Well, I'm still here and all's quiet on the baby front. I've been struggling a little to get time online over the last 10 days as I have DS and DH at home for the Easter holiday which is quite nice. It's a bit strange having a whole 2 weeks holiday at home - usually we'd go away somewhere like to my parents, but given the circumstances, I really didn't want to risk going into labour half way up the M6 motorway or in some other equally delightful , remote location! LOL!

I had a productive week last week and finished stitching my bit on Lizzy's RR - it's now winging it's way across the Atlantic.


We've all been stitching LHN's Dear Diary designs for Lizzy and her RR looks fantastic!


I think I only have one more RR to stitch on and then I'll be done. It really has been great fun to do! I may have to find another one to join when this is finished and hopefully when things settle down with the baby. I'm not sure I fancy a Neighbourhood RR at the moment, but I do like the idea of the Seasonal Dragons RR Leslie, Jenna, Christine and Outi did last year. I have the chart for the dragons in my stash and kitted it up at one point. I've also got a bit of hand dyed fabtic I think would be fantastic for it.


A big THANK YOU now to Barbara who sent me this gorgeous little door hanger.


Isn't it beautiful? I love the purple colours of the fabric and it's such a sweet little design! This came about as I commented on Barbara's Un-birthday post and was one of the 12 to receive a gift. Barbara wanted to make me something to fit the baby theme and I think she's made a wonderful choice. Thank you very much Barbara!

Stitchy update no. 2 - Edgar's RR and it's Burns Night!

I finished stitching and 'signed' Edgar's RR last weekend and I'm rather pleased at how it's worked out.


As Edgar wants us all to include trees in our stitching, all the motifs are from LHN's Morning Berries. To be a little different, I've arranged them in a kind of band sampler layout because of the space available. I love the colours in this one and they really look great on Edgar's fabric. I really love how it's worked out. (My Mum was very impressed when she saw me working on it at Christmas.)

Here's the whole thing. I love the way Edgar has laid it out - it really will be something special when it's finished.



Edited later to add:

It's Burns Night tonight, so we're for haggis, neeps an' tatties with the neighbours! This'll be our third year of doing this and it's always a bit of fun. We never go as far as doing all the formal stuff involved in a Burns Supper, but have some traditional food and a few poems. The first year we did this, I got my DS to recite the first verse of "To a Mouse".

So, in honour of the day, here's part of my favourite Burns poem:

When chapman billies leave the street,
And drouthy neibors, neibors, meet;
As market days are wearing late,
And folk begin to tak the gate,
While we sit bousing at the nappy,
An' getting fou and unco happy,
We think na on the lang Scots miles,
The mosses, waters, slaps and stiles,
That lie between us and our hame,
Where sits our sulky, sullen dame,
Gathering her brows like gathering storm,
Nursing her wrath to keep it warm.

This truth fand honest Tam o' Shanter,
As he frae Ayr ae night did canter:
(Auld Ayr, wham ne'er a town surpasses,
For honest men and bonie lasses).

This is the start of Tam O'Shanter. I really love this poem, the story and the rhythm of it. There's some background info on the poem on the BBC website here. Jim Malcolm set it to music too and I quite like his way of doing it.

Busy busy

What happened to last week? It just turned into one of those weeks for me where nothing worked out the way I'd planned. After spending 2 days at home with DS and our colds, I went back to work on Wednesday expecting to be very busy for the rest of the week. However, on Thursday I then came down with a stomach bug and spend another uncomfortable 2 days at home taking care of that. Hopefully, everything is back to normal now!

Despite the chaos, I did manage to achieve a few things, such as the monkee. I also managed to get Donna's RR finished and into the post.


It's a slight variation on LHN's Through the Woods.


I now have Edgar's RR to work on using a tree theme. I'm trying to work out something based on Morning Berries.

At the very start of last week, I was also one of those fortunate enough to receive an early Christmas gift from a friend.


The Belgian stamp threw me completely, but I'm very touched and grateful for the gift. Given the number of people whose blogs I've seen this on, this lovely person has been extremely generous in her gifts!

A finish and some rambling

Over the weekend, I finished stitching on Cheryl's RR which is now winging its way off to New York and Janice. Cheryl has asked for a house theme in her RR, and as we're using LHN designs, I stitched the top of Nature's Beauty for her.

I'm really pleased with it - I love the way the colours look on Cheryl's linen.

Next, I'll be starting on Donna's RR which is ready and waiting for me. Given that I got a bit behind with Cheryl's my main goal for Donna's is to get back on schedule!

In between times, I'm adding odd blocks to Nova and I've also dug Starflake out of my WIP box, but not much progress to show at present. I also have plans to stitch some small items, but I'm waiting for the postman on that one!


Edited a bit later to add:

Over the last couple of weeks, I've been wandering around people's blogs a bit more than recently. In doing so, I came across an SBQ which got me thinking. It also links in part to a Deb's post on Old and New Ideas.

The SBQ was - What for you means to achieve mastery as a stitcher?

One of my first thoughts on reading the question was - why would/should I want to achieve 'mastery' as a stitcher? What is 'mastery' anyway? Perfection? Ternezia/Renée who suggested the question has some interesting thoughts on the subject.

I don't know that I ever want to be able to say that I've achieved 'mastery' as that would mean that there were no new challenges in my stitching, nothing new to learn. For me, stitching, as with life, is a learning process where I started with nothing on the day I was born and will continue to learn about myself and the world around me until I die.

To a certain extent, too, I certainly wouldn't want perfection in my stitching. I'm all in favour of a bit of imperfection as it personalises the stitching and adds to the expression of the stitcher him/herself. Because of this, my stitching of any particular design will never be the same as anyone else's and therefore each stitcher's work is unique. Why would we all want to produce work that was completely identical?

There's also a question over whether achieving 'mastery' would allow a stitcher to customise a designer's work. Does mastery mean you can customise somebody else's design to make it 'better'? While if mastery is 'perfection' then would the customisation of a designer's work be allowed?

So in my quest not to achieve mastery - I'll use any stitching method I feel like, I'll use a looped start, I'll lick my floss, I'll stick needles between my lips for safekeeping (and then loose them down the front of my shirt when I forget they're there), I'll leave small items in a hoop for days on end and larger items in a scroll frame for months, even years! I won't wash my hands before stitching and I'll always keep a cup of coffee precariously perched nearby.

Can't think of any more bad habbits right now, but I'm sure there are plenty of them!

Anyway, enough rambling! I should be working!

End of the week

The end of this hectic week can't come fast enough! I've been covering at work for 3 colleagues across 2 departments who are either on holiday or off sick. And as if I dodn't have enough of my own stuff to do, and we've had external consultants in all week that I've had to look after!

In the evenings, when I've had the energy, I've been stitching on my RR which now looks like this.


This is Through the Woods by LHN. I'm really pleased with the progress I've made as I was struggling to get anything done when I started. I think I'll have to redo the French knots on the snowman as he looks rather cross-eyed! Or maybe it just adds character? I'm amending the design slightly to make it a bit narrower and longer, but there's no time to finish stitching it now.

I won't be stitching on it any more as there's too much going on between now and the posting date, so I'll be packing it up and getting it ready to post. I feel very strange having to post it off to someone completely different, knowing I won't see it again for several months. However, I'm looking forward to receiving Cheryl's and am wondering what to stitch for her.

Here are the photos of DS's poppies I meant to post last week. Aren't the colours gorgeous?

Well my RR is under way now as I've gridded the outline of squares for stitching. It's a bellpull type layout with six 100 x 100 stitch squares with a narrow row between each.

I've even started stitching my part of it and there's now slightly more house than there was when I took this photo. I'll be frantically stitching on this every chance I get until the end of next week when I go off on holiday, but I'll post an update before I go.



DS brought a little thank you card home from school the other day, from the teacher who we gave the gift to. It was really kind of her and I'm so pleased to think she really appreciates the gift. The response I usually get from my family is almost the opposite! So it's lovely to get such positive feedback for a change!

Finally, DH and DS are always busy in the garden, but it's quite a change this year to have such lovely flowers. Previous years have very much concentrated on fruit and veg. Perhaps as DH announced yesterday that he's getting a second allotment plot, he'll be growing more of these in the garden!


DS has been growing plants to attract butterflies. Unfortunately, we haven't seen any butterflies yet, but the little poppies are such beautiful colours! And, again unfortunately, I've left the poppy photos at home! Oh well, maybe next week.