More Christmas Stitching

First, a big thank you to Marne, Erica and Jen who all nominated me for blogging awards. I hardly feel I deserve your kudos seeing as I have been largely absent from the old keyboard recently, but thank you all. I won’t nominate any blogs, but do check out my blogroll on my Wishlist page – there are tons and tons of really good blogs in there!

This weekend was the Christmas ornie SAL weekend with Leena. I started this ornament last month, but didn’t get around to finishing stitching it, so that was my job for this month, and here it is:

Design: ‘Santa’ by Knotted Tree Needleart from JCS 2007
Linen: 32ct ‘Natural’ by Permin/Wichelt
Floss: DMC, GAST, Carrie’s Creations, WDW – mainly as charted, some substitutions

Now, I’m busily finishing off a couple of exchanges, so I haven’t got much else to show you. I think that my busy Olympic-viewing schedule has also contributed to my lack of progress on many fronts, I just LOVE the Olympics, and although it’s quite a challenge to try to see our Canadian medals being won here on the British coverage; I’ve managed to see one or two, and shouted my head off during each race/fight. Hopefully more to come :)

In the meantime, happy stitching!

Hazel Has Spoiled Me!

Oh my word! Saturday was spent at the spa at Hanbury Manor (*more on that below) and finally I arrived home, tired, pampered and hungry with the prospect of opening the wonderfully large box which Hazel had sent containing the PIF gift she stitched for me. I am truly amazed and delighted and really touched at the effort Hazel went to – not only did she send me an enormous and totally over the top package full of lots and lots of goodies, just look what she stitched for me!!

It’s a lavender-filled heart-shaped beauty, a Tournicoton design called ‘Le Temps d’un Thé’, and it is just fabulous – Hazel has stitched it so beautifully, and the finishing, well, you can see for yourself what an amazing job she did. I feel so very honoured to have some of Hazel’s stitching to hang up! I haven’t yet decided where I’m going to hang it – somewhere it can be admired (both to look at and to smell), but not somewhere in a high traffic zone where it will get knocked or bumped…thinking cap on! The reverse is, by the way, an excerpt from a poem by Théodore de Banville (isn’t Google amazing…).

Here is a very busy photo of all the wonderful extras that Hazel included - thank you so much Hazel, your generosity is so much appreciated!!

It was the lovely Carol’s birthday last week, and she sent me a very kind email to let me know that she likes birthday gift I sent to her ages ago (I didn’t think it was going to arrive that quickly – but how did she let it sit there wrapped up for so long?!? I wouldn’t have been able to!). I know that Carol has been on a Brightneedle kick recently, so I elected to stitch her a sort of hanging pinkeep sort of, um, thing. Anyway! She tells me she likes it so that is the important thing :)

Marne has kindly nominated me the Kreativ Blogger Award – I’m a terrible one for sticking to rules, but I feel Jen would be disappointed if I didn’t include some links to blogs I read, so, in no particular order, have a look at these wonderful blogs if you don’t read them already:

Claudia
Rachael
Marie
Simone
Linda

*For those of you interested in the spa weekend update, 5 of us went to Hanbury Manor in Hertfordshire – it’s a beautiful manor house with lovely grounds and set in the middle of a golf course. Very picturesque! We each booked ourselves in for treatments – I had a super deluxe amazing wonderful manicure, and a pedicure. I’m just hoping my nails don’t chip before the wedding on Thursday. Hmmm, it looks like that means no washing dishes for this beauty queen (imagine me sobbing in disappointment – oh, no, wait that’s H sobbing because he has to do them instead). We then had a fairly pleasant dinner which was so late in arriving that we didn’t pay for it (actually, that might have been the best part about it, but the hotel was in the middle of catering for 2 separate weddings so I think they were fairly flat out). We were out on the terrace enjoying the beautiful views over the lake and one of the golf holes, so we didn’t really mind about the delay. A few drinks were had, a few stories were told, and all in all we had a great weekend catching up. A nice break before the rest of my busy August!

The girls! L-R in back: Louise, Emer, Helen, front: Desiree and me

The main hotel building
The view from the terrace

Happy stitching!

Updates and Goals

I managed to squeeze in a (short) night’s stitching on Spanish Wine – it’s very slowly progressing, but hopefully now that I’ve finished off a couple of larger projects this should start to proceed more quickly.



And of course Thursday was the Snowbird SAL and Paradigm Lost, here is this week’s progress:

Right, so, the monthly goal review:

July’s goals:
Stitch, finish and send a birthday gift – yes, Carol received this
The other gift – finish and send – yes, Marne received this PIF gift
Thursdays – Snowbird SAL – keep stitching Paradigm Lost – yes
Christmas ornament mini-SAL with Leena – yes, I stitched 2
Keep stitching Awake the Dawning Day – yes, and I finished it!
Keep stitching Spanish Wine – yes
Finish the secret stitching – yes, and I finished it!
Start the other exchange piece – yes, and it’s nearly complete
Finish one item from the ‘to be finished’ drawer – yes
Quilt – carry on with Vintage Holiday quilt – no
Quilt – carry on with patchwork bag – no
Quilt – start Xbox quilt – no

I also stitched and finished a gift. You can see I wasn’t too motivated with the quilting in July :)

August’s goals:
Send a birthday gift
Stitch, finish and send the other exchange piece
Stitch, finish and send the Crazy Exchange return exchange to Joke
Start stitching the HOE Prairie Schooler exchange
Start stitching F/S Holiday Round Squares
Start stitching HOE Hallowe’en exchange
Thursdays – Snowbird SAL – keep stitching Paradigm Lost
Christmas ornament mini-SAL with Leena – stitch one ornament
Keep stitching Spanish Wine
Resurrect the AMAP pinkeep from my UFO pile
Start stitching the baby gift
Quilting – carry on with Vintage Holiday quilt, carry on with patchwork bag, start Xbox quilt

That should keep me busy at any rate!

I’ve just gotten back from a lovely weekend with the girls being pampered at Hanbury Manor and I’ll post some photos and tell you a bit about it tomorrow – I am too knackered just now :) Also, Hazel’s long-awaited PIF arrived on Saturday, so I’m going to go open that - which I'm totally looking forward to! - I’ll update you on that tomorrow too.

Happy stitching!