Sun & Stitches

It seems such a long time ago since I came here to write my blog. We had the most wonderful holiday in Egypt - the hottest holiday I have ever experienced. Although we have been to Egypt a couple of times before it has been to the Red Sea area and the heat down by the Nile was so much more intensive which was lovely in the shade but a bit too powerful when you were out looking at temples etc. I have changed my header picture so you can see the two largest of the Pyramids which were fantastic. Keith went down inside one of the Pyramids but I chickened out of that experience as I know it would be much to claustrophobic to me. We had two very hectic days in Cairo before flying down to Luxor to join our cruise. Lots and lots to see but my favourite had to be the temple at Philae Island. We are still sorting out photographs but once they are sorted I will put some in my webshots album for anyone who would like to see them. I know Karan will be looking forward to that bit and one or two others have said they would like to look but they will be tucked out the way so I will not bore anyone who is not interested.



I did some stitching whilst on holiday and got approximately half of my Shadows sampler done.



I also made a start on LHN Winter Whites but I have not really made enough progress on that to show any picture yet.

Unfortunately since getting home I have hardly had the chance to touch a needle.

Thursday I had a lovely day at my Mums as my cousin from Ontario, Canada was visiting his parents and he came to spend the afternoon with us. Its four years since I last saw him and its lovely to catch up in person.

We have had Oscar for the weekend and I have still not finished all my holiday washing, but hopefully sometime next week I am going to be back stitching with great vigour. My "mojo" is jumping up and down with excitement but I just need to find some ME time, either that or go on holiday again - now there's a good idea though I think I have something like 18 or 19 weeks for that pleasure to arrive again.

This morning i went to the Fabric Guild in Leicester - ooh I spent far too much LOL and this afternoon we popped into Derby where I got a lovely book called Countryside Views in Cross Stitch from The Works. It has a lovely little row of cottages which will be just perfect for my Neighbourhood. I had finished designing it but I have one bit I am not happy with and this little group of cottages will replace that bit nicely. Once I have sorted that out I will just need to order my fabric and grid it up and I will be all ready for the New Year start. I am going to use mainly DMC threads though I would quite like to use some varied threads for certain parts but I will have to see how that works out. As I intend doing my neighbourhood on a small tablecloth then whatever I use is going to need to be washable which rather rules out the hand dyed ones which is a shame.

I think next week if I can get some stitching time I really must use it playing catch up with my two monthly SALs as I am so far behind with them at the moment and with the neighbourhood looming for next year I would like to be finishing them on time.

I hope you have all done lots of stitching while I have been away and I am looking forward to catching up with all those blogs during the next week to two.

xx
May your frogs stay in their ponds