UnFinished Object.... but getting there!!!

So here we have one of my UFO projects. Welcome House by Cinnamon Cat. This project was started in March 2006 & I made some fantastic quick progress on it & then I hit the little pink flowers, damn things... too many fractional stitches & it just about finished me off, the rest of the design has taken me a while to get going on & progress has been slow. There isn't much left to be done & I think that makes it even more frustrating, we shall see what happens this Sunday when it's UFO stitching day.

I have to say that I truely love this design & can't wait to have it finished, framed & on the wall. I would hope at that at some point this year it may hang in our new home :-)

And on the new home front, nothing new, we've had to drop the price in order to get some more viewings. We have someone coming on Saturday & someone else coming on Sunday so prey that at least one of them may put an offer in..... we're running out of time!!!!

Stitching Challenge Update

Finally a piccie of progress on the Michael Powell Street design that is one of my 2008 Challenge projects. Started on 1st January all I managed was the little red blob in the middle on the fabric but now I have a whole chimney to be proud of.

Anyway... some thoughts regarding the Michael Powell design. As a kit I have to say that (& I may have mentioned this before) it includes Anchor threads & I really don't like Anchor, after stitching what I have I know that my opinion on this hasn't changed... I still don't like Anchor threads. Ok, next, the chart.. quite clear.. no real problems with that. The design itself, some issues with that but my own doing really. There is quite a bit of Snow on the design & white on white stitching is never great so thats a pain in the butt, the other thing that I am none too keen on is the sky stitching, it's all the same colour & will be a boring bit of stitching.... as I said.. my own doing as it's one of my favourite pictures of his... I'll get over it I'm sure.

You can see an image of the complete design on my gallery site in album 2008 Stitching Challenge: http://www.gregandlisa.co.uk/gallery2/main.php


More progress... on anything...soon :-)

Fingers Crossed

We had a viewing this evening on the flat, hopefully it went well, you never can tell but they were here for ages & looked at everywhere loads & then stood outside chatting with the agent for probably another 10 minutes after that. The young lady kept looking back at the building so I guess we'll just have to wait until tomorrow when the agents gives us a call & lets us know exactly what they thought. Annoyingly as I was staring out the window trying desperately to hear what they were saying Mohair went wandering past the window & off towards to the garden gate where 4 persons were standing. After they went he came wandering in the lounge window & do you think the little sod would share what they were saying... NOPE... not on your life. He sits there just staring at them while chat & just doesn't give me an inkling when he gets back..... cats...nightmare!

Monday was a bit of a bad/good day. I had to get up early to be in the shop at 9am for my framer.... exhausted me a bit, I just didn't realise how much. Luckily after I'd managed to calm myself & started re-stocking the yarns Franny turned up :-) this was a bonus, she was kind enough to get lots of yarns down off the shelf for me & generally helped me stock up so a huge thank you to Fran. Oh yeah & I forgot to show you these, check them out, Fran made them for me & brought them in last week.... I just know that you'll all be jealous as hell but it's tough, they're mine. With any luck I'll make a fabby pair of socks using them & make her very proud.

Where every day is a Monday!!!

I appear to be stuck in some kind of groundhog day style loop where every morning appears to be like a Monday morning. I've already had to amend my opening hours to allow for my new timescales & I've given myself a whole day off mid week but still i'm struggling. No matter how long it takes me to get myself up & to work I still end up here absolutely exhausted & just need to rest, thats the point where I wish I was still at home. Usually I can calm myself after about 30min/1hour but if the customers are flowing I just end up in a bit of a state. Maybe I should be just putting up with these things & not quite whinging so much but it's difficult, having never felt like this before it's almost impossible not to voice my opinions to anyone that cares to listen.

On the stitching front I believe I picked up "Street" the other day (Tuesday I think) & you know I may have even put in more than 6 stitches.. woohoo!! I shall be having another go at that today as I simply can't be arsed to do anything else except sit & peruse my dvd's :-)

Pic of a WIP.. yes another one!

Ok so it's been a week since the start of the year & apart from some wonderful progress on day 1 I have yet to put another stitch in either of my Challenge pieces, this is not really surprising for me & I haven't actually put a stitch in another design so at least the challenge pieces are not alone :-)

I did bring home all of the WIP's that I had at the shop, this included the Quilt Sampler, Welcome House, Cabin In The Woods & Snow. Hopefully you should be seeing a picture of the progress on Snow so far... if not then I really did mess up the uploading of that picture as I thought I had.

This evening will be spent in our "Hobby" room... once known as The Office (for Greg's business), then dubbed the Spare Room & now it's our Hobby room as there is certainly nothing Spare about it & that includes space. We have some work to be done for business sale which has made some progress (allbeit slow) & that involves Greg mainly so I'm here purely for moral support so I thought I'd file away the WIP's for now & maybe add a few (don't want to get any hopes up) stitches to "Street".

You know I really need to spruce up this blog page, it's looking a little dull... maybe I'll see if I can find a fetching picture of myself to add.... ok ok... maybe one of the Mohair instead.. we shall see!!

Happy New Year

Well it's here... 2008... seems like only yesterday we were in New York for our summer holiday, how time flies.

This year will be one of the most... erm.... adventurous.... challenging & hectic that I believe we'll have.
The flat it up for sale & we are desperate to move, the sign is still well & truely planted in the front garden so long may it continue. Fingers crossed we'll be inundated with phone calls from our agent with potential purchasers lining up to get a view at our spacious rooms & tranquil garden enterance.
The shop is still an enormour thorn in my side at the moment. The property has been available for a bit & while we currently have one potentially interested party (for the business too) we are still hopeful of more interest.. you can never have too many people interested! Back to the business sale, we are waiting on the accountant (still) & this is most frustrating. Without that information our buyer is unable to progress with either the business purchase or building signing.

Random comment: I love my new mouse mat & wrist rest :-)

Work in the new year is going to become increasingly difficult for me. I am already larger than the average pregnant person at my stage & it seems that this isn't going to slow down.. good for babies... tiring for me!! I have already reduced my working hours from when I start back on Thursday. I will open from 10am to 4.30pm with the shop closed all day on Weds & Sundays. It takes me longer to do anything at the moment & I am finding that I am breathless quite often, thi is something I've never had to deal with in my life so it's a bit of a change. There will also come a time when I am unable to serve my customers adequately by going up & down a ladder (something which many think I should have stopped already!) but then the bags would just be all over the place & thats not my idea of a tidy shop. When running down my endless list of hospital appointments I also noted that with so many & on a weekly basis sometimes the shop will start to spend more time closed than it does open..... I only hope we get progress on the sale before too much longer.

We've been discussing now for quite some time if we should find out what "flavours" we'll be having when it comes to our babies. The answer to that changes on a daily basis. With one baby we certainly didn't wish to know until it was born so that we had a delightful surprise, well hey ho... surprise... it's two babies. We've had the biggest surprise of all so would it now be more prudent for us to find out what exactly we're having so that we are better equipped to plan what we'll need to purchase (apart from house & car!) to accomodate our little brood? Sometimes yes, we'd love to know... other days we just aren't sure we'd like to know. The likelyhood is that we will eventually find out because I have another 4 scans booked so it'll become almost impossible to miss. I wouldn't want to tell anyone though.... i'd still like it to be a surprise for everyone else but when you know something that everyone else wants to know it can be difficult to keep it to yourself......... a dilemma which will no doubt continue until the morning of the scan... 7th Feb!

I've started my 2008 Stitching Challenge for the group. I designated two designs, both nice & new. One is Under The Arch by John Clayton, reminds me heavily of Pride & Prejudice so I can't wait to get that one stitched up... thats on 28 count evenweave. My second choice is to be a new kit that the parents bought me.. Street by Michael Powell, it has to be my favourite design of his & I think all of his designs are either love it or hate it, you either like the style or you don't, I like some of them but this is my fav.. it's on 14 count aida (annoyingly it comes with Anchor threads & I hate them but I really can't be bothered to switch them to DMC's as I have to make some progress on it today for it to qualify for the challenge)
My UFO challenge pieces are Welcome House by Cinnamon Cat.. I know this was last years design but I just didn't get it finished so here it is again. The second here will be Who's Watching Whom by Dimensions which it works out was started & shelved in 1999 so it'll be good to make some further progress on this long awaited design.

Enough for now I think.... need a cuppa!!!!