Pleasing Progress

I've had a really lovely stitching day, lots of progress & lots of updates to share with you.

Whilst I was enjoying this years first episode of Larkrise to Candleford I decided to stitch on my 2010 Challenge piece, Sweet Dreams. Only an hours worth of stitching but I'm happy with the progress.

The next update is on Yoyo's Christmas Design SAL. I haven't set myself any monthly targets but I have to say I'm really happy with the amount I've done for January & I'm looking forward to next months stitching week.



My other update today is that I cut the fabric for my HAED Dragon Riders & made a new start on it. No picture on this one yet but hopefully soon.

Happy Stitching all :-)

Stitching Monday

Just a small post this morning. The twins are off at nursery so it's my stitching Monday :-)

I have an update picture to post later with my progress on Yoyo's Christmas Design SAL. We stitched for a week together & will continue to do so once a month until our designs are completed & hanging on the wall next christmas... well thats the plan anyway!

This morning I've done the tidying (most of it!), put the washing on, filled up the bird feeder & made myself a cuppa. I'm going to do an hour of a project downstairs watching Larkrise To Candleford & then hopefully cut the fabric ready to get started on my HAED Dragon Riders later today upstairs whilst probably watching some more of the 3rd series of Little House On The Prairie.

Now all I have to do is choose my next hours project.. will it be one of my two UFO SAL projects, the 2010 Challenge project or the Festive Biscornu. I'll keep you guessing for now & post an update pic later.

2010 - A New Start

I was in two minds to do the 2010 Challenge this year. In 2008 I didn't finish either of the pieces that I started for the challenge & in 2009 I didn't even sign up for any. But having spent the latter half of 2009 getting myself back into my all time favourite past time I made a rather late decision to take part... and I did it... I started a nice new design on 1st January. It's Sweet Dreams by Cinnamon Cat & it's for my little boy.



I'm taking part in a few challenges this year & I'm looking forward to working on all of them. I have a 5 day cruise booked with my mum which we've already designated a "stitching holiday", I am sooooo looking forward to that... roll on June.

2009 Finishes
Baby Love by Cinnamon Cat. My only finish this year, my only finish for 2 years for that matter.

2010 Goals/Challenges
Ultimately to finish more than I did in 2009 :-)
Jan 1st Challenge - Sweet Dreams, Cinnamon Cat
UFO Challenge - Cindarella is Proof, Lizzie*Kate
Christmas Design SAL - Merry Christmas By The Letter, Lizzie*Kate
I've Started UFO - Was Christmas Trees but I think I'm going to change that this evening.
I would also like to complete the Festive Biscornu from Polstitches Designs & do at least one (if not two) pages on my HAED Dragon Riders.

Well there it is, that's what I would like to do, only time will tell if I get anywhere. I'll do my best to post regular updates & pictures. All pictures will be found in my WIP folder down the right hand side of my blog & once I get going I'll start a new folder for my HAED.

Happy New Year

Smee!!!!

Ok... time to get back to blogging. What a busy few weeks we've had indeed. So much for taking time off to relax & put my feet up. If one more person asks me if I'm enjoying being a lady of leisure I'll probably punch them!!!!

I've been busy ebaying ever since my last post. The shop stock is getting cleared very nicely thank you very much to all who have contributed to this :-)

Stitching has very much taken a back seat, mores the pity as I was hoping to get my dreaded UFO Welcome House completed but it just hasn't happened... yet!!!

No baby news as of yet, apart from the fact that I've got so damn big that it is actually getting ridiculous. It's a nightmare to walk, sit, stand, sleep, etc etc. Officially we have about 5.5 weeks until our 38 week date, which is as far as the hospital said I would go, please god let it be true. We have pretty much finished the babies room now, let me see if we have a piccie on here.. yep, there's one, that'll do. So you can see we have been quite busy, those that remember it as a desk filled spare room/office will be quite surprised by the change.

I'll see if I can get back to more regular updates now that I'm slowing on the work load (again).

Yay and... "oh"

Postman arrived this morning at the shop with my nice new, correct length, pair of Addi Turbo's.... Wooo Hoooo.

Something that didn't really occur to me until opening the packet... the actual needles would be much shorter too. My first thought was... oh god how on earth am I going to use those, they look like circulars for babies to use!!!!! My second thought was that Fran will be thinking "oh, the uneducated!!!" luv her!!!

Once again I will be dashing home this evening to try out my nice new short circular needles for my nice new Alpaca hat. You can guarantee that by the time I finish it summer will be here (or we'll be heading into winter... won't confirm which year that might happen to be!)

On the stitching front... I have made further progress on Welcome House, I'm resisting posting a picture as it's soooo close to being complete that I'd rather wait, but rest assured, it WILL be done soon.

Little Happy Dance!

Finally I have a completion for 2008. Only problem is that I can't quite share that with you yet as it's to be finished into a gift so I need to wait until it's been received before I can post a piccie :-)

Started back on the Welcome House from Cinnamon Cat... really need to get this finished before March & it's creeping up on me kind of quick now, still, made some more progress on it today & hopefully will get some more done later this week.

Weekend over :-(

Worked some more today on the Welcome House, no picture this week though, not quite enough progress today to warrant a further pic.

Had 2 flat viewings this weekend. Saturday.... they gave nothing away so we have to wait for a call from the agent on that one. Sunday.... now they seemed really happy with the rooms & kitchen etc so I look forward to hearing what the agent says about their visit.

Only a few more days to baby scan day. I just wish it would hurry up & get here. To say that I'm a little anxious is an understatement & at the same time I'm petrified & excited.

Lets hope Monday through Wednesday go quickly :-) xx

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!!!!

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!!!!

A Stitching Update

I know have so many WIP that I'm loosing track myself. At the moment I'm working on the following:

• Christmas Cracker by Bent Creek, this is on 32ct linen so is very tiny & is only really being stitched at work.
• Under the Arch by Heritage Stitchcraft, this is on 28ct evenweave, made great progress only for it to slow rapidly when it came on holiday with me & never made it out the bag.
• UFO SAL this is Welcome House by Cinnamon Cat, 14 ct aida, easy to stitch & almost done but the last part really is the most boring.
• WISP.. ahhh my HAED Dragon Riders.. when I retire (or have time at home) I will devote much needed attention to this wonderful design, I can't wait!

So thats just the ones being worked on at the moment, we shant talk about the WIP that are in the bottom drawer just itching to see the light of day. It's one of these that'll take the place in the UFO SAL database once the Welcome House is complete.

The other thing that has be looked at in great detail is the 2008 Stitching challenge on the forum, has to brand new & some stitches have to be made on January 1st 2008. Choosing the design is going to be a long process. I may have to wait until my stash has arrived from USA before having everything spread out in the lounge so that I can clearly see kits & charts & somehow make an informed decision.

For now... back to the Christmas Cracker & some West Wing I think.

Lise xx

Must Push On

Monday, July 16, 2007, 10:59 AM

Mini target for this week... to finish the Winter Wonderland. I know it's a little bit ambitious but you never know I might just make it in the end.

Managed a little tiny bit of the UFO SAL yesterday but that design seems to have turned into such a chore. The work in the detail took such along time that my brain says thats should have been it, should have been done ages ago but alas.... there is more.

I'm still gutted that I lost an auction the other night on ebay. Would have loved that Stoney Creek book but hey ho, worse come to it I'll just have to pay full price for the damn thing.

The good news is that this week I should be able to get a nice new mobly phone

Ahhhh....back to reality!

Tuesday, June 19, 2007, 01:29 PM

So i'm thinking now that the fabric mound has improved or least made its way back to it's pre-holiday level, it's time to get back to the stitching & gaming side of things.

Warcraft
That first venture back into the land of Azeroth was chaos, I had no idea where I was, what I was doing there & how the hell to get out. Must admit I did quite good compared to Greg who after 5 minutes couldn't remember how to "exit" the game.. most amusing.
Sunday was a vast improvement & just when I thought I was back up to speed there was Monday, an instance.. felt like i'd been chucked back in at the deep end. The spells would work, the healing wouldn't work, I couldn't move... these things were of course all perfectly fine but I just didn't know how to do them. After a couple of deaths & no doubt some serious mumbling aloud by my guild/group mates I got it together... Tuesday will be a doddle!!!!

Stitching
The Cabin part of Cabin In The Woods is now complete, moved onto the alphabet part now & will slowly meet the left edge of the design. Still not bored which is amazing for me a the moment, although the colours are slightly monotonous I am not having to "plough" on & the design is still enjoyable.. quick stitch more before this wears off!
The Welcome House has had no work this week, no UFO SAL stitching for me, next week.
My list of items I'd like to start next is now evergrowing. I had promised myself that when finishing the Welcome House I'd start the Janlynn Christmas sampler but now I'm thinking that I need to allocate myself another UFO so that will be 2 projects taking the place of just one. When finishing the Cabin in the Woods I was going to rush & start the Red Thread series as this looks fantastic but along with that I have several other from my holiday stash that I would desperately like to start, let alone the stash that I already have........

whats a girl to do????

Lise xx

Mid-week

Wednesday, May 30, 2007, 10:37 AM

Wednesday, midweek so thats half day at work.. Yayyyy. More importantly than that it's only 3 days to our holiday... bigger yayyy.

Sharan came over for dinner last night & brought with her some extremely nice homemade scones, homemade by her own fair hand I might add. We are being limited to once every few months with the scones though so that we don't become addicted & thus spoil the whole experience. I can see her point.. they are very morish!

Watched another good movie last night The Lakehouse with Keanu Reeves & Sandra Bullock, proper girly movie & some interesting twists but really lovely & would recommend it for anyone that likes a good romance.

Waiting on a CD that I'm hoping will be delivered today as I want it for our holiday & it has definately been dispatched.. no sign of the posty yet.

Stitching update:WIP: No progress on the Cabin but will be getting some done shortly.
UFO SAL: Bottom section about 3rd done.
Dilemma: what to take on holiday.

Warcraft: made level 67 & quarter way to 68.. will game this evening.

Lise xx

Sunday... day of rest (yeah right!)

Sunday, May 27, 2007, 06:24 PM

Ok... so the day of rest starts at 18.15 for me. I have apple crumble & custard in front of me & Lord Of The Rings, Fellowship, just starting on the DVD. We have to watch this as we've finished Star Trek TNG season 4 & we're not seeing Lee until 1st July so LOTR is as good as it gets at the moment.

I've brought all my personal stitching supplies from the shop to home, pointless them being at the shop as I'm doing more stitching here than there at the moment.

Will update the gallery tomorrow. I've taken some pictures of more finishes & also have pictures of the UFO's to add to a nice new folder.

The home PC has been downloading updates for what seems like an eternity. Turns out that the auto update thing could have been causing my lag whilst in warcraft.. hopefully now that will be fixed & I can game in peace.

Stitching update:WIP: Managed about 5 stitches on the Cabin yesterdayUFO SAL: Did some of this last night, looking good, will spend much time on this tomorrow.

For now... to Warcraft!

Lise xx

ps, this time next week shopping in Manhatten

Fridays quiet night in

Friday, May 25, 2007 11.34PM

Sharan has just departed for home, what a lovely evening. She has a crappy day at work, a nightmare getting home & then comes over here to cook us dinner... something tells me we should have been cooking her dinner.. next time!

Love Maid In Manhatten, great film, a fairytale romance set in my favourite city. To date I've only been there once but that will all change in 8 days time when we're likely to be mid-flight, that is of course as long as we don't crash. Last week we watched Devil Wears Prada, another movie set in New York... throughout this week I'll be looking for as many movies as I can find here at home that are New York based... so excited.

Stitching update:WIP: Was working on Cabin In The Woods today at the shop, making good progress on it but it is getting slightly boring as there are only so many browns that a person can stitch.UFO SAL: None stitched today but bank holiday weekend so will hopefully get a good full day in somewhere.
Would like to get started on the Janlynn Winter Sampler... looks fantastic but will definitely turn into a WISP.

Gaming update:no gaming today, it's late & i'm tired.