Feeling sad today as we lost a good friend and neighbour on Sunday to a sudden heart attack.  We have known the family for nearly 40 years and as children our sons all played together.  As Isabel is 10 years younger than me and appeared perfectly healthy when we spoke last week its really shaken Keith and I.

Holiday Swap Postcards

I recently took part in a Holiday swap with the Surface Design group.  It was a small swap of five people and here are the cards I received and sent.

From Pauline in Australia.

From Sonya in the USA

 

From Lesley in Scotland a lovely use for all those inchies.

 

And from Jenny in Cumbria a really fun penquin.

 

As for me I sent variations of these:

 

 

.Actually these photos show the cards before I edged them but you get the idea.

Flynn update

Gosh, Flynn is nearly 6 months now and grown so much.  They came over to see us last week when I had an opportunity to take the odd photo.

I've got two new teeth and still got my 'best man' bib from Gran and Granpa's wedding.

This is what Supergran has made me for Xmas but I'm not supposed to know so I'll pretend I haven't seen them. 

Another day at the office...

We had fun on Monday at our monthly bitch and stitch group.  We had decided last month to bring an extra sandwich or two and share our lunch:

Linda and Elspeth were first to sample the wares.

Then Jenny entertained us all with her singing hat:

It's abit blurred because it started to sing and shake as I tool the photo, or I was laughing so much I shook the camera, you decide which.

Jenny had brough some presents for us and as she couldn't decide which one to give to whom we all put our names in a plastic bag and picked names out of it.

 

Linda chose my name and I 'won' a pretty boxmaking set.  I'm going to have fun making it up after Christmas.  Jenny was very generous and we all got a beautiful present, she also made us each an origami box with chocolates in it.

 

 

 

We were all very impressed with the boxes and wanted to know how she had made them.  Not having any suitable paper with us, after all we were expecting to use our embellishers today, we used the envelopes from our Christmas cards. 

 

 

 

 We did actually do some work before we started our playday.

 

Still trying to make inroads into Jenny's stash.

Jenny is making a bag

Linda is working on the white bits in Jenny's stash don't think she has decided what it is going to be yet.

Pat has used fibres and silks for her piece, still undecided as to what it will eventually be.

Elspeth is bonding two pieces of felt together, one turquoise and one yellow to be used in a future project.   This is what it looked like when she had almost finished.

As for me, well I just made a mess.

 

 



 

 



Guess who is all of a glitter!!!

Me..... if anyone is wondering how far a very small tube of detail glitter particles will go well so far.
 Covered the whole of my sewing room, spread along the landing, down the stairs, through the kitchen into the dining room and into the living room.  Anyone in close proximity also picked the stuff up, including Buster.   How - I sneezed when opening the tube..... now I guess the vacuum will also be all glittered up.

It's a wee bit nippy today

Winter seems to have come with a shove, we've waded through the floods, put extra woollies on in the snow and now comes the lazy wind that goes right through you.   We've been unable to take Buster for more than a very brief walk recently as its extremely slippy underfoot.  He has four feet on the ground mine were more in the air so I gave up and went home.

One good event though was our EG Christmas lunch.  For the past few years tutors and students at our local college have provided food and a demonstration of how they produced some of the items.  These demos have gone down really well, as has the eating of their creativity afterwards.  On that day we usually have displays of work done by the young embroideres and this year was no exception.  Christmas Stocks was the order of the day but unfortunately I missed who'd won as I was out of the room at the time.

 We also had a display of some of the work done on a morning workshop run by Carole Wilson who is a very talented and creative member of the EG.   Very festive display of angles, trees, bells a dove and Carole's own tree nympy.

 Closer look of Carole's tree nymph and dove, which is balanced on a cotton reel.

 After the meal we had a flower arrangeing demonstration.  Each member was given a raffle ticket on arrival and these four beautiful arrangements were the prizes.  Sorry about the picture quality.  I forgot my camera and had to take these with my phone and email them to myself.  They lost some of their clarity in transition.

 

I've been busy finishing off the cardigan and sweater I've made for Flynn.   I will post photos next time along with my attempt at making one of Carole's angles.  Carole has sent me the pattern for the dove but so far I've done nothing about it but want to make one before Christmas, watch this space.