Your wishes...

I just wanted to pop on with a quick thank you or three.

Firstly thanks to all those who sent me links to small maple leaves both here and by private mail, there are one or two which i think I can adapt for my needs.

Secondly thanks to so many who (again both here and privately) have sent me good wishes and hugs for my mum. She went to see the hip specialist, her gp had refered her too. on Tuesday. The gp had said this chap might be able to give her a special kind of injection which would ease the chronic arthritis in her right hip. However the specialist said that the problem is not the arthritis but the hip itself and that she needs a replacement. Aparently apart from the problems with her chest she is in excellent health (well some good news) but they cannot actually operate until the problems with her chest are sorted out. So that is something for the future lol - just in case i run out of things to do.

Her appointment with the Respitory Specialist is not till the 23rd August but there are a number of tests he wants carried out before he sees her, and these start a week on monday with a CT Deep Chest scan, and seem to run out at about one a week till august. One is a deep breath test - which to me sounds like one of these things where you blow in a tube - but surely they would not send a hospital appointment just for that. Oh well we wait and see and in the mean time try and laugh about all the leaflets they send with information - most of which seems to be warnings about what this that and the other can do to you and what can go wrong - and there were we thinking these things were designed to make her better.

She is at last beginning to eat a little more - thank you god for small mercies, not very significant maybe but in the last three months she has lost almost a stone and a half in weight, which for someone with hardly any fat on her to start with is a bit alarming. Mind we laugh as she keeps trying to be modern with trousers that slip down on her hips all the time. I have told her I am going to get some crop tops for her so she can show off her midriff and she has suggested having her belly button pierced.

Well its 4am and I am going to go back to bed and see if there is any chance of getting at least an hours sleep tonight, though I must admit I feel wide awake at the moment, I doubt I shall at 8am in the morning lol.

Goodnight all and will try and do a stitchy related post with piccies in a day or two - I have taken them just that hubby has not had the time to download them and I cannot do that on my computer.

Hugs,

xx
May your frogs stay in their ponds.

I need a maple leaf!!

Can anyone help - I need a small maple leaf design to incorporate into a wedding sampler I am trying to design for a special couple. I have tried freebies on the internet and they are all too large and I have searched all my Jo Versa and Jane Greenoff sampler books and they have nothing. If anyone has anything or can suggest a chart that has small maple leaves in its design I would be grateful.

Thanks


May your frogs stay in their ponds.

Here I am again, blogging has been at the bottom of a long list of things "I need to do" or should I be more accurate and say I want to do, but unfortunately my list of wants often has to come a long way below things of more importance.

Mum has been very ill again, yet another chest infection and as they have still not been able to clear her lungs of fluid when xrays etc look clear, they are concerned about underlying problems so even more tests are staring us in the face. The trouble is some of these stretch out until August and I assume (as usually seems to happen) they will then refer for different tests so it looks like we are going to be pretty firmly grounded for a while. Well at least until our holidays in October and we were so hoping to get some time away this year seeing more of our own countryside. The annoying part is we have such beautiful weather at the moment and it would be perfect for getting the tent out and going at short notice - oh well maybe one day.

I rather lost my stitching bug too, I looked everywhere but couldn't find it so I decided that a nice big happy dance was needed to see if that would bring it out of the woodwork. With this in mind i fished out Ink Circles "Blackwork Fantasy Garden" and started a slow nightly plod, sometimes only a few stitched but little by little the end came into site and at last the longed for happy dance arrived. It did the trick too - well that and a new start lol. I know I said I was not going to have any new starts for a while but this is a long planned Sal that I am doing with my friend Moll who lives in Norway. We are going Jingle Bells Xmas Tree Farm at the weekends and after two weekends I can tell you I am really enjoying this.

Where are the pictures I can hear you shouting, ok ok they are here.

BLACKWORK FANTASY GARDEN - INK CIRCLES

JINGLE BELLS XMAS TREE FARM

FOREST FRIENDS

I have had to adjust this one as it is an American chart and they have neighbors whilst we in the UK have neighbours and with an eight year old grandson always ready to point out if granny spells things wrong its the easiest option lol. Yes my darling boy was 8 last week, how the years have flown.

I have been taking lots of pictures in the garden which though slightly neglegted is looking rather lovely with all the sunshine. I will try and get on again in a day or so and post some for you to see.

Thank you to those who have taken their time and trouble to once again reading my meanderings. Bless you all.

Love


May your frogs stay in their ponds.

Third Time Lucky -

- I hope. This has posted twice and deleted the body of the mail each time, so apologies to anyone who opened the last post and found nothing but my signature.

A PLACE FOR EVERYTHING

... though not everything is actually in its place yet.

Many of you may remember my craft room, it was lovely and I was thrilled when it became a craft room BUT the furniture was old and adapted to cope rather than designed to cope. A couple of old dressing table bases, each with two large draws. Three Small Wardrobes (if anyone out there is as old as me they may remember Liden Furniture which was a forerunner to Ikea), two of which had been fitted with shelves to hold my stash. Lastly between the two cupboards was a fixed shelve where my computer sat. This has all done well but it had come to the stage that the cupboards were so full I had to clear a shelve everytime I wanted something as it always seemed to be the bit at the bottom I wanted and all the excess was piling up round the walls. In short it was beginning to look more like a junk room than a craft room. So my darling hubby suggested that it was time we looked for something a little more planned for the job of storage.

Off we went to look what was available and the result was a revamped craft room with a place for everything. As yet not everything is in its place but slowly it is getting there. I have a large plastic box on the floor that is full of charts and kits that need to be filed away, and most of the files need a good sorting anyway so thats going to be an ongoing task for a while I think. Also some of the smaller boxes you will see have contents which make it hard to fit the lids on so I am slowly getting some bigger boxes and reorganising the contents of the smaller ones - again

something which is going to take a while, but who cares I now have room for even more stash if I want it.

Unfortunately there are not 48 hours in each of my days - which is something I badly need - so whilst I have been playing - oooh sorry I mean working - the stitching has been cast slightly to one side. I have done a little and I can now see an end in sight for the blues of Quiltmakers dress. I got a little more of the quilt done too.

I also did some more on I Still Do, but after frogging one section only to stitch it again with the same mistake in, it was put away in disgust for a week or two.

Now everything is organised, at least to a degree, I can start to sort out the threads to use for Jingle Bells Farm, though there is a slight problem and that is finding the chart - yep you guessed its in that big plastic box somewhere lol.

I am enjoying the Easter weekend as we have my little grandson (not so little now though) to stay with us over the weekend. He has been with us since he broke up from school on Wednesday and is staying until Sunday afternoon. Poor wee might is not feeling too well tonight though so I am hoping he will be feeling better tomorrow and the sun will shine so that we may go Easter Egg Hunting at Calke Abbey. I can now tell you that we had a lovely day at Calke and it was warm and bright. We did a second egg hunt at Kedleston this morning but though this was forcast as the best day over the bank holiday it drizzled on and off and was rather cold, but fun was had none the less.

Thank you once again to all those who manage to get to the end of my ramblings and even more so to those who make it all worth while by commenting. Bless you all


May your frogs stay in their ponds.

The Reds & Blues

I'm here again and great news as I am now more than half way down my bloglines list. If you have posted recently and I have not got to you yet then I apologise but I will get there.

I am enjoying being back and would have loved to leave more comments but one on each blog is what I have limited myself too, at least you will know that I am alive and kicking once more. The trouble is on many of the blogs you have been so busy and by the time I have caught up and gone to leave a message at the top I cannot remember all the charts, finishes and wips I have seen, the amount some of you can do in a couple of months is mind blowing - oh I wish I could stitch that fast.

I'm quite a slow stitcher I think but then I enjoy what I do and for me I think if I tried to speed up then the pleasure would go, so I shall just plod along in my own merry little way and come share with you when I get the chancel.

Firstly I would like to show you the card I made for my Mum for Mothers Day (14th March in the UK). I am quite proud of this as it was my very first dabble with Parchment Craft. I have always loved the delicate effect that parchment gives so when the chance came for me to have a play my resistance to starting anything new just crumbled away lol.

Next what this blog is supposed to be about and thats stitching. I got my secret stitching done and it will be in the post either today or tomorrow on its way to its next lodging place. I have also done some more work (or should I say blues) on The Quiltmaker, and actually it has not given me the blues on this occassion, maybe because I was just picking it up for a nice "needleful of thread run" between doing my secret one which was a lot of colour changes and fractional stitches. I am ashamed to say that the last time I worked on this was in August 2008. I have now also made another start of I Still Do and I think for the now I am going to stick to these two things, swapping them as and when I feel like it. The last time I worked on this was in May 2009. It has been over a year since either of these have seen the light of day and I would love to get them finished. Especially ISD as it was for our 40th anniversary last year and it would be nice to finish it before the next one appears.

I have got one new start to go into the mix soon, though I need to sort out fabric and threads first. I have had the chart for Victoria Sampler "Jingle Bells Xmas Tree Farm" for a long time and I am going to stitch this as a SAL with two other friends from the A Crafty Natter Group.

When I found my last post about Quiltmaker I had a quick read through and realised that it also described my first meeting with my friend Colly. I cannot explain why, I have lots of friends some dating back from my childhood, but though Colly and I have been friends for such a short time there is something very special about our relationship. We seem to have a deep understanding of each other and it does not matter if we are chattering 19 to the dozen or just sitting together silently stitching we are content in each others company. I feel that she is more like a sister than a friend and I miss her when I dont see her for a while. I wonder what it is that makes things like that, I feel like I have known her all my life and cannot imagine life without her in it, and yet there are people on the fringes of my life who seem to have so much in common with me and yet, though aquaintances of many years, I will never feel the need to call them friend. I am not sure if all that makes sense but maybe some of you will understand what I mean.

Thank you all so much for the welcome back to blogland, for the lovely comments you were kind enough to share on my Water Tiger and my Friends Sampler, and most of all for bearing with my ramblings. Bless you all,

May your frogs stay in their ponds.

Hello There

I am back, or too be correct I have been back almost three weeks, and this is the first opportunity I have had to visit blog land. I always seem to be so busy these days. Now don't ask me why I am so busy, the only explanation I have is that since my dear hubby retired someone has shortened the days because I am sure I used to get far more done in a day than I do now. Maybe the old addage that "life is like a toilet roll, the closer to the end the faster it goes" is true as its certainly running away from me.

We had a lovely relaxing holiday and I came home with two Almost Finishes. My blackwork house was technically finished but I just felt that it needed some chimneys to finish it off, and its still waiting for them lol. An evenings work if that but it keeps getting pushed to one side. The other I have finished and will share with you some pictures.

This is "Come and Share" by Lorri Birmingham (with a couple of slight changes by me).

The first change was the colour of the writing which I changed to pink (it was blue). The next was the word Tea was changed to Coffee as I dont drink tea. I really enjoyed stitching this and am thrilled with the finish. I had intended finishing this as a bell put but now its done I think I would rather have it framed, so it will be a while yet.

I also wanted to share a picture of Water Tiger now he has come back from the framers, and I am happy to report that my brother was thrilled with him.
I am hoping to get on here a little more often now - though I am afraid life does seem to get in the way of all my good intentions so we shall see. I have also made a pledge to myself to try and start reading the blogs again. It feels like there are so many friends out there and I have lost touch with what is going on in their lifes, so I am going to try to make amends.

Thank you to everyone who comes to visit my little world you are all very welcome and I guess if you got this far I had something of interest to say or show, at least I hope that is the reason lol.

Look forward to keeping in touch, sending hugs to those that need them, and warm wishes to you all as I finish with my little saying below my signature,

May your frogs stay in their ponds.

Happy New Year

... to all my readers and friends in the blogging world.


Christmas for us was a peaceful and quiet time spent with family or stitching and the New Year too was spent with family.

On the 7th January 2010, almost a year from when I started, I eventually put the last stitches in Water Tiger, and here is a picture I took - unwashed and unpressed.
He has since been washed and pressed and given to my brother who was thrilled with him. When I get back from my holiday I will get him framed and let you see him one more time. I was so relieved to get him done in time and though I love the finished picture I am really, really glad to say goodbye to this one.


What next, well I have sorted out a few of my WIPs to take with me to Goa (in India), The Blackwork House, Friends of the Forest, and Cup of Tea. I am also taking a new stitch but as this is for a gift and I am not sure if the recipient reads my blog I cannot tell you much about that one. I would certainly hope to get at least a couple of these old WIPs finished within the month I will be away for so hopefully there will be more finishes to share with you when I get back.


It has been so cold and slippery under foot here for the last weeks that I cannot wait to get away to the sunshine and feel warm again.


Sherry asked about my Gracious Era (which incidentally is my UFO piece in the stitching group I belong to) and asked if she could see a picture of what it would look like when it was finished - lol I would add if it ever gets finished as I have been working on this for about 5 years now.


Anyway just for you Sherry this is what it should be like

I will try and put up a picture of my latest update before we leave, either on Thursday night or Friday morning.

For all of those in need of a hug - I send you lots. I hope Karan is now recovering well from her Op and that the rest of you are all well and busy stitching. Now that Water Tiger is done I am hoping to have more time for once again reading and writing in Blog Land. I feel like my life has been on hold for the last few months as every second I had to spare was stitching on him. I am not the fastest stitcher in the world at the best of times and when panic sets in - lol well just be glad you were not in my house.

Bye for now,

May your frogs stay in their ponds.