trees and decorations down from the loft on Saturday and we spent most of the day putting up trees and trimmings.

Last year just after Christmas I bought a skinny tree in the sales, we haven't got much room to have a large tree in the sitting room and this one has turned out the perfect fit.

It has a snowy effect so we have just added some white lights, nice and simple.

The photo doesn't do it justice, it looks much prettier in real life

The mantle is decorated with some greenery I've had for a few years, with the addition of a little ceramic Christmas tree (from Tiger) and the stag snow globe which my daughter, Joanne, bought me a few weeks ago.

She said as soon as she saw this she knew I would love it, and I do!

Last year we had been through a whole year of decorating throughout the house and had just about finished the hallway by Christmas eve, we were both so exhausted by it all that we decided not to decorate for Christmas at all, so this year when my stitched ornament box came down from the loft I couldn't wait to open it and look through them.

My ornament tree is in the back sitting room, it's still a rather skinny tree, I've told Mark I want a 'fat' tree for my ornaments next year, he said we don't need another tree, we have enough and anyway we don't have the space for a 'fat' tree.  Men! don't they know we can 'make' room if we really want something, lol

Here's a few close-ups of some of my favourites.

On Friday morning we are going on a little trip, a rail journey to the Rhine Christmas markets and a trip on the Vulkan Express.  We are staying in a town called Remagen  and will be visiting 3 Christmas markets, Koblenz, Linz and Ahrweiler.  It's our little treat for our 30th Wedding Anniversary which is on December 20th.
We have an early start on Friday morning to get down to St Pancras for 8am but I can't tell you how excited I am!

I just hope that this cold that i've picked up has run it's course by Friday otherwise I shall be sporting a very festive, (but rather sore), Rudolph style nose to Germany!

Almost forgot to show you the pom pom snowman I made for Oliver, he is so cute I almost had to keep him for myself :-)

Well, that's about it for now, hopefully I can manage to take some photos of all the wonderful Christmassy things we are going to see at the weekend, we are back on Monday evening and I have Tuesday off work so I will try and make time to upload photos and blog then.

Until next time
-X-

Playing catch-up

Oh where oh where are the days going!

My kitchen calendar is still on September, i feel like I missed out on October and now we are almost saying goodbye to November.

My eldest sister and my son in-law celebrated their birthdays this month, both of them were victims of a hand-made gift as part of their present.

Gavin is partial to cookies, so I put this together for him

Filled with home made cookies

And my sister is very fond of a hot water bottle, so I knitted this cover as one of her gifts.

I'm happy to say that both were well received.

Today we visited Ludlow for the Christmas Medieval market, which is held in the castle grounds.

At £11 each entry fee it was a bit steep, but seeing as there are not many shops in Ludlow itself and we had travelled almost an hour to get there we grudgingly handed over the money.

To be honest, it was no different to the food festival we went to there a couple of years ago, more or less the same stalls selling the same things, but with double the entrance fee.

You can see how busy it was outside and inside the marquees (if that's the right spelling) it was even more so.

(Ludlow Castle is where Henry VIII first born, Arthur and his bride Katherine of Aragon went to live after they married, and where he died)

There were the usual displays, but i did like this owl

We did manage a walk through the town, which is very pretty with it's black and white buildings

Joanne took this photo, she said it looked like Diagon Alley

And she wanted take Gavin's photo, but he likes having his photo take about as much as I do so we both just pulled a stupid face.

I do have some stitching updates to share but it's way past my bedtime now so I will leave those for next time.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend

-X-

That Chocolate's Gone Straight to Your Ribs, Hat,

Except this one is not brown it's grey.

I can't remember knitting a hat since Stevie was a baby.

This was nice and simple and fits quite well :-)

 You can find the free pattern here on Ravelry.

November means that we have plenty of these deposited every day, this was just on one of our lawns after clearing it the day before, it doesn't look much from the photo but was easily knee deep.

There are still many more to follow

It's going to be another busy month again, we have another 2 birthdays, a wedding and another stitching meet-up.  Actually the stitching meet-up is tomorrow, some of the members of the Needlecraft Haven forum are meeting in Nuneaton for a day of stitching, so another early start tomorrow for me, it's not all that far but it's still two trains.

I was going to take something new to start and then I had second thoughts, I will never get anything finished if I keep starting new things will I?   So I'm being a good girl and  I'm taking two projects that are oh so close to a finish, Elizabeth, who has not seen the light of day for a while now and this one which I started at the Nimble Thimble meet-up.

Excuse the terrible photo

Who knows, this might be a finish by tomorrow :-)

I'm off to get my bag ready then put my feet up for an hour.

Until next time
-X-

The Nimble Thimble meet up, Autumn colours....Is that a Werewolf!

Saturday was our stitching meet-up at the Nimble Thimble.  Twice a year, usually April and October a bunch of us make the trip into the beautiful Welsh countryside to indulge in a day of stitching, eating and stash shopping.

If you have never been to the Nimble Thimble you are missing a treat, apart from in being in the most beautiful setting the shop is chock full of stitching goodies and at this time of year the shop is decked out for Halloween.

There is tea, coffee and chocolate biscuits waiting for us when we arrive and then at lunch time Chris, (the shop owner) puts on a lovely spread for us and in the afternoon there is yet more cake to enjoy!

There were 9 of us this time, and for the first time Michelle, better known as 'Mouse' of the blog Tales of a Stitching Mouse  and her friend Chris came too.  It was lovely to meet both Chris and Mouse and finally put a face to a name :-) and I think all of us were drooling over Chris's Mill Hill finishes, they were all so beautiful!

There are people missing from the photos because every so often they would wonder off to the shop in search of more goodies to add to the 'to buy pile' lol.

I had good intentions of not adding to my ever growing stash but you know how it is, once you start looking there is always something you want!

My goodies

I thought I was done, in fact I was just saying my goodbyes in the shop when Tina asked me if i'd seen this.

Oh my goodness!! how could I resist!

And of course the frame for it had to come home with me too.  I tell you, you should never go anywhere with Tina, she leads you into bad ways, lol.

I think I will have to start a little stash fund tin for next year, there are going to be 3 meet-ups and Tina has already booked one for April 1st :-)

This time of year it really is a pleasure to drive to the meet-up, the Autumn colours can make the scenery stunning, of course it is much better in real life, and I forgot to take my camera so these were taken on my phone, but you get the idea of how lovely the area is.

As you can see it was a misty sort of day, still not too cold though

 

Ooops, i forgot to show you what i was stitching on at the meet-up!

I decided to start something new, a Christmas ornament.  I had a really good day for stitching and I carried on with it over the rest of the weekend too, hopefully if I can get a few hours in this week I should be able to finish it, so I will save it for the next post, sorry to be a tease, but I haven't taken a photo I can upload.

We have Oliver overnight tonight and as it's Halloween when I got back from work we decorated outside

He has been obsessed with Halloween decorations and costumes for weeks, Stevie has taken him trick or treating, I thought you might like to see what he is dressed as...

Scary or what!!

Until next time

-X-

Greenwich, London

It was Marks birthday this past Friday and we had booked to go to our favourite city, London.

This time we opted to stay on the 'other side' of the river, in Greenwich.

Mark had worked in Greenwich, or nearby a few years ago but this was my first visit.  

We got the train to Marylebone so getting to Greenwich involved about another half hour or so and some tube changes, but it's all part of the experience of London and I really don't mind.

We stayed at Devonport House which is a really lovely building, formally a home for nurses working at the Navel College, very central to everything.

We spent time browsing the lovely market and sampling the street food

I can't remember what these were called, they were like doughnuts, rolled in sugar and cinnamon then filled with caramel or chocolate fudge, they were delicious!! 

We walked around the wharf and saw the Cutty Sark

As you can see, It looked like the weather was going to take a turn for the worse, luckily it blew over and we didn't get the threatened downpour. 

We took in the view of Canary Wharf

 

And the view towards the Shard, and those fantastic clouds!

We walked through the Greenwich Foot Tunnel 1/4 mile to the other side of the Thames

It looks deserted, but there were quite a few people walking on Saturday morning.

And we took a late afternoon walk through Greenwich Park

Watching the light change in the sky and the lights come on in the buildings on Canary Wharf

We had a lovely pub meal in The Kings Arms on Friday night, if you ever find yourself in Greenwich and looking for somewhere to eat I can recommend it.

Saturday night we had a great night in the Admiral Hardy, listening to music, everyone singing and dancing and generally having a good time, I drank too much wine and we ate fish and chips out of the wrapper walking back to the hotel, it's the best night i've had out in a while!

I did squeeze in a trip to Loop while we were in London but I will show you what I bought next time.

I've had a lovely week off work, i'm back in the office again in the morning but at least I have a stitching meet-up to look forward to next Saturday :-)

-Until next time

-X-