Not much stitching but what a week !

It's been one of those weeks. One lot of my grandchildren, along with their friend who lives opposite them,
came up with the idea of having a Cake Stall to raise money for SPORT RELIEF on Sunday 21st.March. Therein followed the request to help them out. Now this is now what you think. Yes I did a little baking for them but mainly it was being oversee-er in the kitchen ( this is otherwise known as general dogsbody and peace-keeper), also the 'quality control' operative (making sure there's no egg shell in the mix, no licked fingers etc etc.). My Hubby and I went out and purchased the ingredients for a huge list of buns, biscuits, muffins and fudge. Their Mum filled in the gaps with paper plates, and table covers , bags plus missed ingredients. The making of items started on the Wednesday when my hubby made Fudge (as a trial) we have in the past made fudge but it's always been a bit 'hit and miss', sometimes absolutely beautiful and other times where we ate with a spoon (it always got eaten). Anyway he found a different recipe to our normal one one the 'web' and gave it a go. It turned out fantastic, so he tried another not quite as good ( a bit softer) but OK. He left it at that until I got back from my normal grand children sitting stint on the Thursday evening. Their other grandma made some ginger cake and fruit cake to sell in slices.

THURSDAY!!! The day when all went wrong!
I'd been doing the final ingredient shop and was looking for red balloons. The supermarket only had mixed bags so I remembered that a store just nearby sold 'party goods' so off I went thinking yippee. I found just what I needed Red balloons. Off I go to the pay desk when Bang! Wallop! Thump! I'm flat on face on the hardest wooden floor I've ever come across. After lying there feeling winded and shocked an 'off-duty' nurse came to my rescue. I must admit she was really kind and cheered me up a great deal. The Manager eventually arrived with associate with wheelchair( I could now hardly move my legs). At this point I was wheeled to near the door to try and collect my self and answer all the relevant questions How? What? Why? Now when you think about it HOW do I know WHAT I fell, tripped, slipped, on. over and WHY? oh Why? did it have to be me?? One thing I do know for certain( I did wonder at the time) Who needs Red Balloons when they can have PURPLE KNEES?
Any how to cut a rather long story shorter. The store gave me the balloons. I drove to collect my grandchildren from school and sat later with a bag of croquet potatoes on my swollen knees. By the time My daughter-in -law got home from work I couldn't bend my leg so no 'gear changing'. I was driven home,( about 30 miles) escorted by the grandchildren, who had done a sterling job in looking after me, and my Husband had to travel by bus the next day to retrieve the car. On the Friday I could hardly move what with very stiff legs, twisted side, bashed elbow. sore ribs. I felt a bit sorry for myself. At this point I consoled myself with a little stitching.


The progress on my Christmas SAL is coming along slowly but I'm hoping to get a little more done before the official posting day. Naughty me I haven't yet touched my Three Kings.

While visiting my sister, last weekend, I decided to indulge my self in small 'Hob-Nobbs' design. This is partly because everything I seem to stitching at the moment is quite big and I need a finish to have a 'feel good' about.




OH No. By seeing the photo I realise I have stitched all the blue squares as full blocks (16 cross-stitches) when they should have been over 2 (4 large cross-stitches) Wow is me. Now I've to decide what to do.
Frog or leave.

I did take my UFO with me on my visit and stitched that in the evening and after chatting about the UFO with someone who has seen it finished it has given a better perspective on it. Apparently it has a bit of a three-'D' effect with the non-stitched areas and is quite something to see completed. I have now cheered up about it.

Just to let you know that Spring had finally sprung here in West Lancashire, UK. I am so delighted to see just a few daffodils and the crocus to give a little colour after some of the miserable days we've had recently. The cat-kins are there on our corkscrew hazel, the honeysuckle has started to burst into green and the primroses and pink aubretia are doing their bit as well.







Now back to the SPORT RELIEF cake stall. Unfortunately the friend's grandad died so quite understandably her mum pulled out of helping and at first so did the little girl. But then she arrived in the kitchen with one of my grand-daughters so see if she could watch. Any how she soon joined in and decided she would try and use some of the baking towards a Brownie Badge. My grandson was using his biscuit making towards a 'Community Badge' at the Cub Scouts so as well as raising money for others they had a purpose for themselves. The next thing I know is that a cousin of theirs rings up (he's 4) to see if my grandson can go and play. So now comes the complicated bit. One grandson goes and returning is his girl cousin to sleep over. I now am back to having two 10 year olds and one 8 year old all wanting to bake. ( I can feel headaches coming on). But onwards and upwards having delved into my extra large pocket of patience. Dutifully taking photos for their Brown Owl for the badges.


Grandson's biscuits


On the great day My husband and myself were up at the crack of dawn, he cutting fudge and myself making flap jacks and jam tarts. When the girls fell out of their beds they set about finishing cake decorating and the elder grand-daughter(13) started to make her wild berry muffins and coconut muffins and other bits and bobs, as the day before she had been playing field hockey. A little later the friend arrived so back to four all trying to do something or other and myself now wishing I could find my inner calm. At About half past ten my hubby took the younger of our grand-daughters putting signs up on lamps posts. While the friend was busily doing price lists on the computer and the cousin was still attempting ' things'. At long last the time had come to hopefully sell their goods. The sun was shining. All were in high hopes. It was a super experience for them and they made the grand total of £142.84p and all that on the driveway of their house. Well done to them all.

Now I can do some cross-stitching. Yippee

Oh Boy! What a time

Here we are again. What a couple of weeks. My DH and I returned home from a few days away fractionally tired and hungry. So I set about making us a quick omelet, easy enough I hear you saying, all going well beating up the eggs, pan on the hob, first one made then a bright light followed by darkness. 'Now what've you done?' came the shout from the front room. 'Nothing,' I reply. All the lights are out in the road back and front. Yes, you've guessed 'powercut'. I made the next omelet by candle light, very romantic you may think but I can tell you after 9+ hours with the temperature falling it was not much fun. A few days later the local newspaper informs us -' Power cut affects homes.' Now that's what I call news. I could have told them that sooner than they told me. Ah well all's well that ends well. We got the power back in the middle of the night and discovered later that it had damaged our microwave (4 months old) Oh joy! So now the proud owner of yet another microwave all is well.
Now to a little sewing. I've made a little progress on Window Wreath. It is only single thread and the colours are pretty close but the effect is very good. I've done some of the back-stitching which emphases the holly well. All round each window pane still needs doing and as I only pick it up every now and again it may be a little time before it's finished. Still it's very pretty

Next to the update on my UFO. I have made some reasonable progress with it. I've been doing part of the check coat and his long tie( that's the bit with spots on). Although I'm still trying to get my head around this one at least it's growing slowly. There is quite a lot of counting with it and parts of it have been suffering from the 'frogging' problem that seems to crop up periodically. I always thought frogs vanished over the winter months but alas I was wrong.

Here's something a little lighter. One of my daughter-in-laws dresses their home up for all the 'Holiday'. Bearing this in mind and thinking Easter is coming, when she does Easter egg hunts for the children and a little buffet. I saw these and thought they were just great.

I gave her the surprise gift when they came for dinner yesterday. I can tell you she was absolutely delighted.The web-page for you to have a little look at some of the other goodies is here I can tell you they really are beautifully made having actually held them and the little holders are quite weighty. They also came with small cards to place in the clip at the back. I have already promised myself that I will be getting some more of them, had a thought, they could just be ornamental as well ( now I don't need an excuse).

At last 'Castle in the Air' unrolled, as promised. For those of you here's some info on CiA. There is a choice of straight cross-stitch design or one with specialist stitches and being me couldn't decide on that either. Soooo I do a mix of both depending on how I feel at that moment and whether or not I think the spec. stitch would look too 'clunky' on the 32 count fabric. You have to pick several of the colours yourself. Well at this point( Months ago) I panicked I am not the world's best at colour coordinating, I looked at other peoples ideas on the work that they had posted on the--Website Gallery - to no avail. Some had used pink tones, or yellows etc. etc. Didn't work for me. So I peered out into our garden and made my self a list of what I saw. Wisteria-pale mauve, Aqueba- purple, Forget-me-nots-- blue, Poppies- red, Grannies bonnets-- pink and yellow, Nasturtiums-- orange, Begonias- Wine followed by three varying shades of green. All other colours are stipulated by the Papillon designs. So when this is completed wherever I live in the future I'll always have a reminder of our bright suntrap of a garden. I have actually managed to catch up several downloads. There is just the current one to complete, I have made a start but I must put it aside for a while so that I can do some of my Christmas SAL which up to now has not altered one little bit since my last post. So it's back to 12 Days of Christmas. day two. being the Turtle doves, Here's hoping it goes well.


Just to let you know there really are some crazy folk out there (I live with one). We've had a couple of days of sunshine. Absolutely freezing but sunny and guess what.......my DH has put shorts on!!!!!!! There's just no hope!