Well here I am again and doesn't time fly. We had a wonderful week in Turkey but it seems so long ago now, made worse by the miserable weather here. Im sorry Kathy, no pictures as they are all on hubbys computer but I will see if he will post some over to mine for me (lol if I remember). We enjoyed Marmaris very much and walked a lot, our favourite walk was along the coast to Icmela which is much smaller than Marmaris and very pretty. Luckily we are not beach people because the sunbeds were rather tightly packed at both resorts and if I was going to spend time on the beach I would hate that.

Holiday stitching was LHN's "School of Needlework" and this is what it was like on my return from holiday.

I was unhappy with the way the brown of the 2nd girls dress merged with the brown of the chair and all looked the same, so I unpicked and restitched it in a dusky pink/plum colour which shows up far better. Honest it does in real life even though it doesnt appear to on this picture.

I was enjoying stitching on this so decided to stick with it and last night I finished it. There are you may notice a few slight changes lol.

I have now gone back to Country Bloomers as that is close to being finished and will return to ISD next. I know I ought to be working on that but there is no chance on this earth that it will be finished before September so I decided another finish might cheer me up more.

Only one card to show you this time. It is one I made for a friend in the USA who has recently become a Grandma (I'm not allowed to call her Granny lol) for the first time. Guess you might realise she had a little Grand-daughter when you see this card as its very girly.

I am hoping the weather picks up for the weekend as its the Erewash Show at our local park and Oscar loves us to take him, but no way am I paddling round muddy fields for anyone.

Its now almost 10pm so I am off to stitch and watch a little TV before getting my beauty sleep. Thank you to anyone who has dropped in to read my ramblings and as always to the lovely friends who are kind enough to leave me comments.

Goodnight and hugs,

May your frogs stay in their ponds.

STITCHING, CARDS AND SUNSHINE.

I am told that life is like a toilet roll and the further along you get the faster it seems to disappear. Well that certainly seems to be the case for me as I have no idea where the last month has gone. Yes almost a month since I last made it here and a busy one for lots of reasons. I have stitched but not as much as I would have liked to, I have made cards (a busy time of year for me with close family and friends celebrating birthdays and anniversaries), but what else have I done. I made a Tardis cake for Oscar's 9th birthday earlier this week and talking of time passing - where the hell have the last 9 years gone. My baby is growing up all too fast and there are not so many kisses and cuddles for Granny these days, though I do still get a few so guess I should just make the most of it. He is growing up fast, in fact far too fast for my liking. Mum has had a few hospital appointments and doctors appointments which seems to be more actual waiting about than seeing the people concerned but she is doing OK at the moment so I am not too worried about her. She is off to Eastbourne for a week on Saturday and as it was getting close and she definitely looked like she would be going we decided it might be nice to get a few days away ourselves. Result was that on Monday we booked a late holiday to Turkey and so we are off to the sunshine tomorrow morning. Never been to Turkey before but have heard lots of good reports so I will keep my fingers crossed, but whatever it will be nice and warm and relaxing.

Right now to stitching and I have to admit that I just got fed up with ISD and have put it away for a while with the 2nd large motif still unfinished. Not a lot to do on it but hey ho, it will come out again soon.

In its place I got out Country Bloomers, and since this picture was taken I have finished the yellow bloomers, outlined both them and the green ones, put flowers in the pot beneath the green ones and done another pot. This too has gone away not until after the holiday.

Holiday stitching is always a new start, I know its naughty when there are so many unfinished ones in my box but my excuse is they are all either large designs or need a lot of colours so I need something simple to do on holiday lol. Trawling through my stash I decided on School of Needlework by LHN. Its a nice easy chart, not too big and not too many threads needed to be carted with me, it will slip into my handbag nicely.

Now to cards, the first was made for a very dear friend AnnT who some of you will know though she does not blog.

Next one was for a very dear friend and my neighbour for 40 odd years Christine, again not a blogger.

The final one is actually two pics, first the front and then the inside of the card I made for my darling grandson Oscar. The decoupage was from the "Flippin' Teenage" range and I really enjoyed making this one. When I saw the decoupage sheet I couldnt resist buying it as earlier in the year Oz dressed as a Punk for a school music program which covered 60 years of pop music. It was a really fun show starting with rock music from the late 50's right up to some of the latest hits.

Thank you to all those who were kind enough to leave such lovely comments, you all keep me smiling bless you.

Hugs from

May your frogs stay in their ponds.

Ready For A Change

Its been almost a month since my last post and I haven't really got a lot to show. I have been working on I Still Do but not so much as I have had two small gifts to make too. Hopefully I will be able to show you them soon but as they are both for people who probably read my blog (well one certainly does, not saying who but the one who usually leaves the cheeky comments), then I cannot show them yet. With regard to ISD I am over half done the 2nd of the larger motifs, and will try to plow on until that is done. edit - Oh dear I should that written plough but too much Farm Town must be rubbing off on me and I am using American spellings lol. However I am feeling ready for a change now and having recently seen Kathy's stitching on Fairies At The Bottom Of My Garden, I have a yen to get mine out and do some more on that. Lisa asked what thread I was using for this - its Carrie's Creations, Hearts on Fire which I thought very appropriate. The chart is actually meant to be stitched in a variety of different reds but I just fancied doing it in the one varied colour. Anyway here is how it looked when I took a piccie this afternoon.



The other thing that keeps me busy and out of mischief nowdays is card making. I spend hours designing what to do on the computer before actually printing out bits and bobs I need to actually make the cards. Mostly I use bought card stock though I do print off my own card stock at times too. I know this is supposed to be a stitching blog but card making is just as much my hobby so I thought I would show you half a dozen of those I have made recently but if you don't want to see anymore in the future let me know or I may bore you to death with them as I certainly produce a lot more finished cards than I do finished peices of stitching.

Thank you for the wishes for my health which I am glad to report is continuing to improve. I started driving again and this weekend was our stitching group meet up, to which was my furthest drive so far. Only about a 30 - 40 min drive away to Wendy's house but it felt like a real achievement. As usual we had a lovely day, made even better by the fact that Rachael had bought her daughter Lucy who was celebrating her 11th birthday so we got cakes too. I think she enjoyed her day with the adults too.

Today we took our Grandson to Alvaston park. Its years since I have visited this park and its well worth checking out if you live in the area. Lots of ducks to feed on the lake (and we hadn't thought to take anything to feed them), and lots of ducklings too. A nice new cafe opened there a few weeks ago, nice and clean and not too badly priced for meals and snacks though we only had a drink today. Best of all there is an Addizone there, which is designed for over 12,s though there were a few like Oz who were under this age range, and a few like us right at the other end of the scale, all having fun checking out the outdoor gym - and its free too.

I think thats all I have to tell you for now. Thanks to all those who are kind enough to have left comments.

Hugs to all,

May your frogs stay in their ponds.

ps Oh I forgot to say thank you to Sally for sending me the link to the signatures, I will check that site out Sally, thanks. xx

I lost my name ...

Well not quite my name but certainly my signature here in blogland. I tried going to the site I originally got it from but that seems to have died, which is probably the reason for my signature going walkabouts. Does anyone have any good links to free blog signature sites, if so I would be grateful to know where they are. Of course this is the lazy option lol, I could go to google and would probably find one there, but the word "Free" seems to be used when things are certainly not free just lately. I used to type in Free Clip-art and got loads, now what comes up is Royalty Free and they still want paying. Also a lot of so called free sites just mean that you seem to be able to view they for free. Oh well moan over............ sorry about that.



I promised you an update picture of I still do and so before I go any further I think I had better show you what it was looking like last night.

I am quite pleased with the progress made, I know it doesnt look an awful lot but as its on 32 count after a while my eyes start crossing so I cannot do too much at a time. Also I need to concentrate, now my usual stitching time is when I sit to watch tv in the evening. Ok I get into trouble because I sometimes lose the thread - on the tv programme not the stitching - but as most things we watch are pre-recorded then I can (or hubby can for me) rewind. However because this is finer than I normally do when I look up at the tv, its the thread of my chart I lose so I have to keep working out where I am. I do use a "working copy" so that I can mark it off but you cannot mark off after every stitch. All this said I am still enjoying stitching on this and so whilst the enjoyment lasts I shall stick at it and try to watch things on tv that dont need a lot of concentrating on.

I had a lovely day on Saturday as my little stitching group met at my house. It was a Hardanger Group when I originally joined it but people had deadlines to meet for normal stitching and so bought that and this week there were three of us doing cross stitch, one doing crotchet and one teaching herself Tunisian Crotcheting, a sort of cross between crotchet and knitting. I think we are really now just a group of friends who enjoy having a get together once a month, a bit of stitching, a lot of gossip and lots of laughs so who cares what excuse is made for actually meeting lol.

Oh I was asked how long it took to do my hardanger pieces. I started my Tissue Box Cover on the 8th December 2008. Tulips and Lace has been a lot quicker but I cannot recall exactly when. I have no note of starting it on my blog so it must have been started after i last blogged in July last year. I have a feeling that I started it to take with my to India in October, but sorry cannot be more accurate than that.

Thanks for the lovely folks who left me comments and welcomed me back,

Hugs

Helen xx

May your frogs stay in their ponds.

I think Im back .....

Its been nine long long months since I last posted. I am not going to bore you with the details, most of you know my Mum had a rough time last year but I am pleased to report that she is so much better now and is getting out and about again. I am so pleased that she has become independent again as just after we returned from our annual chill out in Goa (mid Feb) I had a stupid accident and ended up with three bones broken in my spine and a very badly bruised lower spinal region, which meant sitting down was very painful, but then so was standing up so I have had a couple of months where I was going stir crazy, supposedly relaxing at home. How you relax when its hard, to sit, stand or even lie in bed Im not sure but now I too am well on the way to mending.



Stitching has been a bit hit and miss but I have had two finishes. Both are hardanger designs and both are from the Cols Creations collection. The first one was my tissue box cover which I love and I am thinking of doing another one of these in cream at some point, but this one is plain white and is for my bedroom.

Finished March 2011

The second is again for my bedroom and is a beautiful design called Tulips and Lace. I have quite a few of these Col's Creations charts in my stash and look forward to being able to do some more in the future. Oh and just in case anyone notices the little thread sticking out at the bottom (as I know some of those in my hardanger group will lol) I have now cut it off. I have to admit to having a little help with this one as Rachael did the buttonholing round the edge. I have done hardanger for a number of years now and never had problems before but for some reason I just could not get to grips with it on this one and was ready for thowing it in the bin lol. Nothing to do with the design, its just normal button hole stitch - just my head would not work around it at the time and Rachael kindly offered her services, bless her.

Finished April 2011

First things first though and my aim for this year is to finish some of my rather large pile of WIPs. The first one I have gone back too is this one, I Still Do - an Ink Circles Design that seemed perfect for our Ruby Anniversary. That was 18 months ago but as it has a habit of doing life got in the way. This is what it looked like last time I took a picture and I will try and take an update pic later today. I have now finished the first of the two large motifs I was working on and I am hoping to make a start on the second one tonight.




I am not even attempting to work on a rota at the moment, I shall just stitch on this for as long as I am happy doing so and then swap to another. There are so many unfinished projects in my WIP box that I think there will be something I can find that I just fancy doing at the time.


I was having a quick flick round my blog before I started posting and I think I am going to have to alter my WIP list in the sidebar as its very out of date. I will also try to think what else I have finished - Im sure there must be one or two in the last nine months, and they need to be recorded, after all this blog was started so that I would have a record of the things I stitched. Having said that its always lovely to know others are interested too, so it anyone does read this I would love to hear from you.



All for now

Hugs

Helen x

May your frogs stay in their ponds.