A Well-Timed Gift

Hello everyone, thank you all for the lovely comments on my last post. I'm glad I'm not the only one who has grown disheartened with a project. I'm sure it will get finished eventually, I'm just not feeling it at the moment.

One thing that did raise my stitchy spirits was this gorgeous parcel from Jacquie, from My Journey. I've only recently started following her lovely blog and was overjoyed to win her giveaway! Look at the goodies that she kindly sent :)

All of the gifts were beautifully wrapped in pretty pink paper. 

How lovely are those gift tags? I can't wait to get the rest of my stitching stuff back so I can make use of the trims. I'm also the proud owner of a Smiles pin cushion :)

Jacquie also included some Madeira threads and some aida squares, so I can get stitching on some card designs straight away.

Jacquie, I can't thank you enough for this wonderful parcel. Just as I thought my stitching mojo had been left behind in Winchester, you reminded me how much I love stitching and craft. Thank you! 

I hope you all have a wonderful week, best wishes.

 

Lucky Lady

I've been very blessed lately with prize wins and gifts from some dear stitching friends. I was lucky enough to be chosen to stitch the travelling pattern by Elisa. The pattern will soon be moving in with its latest owner, Karoline.

I recently commented on a finished design made by Nataly over at Nataly's Needle Creations. She had recently finished Hibernation Day by Heartstring Samplery and it looked gorgeous. I left her a comment saying so, and Nataly very kindly sent me the chart! I'm so pleased to own such a lovely design and I have started, but just a few stitches. I'm challenging myself by stitching this piece over one on 36ct fabric. It will be so beautiful when it gets finished, if I manage to get that far!

My lucky streak continued with a prize win from Justine over at Justine's Cross Stitch. She recently held a Spring Giveaway and my name was drawn out of the hat! Justine thoroughly spoilt me with a wonderful parcel that truly brightened my day.

I received a whole bunch of DMC threads, a door hanger, a darling card, sweet Easter chick ribbon, a fab chart book (which I'm sure you'll see more of) and the best gift of all . . .

Justine made me a personalised scissor fob and I love it! It's such a beautiful handmade item and I will treasure it. 

Thank you so much to Elisa, Nataly and Justine for making me feel so grateful for such wonderful stitching buddies :)

Hope you're all enjoying a lovely weekend,

 

Travelling Pattern

Hello everyone! There isn't a cloud in the sky as I type this post. It's so wonderful to see the sun after so long! Spring is one of my favourite times of the year, birdsong and daffodils and crisp cool breezes. I hope you're enjoying Spring delights wherever you are :)

I was very lucky to be chosen by Elisa to be the next person to stitch an amazing travelling pattern. Thank you so much Elisa! I will be the 38th person to stitch this gorgeous design. As soon as I'm finished with it, I'll pass it on to the next person. Look out for a post about this soon. 

The pattern arrived at the most perfect time. I had just arrived home from handing in my dissertation. Yes, it's all finished! Woohoo! The whole thing came to nearly 12,800 words in the end. Phew, I'm glad to have got it handed in nice and early. So I was free to start my new pattern straight away. Here's where I'm up to . . .

Whilst I was still working on my dissertation, my stitching was my therapy in the evenings. I've made a fair amount of progress on White Magic, I love the look of this one so far. 

I plan on chilling for the rest of this weekend, I think I deserve a bit of downtime! Me and my housemates will be tuning into Crufts later on, is anybody else watching? I adore dogs and cannot wait to have my own puppy. One day maybe :P

Best wishes to all,

 

Festive Cheer (picture heavy!)

 Thank you all so much for the lovely comments left on my last post. I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season, filled with friends, family and food!

I thought I'd do a picture walk today of all the Christmas goings on in my student house. I'm so looking forward to be spending Christmas with my family, but it's still nice to spend time with my house mates and decorate our house too :)

Here is our humble tree, complete with presents and home made decorations!

I'm sure you will recognise these little ornaments from my previous blog posts :) It's great to finally be able to display them properly. 

Also on display for the first time this year is my framed CCN Gingerbread House.

We had our house Christmas meal on Thursday, seeing as most of us were travelling on different days to get home. We didn't take the traditional route for food. We had a Mexican night! I was on cooking duty, which I love. I take such joy in preparing food for others, that we can all sit around the table and enjoy. I made two different types of chilli and a batch of rice, and we also had home made guacamole and Christmas tree-shaped tortilla chips! Very festive!

White rice and veggie chilli (sweet potato, spinach, peas, onion, kidney beans)

Meat chilli in the slow cooker (beef mince, pork mince and bacon)

After we were thoroughly stuffed from our delicious meal, it was time for presents! I received such a wonderful gift from my house mates. It was so thoughtful and perfect for me :) 

Isn't it charming? It's a wooden suitcase that's been decorated to look vintage. It's just so pretty and I love it! But even better, there were more goodies inside. 

A DVD from my wishlist, two vintage style coasters (I collect these) and an X-men comic. 

I feel truly lucky to have been given such a gorgeous gift. Big thank you to Kathryn and Lucy!!

I feel spoilt already and the big day isn't even here yet. I'm travelling tomorrow. I've got my tickets and booked seats so it should be fine, but you never know with our railway systems. Fingers crossed I make it to Glasto in good time. Yes, I am taking my stitching on the train :)

Best wishes and Merry Christmas,

 

200th Post Giveaway!

I love my little blog. Truly, I do. It's provided me with a means to not only share my love of cross stitching, but so much more. I've connected with people all over the world, some who I even consider as friends. I've also experienced kindness online and every single comment makes me beam. Thank you so much to my lovely readers. I can't believe I've been blogging since 2010! Where does the time go? I've been through so much since then, two jobs, moving to Winchester, going through University and tonnes of other stuff. I'll be blogging way past graduation, don't you worry about that :)

Just as a small thank you to my lovely followers, I'd like to offer a giveaway. This will be a little parcel of Christmas themed goodies, because it's my favourite holiday! Leave a comment on this post to be in with a chance of winning, and let me know your favourite blog. One that you always check up on every time you go online. I'm always looking for new stitchy blogs to add to my reader :) There is no need to post about my giveaway on your own blog, but thank you kindly if you do.

Entrance will close on 30th November. Best of luck to everyone.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for reading my little corner of the blogosphere. It really means an awful lot to me :)

Best wishes,

Another year older

Thank you so much for the lovely birthday wishes on my last post. I had a truly wonderful day and was thoroughly spoilt! I must say a couple of thank yous to two birthday fairies who really made me smile.

First, I got this wonderful parcel from Elisa at Old Ragged Threads. Elisa was swift to the post office and the package was tempting me for days! I was very good and waited until the big day. It's a lovely ornament alongside a M Designs chart and a very suitable card :P Thank you so much Elisa!

 

Birthday day gift number two came from Cath over at The Stitchin' Chicken. Cath truly spoilt me with an array of kits and charts, and even a new hoop! It was a wonderful selection, and I didn't previously own any of the kits. I can't wait to get my needle into this little lot. A huge thank you to you too Cath!

 

I had the most wonderful birthday. I went to Uni in the morning and then Lawrence came over and I opened my cards and gifts. I felt so blessed when I opened every card and unwrapped every parcel. I am so lucky.

Lawrence took me out for dinner that evening. We went to Loch Fyne, which I had never been to before. It was such a stunning restaurant, very welcoming and warm too. The food was certainly delicious.

This was my starter of charcuterie plate, so good. Lawrence enjoyed crab cakes.

 

 

Then for main I had this delightful bowl of goodness! It's a pear, butternut squash and pumpkin seed salad, topped with a fillet of kiln smoked salmon, with a side of chips. It was heavenly!

 

We split a bottle of my favourite Pinot Grigio wine too. I felt like a true birthday girl, being spoilt rotten by my love. I felt so content when I went to sleep last night :)

I hope you've all had a great start to the week too, I'll be back soon with a stitching update.

Best wishes,

 

The Kindness of Community

Hello everyone! The snow is at last starting to melt here on the hill. But now there's talk of flooding, will the weather ever just settle? Probably not :P

But snowy days do make for perfect stitching times. I've had a couple of evenings this week where I've finished my Uni studies, rushed home in the biting wind, pulled off my snow flecked coat, put on the kettle and settled in my chair with my stitching. I now have the most perfect stitching chair that I will have to share in a later post. My housemates all know that that's where I sit in the evenings and they don't dare to take up the space! At last, I have my own stitching chair! I always love being nosy and seeing where others stitch so I'll be sure to show you my cosy stitching sphere soon.

This post is dedicated solely to the kindness of Cath over at The Stitchin' Chicken. After seeing my post about running out of thread before finishing my chicken project, Cath offered to check in her stash for the matching thread. My lucky starts shone as Cath had just enough thread from a leftover kit to send to me. She sent the prettiest card along with the thread, as well as two magnetic bookmarks that make perfect needle minders. Thank you so much for your generosity Cath! Thanks to you, I can now proudly share my finished chicken . . .

Cath must have an affinity for helping cross stitched chickens in need :P

This is the first project I've finished for my sister. I've already picked out the backing fabric and will be making it into a pillow, ready to give to her when she visits in February :)

I do so love playing a role in this lovely community of ours. I'll be putting together a series of giveaways throughout the year as my way of giving back. Look out for them!

I hope everyone has a lovely weekend. I've got two days of work, but only short shifts. Plus I'm going to the Farmer's Market on Sunday morning which is always a lovely experience.

Best wishes to all,

 

Cosy Cats

Don't you just love this time of year? I keep meaning to take my camera out for a walk and get some snaps of all the beautiful autumnal foliage we have around our house. It does make the walk to Uni a lot more pleasant when they are amber leaves to kick up! 

This is my favourite time of the year for stitching too. Getting cosy with a blanket and a lap full of stitching is where you'll normally find me this season. I feel like I haven't been stitching as much as I'd like to recently, but I have got a new start to share.

New starts are just the thing to boost stitching mojo!

I picked up this Solo the Cat kit way back in 2010 at a big cross stitch convention in London. There were so many stalls selling great bargains, I picked up two kits half price that day. This one above, and a wolves design that is yet to be opened too! 

The similar colours in this piece means I have to have a good light when stitching on it. But I'm going along well. I'm not looking forward to all that backstitching though. Some of you may recognise Solo, I've stitched another design with this character before. It's in this post if you'd like to have a nosy. It was the first piece I finished after I started blogging :) How time does fly . . .

I've got a week off from work this week, but still going to Uni most days. I'm looking forward to this weekend though. Me and Lawrence will have been together for two years at the end of the month, so we are celebrating with an overnight stay in London, dinner out and an overnight stay in a swanky hotel! I'm so excited! It's so lovely to be able to treat ourselves once in awhile :)

I'm off to blog read! Can't wait to see what your busy needles have been up to :)

Best wishes,

 

PS Massive thank you to Tricia from The Stamper's Stitches!! She sent me an email saying she had a chart from my wishlist that she would be happy to send me - I'm so delighted! Thank you so much Tricia for brightening my day :D

WOW!!

Well, I could hardly believe it when I logged onto Blogger this morning and my number of followers had doubled! I thought my eyes were deceiving me, or Blogger was having a malfunction. I was so delighted when it turned out to be true! I cannot thank you all enough for becoming new followers, I really hope you like my blog :) I'm still a little confused though, can any one fill me in on how this wonderful thing happened? I had 31 followers before, and then five days later BAM - 61! Hello to all my new followers, please feel free to leave comments and ask questions about anything on my blog, I would love to hear from you. And we must welcome old friends too :)

So, first things first, thank you for all your helpful comments on 123stitch. I didn't actually make my order until I had heard some opinions from the blogging world. Now that I have used the company myself, I can heartily agree with the positive comments. My stash was posted the day after I ordered it and arrived exactly one week after that. It was all packaged up perfectly and I thought the prices were so reasonable, especially because I live in the UK. So any fellow UK stitchers out there, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this site, it's very good indeed.
Here's the stash I got. I know it doesn't look like much, but for me, it's very exciting LOL I got LHN Nature's Beauty and some threads I needed for that, and some other threads too for an upcoming spring project. Stay tuned for that!



One of my New Year's Stitchy Resolutions was to stitch a LHN design, and after seeing Nature's Beauty on Lynn's blog (thanks Lynn!) I knew it had to be that one. I've made a start on it already, although only a very small start. I had to cut the fabric twice because the first one just wasn't big enough. That'll teach me to start a project late at night, but I honestly couldn't resist!

Chilly Paws is in its final stages too, all that's left is the backstitched words to go alongside the cute Britty Kitty. I've got the fabric ready to turn this into a flatfold as soon as it's finished - not too long now I hope.

And this part of the post is entirely for Peggy-Lee, but feel free to read on :) The story goes that I commented on Peggy's post about cookies saying I had never had a homemade cookie before. She was clearly outraged by this (LOL) as she emailed me some lovely recipes for me to try at home. Well, me and my mum looked over these recipes and unfortunately, some of the ingredients weren't available here in the UK. My mum persevered though and found some other recipes on the Internet. So although we didn't get to use your wonderful recipes Peggy, I can now say I've had a homemade cookie. And here's the proof!

We did make a few more than this, but they were still in the oven when I wanted to take a picture. They are so good, I could probably get through a batch by myself :) Thank again Peggy for your kindness and setting me on this naughty path of cookie heaven!
I've got a drama performance coming up at school, but a week after that, I'm going on a school trip to Athens! I'm really looking forward to it as I'm going with my closest friends. I'll be sure to share some pictures after my trip.
I'm going out tonight to see a comedian with my boyfriend, but before that, I've got sometime to make a serious dent in Nature's Beauty.
Thanks again for joining me on my blog, it means so much to me :) I hope you all have a lovely weekend,