There are changes afoot ...

But I'm not telling you what just yet. You'll have to come back and visit me again to find out! He he he

Stitchy Weekend

This weekend was mummy time! I don't get much of that so it was a real treat. Riley headed off for a weekend visit to his dads on Friday morning and Kathy arrived here with her two boys to stay for a couple of days. What a stitchy weekend we had! I got a fair bit done on Celtic Autumn, which put me in good standing to reach my goal of finishing her and having her on my wall by Christmas. Kathy had a happy dance whilst she was here, but you'll have to wait until she gets home later today to see it. It's a beauty and I would recommend you popping over to take a peek later on.

Before I load up the photo of CA, I just want to say thank you to all my readers. I really didn't think anyone came by here anymore after my long hiatus. It's been great to see that you're all still visiting :o)

Ok, so on to the photo:



Have a lovely week everyone!

Latest on Celtic Autumn

I've managed a few more hours on Celtic Autumn today whilst Riley was spending time with his Grandparents, so I thought I'd show you a photo of her now:
(all photo's are clickable)



It's been a long time since I showed you any pictures of Riley. I've just looked back and it was January 1st! He's changed a lot since then. He's three years old now (can you believe that!) Here are some photo's of him taken on Saturday at the local park:

From Riley - 17/10/09

From Riley - 17/10/09

From Riley - 17/10/09

From Riley - 17/10/09

From Riley - 17/10/09

Don't you just love that big sulk at the end LOL.

It's been a long time ...

It's been a long time since I last posted. Six months - the longest I've ever been away from my blog. It's been a hectic six months with lots going on, both good and bad, but I won't go into all that now.

During my time away, not only have I not been blogging, I haven't really been stitching either - just the odd hour or so here and there with sometimes a couple of months inbetween sessions. There has always been something else I needed to get done first. Anyway, this last week I've been on leave from work and so have caught up with lots of tasks I had fallen behind on, including fitting in some stitching time on Celtic Autumn.

Here is what she looked like last time you saw her:



and here is what she's looking like today:





Now I'm wondering if anyone will even see this update or whether I've lost all my readers with being away for so long. I hope not! It would be good to hear from you :o)

Tea Time

Wow, it's been a long time since I last updated. I haven't been on the computer much at all in the last few months. Anyway, as I had to switch the 'puter on tonight to do some work, I thought I'd tell you about my cooking adventures today. You see, I don't cook. I'm terrible at it. But at the moment, needs must. Sooo, with a scrummy sounding chicken recipe from Kathy, who promised me this would be easy, I gave it a go. I have taken some photo's too just to prove to those of you who know me well that I REALLY did do it. LOL.

Firstly, yesterday Riley had a strange request. "Mummy, I want blue biscuits." is what he said. OK kiddo, if you want blue biscuits, you shall have blue biscuits. Actually, you shall have orange flavoured blue biscuits!



Yeah I know, they look kinda green. They do have a blue tinge if you look closely :o) If you close your eyes when you're eating them, or pretend you're Shrek, then they do taste pretty nice LOL.

Next up I did some crisp (chips) squashing and made Crispy Cheesy Chicken with mashed potatoes and veggies. As Kathy said, it was really easy and looked pretty good too ...



And ready to eat



Riley's pudding:



Aww, if you'd seen the look on his face when he saw his pudding. "Mummy!" he said, "I got BLUE BISCUITS!!!" and held them up to show me. Wish I'd had the camera at the ready for that one.

Stitching Update ... at last!

I may not have been online much over the last week, but I have fitted a little stitching in. I came to the end of a page tonight so I thought I'd better show you how she's coming along.



Sorry about the awful photo. Best I could manage tonight. I'm shattered! I went to the gym straight from work (yep, I'm back at it) and then did a pile of ironing when I got home. I was determined to get some stitching in tonight though and really wanted to finish that section. Just another 4 pages to go ... and you thought she was nearly finished? LOL Umm, not quite - about 75% of the way there I think.

Spring Ride Update

Kathy visited us on Saturday. We had a lovely time and even managed a couple of hours stitching after her two boys tired Riley out completely and he crashed in his room. Of course, because we spent some time stitching, which I have kind of got out of the habit of doing recently, I just had to get Spring Ride out last night and do a little on her. I even managed a couple more hours tonight and am now about two thirds of the way through this page. So, here's tonight's stitching update photo, though first I thought I'd better remind you where I was up to previously as this poor lady and her horse haven't seen the light of day since last August.



And as I left her tonight:



Sorry this is such a short post, but it's late and Casey cat is whining because she hasn't got her human belly bed to curl up on.

LOL Cats

From one of my favourite 'non-stitchy' websites - LOLcats.

I hope this made you laugh as much as it did me!

Fast Off

"Fast Off"
DMC Kit
stitched on kit fabric - white 16ct aida

I got to say welcome home to this little guy a couple of days ago. He's been gone a while, but for a good reason. You see I started stitching him maybe 4 or 5 years ago and hated it. You know the feeling, you love the picture, but for some reason you just really dislike stitching on it. He was put away and would probably never have seen the light of day again if Kathy hadn't heard his plight and saved him from the big dark UFO drawer. She's had him a couple of years and stitched on him when the fancy took her (I was in no rush for it back), and look! He's home, with a huge thank you to Kathy for all your time and patience with this project :o) You've done a grand job girl and he'll be framed and up on the wall very soon!

In my own stitching, I have worked a few stitches in Spring Ride over the weekend although not really enough to show an update. Hopefully I'll have some more time tomorrow and will update Tuesday.

In other news, my work rota changes from next week. I'll still be doing the same hours and still over three days, it's the actual days that have changed. I'm pretty happy about this as it does work out to my advantage, although I think it'll take a few weeks to get into a new routine.

I can't remember whether I mentioned last week that Alan and I started our photography course at college. Tomorrow night is our second lesson and this is when the fun really starts and we get to take our cameras out of the bag :o) Don't forget to pop over to my photography blog sometime to see how I'm getting along.

Hope you all had a good weekend. I should be back with a stitchy update soon.

Frogging

See! I do listen to you all :o) The comments on my last post are almost a unanimous win for Spring Ride and a lot of you suggested that maybe I did the frogging on Sleigh Ride first off to get it out of the way. Sooooo, tonight I spent a few hours doing just that.


Before photo with the wrong colour blue in the sky (arching over the sun to the right).


And after.

I've put Sleigh Ride away now, but at least I know that when I do next pull it out, I haven't got to start off with all that horrid frogging.

I was wondering how come you all thought I was very near to finishing Spring Ride, then I noticed the progress bar said 75% complete. I think I boobed a little there as I'm actually only about half way through her. The next 3 pages across her middle consist of very dense stitching (mostly white and pale cream) and there's still another row of pages under those. Yikes! But anyway, she's out next and will be worked on until she's complete. See you in 2010 then ha ha ha!

Thank you for all your input and helping me sort out my quandary. Oh, and Kathryn in NZ, just let me know when you're ready to start on Mermaids of the Deep Blue.

OK, Back to stitching

My New Year's resolution - to stitch more!

And how much stitching have I done in the last 7 days? Zilch, zero, none, none, none! You want to know why? Well, it's because I can't make my mind up WHAT to stitch on. I want to go back to stitching one project at a time to completion and I don't know what to do first. My options are:

1. Complete Celtic Autumn

2. Complete Spring Ride

3. Start a new project - Mermaids of the Deep Blue

4. Complete Tribal Butterfly

5. Frog a massive section and complete Sleigh Ride

6. New start - Lucien, Wizard of Fire by Black Swan

I just can't make my mind up. Come on guys, what do you think I should do first?

How Bizarre

Yesterday I had a bit of a clear-out in the bedroom to make room for my new printer (my Christmas present off Alan) and our camera equipment. This needed to be done as Alan had been using my stitching cupboard as a dumping ground for his stuff and it was beginning to drive me mad.

First off I cleared out my computer desk, which is next to my side of the bed, then I rearranged my stitching cupboard so that I could use the end section for my camera equipment. Lastly I needed to find space for Alan's stuff. His computer desk, which is exactly the same as mine, but buried under a foot of crap, stands next to his side of the bed and at the end of the bed on the same side is my stitching corner.

With all the clearing and tidying done of my side of the bed and my stitching cupboard, I set about emptying out Alan's desk. I did ask his permission first and to tell you the truth, I think he was pleased I was doing it as it really needed sorting out and you know what men are like ... it'll always be done tomorrow lol. So, I worked through the desk methodically, making piles as I went - rubbish, software, printer paper, paperwork for filing, stuff I had no idea what it was, etc. When I eventually lifted out the last of the printer paper from the very bottom of his desk something rattled, so I stuck my arm back in and to my amazement I pulled out these:



These are the very scissors that have been missing for months. I had twice searched my whole stash - inside wip folders, charts, thread boxes, everywhere I keep stitching stuff, but to no avail. I searched the whole house! Everywhere ... apart from Alan's computer desk. I mean why on earth would they be in there? I had decided they must've slipped down the side of the sofa and disappeared into the depths of landfill somewhere when we bought the new sofa's last February. Now that really p'd me off as apart from the fact that they were lovely scissors, they were also attached to a beautiful sparkly fob handmade for me by Nicole.

But hey, I found them and I can't believe I've been stitching, sleeping and computing all within 3 feet of them all this time and didn't know they were there lol. And the bizarre thing? Well, when I looked back at my blog before writing this post, to see when I actually received the fob from Nicole, it was 3rd January 2008 ... and the date I found it again? 3rd January 2009. How bizarre is that?

Happy New Year!

Here we are again at the start of a brand new year. I hope it's a good one for all my internet buddies and their families!

I hope this post doesn't take too long to load up for you. It's pretty photo heavy as I have a lot to show you.

Christmas was especially good fun this year with this being the first Christmas where Riley has been old enough to understand some of what's going on. I haven't actually got any Christmas day photo's for you as we video'd it and forgot to take photo's too. Oops! I can tell you that Riley had a fab time though and was really quite disappointed when he came downstairs on Boxing Day and Father Christmas hadn't left him more presents! Sorry son, you'll have to wait a whole year before he visits you again.

On Monday (29th) we took Riley on a very special outing to see his first live show. The MEN Arena (Manchester Evening News Arena) had a two day showing of CBeebies Live. I booked the tickets in September and was a little dubious really. I thought maybe he'd be a little too young and lack the concentration to sit through a full show. How wrong was I! He loved it! All 1 hour 45 minutes of it. The young chap was in his element. Here are some photo's. They're not wonderful because of the distance we were from the stage and obviously because it was dark, but they are clear enough to see. All are clickable.


Riley entranced at CBeebies Live



The large giraffe (I couldn't work out if it was animatronic or a costume with people inside.


Riley laughed his head off at this elephant. He thought it was great.


Having a great time!


The Tweenies. They sang Riley's favourite song - Horsey, Horsey, don't you stop. He couldn't believe it. They knew HIS song. He was hooting with excitement.


And if I thought he was excited before, it was nothing compared to when his favourite characters came on stage - The Teletubbies!


Justin Fletcher as Mr Tumble. Justin is an excellent presenter on CBeebies and he also teaches the kids sign language too. If you can get CBeebies on your TV and you have young children, try and watch out for his show - Something Special. It really is something special and your kids will love it.


The Koala Brothers and another of the CBeebies presenters - Andy.


Characters from Lazy Town, Jakers and Boo.

It's pretty cold around these parts at the moment and we're told it's going to get colder. I don't think the temperature has risen above zero for 4 or 5 days now. I know some of you live where it is much, much colder, but this is COLD to us here in the UK. Today we wrapped up warm and took a walk in the park. Yep, more photo's to show you ...


The white foreground in this photo is actually the duck pond, totally frozen over.







I have published some more photo's on my photo blog. If you're not already sick of looking at photo's then pop over and take a look. There are some cute close up ones of Riley.

Have a lovely weekend everyone.

A Beautiful Gift!

Recently Riley has been raiding our post. On one recent occasion when I was upstairs as the postman called and didn't realise he'd been, I found two open letters sprawled across the lounge floor, one of them was only half a letter (page 2) and it took me ages to find the other half which had been 'posted' underneath a cupboard. He beat me to it again today and when I realised what he had in his hands he kindly presented me with an opened Christmas card (only a little scrunched up) and a package that was obviously too hard for him to raid before I caught him.

I didn't have much trouble getting into the package though, especially when I saw who'd posted it! Carol made me this beautiful ornament and sent it along with a little note wishing me a happy birthday and Christmas.





We haven't put the tree up this year as electrical items and Riley do not mix well at all at the moment. Neither do Riley and ornaments or Riley and lights LOL. We have however tried to make our lounge as Christmassy as possible without the tree and I have placed my gorgeous ornament in the lap of my cuddly (and safely out of reach of little hands) penguin, where it will stay until the decorations come down.

Thank you so much Carol for the gorgeous and totally unexpected gift! It's ever so pretty :o)

Have a lovely Christmas everyone!

It's Christmas!

Sorry it's been so long since I last updated. It's been a pretty hectic and odd couple of weeks. Lots of things happening that I can't blog about, but there is some stuff I can, like my birthday last week. Some of you have great memories and send me lovely birthday wishes even though I haven't even mentioned my birthday at all this year! Thank you!

I got a stitchy gift too. From Kathy.



Wow Kathy! You didn't 'alf spoil me! Just look at that for a package of stitching goodness! He's Lucien by Black Swan along with all the Kreiniks, beads and fabric for him. Now this one is definitely a new start for next year. Thank you :o)

I don't currently have a stitchy update for you. As I said earlier, things have been a bit, well lets just say I've not had any more chances to stitch than I have to update recently.

I probably wont be back on again before Christmas Day seeing as it's only a couple of days away, so have a lovely time everyone, whatever you're doing.

Father Christmas

Riley had his first ever trip to see Father Christmas today. He wasn't at all shy or worried. He just walked up to him with a big grin on his face.




Receiving his gift. It was a book - The A-Z of Horses (???) I guess Riley will know all there is to know about horses over the next few months ha ha ha.


And because it was so quiet, no queues, no other kids, we were the only ones there, Father Christmas also gave Riley a packet of Jaffa Cakes.

I was quite disappointed as I remember going to see Father Chistmas when I was a kid and there were always beautifully decorated Grotto's with Elve helpers and sometimes even a sleigh ride (sitting in a sleigh with moving pictures on the walls that made it feel like you were moving) to see the man himself. This guy today though, and the ONLY Father Christmas in the (very large) town where we live, was just shoved in an alcove in the shop with that large gold and red chair. That was it. Just an alcove next to the toy section - not even hidden behind curtains or anything. Not really very exciting for the kids, is it? Riley actually had more fun with his first ride on an escalator. He made us go back down on another one then back up again :o)

Help!

We're doing a Secret Santa at work and I wanted to make my person a coaster with a cross stitch pattern of a tea cup and her name on it. I've spent hours already looking for a freebie chart of a tea cup or similar. Does anyone know of one? Can you help?

My coaster will give a square design area of 3.25 inches max and I've got just two weeks until we go for our Christmas meal and exchange the gifts! If you've got anything or know of anything that you think will be suitable, please can you let me know.

Hugs to all.

**edited to add
Many thanks to everyone who contacted me with links to freebies and to Barbara who sent me a lovely chart and Hazel who sent me a great magazine with some tea cups in too! I should be able to start this weekend :o)

Lurgified

Is that a word? I very much doubt it LOL. Two weeks ago today Riley came down with some horrible cold virus and very kindly shared it with us all. My mum started with it on the Monday, me on the Wednesday and Alan succumbed last weekend. Not nice at all. Mum and Riley were both really ill with it, but luckily I wasn't quite as bad which is a good job seeing as I started with it the very day I went back to work after my surgery. Everyone is well on the way to recovery now thankfully.

Do you remember way back in August I showed you a photo of my new stitching corner? I had been using it, but not as much as I would like as it was pretty uncomfortable. The chair was so uncomfortable that I could only just manage about 30 minutes at a time without being very sore in lower back/coccyx region. Here's the photo again to remind you:



In the last couple of weeks we have made some rather nice changes to my little stitching nook. First off I got a new chair. Nothing fancy, just a solid chair with a bit of padding for my posterior. Then last weekend that little white fold-away table was kicked into touch too. Just look at my little space now!





Doesn't that look so much better? I love it! I now have loads of storage space too for all my stash. Want a look inside?



On the left are my charts with my frames underneath. My fabric is in the bottom drawer and the next drawer up contains all my bits and bobs. The next two drawers are still empty and the top one I have kept for storage of my current project. On the right you can see my thread boxes on the top with all my UFO'sWIP's neatly stored and labelled underneath.

Another great benefit of this new set-up, which I hadn't thought about until I came to actually use it, is that because the cupboard is higher than the little table, my chart is at a better height for reading. I no longer have to peer over my glasses at my chart then shove them back up my nose to stitch :o)

So now I have no excuses not to stitch, I'd better show you a photo of what I've been working on. A couple of weeks ago Kathy came over for a visit and she left me a reel of invisible thread. I've never beaded before so she gave me a quick lesson using the invisible thread and away I went!





I am loving how she is looking now with all the beads. My plan is to work the top and side border sections until I'm level with her elbows, then I'll move back onto her dress and get that finished up. I would love to have her finished by Christmas, but I think that might be a tad optimistic.

One thing I realised whilst going through my stash and reorganising it is that I've lost my beautiful pink Gingher scissors - the ones with the gorgeous sparkly keyfob that Nicole made for me. I just can't believe it. They have been missing for a couple of months but I was pretty sure I would find then when I went through all my stash. In the last two weeks my stash has been gone through twice with a fine toothed comb and they are not there :o( I just have no idea where they could be. I am so fanatical about putting things away in their right places that I very rarely lose anything. I am seriously p'd off with myself about it. I just can't think where else to look.

Anyway, I took a great video of Riley chatting today on my cellphone. I would have put it on here today, but thought maybe this post was a bit photo heavy as it is, so I'll update with that in a couple of days.

Enjoy your weekend everyone.

Prizes and Pressies

Earlier this month I won a competition on Petra's blog for a copy of Cross Stitcher magazine which had with it a great calendar full of Margaret Sherry designs. I love Margaret Sherry's little critters and I was over the moon to win. I was even more over the moon on Saturday morning when the postman arrived to deliver my prize and then totally stunned when I opened the parcel from Petra and found ALL THIS inside:



Riley has pulled the sticker book over my magazine, but it is there in the photo. You should have seen Riley bouncing around like a jumping bean when he realised that all this stuff was for him! He was so excited. I only just managed to take this photo before he was off with the sticker book and the Crayola colouring set.

Can you see at the back of the picture the Pez candy? I remember those candies with the cute dispensers from when I was a kid, but I've not seen them for years and didn't even think they did them anymore. I'm pretty sure they weren't called Pez over here. It was quite nostalgic seeing them again. Here are some photo's of Riley working out how to use it. I just love his expressions lol.







and one last photo of Riley in one of the really cool t-shirts Petra sent through. I made Riley do 'so big' with his arms so you could see the picture. This is my favourite shirt - I just love how the bugs make a skull. Riley's favourite is the dinosaur one.



Thank you so much Petra. You really made my day and I'm pretty sure you made Riley's too!

Things a two year old shouldn't know

Alan was going out. He was taking Riley with him so I was getting Riley ready with coat and shoes whilst Alan got himself ready.

Sitting on the floor I first put Riley's shoes on. Riley had a thing about feet a while back after he got a blister on his little toe from flooding his wellington boots.

Mummy - "one shoe, two shoes!"
Riley - "mummy (in that 'are you stupid woman' voice), sore feet."
Mummy - "come on, stand up while I put your coat on. Your feet aren't sore anymore. All better now."
Riley - (louder) "Mummy! Sore feet."

In comes Daddy and takes Riley down to the car, straps him in the safety seat, messes about for a few minutes and then heads back towards the house.

Alan - "You dopey sod."
Karen - "What????"
Alan - "You put his shoes on the wrong feet!

Riley told me and I didn't listen. Bad, bad Mummy ... but I'm sure a two year old shouldn't know that his shoes were on the wrong feet!